Month: December 2008

Hypocrite, thy name is mother

From downstairs, the sound of bickering, then howls of indignation. I stomp down the stairs and into the fray. “What?” I demand, giving them both my best stink-eye.

“He hit me!” wails the assaulted.

“He was teasing me!” counters the other.

“In this household, we do not hit,” I lecture. They’ve heard it before. “It is never okay to hit. Never. If you are frustrated, use your words. If using your words doesn’t work, what should you do?”

“Come and tell you,” they say in pouty unison.

“That’s right. If your words don’t work, you come and tell me or Daddy, and we will help you.”

**Fast forward two hours.**

I can hear the commotion escalating from downstairs. Right on cue, I hear the inevitable: “I’m telling!!”

One boy comes up, his brother right behind him. “Mom!” he begins.

I cut him off. “I don’t want to hear it. Go settle it yourselves. Now go away. GO!”

How long d’you think I can keep playing both sides against the middle? One of these days, this will surely come back to bite me in the ass…

Brain, Child winner!

Congratulations to Karen of Virtually There, winner of the one year subscription to Brain, Child magazine! Karen was chosen completely at random with the assistance of a sleepy Tristan, who picked the number six because “I’m almost not six anymore.”

There’s still a couple of days left to enter the contest for an iTunes Canada gift card, though!

Thanks to Stephanie and the folks at Brain, Child for the freebie.

Another gift for you!!

Who loves ya, baby? I do!! And, as my mother always says, “If you love me, buy me things!”

Well, in this case, I’ll give you things. The nice people at iTunes Canada would like you to know that you can now buy iTunes gift cards at Sobeys, Mac’s, A&P, Safeway, Save-on Foods and Coop. To help get the word out, they’re sending me an iTunes gift card for me to share with you! (Disclosure: they’re also giving one to me. Hooray for sharing!)

*cue Don Pardo-esque announcer voice*

Busy moms can simply pick one up while grocery shopping and give the gift of instant entertainment.

Entertaining and need to set the mood quickly? Simply download your choice of music to your computer, burn it to a CD and play it all night long.

Or maybe you have a music lover on your gift list, but you don’t know what kind of music to buy. Give the gift of downloadable joy!

/announcer voice

(Hey, if you want free stuff, you gotta put up with the pitches every now and then, right?)

We don’t have a lot of time, so I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to get this to you before Christmas. But if you are Canadian, and you would like a $25 iTunes Canada gift card, leave a comment below. As always, though, it’s not just any comment. This time, I want you to tell me one song I must download and add to my iPod and why. Contest closes end of day this Thursday, December 18.

Kids, books, and a love of reading: Part Two of two

In part one of this mini-series on helping your kids to fall in love with books, I talked about a new website full of book suggestions. This post is about a great set of new books that I was offered for review in mid-November. Not just any books, but graphic novels comic books for beginning readers.

I might have mentioned before, we come by a love of comic books honestly in our home. Beloved studied illustration formally before moving on to an animation program, and our basement is crammed to the rafters (literally!) with the paltry remains of his once-legendary comic book collection, largely skewed to the 1980s superhero genre. And at the tender age of six, Tristan is already creating his own comic books. So when the nice people from TOON Books sent me a pitch offering me a couple of free high-end hardcover comic books for beginning readers, I couldn’t say “yes” fast enough.

Here’s the pitch that hooked me:

Since the early days of comics, parents and teachers have experienced a challenge: Kids, even reluctant readers, love comics, but are comics good for them?

With TOON Books, the solution has arrived. Authored by illustrious cartoonists and children book artists, edited with the highest literary standards, and thoughtfully making use of a controlled vocabulary, the new books are perfect for emerging readers ages four and up. The series, developed by Francoise Mouly (Art Editor of The New Yorker) with Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman (MAUS) as Advisor, builds on a tradition of excellence in children’s literature: young readers will fall in love with these books and return to them over and over again. The luxuriously produced hardcovers are gifts that they’ll treasure for years to come.

