Yes, purple shirts will sap your creativity, energy and motivation to do all things bloggy.

Oh, and yeah, I’m pregnant too — new Navelgazing Baby expected in Spring 2012. Voila!

Unfortunately, there aren’t that many child survivors portrayed in The Walking Dead, and the few shown are there mostly as plot devices or character development props for adult characters. On the other hand, there aren’t very many zombie children portrayed either so I often wonder what  really happened to the mothers and their children. The likely answer is that the writers haven’t thought about this in any significant way since explorations of mothering are generally absent in the apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic genre. Sure, you see mothers and their children but many times it’s the father-child (often father-son) relationship that’s explored (See, The Road, 2012, War of the Worlds, etc.).

In the first episode of The Walking Dead, we meet a father and his 12-year old son who are surviving after having lost the mother/wife of the family to the “walkers” (the term “zombie” is never used on the show). She is now a walker with some residual memory since she keeps returning to the house where the family has hidden out. We don’t get much sense of her personal story since the focus is on how the father is dealing with his and his son’s grief plus the responsibility of parenting and managing survival for two.

In later scenes, we meet the wife and son of the main protagonist, Rick. We see some mothering going on there but the emotional drama related to this family is mostly centered on the relationship between Rick and his wife, Lori, and the love triangle he’s unaware of.  Plus, we’ve yet to see how Lori and their son, Carl, managed to survived the escape from their home. Did Lori have to do any fighting? How did she protect Carl?

This makes me wonder why writers don’t seem to find the stories of mothers compelling unless it’s to prop up a plot point or flesh out other characters. It can’t be because there’s a lack of material. Here’s what I imagine that mothering through a zombie apocalypse might look like:

• Mothers fighting off baddies, both human and non-human to protect their families
• Mothers using their ingenuity to use what’s available in order to meet their families immediate needs
• Mothers making hard choices about their families’ survival
• Mothers trying to find some semblance of happiness in the face of adversity
• Mothers sacrificing for their children or maybe even not sacrificing anything
• Mothers being tough
• Mothers being gentle
• Mothers sheltering their children from the truth of their situation
• Mothers being bluntly honest with their children about the truth of their situation
• Mothers grieving
• Mothers rejoicing
• Mothers doing whatever they are capable of doing at any given time

As you can see, I don’t think there’s any one way that mothering would be like during a scenario like a zombie apocalypse. We don’t even have to have a zombie apocalypse to know that mothers and their children are capable of surviving as best they can. Mothers across the world are mothering through adversity and they have been since the beginning of time. From the mother who is navigating incredible poverty with her children, to the mother who walked across a desert with a sick child for a chance at medical care and food, to the mothers who are mothering in the middle of war zones, there will be no shortage of stories.

He still on the titty?

When are you going to wean?

How much longer is he going to be doing that?

Oh, he’s still nursing?

Sigh…Don’t these folks realize that I never plan to stop nursing? Sheesh, I’ve already mapped out how I’ll nurse him after he goes off to college. It’s not like I’m still nursing him because it’s developmentally and  nutritionally appropriate for a toddler.

Didn’t you know, it’s all about me, me, me!

My baby turned two last month and I didn’t write about it. Oh, we did celebrate his birthday. We went out of town and saw various relatives. He had a small party with ice-cream cake. We even took him to the zoo for the first time.

When we returned home, I tearily finished editing a video to commemorate his first two years.

Damn, my baby is two, y’all! Two! How did we get here so fast?

Just the other day I was marveling at him being able to roll over on his own, now he’s running, jumping, and climbing with ease. He’s eagerly exploring his independence but isn’t afraid to need me. And while two is an age that we both find frustrating at times, I’m grateful to be able to experience it with him.

Baby E used to sport an afro most of the time but lately we’ve taken to braiding it up. Both C and myself wear our hair in locs but we haven’t taken that step with Baby E. C is in favor of going ahead and locking it or just cutting his hair. I’m more sentimental about keeping his baby curls for as long as possible (*sniff). A few months ago I was more on the side of giving him his first haircut but that was mostly because Baby E would not sit still long enough to let me braid his hair. However, haircuts are currently on the back-burner again because Baby E will sit still for his babysitter while she braids his hair. I can barely imagine what he would look like with short hair.

Check out more Mahogany Monday posts here.

• Finding daycare when your parenting style isn’t quite mainstream
• Pumping again when you haven’t done it regularly in a year
• Yes, it’s okay to nurse your toddler…really
• How I realized that my workplace is institutionally sexist (and cis-sexist) despite their commitment to “diversity”
• Toddlers, solids, development and mother blame
• Finding time for me
• My baby’s turning two!!!
• Passing on my cultural heritage to my child
• The zombie apocalypse

We use our Ergo carrier a lot, mostly because we don’t have a stroller. We’re not against strollers, we just haven’t had a sustained need for one. This could change, of course, particularly if we introduce another child into our family. For now, Baby E is content to ride on Daddy’s back, as seen here in this photo. And yes, he is that cool.

