Month: December 2007

Car seats and winter coats

Glen from the Ottawa Start blog raised an issue earlier this month that has always bugged me.

Did you know that car seats are not safe when your child is wearing a bulky winter coat? Seriously.

I had just started poking around to find out if there has been any improvement in the safety ratings of those “cuddle bags” for the infant carriers (I used one for Simon and loved it) when Glen posted his experience. He e-mailed Dorel, the manufacturer of his daughter’s Safety First car seat, asking what they recommend and they suggested that the coat be removed before his daugter is strapped into her car seat.

Yah, right. I’m going to spend an hour getting my kids INTO their coats and whatnot, step out into the minus 20 degree wind, walk a dozen steps, and then strip the coat back off again so I can strap them into their car seats. And they will sit placidly with their coats covering them like blankets so they don’t freeze to death while the car warms up. And then we’ll do it all again in reverse when we get wherever it is we are going. Seriously?

CBC picked up on the story as well, and ran this article where Transport Canada confirms that bulky winter gear interferes with the safety specifications of the restraint belts.

I remember reading about this and agonizing over it when Tristan was a toddler, and I simply can’t believe there hasn’t been some sort of improvement to the design of the restraint system since then. It’s bad enough trying to adjust the harness belts during those transitional months when you switch from winter coat to rain gear and back again, but to actually have your car seat deemed unsafe for almost half the year?

Add this to the list of things that will be fixed when I’m elected Queen of the Universe. How do you deal with car seats and winter gear? (And for those of you who don’t have freezing temperatures, you don’t need to speak up today. With another 15 cm of snow in the forecast in an already record-breaking year, I don’t want to hear about places where you don’t need to wear a bulky winter coat!!)

2007 – The Year in Review

I did this meme last year, and thought it was a neat way to take a look back at the year. These are the first sentences of the first posts of each month in 2007:

  1. I’m fond of odd-numbered years – they seem to be lucky for me.
  2. Considering how socially awkward I feel when I don’t have my computer to mediate my conversations, I’m becoming addicted to these blogger meet-ups!
  3. Sorry, I still don’t have much for you today.
  4. I’m so good to you.
  5. Parents of preschoolers, consider yourself warned: Thomas the Tank Engine’s popular “Day Out With Thomas” is coming to Ottawa this summer!
  6. First of all, thank you all for your sweet words of congratulations.
  7. Four states, two provinces, six days, 1850 kms, 546 photographs… and we’re back!
  8. As I mentioned, we spent an extended summer weekend with my brother’s family at his in-laws’ cottage.
  9. We’re freshly back from our weekend getaway to Smugglers’ Notch Resort in Vermont.
  10. Tristan has been thinking a lot lately about how things will be when he grows up.
  11. Yay, it’s November!
  12. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to be done NaBloPoMo on Friday (yay! I made it!) and not have to worry about throwing together a blog post on the weekend, not because we lacked bloggable fun but because we were so darn busy I hardly had time to sit down let alone blog about it.

I love how so many of the year’s important events – finding out I was pregnant, three great trips, even a year of bloggy socializing – fall into this list, and how prescient the first line turned out!

(Feel free to play along, and leave me a note in the comment box if you do so I can come and check out yours.)

Christmas 2007

And so it came to pass that she spent almost 48 hours without attaching herself to the computer. And lo, to her great surprise, it was good.

And while she was not clacking madly on the keyboard, she found that she had opportunities to play with her children, and read new books, and converse with her family, and eat – and eat – and eat. And lo, it was good.

And she did not read her Bloglines account, and she did not fret over the great numbers of unread posts piling up. And lo, it was good.

And she bathed in the warm glow of her baby niece’s smile, and laughed at the noisy antics of her boys and their adoring cousins, while trying only half successfully to have grownup conversations around their happy exhuberance. And lo, it was good.

And there were gifts, and there was family, and there was food, and there was love.

Christmas 2007

And lo, it was very, very good.