They sent us three books: Jack and the Box, Mo and Jo, and Stinky. The very first night, Tristan read the entire Jack and the Box book from cover to cover out loud to Beloved and Simon. That’s 30-odd pages, and he’s only in Grade One. I was so impressed! And it’s not an overly simplistic book either. That’s what I liked about these books, that they’re accessible without being condescending. Beloved and Tristan took turns reading the next two books out loud over the subsequent nights.

The same week we received and devoured our TOON books, Art Spiegelman was interviewed on my favourite radio program, CBC’s Q. There’s an article about the books, and you can listen to his interview from the CBC site. (Gah, the link to the interview from the CBC article doesn’t work. If you’re determined, and it is worth it, go to http://www.cbc.ca/q/pastepisodes.html and scroll down to December 2 to download the podcast of the episode.) It’s really quite fascinating, the philosophy behind reclaiming the comic book genre for beginning readers. I was particularly intrigued by the discussion about how Jack and the Box is even a bit on the scary side, from a child’s point of view, and how they attributed kids with a level of sophistication and cognizance that a lot of beginning-reader books simply do not. They also talk about how comic books add a nuance in expression and interaction that regular picture books do not. Even if you don’t get the books, which I highly recommend, the interview makes for some thoughtful discussion.

Am I raving a bit? It’s genuine. I honestly love these books, and can’t wait to go out and add some more to our collection.

Kids, books and a love reading: Part One of two

I’d originally planned this as one post, but time and my own loquaciousness have deemed that they be separated into parts one and two of a theme: I love reading and by all things holy, my kids shall love to read as well. Lucky for us, I’ve got two great new tools to help with that goal.

The first is a new website designed to help you find books that one celebrity author thinks your kids will love, courtesy of a Mother-Talk blog tour.

James Patterson, one of our generation’s most prolific authors, has taken to heart the cause of getting kids of all ages to love reading. To that end, he recently launched a new website, ReadKiddoRead.com, filled with recommendations to truly great books for kids. From the Mother-Talk pitch I received:

Whether you are still enjoying picture books with your baby or have an older child reading at an advanced level, ReadKiddoRead acts as a resource for finding the best books. Each featured book, hand-selected by Patterson, includes a synopsis, related themes, quotes from critics, links to find the book in any number of locations (including local libraries), and even similar suggested reads. In addition, the website provides resources for finding book discounts and promotions, features interviews and contributions from authors and celebrities.

I signed up for this blog tour because it’s a topic close to my heart, but I was genuinely impressed by the ReadKiddoRead website. It starts with an overview of various age groups and book types. Click on one of them and it will bring you to a list of book ideas in that category with truncated reviews of each one. Click one more time, and you get a full review of the book, including where to buy it, a US library finder (too bad there’s no Canadian equivalent!), a few words from the critics, and a list of a dozen or more “if you like this book, you’ll love this one” suggestions.

They’ve set up a Ning community (you’ll know Ning if you signed up for TwitterMoms or Nablopomo, among others) to discuss ReadKiddoRead and other book ideas for kids.

Just in time for the holidays, if you’re looking for a new book or ten for your favourite kiddies, this is a great place to start. A lot of my board books have been drooled to death, so I might just use the 0 – 2 category for a few suggestions to fill Lucas’s stocking this year!

Coming up next, a set of amazing new books for beginning readers…

Disclosure: I received a $20 amazon gift certificate for participating in this Mother-Talk blog book tour.

Best Santa-social media mash-up EVER!

A colleague of mine (Hi Dawna!) tipped me off to this at a Christmas party the other day. If you are Canadian and have kids who still believe in the wonder of Santa, you *must* visit the Portable North Pole.

You answer a few questions like how old is your child, first name, gender, province of residence and a few others, and then upload a photo of your child (optional, but worth it!) Santa will e-mail them a personalized video greeting. Tristan and Simon were open-mouthed with wonder, especially when Santa opened his big book and said, “Hmmm, Tristan, let me see. Oh yes, here you are!” and turned his book to show Tristan’s name and a photo of him. Priceless at any cost, but totally free! (We had extra fun with ours because the photos I uploaded came from our trip to North Pole, New York earlier this year. Upped the believability factor by 10, IMHO!)

