Oh well.

This is the first year since I started blogging that I didn’t make it through to the final round of voting for the Canadian Blog Awards. There’s a good chance I’d be pouting right now if I weren’t so happy to see the blogs that DID make it to the final round, including two of my favourite bloggers (Don Mills Diva and Fawn) and two of the blogs I personally nominated (Under the Mad Hat and Party of 3).

If this news had come during my funk last week, I’m sure I’d have taken it extremely personally, wondering if I’d jumped the shark bloggily speaking. But after spending a thoroughly wonderful weekend having a visit from Marla and Josephine and having dinner with Andrea and her lovely family and then attending a baby shower for one of my very favourite people in the whole world, it’s hard to be unhappy about anything!

If you aren’t reading any of these fabulous blogs, you should be. Congratulations to all the nominees! Now I have to figure out how to get three more IP addresses so I can vote for all of them.

The inevitable sheepish morning-after post

I think it was Mad Hatter who once wrote about the tradition of the morning-after the emotional outburst post with far more humour and eloquence than I am likely to attain here today. If I thought I’d have more than a minute or two here, I’d go find it. What is it about bleating your anxiety out into the interwebs that seems to release the pressure building up in your brain? The hangover from an emotional drunk always leaves me feeling vaguely silly but hugely refreshed.

I knew when I was posting my little pity party last night that I would likely feel better by this morning, and I almost didn’t press the “publish” button for that exact reason. (Some weeks, I delete more than I post!) But, I am so glad I did. It never fails to amaze me how a little “oh, me too” or even a simple “there, there” makes things seem so much easier to bear. More than a dozen comments and e-mails in less than twelve hours? I don’t feel nearly so alone anymore, and that’s a blessing indeed. Sincerely, thank you.

It *is* a rough stage, isn’t it? You’d think having been there a couple of times already, I’d’ve remembered that more clearly. Add in a little nanny-search stress (good news on the horizon on that front), a dash of back-to-work anxiety (that one is still freaking me out), and the triumphant return after a blissful nine-month absence of the monthly red menace (is it possible I forgot how annoying THAT one could be, too?), and I guess I can cut myself a little slack.

It means so much to me that you are all still out there, and so quick with a word of kindness. This is blogging at it’s finest, and why I keep doing it when maybe I should be doing something more productive to prepare for the pending arrival of our weekend houseguests, Marla and Josephine. Hey, if that doesn’t brighten up a week — heck, a whole month! — I don’t know what would!!

Regular posting may or may not resume shortly

Gah. In the middle of a bit of a storm here, emotionally speaking. Feeling some kind of emotional flu, desperate and frustrated and overwhelmed. Really think that if I could just get some of this crap out of my head, I’d feel much better, but I can’t get 10 minutes to myself anywhere, let alone at the keyboard. That is 99.8% of the problem, to be honest. While I wouldn’t trade my life in a minute, I sure wish I had some fresh air right now. I have not been out of arms reach of my beautiful baby for more than 35 minutes in the past five days. Literally. He gets up when I get up, only naps in short bursts after much rocking, and now wakes up shortly after he goes to bed again. He only settles if I’m in the bed beside his cradle. It’s making me more than a little squirrelly, let alone snappish, which makes me feel guilty, which makes me feel ashamed, which makes me whiney, which makes me unpleasant to be around. Yanno?

It doesn’t last forever. It doesn’t last forever. He’ll be young for such a very short time. This will not last forever, and some day I’ll look back and wonder what my problem was. But right now, I wish I could breathe.

In which I trade my mother’s loyalty for a few inches of ink

Huh. Hard to figure out how to play this one.

It’s not every day you get quoted in the Globe and Mail, after all. For an attention junkie like me, it doesn’t get much sweeter than that. When Fiona sent me an e-mail to ask if I’d mind being interviewed for a piece she was working on about baby-led weaning, I knew if nothing else it would make great blog fodder.

