2008: a meme of review

It’s become a bit of a tradition for me to do this end-of-year meme. It’s not as lovely in narrative flow as last year’s seemed to be, but then again, this was a kind of disjointed year, from a bloggy perspective. A lovely, full, hectic, but ultimately wonderful year. It’s hard to imagine that this time last year, we were still a family of four, waiting (im)patiently for the Player to be Named Later to make his big entrance. So, for the sake of tradition, here it is: the first line of the first post of every month in 2008.

  1. Those of you who know me well know I don’t usually bother with resolutions.
  2. Okay, I admit it: it’s been fun dragging y’all along on this crazy ride with us.
  3. The boys laughed uproariously when we watched a preview of Mr Bean’s Holiday at the theatre, so Beloved thought it would be a good Sunday-afternoon family movie to rent.
  4. Lucas and Tristan have had a lot in common.
  5. We’ve talked about circumcision and strollers, breast and bottle, slings and baby carriers.
  6. Sorry about the downtime.
  7. It was one of the hottest days I can remember, the steamy tropically oppressive kind of heat that reminds me of my childhood summers in Southern Ontario.
  8. It seems mildly ridiculous to me that I have three strollers and yet am shopping for another.
  9. You know how when you don’t have kids, and especially if you go through a period when you’re not sure that it will ever happen, you have these images in your head of what life with your kids will be like?
  10. Not a day goes by that I am not amazed by the simple fact of their love for each other.
  11. With Halloween barely put to bed (with a sore belly from all that candy, no doubt) we’ve nary the time for a breath of air before the season of Santa Claus parades is upon us.
  12. Uh oh. Cue REM’s “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”

Happy New Year to all of you who have taken a moment to read, to eavesdrop, and especially to contribute to the chatter around here. I wish all of you a new year filled with joy, laughter, and wishes fulfilled!

In which I got exactly what I wanted this Christmas – twice!

I’ve been trying to get to the computer to write this post for a few days, but we’re having a very social and very sleepless holiday over here. It’s an, um, interesting combination!

This Christmas, there were only a few things I asked for. One was one of those organizational calendars with separate spaces for the whole family. (Thanks, Mom!) One was the Twilight series of books by Stephanie Meyer. (Thanks, Beloved!) (Ahem, and yet another reason the blogging has been sporadic. Review pending, but damn, I’m seriously hooked!) And one was an inexpensive little point-and-shoot digital camera that I could comfortably tuck into my pocket or bag to carry around with me. You know I adore my Nikon D40, and it takes glorious photos. But it’s pretty bulky, and when my arms are often already juggling a baby and who knows what else, it’s sometimes a bit of a pain to lug around with me. Plus, I wanted something I could take to the beach or the park, or out in less than favourable weather, without having to worry about protecting it.

Anyway, colour me spoiled, I know, but I got exactly what I asked for. Beloved got me a lovely little Canon PowerShot A470, and he even got me a Canon photo printer in matching pink. Does he rock or what?

I loved it, it was perfect and exactly what I asked for, but yesterday I took it back to the store. How’s this for ironic? On Christmas Eve morning, at about 10:30, I checked my e-mail and found a note from Kate, of the blog My Name is Kate. (Great Canadian social media and marketing blog, if you haven’t been over there. One of my favourites!) Kate had been running a contest to win aFuji Finepix S2000HD, a fancy-assed high-end point-and-shoot with HD still and video capability. To enter the draw, she had commenters leave a note with their favourite Christmas song. She said for 10 chances to win, upload a video somewhere on the interwebs of you singing that song. Well, it seems unfair to subject anyone to me singing anything anywhere for any reason, so I decided to exploit my children instead, and uploaded this tiny clip of the three of them singing a bit of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. And, as you’ve probably guessed by now, I won!

Who would have guessed that winning a free, way-cool digital camera could make me feel so uncomfortable? I had an idea that Beloved had got the camera for me, as he can’t keep a secret to save his life (smooch) but he wouldn’t confirm or deny until I opened the box Christmas Eve. I waffled for a while, sentimentalist that I am, but in the end we decided to take back the Canon mostly because it doesn’t have the video capability that the Fuji does (and if you peek at the video I uploaded of the boys singing, you can see that my little flash camcorder doesn’t do much of a job on that, either.)

