Morrisons - Where Breastfeeding is 'Embarrassing'

I've still had no response from the last blog post. Interesting.

I've also just been told about a woman breastfeeding her baby in the cafe who was asked to leave as it was "embarrassing" the other customers.

Go Morrisons, you ROCK at being cool.

Seriously? Seriously? Does anyone believe that bullshit?

Also, as an aside, their 'cooked and ready to eat' mussels are so frozen I'll be ready to eat them about this time tomorrow.

Why I won't be buying from Morrisons or Kiddicare until they change their views

Below is a copy of an email I've just sent to the CEO of Morrisons, a Mr Dalton Philips, regarding a display I saw instore yesterday. Yes, yesterday - not 30 years ago as the sexist stereotyping suggests.

Dear sir,
I noticed in my local store that above the toy aisle were the signs ‘Boys’ toys’ and ‘Girls’ toys’ (helpfully blue for boys, pink for girls, just in case anyone was in any doubt!), with the toys separated according to whomever is in charge of this sort of thing’s pre-conceived ideas of what girls and boys play with.
I’m really disappointed that in this day and age this sort of thing is still happening. These aren’t old signs – the entire store has just been revamped – so someone, somewhere in your company has clearly decided that this is appropriate.Gender stereotyping through toys is highly influential and persuasive. It invades children’s and parent’s choices, their actions and their expectations. It’s indicative of the (thankfully slowly changing) world around them where boys dressed in blue do Boy Things, while pink-clad princesses pursue Girl Pursuits. I’m sure that you wouldn’t claim only women care and nurture children, for example, yet all of your dolls were in the ‘Girl’ section; utterly reinforcing regressive stereotypes and damaging growing children’s sense of individuality by lumping them in groups based solely on gender.

There have been many recent campaigns against this sort of sexist stereotyping, which you may or may not be aware of:

•  
Dr Laura Nelson led a winning campaign against Hamleys for gender segregating toy signage within its stores: http://delilah-mj.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/campaign-success-hamleys-toyshop-scraps.html

• Swedish schoolchildren reported Toys’R’Us for outdated gender roles in their merchandising, resulting in a public reprimand for the company
http://www.thelocal.se/22504/20091006

•  
Pinkstinks (www.pinkstinks.co.uk) launched a campaign against the Early Learning Centre for gender stereotyping in stores which has led to some positive changes occurring.

You can see that corporations are taking this seriously and are slowly making the necessary changes needed. Please make Morrisons one of the progressive companies by stopping your stores’ reliance on this outdated and harmful method of visual merchandising which introduce, promote and reinforce sexism. Until such time as you do, I won’t be spending money on toys in any of your stores or affiliates. I’m sure one person’s boycott won’t even register on your radar but my conscience will be clear that I’m not supporting this behaviour. I do hope that the decision-makers at Morrisons choose not to continue propagating these destructive stereotypes.
I would appreciate your feedback on this matter.

In hindsight I wish I'd signed off 'love from a little boy who likes to breastfeed his dolly and whose favourite colour is purple, and a little girl who likes to wear blue pyjamas'. C'est la vie.

With thanks to various online peeps who gave me advice and support when drafting the letter, and to Dr Laura Nelson for blazing the trail with Hamleys.

Trial Tuesday

The very lovely Rebecca over at Weight Wars' most recent blog post has inspired me (to be honest, everything she does inspires me - she's truly inspirational in what she's doing and is, well, a lovely person too) to create some little goals for this blog and life in general.

This week's goals are:

1) Think about what I'm writing (and actually write it!)
I know it sounds a bit daft, but my posts so far (including this one!) have been written off the cuff and posted as soon as they're done. They're not exactly indicative of my writing style, or me as a person. So I'm going to start thinking a bit lot more about the content, look and feel of my posts. I'm also going to make sure I post regularly, otherwise what's the point?