Christmas thoughts

It’s Christmas Eve, early in the morning. Today will be a chaotic day from end to end, and I’m almost reluctant to launch myself into it, knowing when the dust finally settles that Christmas will be more or less over.

The boys and I are taking the bus downtown to my work (an adventure in itself, their first ride on public transit!) and Beloved will join us later for the office children’s Christmas party, complete with a visit from Santa himself. I have to make one last stop at the Rideau Centre, which promises even more chaos. Then home for an afternoon visit from my entire side of the family – fourteen or more of us, crammed into my little townhouse! – which will meander its way into our traditional Christmas Eve gift exchange after dinner.

I’m so lucky to be at the centre of this family. I remember the Christmases when my brother and I were young adults, and there were no children racing through the house on Christmas Eve. Though it was always wonderful to be with my family, the extra joy of my two kids, plus my brother’s two, plus my cousin’s six year old, will fill the house with the kind of blissfully crazy energy that only kids hepped up on Christmas overload can generate.

I hope to cram in one more post before Christmas, but just in case I don’t get around to it — Happy Christmas (or just Happy Tuesday, if that’s your preference) to all of you, and your families. May happy chaos be the order of the day!

Drama at the Canadian Blog Awards

Sigh. When I was asked, maybe a month or so ago, to help out in determining whether nominated blogs were eligible for their category in the Canadian Blog Awards, I was happy to do so. As I said, the CBAs have been good to me over the years, although I had always been concerned that maybe they were a little too deeply mired in the political end of the Canadian blogosphere. Over the years, I’ve been fairly careful to avoid the political blogs because I find the participants particularly combatitive, confrontational and often disrespectful. Life’s too short for that kind of conflict and stress! So when I had the opportunity to jump in and represent both the family blog community AND maybe even the PR and marketing and social media blogs where I spend all my time, I thought it was a good opportunity to offer a diverse perspective to the organization of the CBAs.

So far, it’s been an unpleasant experience. There was a request for a Best Feminist Blog category, to which I responded “as a feminist with a blog, I’m not sure I see the merit in this category.” (Or something to that effect.) Best Feminist Blog was, to me, not all that different from Best Female Blog, and I couldn’t quite imagine why we would require an exclusive category for it. Before we could even decide on how to handle the request, it was promptly followed by a request from the other end of the spectrum for a best Anti-Feminist Blog, which I personally find somewhere between ridiculous and offensive, and a shitstorm of epic proportions ensued. In the end, we tried to make a compromise with a “Best Activist” blog category, and that impressed nobody. There are now calls from one end of the spectrum for a “girlcott” of the CBAs, and people are pissed off enough to be withdrawing not only their own blogs but nominations they have made. Most of you reading this probably don’t care a whit one way or the other, but I wanted to post this because someone on some discussion board noted that I have been pretty much silent on my participation — and if you read even half the comments on various blogs and discussion boards, you wouldn’t wonder why!!

The whole thing makes me very sad. (In fact, I’m sure it’s more than half the reason I reacted poorly to some comments on this blog earlier this week – I kind of felt like there was suddenly a battle on every front, and with four days until Christmas and the hormonal stew that is 100 months pregnant, I really didn’t need the extra stress.)

I don’t really know the other guys who have done the lion’s share of organizing the awards. I know them by name, because I like to keep at least marginally abreast of who’s who in the blogosphere, but I admit I don’t regularly follow their blogs. I know from the conversations we’ve had in trying to sort out this mess that they’re nice, thoughtful guys who are trying hard to make something that’s good for all Canadian bloggers – and that’s exactly why I agreed to be part of the team and why I am sticking with them. And they are getting resoundingly trashed for their efforts. It’s really quite shameful. Sure, people can disagree with the positions the operators of the blog awards have taken, but my best advice to those who vehemently disagree is to help out in the organizing of next year’s blog awards… not trash the awards in general and sully them for the people who are genuinely tickled to be nominated and the people who nominate their fellow bloggers to recognize a job well done.

