I wasn’t the girl day dreaming about the names of my children and what kind of mom I’d be. I knew I’d be a great mom but I didn’t say things like, “When I’m a mom...I will ___ or I wont ___.” I just never thought about it.
But now that I am a mom and I know what a huge responsbility it is to raise decent human beings, I find myself creating the weirdest rules for our family and myself.
Some of our family rules?
We don’t allow the viewing of our infants in public until they are about 6 months old. No, we don’t keep our kids locked in the house or keep ourselves from going out. We actually go out a lot. But whenever we do go out, unless forgotten, we always drape a blanket over the entire care seat with the handle up to keep the cover off the baby. We do this because it keeps the wondering hands of strangers off our children but also because it keeps them calm and unstimulated. It has actually kept our children sleeping while we’ve ran errands like grocery shopping, doctors appointments, and the like.
We also do this because we don’t believe our children are zoo animals and should be gawked at. We spend enough of our lives in the public eye and feel that we’d like our babies to have some privacy. It’s actually kind of funny to see people try to look past the blanket or if we do lift it up on the rare occasion some people break their backs to get a peek. TP and I look at each other and laugh when that happens.
Putting pictures up of our children on Facebook is prohibited unless someone asks. Seems kind of strange to post pictures of our children on an open blog but not on Facebook. However, when we post pictures on here, we control what they look like and what context their in and that is something extremely important to me. I’ve had friends and family ask to take pictures of Bean and Reid and I say quickly, “That isn’t going on Facebook is it?” and they say no. Or if they say yes I ask them not to or say it’s alright. I just don’t believe that people should be able to freely post pictures of someone else’s child, family or friends.
Nick names to us are so personal. Which is why if you read the paragraph before this one, you’re probably wondering who the heck is Reid. Well, it’s the new guy. You see, it was beginning to bother me that other people besides close friends and family were using his nick name and we didn’t like that. So we’ve stopped sharing it in public and I’m going to stop using it here. I will also correct people who we haven’t allowed to use the name.
It kind of comes of grumpy or snobbish when I do this but I have every right. It’s our kid and we decide what people call him until he’s old enough to make those choices. I’m very picky about names. I always want to make sure I spell them right, pronounce them right, and do not want to use a nick name instead of the full name unless that person tells me I can.
Those are the only big things I can think of right now. Do any of you have weird mom things you do or think you may do when you have children?
And just because he’s too darn cute, here’s Reid:
-M