2) Spend more time playing
I know it sounds a bit simple, but day to day life gets so caught up in going to and fro places, feeding people, changing nappies, wiping bums, cleaning up (Operation Organise My Life is going well, by the way) that I don't spend an awful lot of time playing with the kids. So that will change. This will also take up time, which will help me with a problem I'm having (that I won't go into here)

That'll do, donkey.

When enough is enough is enough

I haven't posted for a while. Mostly because there's only so many times you can say 'still not sleeping'. But she's not. Every day her nightly sleeping patterns get worse, and worse, and worse. I'd say they couldn't get any worse, but I'm pretty sure she'd find a way, just to spite me.

I sent a text earlier saying 'I can't do this, I've had enough.' but what choice do I have? This is it until she changes. If she changes. What I wouldn't do to go out on the piss for a night. Have a full night's sleep. Go to the loo without juggling baby, pre-schooler and dog. Christ, even go to a full day of back-to-back meetings at work! I'm ashamed to admit I've fleetingly pondered returning to work early just so I can catch a break. It's relentless and I'm close to my wit's end which is crossing over into every other aspect of my life too. I'm >< close to deleting all my internet accounts, locking the door, and not moving for the next year.

If anyone says 'this too shall pass' I'm going tor each through your internet and rip your teeth out. Just so you know.

Operation Organise My Life

Today was the first day of a new regime in this household. Drawing from the chore list of a, um, infamous-in-certain-circles group of women I created a weekly job chart.

Why couldn't I just get on with it? Well, for starters I'm an obnoxious mix of OCD and pathological laziness. I get twitchy when things aren't right, but on the other hand I can't be arsed to move from the sofa. I figure that having a list (on a spreadsheet no less!) that I can cross off will keep me motivated. It should, theoretically, also mean that the basics get done so regularly that I also have time to spend on the not-so-basics. I don't think I'll list them, as my non-basics are probably at the top of your must do list!

Each item on the list has been designed to fit into no more than a 15-30 minute time frame, which is ideal for getting done between wiping bottoms, feeding babies and watching back episodes of The Bill.

To be perfectly honest, some of my jobs got left until my husband got home as I was indisposed between 10.30am and 3pm but as they're designed to be quick jobs, it was easy to whizz through them while he took the tribe to buy milkshake and tin foil (rock and roll!).

Tomorrow's list is slightly longer as Pixie is off at nursery for half a day so (theoretically) I should get more done. It's also bin night. If they don't come and get the plastics on Wednesday we're in trouble - were overrun!

Isn't It Meant To Get Easier?

Life is meant to get easier with a baby as they get older, according to the hordes of moms who have been there and done that.

Why is it in this household things are getting harder?

Probably the biggest cause of this is the fact Pops has stopped sleeping 12 hours a night with only one quick feed after about 10 hours, to waking every hour or two every night. I'm pretty sure you're meant to get more sleep as they get older rather than  less.

But, to be fair, the nightly wake ups don't impact on the washing that seems to multiply as soon as you look at it (where do people hang their washing to dry? It's ridiculous!); the kitchen that's less a bombsite and more an explosion in a shit factory; the piles of stuff everywhere... Where Pixie is now old enough to sit and watch TV (*clutches pearls*) on his own, or play at 'I'm Fireman Sam and I'm putting out fires!', Pops is very much like her brother was and doesn't like being left to her own devices, doesn't like toys and isn't very impressed if you try and play with her. All of which mean it's pretty difficult to pop off and get things done. More was done when she was tiny and in a sling! Also, since the multiple chicken pox fiasco, we've relied on her dummy far too much (as in - every minute she's awake, pretty much) which is causing its own problems.

Things need to change and we need to get back to where we were but at this moment in time I don't really know where to start.


This post brought to you by one stream of consciousness and 18 dummy replacements.

10 Things I Need To Learn From Blogging...

This blog post from Kathryn at London Bakes can teach all bloggers a thing or two.