There are only seven blogs nominated so far in the Best Family Blog category, and only one nominee for Best Blogosphere Citizen from “our” end of the blogosphere. I’d really like to see some of the people who hang out here even occassionally take the time to nominate a few favourite blogs, so this crazy issue doesn’t tank what can be a great opportunity for us to recognize the hard work and great effort of our favourite bloggers. It is, in the end, only a silly blog award. But I know it feels terrific to have the validation of a nomination, it’s fun to compete (even when you come in near last, like with the Weblog awards!) and I’ve been proud to display my CBA badges in the sidebar. Don’t let a few bad attitudes spoil the fun for the rest of us.

A Christmas Story

(No, not that Christmas Story, although it is among my favourites of the season.)

After my ultrasound Friday morning – all things are good, placenta is out of the way, baby is up to six pound and looking fine – I went to Toys R Us for a few last-minute things. It was first thing in the morning, barely 9 am, and the place was blissfully unbusy. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for, and I found one last inspiring gift. I waddled up to the cash register, and nearly choked when the total she announced was about $30 more than I was expecting.

“Um,” I said, looking at her display,”this thing is supposed to be $24.99.”

“Oh!” said the cashier, “It rang through as $59.99. Can you show me the sign that said it was $24.99?”

Sure enough, we got to the shelf, and there was actually two shelves of them with the $24.99 label – but when I peered down to the lowest shelf for a better look, the small print on the label clearly named a different product. Aware that the $24.99 had been maybe a little too good to be true, I shrugged my shoulders and told her, “Oh well, never mind, I don’t want it at that price.”

She said, “No, no – I would have assumed the same thing. I’ll give it to you for $24.99.” Score! But, when she rang it through and tried to override the price, she had to ask for supervisor authorization because of the amount of the discrepancy. The supervisor took a harder line and pointed out that the label clearly indicated a different product. The cashier, a perky and bright-eyed teenager, gestured toward my jutting belly and said, “Take a look at her – does she look like she’s in any condition to be bending over that far to read the fine print?” I don’t know who laughed louder, the supervisor or me, but she didn’t argue the point and I walked out with the toy for $24.99.

The nice thing about having a blog is getting the last word

I’ve vacillated quite a bit about what to post today. Late last night, tears still stinging my eyes, I was going to turn off the comments and not post anything until after Christmas, or at least until after the weekend, to take a little break from blogging. The level of judgementalism in some of the comments yesterday really got to me. (When I re-read them this morning, I could clearly see that it was only a few – but once I was feeling defensive, hurt wasn’t far behind.) Lying awake after my 4 am pee break and unable to go back to sleep, I thought maybe I’d try to make a joke out of it. An hour ago in the shower, I thought maybe it was best to just ignore it and write about something else entirely.

Since my muse has deserted me, you get this stream-of-consciousness instead. For those of you who are curious (or, in some cases, disturbingly judgemental) about our choice to send the boys to Catholic school, beyond this post here’s the gist of it our reasoning.

I like me. I like who I am, how I am, how I got to be here. I am content with myself in many ways, and by extension, I’m happy with how I got here. I have such fond memories of my childhood that it makes perfect sense to me to raise the boys in more or less the same way I was raised. Beloved and I both went to Catholic school, and I don’t know about his parents, but mine had the same doubts and questions and concerns about Catholicism, and even Christianity, that I do. I’ve posted many, many times about this, and maybe that’s why yesterday’s comments caught me so off guard.

So, back to the rationale. The bottom line? It was good enough for me, good enough for Beloved, good enough for my parents, to go to Catholic school and have that fundamental set of beliefs, and then make our own choices as we grew up — and we believe it’s good enough for the boys, too. I may have issues with even some of the most basic precepts of the faith, but that doesn’t mean I discount the whole thing. I’m not anti-Catholic, it just took me a long time to reconcile my own fundamental beliefs with that of the Church. Over the years I’ve learned to have the courage to change the things I can and the serenity to accept those I cannot. It’s a philosophy that works for me, despite my occassional ponderings otherwise.

