It’s official: I’m a writer!

Long time readers and friends (hmmm, that may be redundant) know that I have always harboured not-so-secret dreams of being a “real” writer.

You might argue that I already am a writer in that my day job (in that other life that still lurks outside of maternity leave) since a large part of my job comprises stringing words together in a way that is meaningful. It’s rarely creative, though — at least, not in the conventional sense.

You might have more success in arguing that through blog, I have come closer to earning the title of “writer.” I write regularly for an audience, often with at least a certain amount of craft and attention to style, voice and narrative. In accepting paid advertising and other compensation, I’ve even been remunerated for my writing. All very nice, and all writerly sorts of things to do. But somewhere in my head, I’ve always felt I wouldn’t be an official “writer” until someone commissioned an article and published it, and was even kind enough to pay me for my efforts.

That day has finally come.

Remember last summer, when the nice folks over at Smuggler’s Notch offered us a free weekend getaway at the resort, all for the simple effort of blogging it? Well, my contact there sent me an e-mail just after Lucas was born saying congratulations on the new baby, and oh, by the way, would you be interested in writing an article for our resort magazine? I was barely a month postpartum, hormonal and sleep deprived. I couldn’t write a coherent grocery list, let alone be creative and wordy enough to write an actual essay. Of course I said yes.

The theme was “taking a walk on the wild side” and the idea the editor wanted to pursue was adventures with your kids. I took my original blog post on our canoe trip from hell and polished it up a bit to turn it into a freestanding article (click on the link that says “Family Adventure: Who Needs Wildlife When You’ve Got Kids” near the bottom of the page.) In re-reading it, there are a few things I would change, but it’s not bad for a first try, especially one written when I considered it a good day to get my teeth brushed by dinner time.

The resort magazine has a circulation of about 17,000, so it has the potential to be read by quite a few eyeballs. And of course, I stuck the blog address in my byline.

My first published article. One more item to check off on my life-long to-do list. I’m so proud of me!!

I’ll bet you didn’t even know I was gone

Three tanks of gas: $240
DVD player to replace the one that died 35 minutes into a 20 hour road trip: $129
Upgrade hotel room to a two-room suite for two nights (invaluable!): $80
Toll highway to bypass Hwy 401 rush hour traffic (worth every penny): $26

Five day road trip to take the boys to see both sets of cousins:

Beloved's family

Dani's family

Priceless.

More meme-aliciousness

More fun filched from About Miche:


Your Thinking is Abstract and Sequential


You like to do research and collect lots of information.
The more facts you have, the easier it is for you to learn.

You need to figure things out for yourself and consider all possibilities.
You tend to become an expert in the subjects that you study.

It’s difficult for you to work with people who know less than you do.
You aren’t a very patient teacher, and you don’t like convincing people that you’re right.

It’s all true, except for the fact I’ve been told I’m actually a pretty good teacher, and my thinking these days is pretty much along the lines of, “Where was I? Oh right! *pause* Erm, where was I?”

40 (mostly) free family fun ideas

Now that summer is almost upon us, I’m compiling ideas for cheap family outings in and around Ottawa. We’re so lucky to live in a city with walking trails, waterways, parks and other inexpensive or free things to do with kids, but there are also plenty of things to do on a rainy day. Some of these things are full-day adventures, but most will occupy at least a couple of hours. I started with a list of 15 things, then aimed for 25, and finally ended up with FORTY!!

Capital ideas

Diesel dogs (street vendor hot dogs) under Maman the Spider makes for a memorable if not nutritionally sound lunch

Watch the ceremonial parade and changing of the guard on Parliament Hill every morning at 10:00

Take a tour of the Parliament Buildings and check out the view from the Peace Tower

Explore the grounds of Parliament Hill, from the statue of Sir Gallahad to the colony of feral cats

Peruse history in the collections at Library and Archives Canada

See the horses at the RCMP stables and musical ride centre

Visit the Bank of Canada’s Currency Museum

Tour the gardens at Rideau Hall

Admission to the National Gallery is free on Thursday nights

The Canadian Museum of Nature also free on Thursday nights.

The Canadian Museum of Civilization, including the absolutely stellar Children’s Museum, is free on Thursday nights after 4 pm.

Borrow a free museum pass through the Ottawa Public Library’s Museum privilege program

See a bit of local history at the always free-of-charge Nepean Museum

Admission to the Experimental Farm animal barns is free in the winter months.

Watson’s Mill in Manotick is free every day, with milling demonstrations through the summer months. (They’re closed through a lot of the winter months – check for times before you go!)

