These dolls families from Plan Toys are confusing to me. Plan Toys are known for their quality children’s toys that are socially and environmentally responsible.

The top family is known as “Modern Family.” What exactly makes this family so modern? It’s certainly not their outfits.  Could the Dad’s pants be any higher? And what’s up with mom’s banana yellow coat belted around what appears to be a floral nightgown? How is this family supposed to embody a modern family, other than the very suspicious fact that two redheads have managed to spawn a brunette boy and a blonde girl. Modern, indeed. Maybe a more appropriate label would be…alternative family?

The second family is labeled “Asian family.” Since I’m Asian-American myself, it’s nice to be represented for a change. But I’d really appreciate it if the entire family didn’t have the exact same super-Chinky hairdo - that awful bowl cut. I know white people think we all look alike, but give me a break!

As for the last family, this one is generically labeled “ethnic family.” Ok-aaaay. Apparently, having brown skin and curly hair covers the rest of the non-white and non-Asian population. Is ethnic supposed to be the new black in the postmodern toy world? At least the ethnic dolls all have different hairstyles and appear to be the best dressed out of all the other doll families.

Tonight Jonah (my 6-year-old) got into his bath and asked me earnestly, “Mom, sometimes my penis just sticks out. Why does that happen?”

I froze and wondered, why oh why is my husband always conveniently MIA whenever this topic comes up? I desperately tried to think of a truthful, yet simple answer. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a great track record whenever questions about his junk come up.

The last time Jonah cornered me about the birds and the bees, he was 4-years-old. We were having dinner and he asked, “Mommy, if a sperm comes from a man and an egg comes from a woman and they have to get together to make a baby, well, how does that happen?” And you guessed it, his dad was nowhere to be seen. I remembered just taking a deep breath and plunging right in with the truth and I said something like, “Well, when a man and a woman get married, he puts his penis into her vagina so the sperm can come out and swim towards the egg inside her body.” I braced myself for the inevitable barrage of questions that would follow. But to my shock, Jonah was silent. And this is a kid who never stops talking.

He pushed his dish of ice cream away from him and said slowly, “Um, I’m not very hungry anymore” and walked out of the kitchen with a defeated posture. I wondered if I’d traumatized him for life. But the very next day, when I picked him up from preschool he was chattering away incessantly as usual. He excitedly declared that he was going to marry his classmate Morgan someday. I pulled away from the preschool school and said something vacant like, “Oh that’s nice, honey.” And he continued, “Yeah, I asked Morgan if she would marry me so she could come live with us. I also told her that once we got married, I could stick my penis into her vagina!”

“Oh that’s nice, ho—you what?!” The sound of shrieking brakes drowned out my cry of dismay as I narrowly avoided colliding with oncoming traffic. It was difficult to explain that although, technically, there’s nothing wrong or shameful about sex, it was still a private topic.  In today’s school climate of “zero tolerance” and “no touching” policies, I wondered where my son’s penis transgression fell.  Luckily, I never got a scandalized phone call from Morgan’s mommy - a rather proper British lady.

So all these repressed memories tumbled into my head in a sort of post-traumatic stress flashback as I deliberated on what to say. Finally, I just copped out and pleaded ignorance and said something lame like, “Oh that’s just what penises do sometimes. Your dad will know better. I don’t have one - so don’t ask me why!” I added quickly.

Jonah paused and said, “Oh, I was just about to ask you why.”

“Well, like I said. Penises do mysterious things sometimes. Daddy will explain it better”

He seemed satisfied with that non-explanation and finished his bath. I felt relieved and a little guilty that I had passed the buck onto my husband. But the truth is, I don’t think Jonah wanted a long, complicated explanation about the physiological phenomenon of penile function and what causes it to become erect. He just wanted to make sure that it wasn’t abnormal.

And I wasn’t lying either. I honestly don’t understand why penises do what they do sometimes. All I know is that men have two heads and it’s the walnut sized one that they default to.

I bought some of these Egglings for Jonah from Giant Robot as an Easter present since he’s such a nature fanatic. He’d been pestering me to plant some flowers and herbs in the backyard but since I have the blackest of black thumbs, I didn’t feel like adding herbicide to my bad karma list. I’m probably the only person who can mess up a Chia Pet and make it sprout only mold.

These little Egglings are perfect for kids and horticulturally-challenged folks like me. It’s a total no-brainer. The white egglings are made of white, porous ceramic and look identical to a jumbo egg. But you crack the top gently with a spoon and inside there’s a peat-fortified mixture inside the eggs all ready to go. All you do is add water and set them out in a sunny place to grow. You don’t have to whip out the gardening gloves or mess around with potting soil. Minimal fuss and muss.