Ah, but as many other A-list celebrities like myself have learned, the media is a fickle mistress indeed. I’m quite sure I never would have said that my mother was “nagging” me to start feeding Lucas solids. “Haranguing” maybe, or “cajoling.” “Hectoring” would have been a good word, now that I think of it. But I would never in a million years told Canada’s national newspaper that my mother was “nagging” me. Never.

I’m *so* getting a lump of coal for Christmas, aren’t I, Mom? (We won’t even get into the fact that we skipped over six weeks’ worth of milestones, from first cereal to first Cheerios, in a single en-dash!)

Now that I’ve alienated the one person whose vote I knew was in the bag for the Canadian Blog Awards, I need your vote more than ever. Take pity on me, and throw me a vote, willya?

Apparently I put the “pen” in “penis”

Been getting a lot of blog fodder from CBC these days. Last week it was the top 10 TV shows courtesy of Q, and today’s post comes via old Spark podcasts I downloaded to listen to on our road trip this past weekend.

According to the artificial intelligence at GenderAnalyzer.com, there is a 76% probability that Postcards from the Mothership is written by a man. I found this rather curious until I scanned down my own current home page and realized I have three large block-quotes, at least one of which I know *is* written by a man. I got curious, and started dropping individual category pages into the analyzer:

We guess http://danigirl.ca/blog/category/mothering-without-a-licence/ is written by a man (54%), however it’s quite gender neutral.

We guess http://danigirl.ca/blog/category/it-is-all-about-me/ is written by a man (55%), however it’s quite gender neutral.

We think http://danigirl.ca/blog/category/the-wee-beasties/ is written by a man (71%).

We think http://danigirl.ca/blog/category/life-the-universe-and-everything/ is written by a man (75%).

We guess http://danigirl.ca/blog/category/ottawa-bar-harbor-2007/ is written by a man (57%), however it’s quite gender neutral.

Hmmm, my manliest writing is on random topics and when telling stories about the boys, and writing I do specifically on mothering is my most gender-neutral. Interesting, in a passing sort of way. Go ahead, go plug your blog in there, then come back and tell me your results. You know you want to!!

***

Speaking of “you know you want to…”, it’s that time of year again. Even though I had to resign from my position as an organizer of the Canadian Blog Awards (just not enough hours in the day!) I will still shamelessly whore myself for your votes. I am proud to say that Postcards from the Mothership has once again been nominated for a Best Canadian Family Blog award, and I will milk it for all it’s worth!

Best Family Blog nominee

You can vote any day this week, but you can vote only once per category so choose well, as there are several excellent blogs nominated. Don’t make me beg. Well, you’re right, I’ll likely beg anyway. But don’t let that stop you! VOTE!

Road trip

The boys and I are heading down to southern Ontario for a road trip with Granny and Papa Lou today. Both of my brother’s kids have birthdays this week, so it should be a fun — if not hectic — weekend. Beloved is staying home to grade papers. Lucky him!

If you just can’t wait until I get back for a decent post, take a peek over at Digital, Baby! where I wade into the Motrin Moms fray.

Top 10 TV shows of all time

I’m a big fan of the eclectic CBC Radio program Q, arts and culture from a Canadian perspective. I was listening yesterday in the van while running errands, and they had a segment on one regular contributor’s top ten TV shows of all time list. I thought he did a pretty good job. Here’s his list and justification for each:

1/ The Simpsons – this shouldn’t be an argument; it will become longest running show in history next season, opened doors for prime time animation, cultural influence is immense. Yes the movie was a letdown, but the show is unmatched.

2/ The Sopranos – watching it again reminds you just how groundbreaking this show was; best writing on tv except for the show above it on this list.

3/ Hill Street Blues – changed tv police dramas forever, still stands up today.

4/ M*A*S*H – most watched series finale in history, show broke tv rules and rewrote them – political and funny, this one also comes in a glorious box set edition.

5/ The Wire – another of the recent cable shows that elevated the entire format, simply amazing.

6/ Saturday Night Live – hugely influential, made sketch comedy subversive and voice for counter culture, launched numerous careers, from Chevy Chase and Bill Murray to Will Ferrell and Tina Fey.