Naturally lovely

In the west end, walk the boardwalk along the Rideau River wetlands in the Chapman Mills conservation area

In the east end, walk the boardwalk through the Mer Bleu bog, an “internationally significant wetland”

There are some wonderful hiking trails in the Greenbelt. The Jack Pine Trail is about a 40 minute loop, plenty easy for little legs.

For an easy walk with a stroller, wander the paved bike path from Hogs Back Falls to Vincent Massey park. Take the high trail on the way back and visit the oft-missed stone patio overlooking the river, and bring some birdseed to hand-feed the chickadees and nuthatches

Feed the ducks and geese on the Rideau River near Billings Bridge

Take a wander around Rockcliffe Park and enjoy the gorgeous stone gazebo and the lookout onto the Ottawa River

Visit Rideau Falls and the gorgeous parkland around old city hall

On Sundays in the summer, Colonel By Drive is closed to traffic and open for bikes, blades and strollers

Retail therapy

Chapters has a great kids section, and most of them have a train table or other toys to play with while mom and dad browse

Ross’ Independent Grocer in Barrhaven has a free playzone where you can drop the kids while you shop

Drop off the kids at Ikea’s ball pit and play centre for a free hour while you browse

Take me out to the park

There’s a terrific splash pad and playground off Longfields in Barrhaven. We pack a picnic and could spend the whole day there.

The playground at Brewer Park has always been awesome, but it’s just been retrofitted to be especially accessible for those with disabilities

There are dozens of wading pools of various shapes and sizes tucked away in parks throughout the city. You can get a list of them here

Did you know the city offers free swimming lessons?

Take a Sunday morning browse at the Ottawa Farmers Market at Landsdowne Park, then stay a while and play at the lovely little park on Fifth just before the Driveway.

Plan a day of sun at the beach at Britannia Beach. Buy yourself some fries for lunch, but don’t feed the seagulls (they’re a leading cause of beach-closing e-coli.)

Visit the recently-improved Petrie Island beach and nearby trails

There’s a great list of urban parks and a bit of a history lesson on the NCC site

Consider a playground tour. New is interesting, especially to kids!

For a few dollars more (not quite free, but mostly around $10 for the family)

On a rainy day, consider an indoor pool – or maybe even ride the surf at the Kanata wave pool

Doesn’t every preschool boy love trains? A round-trip on the O-Train is only an hour or so.

Get out of town

Tour the Hershey Factory in Smiths Falls (it’s open until December 2008) and get your free sample

Spend a day at Lac Phillip and spelunk the Lusk Caves

Enjoy an afternoon getaway to the Mackenzie King estate at Kingsmere
(you’ll have to pay a per-vehicle fee less than $10 if you drive)

Hike the Eardley Escarpment in Gatineau Park, especially lovely in the fall (you’ll have to pay a per-vehicle fee less than $10 if you drive)

Edited to add: this post is quite a few years old, but still very popular. Sadly, some of these things like the Hershey Factory have disappeared. If you’re looking for other ideas, check out these blog posts about family fun in and around Ottawa. 🙂

Doing it right

Chris over at Smartmouth Mombie tagged me for her most excellent Mother’s Day meme. She said:

I think the Moms/Mommies/Mamas in the blogosphere spend more than enough time admitting our shortcomings and not nearly enough time celebrating our strong points. So, I’m suggesting that on Mother’s Day, or the day after, or at least some time in May, you take a moment and make a list of three things that you do well as a mother and either post it in the comments here or in your own blog.

She’s so right. We really have to find more time to celebrate the things we as mothers are doing right. Confident as I am in my mad mothering skillz most days, I still found it surprisingly difficult to write this post – and not only because I am trying to write it while stuffing the soother back into Lucas’s mouth every two minutes while he fusses on the swing beside me. Three things I’m doing right, in no particular order:

  1. I’m fairly consistent with rules, routines and discipline. I set limits and impose structure, and stick by them so the boys always know where the lines are drawn and even what to expect from daily routines. I’ve recently begun to perfect my hairy eyeball, a gift from my own mother, so that I can often convey more effective threat of consequences with a single look than I could with 100 words. But I strive to be reasonable, and try to see things from their perspective before meting out discipline.
  2. The boys know they are loved, by me and Beloved and their extended family and friends. I never miss an opportunity to tell them how much I love them and how wonderful they are. Tristan and Simon both made Mother’s Day ‘stories’ in their classes with fill-in-the-blank statements like “My mommy’s name is” (Simon said, “just mommy”) and “My mommy’s favourite food is” (Tristan said “coffee”). Both of them ended with a variation on the same sentiment: I love my mommy because: she loves me.” Reading that, I felt like I was doing a good job as a mother. Come what may, I promise to always love them and always stand behind them.
  3. I let the boys play, and I play with them — sometimes. I think I strike a pretty good balance between letting them entertain themselves, inspiring entertainment (nothing like the sudden appearance of fresh bubbles to improve an otherwise boring afternoon) or joining in on the fun. I like adventures as much as they do, and love family walks, visits to the museum, the park or the pool.