So I’ve got a quick question for y’all: do you have one of those dedicated photo printers, and do you find it’s worthwhile? Beloved and I are debating whether to keep or return the printer (it was part of a package with the Canon) and whether it’s more cost-effective to just print the photos at Loblaws for 20 cents each or if it’s still cheaper to do it at home, once you factor in the cost of paper and ink. And any thoughts on quality would also be appreciated!

CanadaHelps gift card winner!

Congratulations to Holly of Humpty Dumpty House, the big winner of the $25 gift certificate from CanadaHelps.org. Sometimes it pays to be number two!

(And this time, I double checked to make sure I had the right commenter. Twice!)

Thanks to CanadaHelps.org for sponsoring this contest, and thanks to all of you who shared comments of people who made a difference in your day, or in your life. Isn’t it amazing how easy it is to turn around someone’s day with a simple act of kindness?

Don’t even ask where I ran the cord from

The boys are engaged in an ongoing battle of one-upmanship. Whatever one can do, the other can do better.

A snippet of conversation from today:

Tristan: “Yeah, well, I know more Pokémon characters than you do!”

Simon: “No you don’t!”

Tristan: “Yes I do!”

**fast forward through six rounds of “No you don’t!”/”Yes I do!”**

Simon: “I’ve been watching Pokémon longer than you!”

Tristan: “No you haven’t. I’m older, I’ve been watching Pokémon longer than you!”

Simon: “No you haven’t. I’ve been watching Pokémon since I was in mommy’s belly!”

Beloved, after the laughter of grownups subsides: “Sheesh, you didn’t tell me you had cable in there. No wonder they were all so reluctant to come out!”

A gift to make the world a better place

I’ve got a couple of posts to share with you, neither of which is quite ready for public consumption. But I got an email last night about another great giveaway for me to share with you, and I wanted to post about it right away.

Let me tell you about CanadaHelps.org, a registered Canadian charity that helps other Canadian charities by acting as a portal website, fostering giving by making it easy for donors to find Canadian charities and make a donation online.

They are the first and only registered charity that makes giving to your favourite charities easy with secure tools for donating via credit card, gift card or even stocks and mutual funds. With CanadaHelps, it’s easy to find a cause you’re passionate about by searching the 83,000 Canadian charities. Here’s some information from their website:

For donors, CanadaHelps.org simplifies the donating process, making it easy, quick and secure. On any pages where you share personal information or perform financial transactions, CanadaHelps.org encrypts your data using Secure Socket Layers (SSL), allowing you to send and receive information without the worry of having it intercepted. Put simply, donors go online, select as many charities as they wish, make their donation and receive a tax receipt for each donation immediately.

For charities, CanadaHelps.org provides a cost effective alternative to setting up their own online donations facilities: there is no set up fee, no annual charges and charities receive immediate notification when a donation is received. Charities are only charged when a donation is actually made, thereby ensuring a charity is not paying for a service that is not being used.

Recognizing the benefits of online giving to both donors and charities, CanadaHelps launched its first website in 2000. Today, more than five years later, CanadaHelps facilitates over $10 million in donations to Canadian charities annually.

I wish I’d known about this before Christmas. This year, instead of teacher gifts we donated a backpack full of school supplies to a Canadian child in need in the name of each of the boys’ teachers through WorldVision. A gift card from CanadaHelps would have been another excellent way to share the gift of giving.

And now, thanks to CanadaHelps.org, I have a $25 charitable gift card to share with you. Leave me a comment telling me about a time someone made a difference in your life — big or small — and I’ll enter your name in a random draw for the $25 gift card. You’ll be able to use the gift card on the CanadaHelps.org site to make a donation to a Canadian charity of your choice. They were kind enough to offer a CanadaHelps gift card for me, too. Isn’t that great? They give to us, I give to you, and we each give to our favourite charities through CanadaHelps.org. Contest closes end of day on Monday, December 29. FYI, the deadline for making a donation that will be deductible on your 2008 income tax return is December 31 of this year. You can get more information about donations and tax deductions on the Canada Revenue Agency website.

Note: If you win, I’ll need your full name and e-mail address, which will be given to CanadaHelps.org solely for the purposes of sending you the gift card.