Kerry sent me an article on what I was really thinking about when I posted yesterday that gets to the heart of the matter much better than all the subsequent comments, so I wanted to share that with you, too.

I’m off to another ultrasound, to ground myself in what really matters to our family heading into this holiday season… the fact that we have each other.

The twin mythologies of Christmas

The boys have been talking about him a lot this season. You know, the larger-than-life figure who was probably once a real flesh and blood person, but whose mythology has blossomed into something so wide-reaching and so integral to our culture that you simply can’t avoid him. He’s so central to this particular season that he regularly makes an appearance in conversations at the family dinner table, and I feel like I have to bite back my own cynicism to support the boys’ unquestioning faith for at least a couple more years.

Oh no, not that guy. Not Santa. I’m talking about Jesus.

It’s just been in the last month or so, juggling the various seasonal mythologies, that I realized I feel more or less the same way about supporting my children’s belief in Santa as I do about supporting their belief in Jesus. The similarities are striking: I believe both are lovely concepts at the core and I have no issue with how other people choose to venerate the central figure – or not; I think the values and ideals engendered by each of the central figures are far more important than the figures themselves; both figures have reached a status of epic mythological proportions based on some granule of (often debated and misrepresented) fact; and, at one point in my own childhood I had complete faith in each of them, and managed to survive the transition from faith to skepticism intact. So while I think it’s important for the boys to have some sort of belief in the central mythology in each case, I’m having a hard time counterbalancing that with a vague sense of guilt in being disingenous with them.

(Hoo boy, if the circumcision post didn’t generate enough controversy, this one sure will!)

For as long as I can remember, I’ve believed more or less that Jesus was a great and influential man, but I haven’t been able to give myself over to the kind of faith that can accept he was God incarnate. In choosing to send the boys to a Catholic school, I realized I’d have to subjugate my own beliefs and let the boys learn a more traditional religious view – just like I did when I was their age. When they’re older, we can have righteous religious debates and they’ll be free to choose whatever belief system works for them, be it fundamentalist Christianity or Hinduism or something else – or nothing.

Tristan talks a lot about Jesus because that’s what he’s learning in school, and Simon picks right up on it. We entertain lots of questions along the lines of “Why did Jesus make snow?” and “Why did Jesus make spaghetti?” (I had a hard time not seizing that opportunity to indoctrinate him with a little Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, but I restrained myself.) I try to answer him in ways that contradict neither the official Catholic perspective he’ll be learning nor my own muddled beliefs, and while we’re philosophizing at a first-grade level, I think it’s working.

But I can’t help but feel a little hypocritical sometimes as I support and affirm what they’re learning to believe when it’s in direct contravention to my personal beliefs — in much the same way it’s hard for me to give myself (and them) entirely over to the Santa mythology. I feel like I’m being duplicitous and dishonest, even if it’s for a good cause.

Building up their belief in Santa is full of the same traps and pitfalls: I feel hypocritical setting the boys up to believe in something I know is false, and I feel bad knowing one day I’ll have to reconcile that faith with reality. One of these days, they’re going to realize it’s Daddy who took a bite out of the cookie and left it on the plate by the fireplace, and it’s us who stuffs the stockings and leaves the present under the tree on Christmas morning, and it bothers me on a fundamental level to deceive them. Not enough to do anything but muse about it here, mind you.

I don’t plan to deprive them of the joy of believing in Santa any more than I plan to contradict the teachings of the Catholic system. In time, they’ll be old enough to make their own choices, and find their own belief system. I hope they’ll always have the same love of the magic of Christmas that is deeply ingrained in me, whatever mythology they choose to believe. I think I’d best be getting my story straight pretty soon, though. I suspect their days of blind faith are numbered.