Phew, that was harder than I thought. First, all modesty aside, I thought I wouldn’t be able to narrow it down to three — and then once I got going, I found it hard to find three good ones!

Now it’s your turn to share with the class. Consider yourself tagged and play along, either in the comments or back at your place. Name three parenting things that you do well.

(Edited to add, after two days with ZERO comments: Really? Nobody can think of three things they’re doing well??)

Oh great, something else to obsess over

Filched from Suze:

Your Score: The True Neurotic

You scored 54 anxiety, 53 awkwardness, and 67 neuroticism!

Congratulations, you are The True Neurotic, you nail-biting, conflict-avoiding worrier, you. You’re plagued by self-doubt and anxiety, which makes social activity hard–even though you may be well-liked, you feel under a storm of silent criticism. It doesn’t help that people give you funny looks for organizing all your pens by color or sharpening your gnawed pencils to a delicate point.

Your high anxiety score implies that you are unable to relax, worry about the future often, and probably are plagued by irrational fears and self-doubt.

Your high awkwardness score implies that you are socially inept, probably stick out from the crowd, and feel uncomfortable in large groups of people, such as at parties.

Your high neuroticism score implies that you exhibit neurotic behaviors–probably organization, fanatic obsessions (can you recite the entire first LOTR movie?), repetitive mantras, constant checking, or orderly rituals.

Link: The Neurotic Test written by littlelostsnail

Sheesh, I took the test three times, thinking maybe I was exaggerating my responses a bit the first go around, and I keep getting the same result. I’m not THAT neurotic. (Am I?)

Wherein Tristan has Beloved’s number

We’re getting ready to go out to visit some friends for dinner, and Beloved is taking a, erm, bathroom break. I’ve recently taken to teasing him that he uses the bathroom as a refuge. He has his book in there and the door locks. Can you blame him?

“When are we going?” asks Simon.

“As soon as Daddy is done in the bathroom,” I answer, putting diapers in the pack for Lucas.

The boys are giggling. “Oh, then we have lots of time!” Tristan says, and I laugh out loud. Apparently I’m not the only one who has noticed.

“Yeah,” adds Simon, “Daddy takes a LONG time in the bathroom! We could be here all day!” By now all three of us are laughing.

Tristan mimics holding a book out in front of him, squinting one eye and staring at the imaginary page with the other. “I’m busy!” he says in a gruff but accurate impression of Beloved. “I still have to finish this chapter.”

Lampooned by our own children. I expected this, but not nearly so soon!

Kids’ music: a review in three parts

Thanks to the quirks of Canada Post and Amazon, I received three new CDs in the mail one day this week. (Can we pause for a minute here and reflect that the idea of buying CDs has become vaguely anachronistic, while I clearly remember not only when the technology debuted but was an adult when I capitulated to the death of vinyl and bought my first CD. And now that technology is on the way out. Crap I’m old. But that’s not what this post is about. Shake it off.)

Ahem, yes. CDs. I had signed on to be part of a MotherTalk review of a new kids’ CD and DVD called, rather uninspiredly, That Baby CD and That Baby DVD. My spot on the blog tour was last Saturday, but the package didn’t make it across the border until this week. While waiting and checking my mailbox daily last week, I happened to catch the Barenaked Ladies on Regis and whassername (I swear, it was only on because I had been listening to Canada AM while I nursed the baby!) performing a song from their new kids’ CD, and Simon loved it so much that he was singing along by the second chorus. I knew I had an unused Amazon gift certificate from a previous MotherTalk review, so I used it to buy the new Barenaked CD and Amazon nicely suggested I might like the CD For the Kids to go along with it. I’d been meaning to check that one out for ages, so with two clicks they were both on the way. All three arrived on the same day this week.