A Christmas Traditions Meme

I was stuck in traffic recently (please let this ridiculous transit strike end soon!) and this meme presented itself to me. Most of it was originally scribbled on the back of a coupon for dog food, braced on the steering wheel of the car while Lucas snoozed in the car seat behind me. Feel free to filch it for your own blog, or play along in the comment box!

There are so many ways to celebrate the season, and once a family gets locked into a certain set of traditions nothing can break the spell. How do you handle these ones in your family?

1. Christmas Eve or Christmas morning?

Since I was a kid, we opened all our presents on Christmas Eve. Santa brought one present and stuffed our stockings for Christmas morning, and even as grown children living away from home, my brother and I insisted on a Christmas morning Santa present!

2. Donner or Donder?

Ahem. As most of you know, I have a personal stake in this one. Let’s just say it was a proud moment this year when we watched Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer on CBS, and Simon spent the whole hour hollering “Donder!! Not Donner!!” at the TV whenever Donner was on screen.

3. Turkey or ham?

I was going to include goose in here, but does anybody really eat a Christmas goose anymore? I know, there are probably lots of people who have Christmas lasagnes and Christmas meatloaf and whatnot, but it seems to fall generally into ham and turkey camps. We are firmly turkey people. (**Waves and blow kisses to mother**)

4. Gifts opened all at once, or one at a time?

The first time I ever spent Christmas away from home with my ex’s family, I was openmouthed with wonder (and a hint of dismay) at the frenzy of gift opening. Everybody got their pile of presents, and everybody just tore in like a bunch of present-piranhas, wrap flying everywhere. I’m firmly in the camp of savouring the gifts one at a time and enjoying watching everyone open their gifts.

5. Christmas tree: live or artificial?

I’ve never had a live tree before, and I toyed with the idea this year. Beloved mocked me. I do love our artificial tree, though. It’s seven feet tall and still full and fresh looking even though it’s more than 15 years old. And it looks better and better each year as the handmade ornaments from the kids slowly replace the store-bought ones!

6. Cards: boxed cards, family photo cards, or e-cards?

I’m a fan of the boxed card. In a perfect world, I’d love to do handmade, but… yeah. One year, we put a fridge magnet made out of Tristan’s first Santa picture in every card, and I always wanted to do that again.

7. Christmas lights: incandescent or LED?

I’ve switched over to LED, but I’m not a huge fan. I think the incandescent have a brighter, warmer glow, but I’m doing my part to save the polar bears.

8. Re-gift or not?

Am a shameless re-gifter, but rarely have the opportunity… the people who give me gifts have impeccable taste, for the most part!

9. Gift wrap or gift bags?

I lean to gift wrap on this one, mostly because I think kids like tearing through paper more than they like lifting out tissue paper. The environmental aspect makes me cringe, but we do try to recycle it all.

10. Best Christmas song?

David Bowie and Bing Crosby’s Little Drummer Boy

11. Best Christmas movie?

A Christmas Story. I simply cannot believe I do not own this movie — I even have a “Fra-gee-lee” ornament on my tree!! — after years and years of dropping hints. It never goes on sale after Christmas, and I now refuse to pick it up for myself, so each year I have to comb the TV listings to make sure we catch it when it comes to broadcast cable. We don’t even have a PVR to record it. It’s one of the great travesties of the season, I tell you!

12. Favourite family tradition?

All of them. Traditions are the cathedral of life to a creature of habit like me!

Okay, your turn. Do play along!!

iTunes winner!

Hooray! We have a winner for the iTunes gift card!

Congratulations to the tenth commenter on the original post, Madeleine!!! (Bonus points for her 80s reference, and for the cost-saving tip that you can buy gift cards at Costco for less than their face value. I had no idea!!)

Thanks to iTunes Canada and their PR agency for the freebie, and special thanks to all of you for your music suggestions. I’ll spend far more than the value of my own gift card loading my iPod with cool new tunes!

Edited to add: because I am so pathetic that I could not properly count to 10, I have decided to give away both gift cards, one to Madeleine, who was in fact #9, and one to Andrea. Oops!

On public service, partisanship and social media

Let’s say I have a hypothetical friend. She’s a lot like me, but let me stress this — she’s not me. We have a lot in common, though. We both view our jobs with the public service as something of a noble calling and a privilege to serve Canadians. She is such an amazing boss and mentor that she recently won a national award of excellence for people management. She is a little more senior than me in the management tree, a little more politically conservative, a lot more sophisticated about politics. We both have a blog. She and I have both called Stephen Harper an idiot on our blogs, me mostly over childcare issues and her over the recent economic statement fiasco.