These handmade egglings are extremely popular in Japan and they come with a terra cotta tray and an extra seed pack to insure success. Ten egglings are available: three herbs (basil, mint and thyme), three flowers (chrysanthemum, phlox, petunia), and four special edition varieties (lavender, cactus, red pepper, and wild strawberry).

The Nyokki eggs (Japanese word for grow) with the little legs grow rye grass and you can trim it and style it any way you like.

These little plants are just so cheery and so cute and I’ve perched them all on my windowsill in the kitchen and water them daily. The instructions do warn about the dangers of overwatering since they can cause the roots to rot. So sadly, it is possible for me to kill these plants as well. I’ve been restraining myself from drowning them since it’s so much fun to water them.

But I think I’ve just discovered the perfect generic birthday/teacher/hostess gift and plan to stock up and stash them in my closet to have in a pinch. They come adorably packaged of course, since they’re a Japanese product. But overall, this is the rare fusion of form meeting function in equal measure.

LINKS: GiantRobot and Eggling.com

Take a closer look into the dark eyes of J. Lo’s spawn and I defy you not to shudder. Emme looks like one of those sinister Black-Eyed Kids I’ve read about in various internet reports. Makes me wonder if J. Lo craved any raw meat during her gestation.

Spooky!

LINK: Gawker

Not all of us are blessed to be able to sling a Birkin bag over a tanned, toned shoulder. But you can show off a custom bag displaying your cutie’s art work for a one-of-a-kind accessory.

Simply scan a picture of your child’s artwork (or any image of choice) and send it to Scribble Couture and they’ll transfer the image onto a canvas tote, leather bag or silk clutch.

LINK: ScribbleCouture.com 

In the Netherlands, home birthing is popular and the birthing stool is an important tool used by midwives to let gravity assist with the delivery. A blogger named Amazone shared a photo of this birthing stool that she inherited from her in-laws - which is basically a modified milk bucket with what looks like a toilet seat attached.

I’m all for home birthing, but she might want to scrub that milk bucket out and give it a good disinfecting first. Between the cattle and the other babies that have used this, it looks like it’s seen some stuff. Otherwise, I think it’s ingenious. It must be nice having crafty in-laws. My mother-in-law can’t even bake cookies without burning them. And nothing says love like a used birthing stool.

LINK: Farqmazone blog

My 18-month-old had his first haircut over the weekend and it’s like he had some magic makeover in Cosmo magazine and turned into a little boy. That’s precisely why I put it off for so long. Unlike Jonah, who was born with reverse male pattern baldness (long hair on the sides and back, bald on top), Asher rocked a full head of golden brown locks from the beginning.

As his hair grew longer, his shaggy, rock star hair inspired serious hair envy even in real rock stars. My husband’s cousin is Justin Warfield of She Wants Revenge and when he met Asher for the first time, he couldn’t stop admiring his effortlessly shaggy hair. “Oh My God, he has such good hair! I can’t believe it just grows like that?! You don’t do anything to it?”

Soon, the cute rocker hair started growing longer in the back and started to look like a baby mullet - not so cute.  But still, I hesitated to cut it. I knew that with a few snips of the scissors would transform his baby face into a toddler face and I wasn’t quite ready to let my last baby grow up. However laziness eventually trumped sentimentality as I quickly grew tired of picking dried food out of his unruly bangs. The ever-present tangles in his hair after shampooing only unraveled after a good deep conditioning. I was lucky to shampoo and rinse his hair, let alone get him to sit for conditioner and a comb-through. When his beauty regimen became more involved than mine, I knew it was time.

He happily sat in my husband’s lap while the stylist snipped off his golden brown curls. I requested them to keep it long and shaggy enough so he could keep his curls and the stylist tucked all the hair into a little envelope for me since it was his first haircut. Afterwards, she took a polaroid photo of the family and tucked it into a keepsake certificate that stated “Asher has graduated from babyhood with his first haircut.” I’m not the sentimental type, but this got me all misty-eyed since it was the truth. He suddenly looks like a little boy. Everyone who sees him can’t believe the difference.

The envelope of hair goes into my hatbox full of other sentimental treasures like Jonah’s baby teeth. Besides moms, only serial killers collecting trophies from their victims and Howard Hughes types would keep detritus like teeth and hair. Like sociopaths and psychopaths, I guess moms like me are obsessive, single-minded…and a little bit crazy.

During Spring Break, the taekwondo studio that my son takes his lessons conducted a Spring Camp for students who were out of school. I signed up my 6-year-old immediately. I’m a big believer in “wearing out” your children - it makes them so much more malleable and cooperative by the end of the day. But it also meant a studio full of high-energy, mostly boys bouncing off one another for the day - a situation rife with drama and tears.