Random bullets of minivan-ness

  • It’s been just over a week since we picked up the minivan. Meh. I don’t hate it, but I can’t say I’m in love with it. It has wheels, a steering wheel, and it goes. I suppose that’s a good start.
  • The first time we tried to pick it up, we made it all the way to the dealership with the boys in tow before they realized they had forgotten to order the licence plates for us, so I had to trek back the next day after work to pick it up.
  • The good news is, the dealership is a four-minute walk from a major transit station. (And, for the record, it’s the only time I’ve had to stand on a bus for this whole pregnancy. People who live in Barrhaven apparently have better manners than the people who live in South Keys. I’m just sayin’.)
  • The bad news is, it was yet another snowsqually day in Ottawa (have there actually been ANY days without snow so far this year?) and it took me more than an hour to make the 15 minute drive from the dealership to my house.
  • Being stuck in crawling traffic for an hour in the dark gave me a lot of time to poke around and play with various features inside the van, like the multitudinous cup holders, the drop-down sunglasses holder / conversation mirror, and the dual cigarette lighters (with no ashtray – where will I put my coins??) At least I know the defroster, the heater and the windshield wipers work.
  • I still have no idea how to set the radio stations.
  • I must admit I do like the imperial feeling of sitting WAY up high and looking down at all the little sedan drivers below.
  • The highest speed I achieved on that first drive was a heady 40 km/h on Fallowfield. I see this as an omen.
  • When I went to step out of the van in the driveway, and my leg swung open into a vast expanse of nothingness with the ground a vertiginous distance below, I really thought I was going to have to use a step-ladder to get in and out of the damn thing for the rest of this pregnancy.
  • The boys were desperate to go for a ride, so we took them for a spin up to the movie store at the corner.
  • Tristan, who is apparently five going on fifteen, immediately claimed the back corner seat for himself. He seems miles away from the driver’s seat and I’m not used to having to practically shout to talk to him. I find myself watching him more closely now in the rearview mirror simply because he seems so far away.
  • Simon claimed a seat on the middle bench, and announced that the seat beside him was reserved for his “baby brudder.” When Beloved tossed the DVD boxes on the seat beside him for the ride home, Simon immediately told him to move them or his baby brudder would have to sit on them.
  • It took a couple of days, but I’m starting to get the feel for manoeuvering the tank in and out of parking spots. But getting the snow off that sucker takes about a week and the use of a long-handled broom.
  • It’s a royal pain having to either remember to switch stuff from one car to the other or stock a second car with all the things you stow in your car so you don’t have to worry about them – a snow scraper, a box of kleenex, the iPod transmitter thingee, the reuseable grocery bags – let alone the cost of a second set of car seats. I don’t even have a plastic sleeve to keep my new insurance and ownership papers in.
  • I hadn’t really thought about the impact of having a second car in the driveway, aside from the annoying fact that no matter which car is closest to the road, you need the other one. But now we have no driveway left for hockey games or visitors, and with six foot snowbanks there’s no street parking either.
  • A few nights ago, I took the Focus Wagon up to the grocery store, and it was like sliding into a comfortable pair of shoes. I think I actually sighed in contentment as I pulled into a parking spot. SO much more comfortable. Sigh.

Contemplating February 1st

I had to laugh. Remember when I talked about my obsession with Survivor and how it’s been deeply intertwined with my reproductive years? I wrote about how Simon was born on the morning of the first episode of the first Survivor All-Stars season in 2004, and what a valiant effort I made to stay up late enough to watch it – from my hospital room – after being up since 6 am the morning before.

So this week on the latest Survivor grand finale, Jeff Probst announced that the next Survivor series will be yet another all-star season, this one “fans versus favourites“, and it’s scheduled to start February 7 – a week past my official due date of Febuary 1st. Anyone want to lay a bet that I’ll be welcoming the new baby into the world by watching the first episode from my hospital bed – again?

***

The other thing about my due date of February 1 is that it’s Simon’s birthday. How inconvenient!

I’m thinking about boosting his birthday party up by a week or even two. You think the average about-to-be four-year-old would notice? Or care?