As it turns out, she has recently applied for and been offered a new job in a new department. As this is the 21st century and she’s plenty savvy about social media, she wasn’t surprised when she went to meet the new team and found out that they’d googled her, and found her blog. She was surprised — and that’s a bit of an understatement — when the senior manager at the new department contacted her old senior manager and said that the political entries on her blog are contrary to the Public Service Code of Values and Ethics. (!!) They told her that not only did she have to agree to not ever blog about politics again, but to take down the existing political posts. Not posts critical about the department or the work environment or anything sensitive, mind you. Just the sort of observational rant that any citizen might make over drinks or the backyard fence. They said that this was a “dealbreaker.”

I am – hypothetically, of course – outraged over this. We’re talking about someone who blogs in a manner very similar to me, maybe 30 percent personal, 65 percent pop culture, 5 percent political. I’ve read the posts in question, and they’re no different than what you’d see in the average Letter to the Editor, if not a hell of a lot better written and a lot less vitriolic.

What do you think? Should an ordinary public servant be allowed the same freedoms as any citizen, to air their opinions – political or otherwise – on a private blog written on private time? And if it were you, would you dig in your heels and stick up for your rights or acquiesce for the sake of making nice with your new peeps?

Do you have the time?

Of all the things about having a baby in the house, I think the thing that has been the toughest is the intensity of it — the absolute lack of time for anything that isn’t caring for the baby, or making dinner, or doing laundry, or tidying up, or somehow caring for the bigger boys. The simple lack of time. I remember back before the baby was born, on the days when I wasn’t working I’d take a nap in the afternoon and then come downstairs and have a wee snack on the couch while I read a couple of chapters of my book. I think back to those times with a kind of wonder. Did I really have that much spare time to myself? How did I do it? Where did that time come from and more importantly, where did it go and when for the love of god will it come back?

I feel that lack of down time, lack of “me” time, even more acutely right now when I look at my collection of holiday crafts through the years. When we decorated the house for Christmas, out came samples of all my little crafty projects: handmade stockings, several different kinds of ornaments, folk-art painted wood decorations, handmade candles, little fridge-magnet marbles with cutouts from old Christmas cards… I love crafty stuff at the best of times, but I really feel the absence of being able to do any of this stuff this year. I was part of a cookie exchange this year and finding the time to make 10 dozen cookies nearly killed me, whereas I’d normally make shortbread and peanut brittle gifts for all of my family and many of my friends without breaking a sweat, and had time to make homemade holiday crafts on my own and with the boys. I’m not sure if it’s the “factor of three” or if it’s just that Lucas is a particularly demanding baby — especially now that he’s officially crawling and terrorizing all of us! — but there is simply no time that isn’t filled to overflowing with rather uninspiring domestica, and an undone to-do list of rather epic proportions. The list is an odd mix of things I must and want to do: everything from clean the toilets and organize the closet to back up the blog and paint our bedroom. Every day is a triage of what absolutely cannot wait one more day to be done.

My life is very full right now, in the best possible way. I truly believe that raising these boys, that being a part of this family, is what I have been called to do in life, and I love it. But as recently as a few weeks ago, I also felt completely panicked by the weight of the things that were required of me, the things that ensured I had only a handful of minutes every day to do what I absolutely had to do to keep my sanity: peck out a few e-mails and a blog post, or run to the gym.

I’m trying to feel more philosophical about it now, to remember that some day I’ll look back on these days with nostalgic longing. I try to keep in mind that Lucas’s babyness is already escaping, his toddlerhood looming, even though he’s only been with us for a breath or two. I cast my mind back to Baby Simon and Baby Tristan, lo those many — but so few! — years ago, to remember that I probably felt this way then, and yet I survived to tell the tale.

But as I walked through the craft store yesterday, casting a greedy eye on row after row of project ideas, I felt the weight of that physical need for time and space. I made those marble magnets two years ago, when Simon would have been coming up on three and Tristan almost five. So I know that by the time Lucas is three, in just a couple of brief years from now, I will have managed enough balance in my life to find that creative space again. I might even pick up a book in the afternoons, one of these days.