Quite often the only time that I'm alone ALL DAY is in the car so I tend to make most of my calls between 7:30 and 8 am and 4:30 and 5:15pm. I'm not unique in this, I know. So this afternoon I called my mom to chat while I was driving home from work as I do about twice a week. She was shopping and asked me if I had any ideas yet about what we would like for Christmas. I told her that I wanted clothes but BEGGED her to make it easy and just send a gift card. (You know, because of stuff like this (the pics are gone... they were on geocities! Wow my blog is old.) I gave her a suggestion for Spouse. Then, she started to complain about how hard it is to decide what to do about To.
ME: Tell me about. I have exactly one idea. I'm going to get him some cute wooden food to go with his pots that I got him for his birthday.
MOM:I thought about that, too. Unless you think it would make (spouse) upset.
ME: Huh? All he got them so far was a Lightening McQueen racetrack and some sleeping bags.
MOM: No, I mean... you know. Because he's a little boy!
ME: MOTHER. Are you KIDDING ME? You really think that it would bother (Spouse) if we got him play food?? We're talking about buying them an entire play kitchen!
MOM: Well! I don't know. At least don't buy him a pink kitchen.
ME: I won't if I can avoid it! Don't get me started. I can't tell you how much it pisses me off that retailers have to divide their toys into "boy toys" and "girl toys." Why should Target decide who gets to play with what? I hate their website.
MOM: Well, not everyone is as progressive as you are I guess.
ME: My views are quite controversial, yes.
I'm pretty sure that she was teasing when she made the comment about my "progressive" views but she was quite earnest when she asked if my husband would be bothered by kitchen-related toys for our sons. SHAME ON YOU, MAMA. I shouldn't be surprised given what I've seen her give my nephews. (She likes to give things like realistic looking water guns, light sabers, all sorts of action figures that shoot things. All the fun stuff that mean old AAYOR Mommy won't buy. At least when they were really little she stuck to Little People playsets and toy cars.)
I dread the day when my kids come home upset or confused about what is ok and what isn't for boys. At the moment, thank god for Montessori school.
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On a completely different note, even though I hate Target for their stupidly gender-divided toys, I love them for many other reasons. So, I was there last week browsing toys, trying to get some ideas, and saw that they had a giant box of pretend food for like $10. The Melissa and Doug food is AWESOME and I adore their toys for many reasons, but it is pricey. Like $20 per set unless you get it on sale (and the sale ones at TRU sold out on cyber monday before I got to them. boo.). So I picked it up to check it out and I was SO disappointed. It was full of play JUNK FOOD. A few fruits and veggies, bread, cheese, milk, a few other things but tons of crap like hotdogs, burgers, fries, boxes of Hamburger Helper and macaroni and cheese. WTF?
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