7/ The Twilight Zone – remarkable series that still holds up, challenged conceptions of what tv could be, and set groundwork for later shows from The X-Files to Heroes.

8/ The Muppets/Sesame Street – Jim Henson gets a double shot for his two greatest creations, shows that forever changed the way people see children’s entertainment, he was one of tv’s greatest geniuses.

9/ Law and Order – will become second longest running series next year, updated the police procedural for modern era, there would be no CSI without this show.

10/ The Munsters – because I can – this show kept me company during many sick days when I was a kid – I still love it – way better than The Addams Family.

Okay, so I’m not a fan of the Munsters, and I’ve never seen The Wire, but I’m on board with just about all of these choices in the order he included them. Interesting that there are no medical dramas in here – no ER, no Grey’s. I might find a place for Seinfeld or Friends in my own top ten list, or maybe All in the Family. And the original Star Trek. I’d put an asterisk beside SNL to include SCTV. And I’d like to find a place for Survivor, because it was the granddaddy of all reality television — like it or hate it, there’s no doubt it changed the TV landscape.

Whaddya think?

The one with the dollar store snow globes

We were in the dollar store the other day, and the boys fell in love with the display of little Christmas snow globes. I told them they could spend their own money to get one, if they wanted to, but then they wouldn’t be allowed to buy their weekly supply of Pokemon cards. I was secretly pleased when they each decided to buy themselves one. As they flipped them upside down and back again, I explained that the globes were glass and that they’d have to be extra careful in taking care of them. They were not a toy to play with, but a decoration to admire and handle carefully.

You can probably guess where this is heading.

We were in the van, not three blocks from the dollar store, when I heard the distinctive tinkly sound of breaking glass. Simon had forgotten his snow globe was in his lap and it shattered upon impact with the floor of the van, leaving a puddle of wet flakes of plastic snow and about three million slivers of very thin but very sharp glass.

We stopped at a gas station and vacuumed up the debris, and I shushed Tristan a few times as he made pointed observations along the lines of “It’s a good thing I didn’t drop my snow globe, eh Mom?” I could tell Simon was upset, and I knew that the globe had been dropped through inattention rather than carelessness. He was so forlornly disappointed that my heart ached for him. When we got home, I took Simon aside and promised him that the next time we went to the dollar store, I’d buy him a replacement.

Yesterday, we happened to be at the same plaza, so we made a special stop to buy a replacement snow globe for Simon. The cashier carefully wrapped it in paper and placed it in a bag, which Simon carried with all the careful reverence a four-year-old can muster. We talked on the way home about how snow globes are really more for looking than for touching, and that since we now know how fragile they are, we would be extra careful when touching this one.

Again, you can probably see where this is going.

I was nursing the baby this morning when the boys were getting dressed. I’d already issued two firm reminders to Simon to get moving, but he was dawdling. Suddenly, he came running into my room whispering, “I’m so so sorry, Mommy. I’m so sorry. So sorry, Mommy.” The genuine sincerity of his apologies would be a lot more endearing if I didn’t hear them several times a day lately. He’d tapped the two snow globes together to hear the noise, and shattered not his but Tristan’s snow globe, this time littering the floor between their beds with a puddle of plastic snow and three million shards of glass. AND, he was still in his pyjamas.

I was flummoxed as to what to do. I’ve been having a very hard time with Simon these days not listening to my instructions, especially with no-brainers like “Don’t touch.” (He almost burned his fingers on a boiling pot of Kraft Dinner the other day, even after I told him to be careful. It’s like living with a toddler all over again!) I’m not going to keep replacing the damn snow globes even at the affordable cost of a dollar, but I felt bad now that it was Tristan’s globe that had been broken through no fault of his own. In the end, Beloved came up with the idea of having Simon pay Tristan back out of his own allowance for the dollar spent on the snow globe.

I thought that since Lucas isn’t crawling yet, we’d be safe putting out the more delicate Christmas stuff this year — stuff we’ve had no problems with for the last year or two — but now I’m beginning to rethink that.

