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The Baby Manicure Tragedy

Aug 2, 2010 | Filed Under: Candy's Column,Featured,Musings

Re-posted from October 16, 2009. The family is en route to Los Angeles after Skye’s successful 2010 East Coast Birthday Tour.

The manicure victim blows bubbles to cope with her trauma

With motherhood comes many new and important responsibilities, such as picking baby boogers, wincing when your husband picks out the wrong pair of baby socks and Tweeting about the State of Your Breast Milk. Another such responsibility is giving your baby regular manicures so that she doesn’t wake up looking like she’d spent the night wrestling a raccoon, as my child did this morning. Feeling horribly guilty about the tiny scratches near Miss Skye’s right eye, I did what any concerned mother would — and put out several raccoon traps around the house.

Once I owned up to the situation and maturely admitted that she had scratches because MR. CANDY had failed to trim her nails (men, I tell ya), I decided to clip them myself before she, you know, lost an eye or something. Have you ever given a baby a manicure? The thing about babies is — and you non-parents out there may not know this — is that they’re small! As are their nails! And their nail CLIPPERS! Cutting their tiny little nails with their tiny little nail clippers feels as natural as putting fake eyelashes on the cats. Which they are not happy about, by the way.

Another thing about babies? Is that, at eleven weeks old, they like to move around. A LOT. Fascinated by these things called arms and legs attached to her body, Skylar is constantly testing them and flailing about as though she’s auditioning for Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance. Given this, any mother with common sense would, of course, try to cut her nails while she was asleep and immobile.

So I, naturally, cut them while she was awake and flailing on my lap.

You know what’s coming, don’t you? Oh yes. SNIP goes the skin, making her tiny little finger bleed. Baby Girl looked at me like, “Why would you DO that to me?!”, pouted, then cried for a solid ten seconds. Yes, only ten seconds. I, on the other hand, cried about it all afternoon. Omigod, people — inflicting pain on your child, however unintentional…? THE. WORST. FEELING. IN. THE. WORLD. I honestly felt faint, like I could pass out from the horrible, overwhelming guilt. Is this what Catholics often feel like? If so, I’m glad my dad stopped practicing Catholicism before I was born. ‘Cause that depth of guilt is practically paralyzing, I tell ya.

Needless to say, I did not cut the remainder of Miss Skye’s nails today. Instead I held her closely and offered my boobs as a peace offering. Now I’m faced with the age-old parental dilemma: Let my daughter scratch her eyes out or sever her hand with the clippers? Ugh. It’s SO much more fun picking baby boogers.

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Fun Game Time: The Laughing Stork’s Pregnancy Bingo!

Jul 14, 2010 | Filed Under: Featured,Humor & Satire | Tags: Games, Pregnancy Bingo

Re-posted from April 29, 2009

Hey, you sexy Pregnant Ladies! Need a break from your exciting weekend nights of Pay-Per-View movies and countless trips to the bathroom? If so, have we got just the thing for you:

PREGNANCY BINGO!

Warning: The sheer excitement of playing this game may cause urinary incontinence, nipple hair growth and lethal flatulence… oh wait, no. That’s merely part of the fun of being pregnant. Carry on.

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Toddlers & Tiaras Play-by-Play: “Where’d My Ni-Ni Goooooo?!”

Jun 3, 2010 | Filed Under: Featured,Pop Culture,Television | Tags: Live Blogging, Toddlers & Tiaras

In the Season 3 premiere of Toddlers & Tiaras…

:01 – The Le Maison de Paris (or, in proper French, La Maison) pageant director says we should expect to see lots of beautiful girls, beautiful faces, beautiful smiles.. and lots of happy little girls at the end of this pageant!

Clearly, she hasn’t met Makenzie yet.

:01 – Why is the Louisiana-based pageant called Le Maison de Paris? The pageant director explains: “So many people would like to see Paris… Louisiana, French, it goes together. That is our native. You know. That is our, um, language… here.”

She had me at “that is our native.”

:02 – We meet 4-year-old Makenzie. “I am a beauty queen,” she smiles, adding that she needs to be in pageants because “you get to dress in fancy clothes.” Awwww. What a sweet girl. Then her tiara falls off. Makenzie SCREEEEAAAMS. Whoa.

:03 – “I do whatever I want to,” the little diva smirks as she huffs and puffs and bosses her mom around. Somewhere, Tyra and Mariah are bowing down to this girl. Her mom explains that she’s an only child. OH! OKAY! No wonder. Carry on then.

:04 – Six-year-old Daisy makes her show debut. Her mom crows that all little girls like to get spray tans and glue five-foot eyelashes to their eyes. And Daisy…? She also likes to shake her booty to Hip-Hop like she’s a back-up dancer for Snoop Dogg.

:05 – Alex, 9, has been in more than 300 pageants. Which, if she started competing the day she was born, equals about 33 pageants a year. I’m happy to report Alex enjoys competing for all the right reasons:

Money, money, money. “You did really good there. Look at that little hunk of money!” her mom compliments her, as they get nostalgic looking at this picture from a past pageant. A real heart-tugger, for sure. Alex even has jeans with her likeness painted on them, surrounded by dollar signs and the words, “Give me the dough!” And people think pageants send the wrong message to kids. Pishaw!

See? Even Santa Claus approves this message.

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Chicks, Man

Jun 1, 2010 | Filed Under: Candy's Column,Featured

I get out for Girls’ Nights approximately every solar eclipse these days, so I was looking forward to getting all dolled up (translation: putting on deodorant), having a few martinis and seeing Sex and the City with the girls this weekend. Sure, reviews of the movie suggested that pulling out my teeth with pliers would be more fun than watching the Film That Never Should Have Been Made, but I didn’t care. I mean, c’mon. Martinis! A movie! Deodorant! That’s as exciting as it gets for the mom of a ten-month-old. Not to mention I’m pretty sure we broke the pliers trying to put Skye’s walker together. So teeth extraction by pliers wasn’t even an option.

In retrospect, I should have just used the pipe wrench. Because that would have been less painful than what transpired Friday night.

Terribleness of the movie aside — and, other than a spot-on exchange between Miranda and Charlotte about motherhood that lasted all of a minute of the two-and-a-half-hour movie, it was disappointingly terrible — it was the real-life drama that really dragged me down. I was reminded why most of my friends are guys: CHICKS ARE MEAN! Not you lovely ladies reading this, of course, but a lot of females…? Not exactly kind to each other. The few female friends I do have, including the one who invited me to join her and her other friends for the Sex and the City “fun,” are very low-maintenance. As in I don’t have to worry about them being nice to my face, and then mocking my “fat ass” behind my back. My friends have NO problem laughing at my fat ass right in front of me. No! I kid! My ass is more flat than fat. Which apparently makes it all the funnier. Got some syrup to go with that pancake ass, Kirby? Ha, ha!

Um, what was I saying? Oh yeah. My friends are sweet and low-maintenance…

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