See more Mahogany Monday links here.

Check out more photos for Mahogany Mondays at The Mahogany Way.

Members of this brigade are always offended that there are spaces that prioritize the experiences of persons of color above white persons. They manage to derail otherwise productive discussions with the same tired statements to support their supposed feelings of being offended.

“If there was a White XYZ Association then it would be called racist.”

“I’m tired of having to cater to other communities, it just fosters racism.”

“Why are you segregating yourselves?”

Listen up, Waah-Waah Brigade:

We’re tired of your warped definitions of racism.

We’re tired of hearing your accusations that rely on the logic of  false equivalence.

We’re tired of being told that our concerns don’t matter because they aren’t your concerns.

We’re tired of being erased from breastfeeding/birth/parenting literature and images.

We’re tired of your failure to recognize the role history has played in the present state of all of our lives.

We’re tired of your assumption that being “colorblind” is a positive trait.

We’re tired of constantly having to justify the centering of our issues when we’ve been marginalized.

POC involved in breastfeeding/birth/natural parenting causes set up their own spaces because we tend to be erased, minimized, and silenced in mainstream spaces. We shouldn’t ever have to apologize or feel guilty for filling gaps or tending to our own needs.

How fair is it that we get accused of being exclusionary by people who tend to exclude us in the first place?

So, Waah-Waah Brigade, you can shut it.

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Since 2007 I’ve faced unemployment three different times, each period longer than the previous stretch. I can honestly say that the reasons have nothing to do with how good of an employee I was. The first time had to do with me moving to a new city. The second time was because my grant-funded position at a non-profit was eliminated due the agency losing that grant. The third time, well, let’s just say that if I had been eligible to appeal my wrongful termination, I would have won.

We place so much value on paid work (and of course some paid work is more valued than others) that unemployment is viewed as a moral failing. Of course, not many would dare say that to your face but that attitude is all around us. How else to explain the fact that I automatically feel embarrassed when I meet someone for the first time and they ask me, “What do you do?”  I feel judged if I say something like, “I’m between jobs,” or  ”I’m job searching,”  or ” I’m unemployed”. The stigma of unemployment is such that you can be assumed to be lazy, a terrible employee, broke (another “moral” failing), etc., if you don’t add qualifiers to your answer. So I rely on euphemisms like, “I stay home with my son,” because in some circles it’s more acceptable to be a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) of your own volition.

And yes, I have enjoyed being a SAHM. I get to spend more time with my son. I don’t have to deal with rush hour traffic twice a day. I don’t have to stress about workplace politics and dirty tricks. In many ways, I get to breathe. To be perfectly honest, I don’t really miss going off to an office environment. The problem is that I didn’t get to choose to be a SAHM so my family didn’t get to prepare for that choice. Instead, I was unceremoniously thrown into a situation that currently is unsustainable. So, for the past year I’ve looked for a new job.

Simply put, unemployment and job hunting sucks. It sucks for the basic reasons of having to organize a resume over and over, the hours of searching for job listings, and then having your applications rejected. It sucks when your options are limited because of childcare needs and costs. It sucks when the thing you’re qualified to do is not in high demand in your city. It sucks when being unemployed is also a hindrance to becoming employed. Here’s why else it sucks — it makes me question my own value.

What good am I if no one thinks I’m hire-able?

Am I a bad person for not wanting any old job?

What was the point of getting a master’s degree if it actually hinders my job search?

Am I letting my family down by not being “successful”?

To some, this thought process might sound irrational but when society says your worth is tied to your ability to make money, is it really that irrational? Unemployment is a soul-sucking, doubt-inducing beast that sometimes left me sobbing over my computer keyboard.

Sigh.

So here’s the good news — I’ve been hired. I’m simultaneously relieved and anxious about it. I’m grateful for the opportunity because now there’s the promise of steady income. With steady income comes a lessening of family stress and room to breathe. However, I don’t like having to find alternative childcare for my son (a situation worthy of its own post) and I’m sad to lose the flexibility I had with my time.

If there’s anything I learned from being unemployed, it’s that I like to be the primary determinant of where I spend my time. So, over the next year I’d like to find a way to earn a steady paycheck while spending my time in ways I find fulfilling, and that includes being my son’s primary caregiver.

However, I’m glad to say goodbye to involuntary unemployment. I hope we never meet again.