I sometimes have trouble finding personalized mass-produced trinkets with Tristan, Simon and Lucas written on them (dang, shoulda named them Ryan, Matthew and Michael!) but all three names were in the drop-down menu on Portable Santa. I’m highly impressed!

Give it a try, your kids will LOVE it!

My Christmas gift to you

Hooray, more free stuff!

A while ago, I got an e-mail from Stephanie of Brain, Child magazine. She asked me if I’d be interested in getting to know Brain, Child a little better with a back issue, and would I like to give away a one-year subscription to one of my readers. Hell yes!!

I’d heard of Brain, Child before, and had been meaning to check it out. They call themselves “The Magazine for Thinking Mothers.” I really, really enjoyed the issue they sent me. There were, to my great relief, no articles offering 20 quick lunch ideas under 300 calories, nor were there any articles on how to decorate your nursery using ridiculously over-priced swag from Pottery Barn Kids. Not a single lipstick review! It was, in short, unlike 99% of the glossy magazines aimed at my demographic.

It was smart, it was witty, it was occasionally wrenching, and it was a really good read. The backbone of the magazine seems to be personal essays, rounded out by a selection of shorter pieces, fiction, features and reviews. I gobbled it all up and can’t wait to go back for more — but I’ll have to wait at least a little while, because they only publish four times per year.

If you’d like to be entered in a draw to win the one-year subscription to Brain, Child magazine, just leave me a comment before December 14, 2008 and tell me one thing you’re wishing for this holiday season.

Santa Quest 2008

It seemed like a simple enough idea at the time. (Doesn’t it always?) Pictures with Santa. We do it every year, and I love my little collection of photos of Santa and the boys through the years. We usually just zip over to our local Loblaws, who just happens to have the most authentic Santa in town AND no line-ups, and we’re in and out in 20 minutes. It was a little more challenging with Tristan in school full time this year, and with no Santa at Loblaws this year, but a PD day last Friday gave us the perfect opportunity. A mom-in-the-know tipped us off to a deal at Carlingwood Mall: free pix with Santa if you buy a $25 gift card. Free? You know I likes me some free, and the kids likes them some Santa. A perfect day’s outing.

We arrived at Carlingwood about an hour before lunch, and headed straight for Santa’s big chair. And that’s where things started to go awry. Santa was a girl. Santa was a shapely girl with long, brown hair. Santa was wearing a crown and wings and a blue taffeta dress. Santa was — horror of horrors — sharing his big velvet chair with the Fairy Princess. WTF???

Memo to Carlingwood management: While I’m sure there are a goodly number of boys who might have been entranced by the Fairy Princess, there are a few — mine included — who were crushed by the weight of their unfulfilled expectations. Set up the Fairy Princess display in July, wouldja, and leave December for His Jollyness.

I gave the boys a choice: stay at Carlingwood for lunch and browsing as planned, and we’ll make a special trip another day to see Santa, or we’ll pack ourselves back into the car and give Santa another try at a different mall. I could read the answer on their faces before I even proposed the choice. Off we went to Bayshore, where Fairy Princesses are not welcome in December.

It’s a quick drive but a long hunt for parking on a PD day in the weeks before Christmas, but eventually we were out of the car and making a beeline for Santa’s workshop. There he was, in all his red jolly splendor, with at least half the population of Ottawa in line to see him. I took one look at the queue, which snaked entirely around Santa’s workshop and doubled back on itself, and convinced the boys that we’d go for lunch first and come back after, hoping against hope that the line would have receded by then.

Forty minutes later, and the line had, in fact, lengthened. We queued up, and I wandered over to the people at the front of the line, looking a little too much like the contestants on Survivor on day 38 — scruffy and malnourished, where you can see a little bit too much of their teeth — and asked one how long they had been standing in line. “Ten minutes short of two hours,” she growled without consulting her watch, and my heart sank.