Inevitably, Jonah and the rest of the boys had run-ins with The Bully. There’s one in every group and this one was the biggest and oldest kid. He was disciplined with being benched and given push-ups whenever he acted up, but he persisted. At the end of the day, Jonah breathlessly told me the newest transgressions by The Bully and complained of his encounters. I advised him to simply walk away from this kid’s taunts and simply not to react to provocation, since that’s exactly what he was looking for. I told him to try and sympathize with The Bully because anyone who picks so many fights is obviously unhappy and there’s probably some issues at home we’ll never know about.

At the end of the week, when I came by to pick my son up, the owner of the studio and all the assistant teachers were laughing uproariously on the mat. They told me that The Bully and two other kids were getting into an argument when my son Jonah intervened. He walked over, put his hands on his little hips and said earnestly to The Bully, “Why are you always so conflicted?”

Everyone froze and just stared at each other speechlessly before cracking up. The Bully didn’t know how to reply and the tension dissolved immediately. Apparently, I have a budding Dr. Phil on my hands. But it got me thinking that therapy-speak has become so ingrained in our culture that even my 6-year-old son channels his inner pop psychologist to resolve conflicts. On the upside, he and The Bully reached a turning point after that moment and according to Jonah, they are now “sorta friends” or sworn frenemies.

So many superheroes to pick from and emulate, but what if your child doesn’t gravitate towards a particular one? Have no fear, Super You is here!

Your child can customize his or her own superhero costume by picking out a unitard color and personalizing it with a patch reflecting their skills. Whether s/he’s a crime-fighting, computer-whiz or a butt-kicking ballerina, there’s finally a superhero costume to reflect their unique magical powers.

And no, they don’t come in adult sizes. Too bad!

LINK: SuperYou

One of my oldest friends just invited me and my husband out for dinner on Saturday night with her friends. I didn’t know if I could get a sitter on such short notice, so I told her it wasn’t likely we could make it. “A Sitter?!” she exclaimed, “Our reservations are before 11 pm, you don’t need a sitter!” 

Sigh.  For what seemed like the umpteenth time, I explained to her that my 18-month-old  and my 6-year-old had a strict bedtime at 7 p.m. It’s a schedule they’ve been on forever and keeping them up later doesn’t move up their wake up time any later. They’re up at butt crack of dawn no matter what time they go to bed. Besides, what over-tired toddler and first-grader is going to sit quietly through a long, boring grownups dinner anyhow? I’d be spending my entire evening walking them around outside. It would be pointless.

She gave me a passive-aggressive guilt trip about how her friends with kids stay up to all hours and how unusual she thinks my bedtime policy and then whines about how she never seems me anymore. And it’s true. I never see my friends anymore.  I also never go to the bathroom alone anymore either so free time is at a premium around here. By the time I hung up, I felt annoyed and resentful at being made to feel guilty about being totally overwhelmed.My husband and I are busy. Everybody’s busy, but we are really really busy. In addition to owning a business, he works long, crazy hours as a writer on a television show. I feel like a single parent many weeks and I also juggle my own freelance writing when the kids are asleep.

Like most modern moms, I’m juggling lots of plates and the ones that are irreplaceable have to stay in play and the others like friendships, laundry, exercise and sleep often get dropped and shattered to the ground. But I’ve just come to accept that my friends who are DINKS (Double-income couples, no kids) or SINKS (single income, no kids) simply cannot grasp that kids really are the ultimate time-suck. I know I’m still surprised at how little else I accomplish besides keeping my kids alive. Keeping two active boys out of harm’s way is ridiculously time-consuming. Parenthood throws a Playskool sized monkey wrench into friendships. Especially old friendships that go way back to childhood.

Out of my tight-knit group of girlfriends I’ve known since my school days, I was the one who declared she’d never get married or have kids. Apparently, Fate had other plans for me. Immediately upon graduating from Cal Berkeley, I met my husband-to-be in Los Angeles. I was only 22 and for the first time in my life, I was absolutely certain about what I wanted to do with my life: marry him and have his children. Fast forward 15 years later and my husband and I now have two sons, an 18-month-old and 6-year-old. Yet, I’m one of the only ones out of my ambitious, brilliant childhood friends to have children. 

I’ve gravitated towards other mom friends through the years, but scheduling girl time with them is exponentially harder when you throw their families into the mix. And the rare time I do get away from the boys, I want to spend alone decompressing. I never realized how much alone time I needed until I was totally deprived of it. I often retreat to a quiet place to read, shop or surf online. I don’t want to talk, answer questions, chit chat. I go into Greta Garbo mode and “vant to be alone.”

If anybody out there has a solution for juggling friendships or grown up time without kids, I’d love to hear it. It’s enough of a struggle to schedule alone time or date nights with my husband - and we live together. Let alone fit in friends with equally busy schedules. How do you guys manage?