apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Nursery theme month? Oh great...

I'm starting to hate this blog/site AT so much now! A bunch of snobs. Yes, some of us have children. Oh, I am soory it's not "pet" month.

correction: sorry. This was the last straw for me.

I understand Jean's sentiment - there are plenty of websites and blogs for people with children about baby products, organizing and decorating baby and kid spaces, living with kids, etc. (Note: I have two young sons and even I'm not psyched about a whole month of baby/kid stuff).

but there are plenty of websites and blogs out there for people with pets about pet products. plenty of places online to learn about decorating and living with your garden. yet june was garden month and july was pet month. i don't have kids, but i think kids month is a great idea. there are so many very conflicting philosophies about the spatial issues that arise when children are involved (from how much room a growing family needs to what colors are appropriate for the nursery -- see previous arguments on the New York AT site). also, the recent trend of modern and urban-oriented baby gear is worth covering here.

i don't have either a substantial outdoor space or any pets, and i still found those two topics interesting and informative.

and in a more practical sense, if we're going to keep doing theme months, we're going to have to expand out of 'bathroom', 'kitchen', 'bedroom' and other topics that are so obviously 'apartment' related.

People with children are incapable of understanding how painfully boring it is to people without children to hear about them. This isn't to say that people without children don't like children, although some don't, but it's such a different lifestyle that it is very difficult to relate.
The Opoponax, somebody who doesn't have the space for a full garden might have room in their life for some plants in the living room or some potted herbs in the kitchen. Somebody who doesn't own a home or doesn't have the landlord's blessing to renovate a bathroom can still find some new bath towels or a great shower curtain. My point is - you can't partially have a kid. You either do or you don't. There isn't "something for everyone" during kid's month.
I also don't think there is anything "modern" about having kids or living with kids. Whether you buy your baby bedding from Wal-Mart or waste your money on Dwell Baby bedding, it will still end up with urine, feces, vomit, sweat and drool on it. If this is "modern", I'll be looking for a new definition.

Thanks for pointing me to new vendors for kid stuff -- it's great to have for co-workers baby showers, christmas gifts for neices and nephews, birthday gifts for the children of close friends...

Really, for me it's better than the gardening stuff. I mean, gardeners live such different lifestyles... all that time spent outside weeding stuff, charting crap on graph paper, nattering on about seedlings and grow lights and cuttings from friends -- yeesh. I have a coworker who's a master gardener, and please, don't get her started! I'd rather stick a fork in my eye.

what does that mean, there is nothing "modern" about having kids? maybe that idea could be discussed here a bit. is modern design only for single neat-freaks?

i think there's room for all of us in modern design (whatever that is). last time i checked, adults needed to wash their sheets and wipe down their counters, too. i don't give a rat's bottom about pets and pet-related design, but kids are just a part of life for lots of design-loving people.

I thought for a while before responding to carrie's comment. As a "person without children" I can attest that not all of us find hearing about children "painfully boring", Carrie. In fact, I find it interesting, enlightening, and even envy-producing (although these days I have grandkids-envy, not kid-envy, I'm closing in on 50) -- but never painfully or even painlessly boring. Bring on Nursery Month! (Especially with the little Maxwell or Sara Kate due soon.)

On a different note, but still somewhat on topic, why does everyone seem to assume that all the other ATers are young modernists? My decor is less "mid-century modern" and more "mid-life what-I-like", but I still like to think I have a place in AT. Do I not?

Thanks for listening. Er, reading.

Hi Smallcitybeth,
Perhaps I should've responded on the SF post instead, titled "Whose Modern Home Anyway" in response to the ongoing how-to-live-with-kids debate. That is where I got the word "modern" from, although I strongly agree with you there are all types of design represented on AT! My own apartment is a mix of many styles and I like reading about all styles here.
I think I came off wrong (in tone) and apologize for that. I don't have kids and certainly don't hate them. I didn't mean to imply that everybody without kids doesn't want to hear about them, I meant that people with kids seem to assume (sometimes, but not always incorrectly) that other people want to hear every detail of their life with baby.
I guess what bothers me the most is that Hollywood (and now potentially AT) seems to buy into the modern/trendy side of babies. It's like the new trendy human equivalent of having a purse-sized pooch a la Paris Hilton. Babies are the new chihuahuas. I know (hope!!) most people have babies because they honestly want to love and raise children. But I honestly know people who have had babies in the past couple of years because "everybody around them was" (direct quote from a friend of mine). She was really into buying all of the trendy baby stuff, although now that baby is finally here, baby is more of a nuissance left to the nanny only to be paraded around when she has the newest diaper bag or RL baby wear.
As sally said above "Kids are just a part of life." It's sad they often aren't treated as such. There just seems to be such a trend to treating kids almost as a gimmick, a focus on getting the marketing dollars from people seeking modern design even though baby will outgrow these items in such a short period of time. People are so quick to make fun of people who treat their chihuahuas like kids, but what about people treating their kids like sweater-wearing chihuahuas?

Hi, Carrie!
Thanks for the clarification -- what you say in your second post makes a lot of sense, and I'm with you there. Guess because I'm in a different age group (and city) I hadn't encountered the "baby as the new chihuahua" concept. (Yeek!)
It'll be interesting to see how this Nursery Month unfolds -- hopefully it'll be what's best for the baby, the family and the home, not what's trendiest.

scb

carrie, i definitely know where you are coming from.

another aggravating variation is the household that is given over completely to kids toys and furniture, so much of it large, plastic, and ugly. when i was pregnant i visited some old friends of my husband's, who had a toddler. they had almost no "adult" furniture, but the house was filled with their kid's stuff, it was just everywhere. it really freaked me out! my son has no problem dealing with living in a regular house and not having mass quantities of toys lying everywhere.

i have no kids, nor are planning on having any. BUT i'm excited about kids month. why? i think that a majority of what is made for kids is made with a playful quality that is freeing and NOT snobby. products like the potty bench make me think about how to organize the bathroom in an "out of the box" way. there's something useful to take out of every post. that's why we loves me some AT. yum yum.