craycrayfish's saved articles

batmans mask won’t work

https://vitals.lifehacker.com/were-calling-it-physical-distancing-now-1842454451 Read more

Yeah, there are good bits, but oh my god are there so many shitty things about being a parent. It’s ok to acknowledge that and commiserate with other people about it.

Hang in there.  I remember feeling the same way at times. All I can say is, for me, I don’t remember the bad, tough days/nights/weeks/whatever. I remember the happy, fun moments from when he was really little.

That’s all true, but I can tell you, that each new phase you enter brings it’s own good stuff, too. Sometimes I miss my son’s pudgy baby face and goofy toddler-isms, but his 7-year old curiosity, laughter, and intellect is pretty amazing too. :)

Talking is huge. It’s very rewarding once their verbal communication expands beyond screaming at you. 

My sister-in-law told us, “Everything is a phase.”

Made it so much easier to keep the difficult nights as a newborn, or a bad stretch of behavior as a toddler, in perspective while we were in them. We knew it would pass, and and we knew that we could get through it.

It isn’t really advice, but when we were in the hospital with our firstborn a nurse told us that when children are babies the days are long, but the years are short. I still really like that saying and realize how true it is more every day. It seems life will never get easier when you’re in the trenches with a… Read more

We’ve never let our kids eat or drink anything other than water in the car, and it has been one of the best decisions we have ever made. It’s a myth that the backseat of your car must look like the floor of a movie theater if you have kids. 

“enjoy every second of it because they’re grown up before you know it.”

It’s well intentioned, but there’s no way to enjoy the shitty diapers, the not sleeping, the arguments with irrational 3 year olds, the tantrums of two year olds, and attempting to restrain a five year old who is raging against perceived injustice.

Two weeks into my year abroad in the UK my grandpa died. (He was hospitalized my third day there.) Everyone kept asking me “alright?” (or worse “are you alright?”) and I just kept thinking, “wow, people in the UK are really perceptive” and unloading a whole bunch on them. Eventually, I realized that “alright?” was… Read more

This. I had a coworker who always took “How was your weekend?” to be an intensely invasive personal question. That was not a faux pas by the people asking her, that was her inability to understand the concept of “small talk.”

and the Lord Jesus spoke: “ye, if thou hast a rockin bod, make yon ducats on the site only for fans, my child! dolla, dolla bills, ye all!”

I’m not saying it’s all on the pregnant person to just absorb any comment people feel like making, just maybe try to be conscious of the difference between an objectively offensive comment and someone not phrasing it quite to your personal preference. Read more

Telling people alternate lines isn’t all that helpful. You find “Are you excited?” to be intrusive, but not “How are you feeling?” and blanket advise people to ask the latter. But I’ve known pregnant women who HATE “How are you feeling?” I’ve been told forever to never, EVER ask “Is there anything I can do?” because… Read more

The two aren’t mutually exclusive. You put a statement of importance online for the world to see, maybe take a second and make sure it’s not open to people saying “was she high when she wrote this?”...It distracts from the point. 

I thought that, in America, baby showers took place before the birth.

I loathe and despise loud, sudden noises--I’m one of those people, like James Herriot, that can’t watch anyone blow up a balloon--so I don’t get the appeal of these things in the first place. But also, DON’T BUY YOUR CANNONS AT AUCTION. That seems to be a lesson to learn here.

So going to preface this before I say what I’m about to say because I know someone here will immediately go to “Oh you’re just being a douche on the internet”, which... well, saying that already has put that in their mindset but we’ll sort that out later: Read more

It’s not really the phone anxiety thing, though plenty of people have that. Read more