I stepped back to the boys and tried to convince them that we’d come back another day. “It’s a very, very long line, guys,” I pleaded. “We don’t have to see Santa today. We can come back on Monday after school with Daddy, and we can all wait together. I promise!”

Tristan and Simon looked at each other placidly and said, “Nah, we’re good.” It was by now early afternoon. I knew Lucas would need a nap. The day already seemed endless, before even attempting to wait out this queue. The boys may have had it in them to wait it out, but I wasn’t sure I did. I tried, I really tried, to convince them to leave. Every two minutes for the first half hour or so, I rephrased the suggestion. “We can go to the toy store today! And look at the Webkinz AND the Lego! And even the pet store!!” This was my best shot, but they didn’t even nibble. Each time, I got the same response. “It’s okay Mom, we’re good.”

And you know what? They were. I don’t know whether it was the proximity to Santa that had them on their best behaviour or what, but we waited in that line for NINETY-FIVE minutes. Even Lucas was patient, sitting in his stroller and occasionally in my arms, looking around and watching the people and the decorations without any sort of fuss. We stood in that line for an hour and a half, and there was not one shenanigan, not a single hijinx, not even a shushed threat of Serious Consequence. No begging for bathroom breaks or drinks, and not even a “how much longer?” whine. Well, okay, not from the boys, anyway.

It was worth it, don’t you think?

Santa 2008

Holy crap, I actually did it!

Remember Plan B? The plan to lose 20 lbs in 20 weeks, to drop back down from 192 pounds to my pre-pregnancy weight before January of 2009?

I did it!! Yay me, I did it!! I lost 23.5 lbs in 15 weeks, and now I’m a couple of pounds under 170. From a tight size 16 to a comfortable 12. Not bad, eh? This is as small as I’ve been since June of 2005 — when, ironically, I joined weight watchers because I thought I was too heavy! My pre-pregnancy comfortable jeans are now too baggy and slidey-offy to wear, and I’m wearing my skinniest jeans comfortably.

So I wanted to be all clever and show you what 23 lbs of fat looks like. Unfortunately, the dairy manager of Sobey’s kept shooting me these really suspicious looks as I stacked pound after pound of butter into my cart, so I just snapped off a really quick shot instead of the artistic expressionism I had been imagining all these weeks as I crept ever closer to my goal:

23 lbs of butter

Then, I realized that there was something else in the cart that ALSO makes a pretty decent illustration of exactly what 23.5 lbs looks like:

23 lbs of butter and cuteness

Well, you get the idea.

Anyway, I’m absolutely thrilled with myself. I’ve never achieved this sort of weight loss before, and so I have no idea if I’ll have trouble maintaining it. For now, though, I still look a bit too much like a “before” picture than an “after” picture for my own comfort. That, and going back to my extremely sedentary desk job is sure to add back at least five or so of those lost pounds. So, I’m readjusting my goal to include another 10 lbs of weight loss by the time I go back to work in two months. That will bring me back to my pre-fertility treatments and pre-FIRST-pregnancy weight. The cookie turkey snacking holiday season will make it a challenge, but I think I can do it!

He’s a goer

Uh oh. Cue REM’s “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”

The baby? He’s mobile. We are so farked.

He’s not quite crawling yet, but he knows how to lean over from a sitting position and stretch himself prone. It’s only a matter of days before he pops up on his hands and knees and scoots away. In the interim, though, he’s turned the barrel roll and the 96-point turn into an art form. He also scooches over to the furniture and manages a little baby chin-up, hauling himself up on his knees.

Did I mention we’re farked?

And he’s in that intense stage of baby development where one not only acquires a new skill, but one must practice that new skill at every available opportunity, and during each and every waking moment. I can’t turn my back on him without him making a break for it.

So very farked.

Because there was less than two years between Tristan and Simon, we never really moved out of a state of general baby-proofedness between them. In the intervening four years, our house has become home to every possible choking hazard known to the modern world, most of which are lurking under furniture and tucked in hidden cubbies and corners just waiting for a curious human with an eye-level of approximately eight inches off the ground to happen by.

And hardy-har-har, I thought the Christmas tree would be safe this year…