The MotherTalk tour for That Baby CD and DVD is officially closed, but since they were nice enough to send me the free stuff, I’ll say a few things about them. I loved the fact that the CD was packed up to look like a 45 RPM record. Very cute! And the musical selections were nice enough. Imagine a few rock “classics” crunched up and folky-ized, so they come out sounding like folky muzak. (‘Classics’ is in quotation marks because the songs generally stuck me as lesser-known B-side tracks by artists like Springsteen, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon.) Benign enough, and pleasant background music, but not really to my taste. I have a minor issue with the idea that kids’ music should be dumbed down to pander to kids. The DVD is the CD with accompanying videos, a kind of a cross between the old Sesame Street and Baby Einstein. Meh. It was okay, and I’m happy to have it to play for Lucas (in between Sponge Bob and the Wiggles) but I honestly can’t recommend that you rush out and buy it. It’s nice to have, but I’m glad it was free, yanno?

The next CD was For the Kids. This is much better. It’s an inversion of the previous formula — kids’ music redone by popular artists to give it some life. Sarah Mclachlan does a cover of The Rainbow Connection that will go into regular rotation on my iPod, along with Raine Maida and Chantal Kreviazuk doing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I will enjoy listening to this one.

But the best, by a country mile, was the Barenaked Ladies new CD for kids, Snack Time. At the risk of tangentizing this post to death, I must admit that I am an old skool BNL fan. The first indie bootleg cassette (CASSETTE, people!) I ever owned was a copy of their pre-Gordon indie album, back in 1989 or so. They feel like old friends to me, and so I have a considerable affection-laden bias toward them. When I heard that they were doing an album for kids, I had an inkling it would be a lot of fun. I was right.

I love it.

It’s BNL at their best – silly, whimsical, clever and playful. The music has real energy behind it, which is something that the first CD in this review was lacking. Aside from the musicality, though, it’s the lyrics that make these songs endearing. A few of my favourite tidbits:

  • From ‘789’, based on the old joke, why is six afraid of seven? Because seven ‘ate’ nine: “Once upon a time in our solar system / We couldn’t make due without 9 / But Pluto’s not a planet now / So 8 will do fine.”
  • From the punny ‘Raisins’: “When I make mistakes / I use a lot of salt / Because salt makes m’steaks taste great.”
  • And from the patter woven into the Crazy Alphabet Song, which features almost an entire alphabet of silent letter words: “Ancient Chinese river, eh? My guitar player, some hotshot…” (You have to be of a certain vintage to recognize that one. Truly, where do they come up with this stuff? Priceless!)

I also learned that Geddy Lee and I both favour BBQ chips as a snack.

I first popped this CD into the player in the van when I had to run an afternoon errand with Simon and Lucas while Tristan was at school. By the time I was on my way home, both boys were asleep, the sun was shining in a brilliant blue sky, and I had most of a warm Tim Horton’s coffee with me. I spent the best part of a blissful hour driving loops through the countryside, delaying our return home so I could continue to listen to more of this delightful CD.

This CD may in fact be the thing that helps keep us sane on our planned 20+ hours in the car later this month when we set off across the province on a road trip to see family in Windsor. And hey, I just noticed when I was putting in the links for this post, you can download 789 and watch the video on the BNL website, and they’ll be on CBC kids on Monday to perform songs from the album. Kewl!

Hey! You! GUUUYS!

If you can hear Rita Moreno belting that out when you read the title to this post, then you are of the proper vintage to appreciate this tidbit: PBS is remaking The Electric Company! Production starts this week, and the first episodes should appear in January 2009.

I have mixed feelings about this. I loved watching the original Electric Company. That and Sesame Street were my daily staples when I was Tristan’s age, and definitely contributed to my lifelong love of words and language. So fond am I of those old classics that I asked for and received both of the Sesame Street “old school” DVD sets and the Electric Company boxed set — and honestly? I still love them. They’re funny and quirky and enjoyable to watch over and over again. So, in theory I should be thrilled to see this remake, right?

Well, not so much. I’ve lamented before that the 21st century Sesame Street doesn’t hold a candle to the often psychedelic, folky episodes of the early 1970s, and the Electric Company was even further out there. WAY out there, by today’s standards. I just can’t imagine them doing it justice in a world where vintage Sesame Street comes with the disclaimer that it might not be suitable for preschoolers.

We’re not in 1976 anymore, Toto. The Electric Company website offers downloadable ringtones, wallpaper and buddy icons. They even have a blog, though its link is currently broken. The one thing that gives me hope that the flavour of the original EC may be preserrved is the downloadable iron-on transfer section. Ah, iron-on t-shirts… sigh.

Well, I’ll wait until January and take a peek before I pass judgment, I guess. But, um, can somebody please help me with my cell phone? Because I really need an Electric Company theme-song ringtone!!

(Edited to add: Bah! Ringtones not available in Canada, only to residents of the US and Australia. Boo!!)