Four is a tough age, you know?

Entitlement, failure and self-esteen

In my search for a new nanny, I’ve had a lot of exposure to the 20 to 25 year old age group and I have to agree with the prevailing opinion that this particular generation seems to have a highly over-developed sense of entitlement.

A week or so ago, I read about a study by Ellen Greenberger, a psych prof in California, who examined that sense of entitlement and found that students today expected high grades for modest efforts and were extremely demanding of their professors: they expected same-day e-mail responses, special consideration for effort over achievement, and believed that professors had no right to ban cell phones during lectures. I’m not that far removed from my own academic career (only a decade or so) but I can’t imagine making the kinds of demands on a prof that I see students making of Beloved where he teaches.

Hot on the heels of that article, last week there was another report, this one about a high school in Saskatchewan that is thinking of doing away with those self-esteem crushing Fs when a student scores below 50% on a course. Instead, students would receive “incomplete” or “no mark” on their report cards and transcripts. (I’m barely able to type this for the rolling of my eyeballs.)

“Failing marks do not encourage student engagement with school,” [the principal] said yesterday, pointing to the permanent scar on a student’s transcript, as well as negative effects on motivation and self-esteem. Teachers are also demoralized when they hand out failing grades, because many see it as indicative of their own efforts, Ms. Figley said. “Just like doctors don’t want patients to die, teachers don’t want their students to fail.”

So the message to students is, “we know failing sucks and we don’t want your feelings to be hurt, so if you don’t pass we’ll just pretend you never took this course.” Yeah, that’s a healthy approach.

In the past month, I’ve been appalled by the lack of respect shown by the young nannies applying to take care of the boys. This is a job where trust and personality are two of the keys to success, and I’ve received replies that are barely literate, let alone borderline impolite with their immediate familiarity. That, and we’ve scheduled four interviews so far with only one candidate even bothering to show up. One at least had the decency to call a couple of hours before an interview set up three days ago and ask for a reschedule due to that old standby, a “family emergency.”

I don’t want to seem like an old biddy shaking my cane and tsk-tsking an entire generation, but what the heck is going on? And, more importantly, what do you think we as parents can do about it to avoid the same fate for our kids? Is this sense of entitlement a product of being raised in an environment of leniency and lack of discipline, or is it a question of having always gotten everything they asked for? Is it that in waiting longer to have kids, we’re too tired to mount a decent offense in the discipline department, so the kids are running roughshod and getting away with stuff we never would? Or are they posh because they were constantly escorted and chaperoned from playdates to skating lessons to sushi dinner?

Best Bet Toys for 2009

[Edited to add: Click this link for information on the most recent CTTC Toy Report for 2010.]

Apparently, I’m a creature of habit and tradition. (Who knew?) Each year since 2005, I’ve blogged about the Canadian Toy Testing Council’s annual Toy Reports. I love these reports because they aren’t sponsored by any company or store; toys are tested and rated by Canadian kids and families. You can search for a particular toy to see how it ranks and what families did and did not like about the toy, or you can peruse the Best Bet listings for the best-ranked toys of the year. There’s also a “children’s choice” category, and breakdowns by age group.

This year’s Best Bet toys include old standards like playdough (in this case a Diego/Backyardigans combo), Brio trains, Lego, and a handful of Crayola sets. They also recommend a Musical Bingo game which sounds kind of intriguing and an indoor Scavenger Hunt game from Pazow that I might just have to pick up for my little scavengers.

If you’re looking for recommendations for great kids’ books, you can get that from the CTTC site, or you can hop over to Mad Hatter’s blog and take a look at her ongoing series on the subject.

This year, our Christmas gifts to the boys will skew toward their current obsessions with Lego, Pokemon (choke), and Star Wars. Simon loves board games as much as I do, so we’ll add to our family collection of those, too. And while I’m guessing Lucas would be just as content to play with the wrappings as the toys inside, I’ve got one of these classic FP telephones stashed away for him, too. Some toys never go out of style!

Got a favourite toy or gift to recommend?