Twinkle: Pack-n-Play

Do y'all remember when I was expecting Twinklette, and everyone told me I had to get a Pack-n-Play, and MIL was the pushiest one of all? She insisted that I wasn't going to want to go upstairs to change diapers and I needed a lycra and plastic monstrosity right there in my living room, and I'd need one whenever I traveled, too. She and FIL went shopping with us and insisted that we needed one, and I had to throw a pregnant b*tch fit in the middle of Babies 'R Us to get her off my case.

The thing I've found is that hotels provide cribs or Pack-N-Plays, so all I really need to do is bring sheets (plus who wants to go through TSA with their own collapsible crib?). That makes traveling a non-issue...and as for walking up the steps to change a diaper, I've never minded. I prefer to have the sanctity of my nice, clean living room intact and free of baby clutter, and walking up the stairs is a small price to pay. I did invest in a pretty little Moses basket for Twinklette to take downstairs naps in when she was an infant. Who would ever imagine that buying a Moses basket would be an act of sedition? But it is, to so many mommy clones and bossy grandmothers.

I've never missed having a Pack-n-Play, and I actually revel in the way not owning one makes me feel like a rebel. I know that they're convenient; I know that some of my favorite people in the world have them...and that's OK for them, but for me the Pack-n-Play became too tied up with the controversy surrounding it and with my pushy MIL's opinions of how I should run my home. It became a personal symbol of oppression. Incidentally, SIL has a Pack-N-Play in her living room, which makes no sense because she lives in a ranch. Her kid's nursery is quite literally a few steps away from the living room, but there the Pack-n-Play sits, front and center. You know MIL is pleased.

So now my SIL's SIL, Beth of the Verboten Birthday Cake, is coming to town--this girl is nice enough, but she's a pushy Jewish grandmother-in-training. I mean, her son is not even one year old, but I would say that in about 30 years or so, his future wife will have one hell of a stealth blog where she does nothing but b*tch about Beth. Anyway, Beth just Facebooked me because she wants to borrow my Pack-n-Play (I guess the one at the hotel isn't good enough for her little Noah) and I got a little ego boost telling her--the mother of maternal obligation--that I don't have one. I happily sent her to my MIL...Pack-n-Plays are the least of what those two have in common.