Category: Mothering without a licence

No strollers allowed

Following our apple-picking adventure on Saturday, we popped into nearby Merrickville for some browsing. The place is riddled with fun and funky boutiques, many filled with the wares of local artisans, with not a chain store to be found. I love the ecclectic character of the place, and that you’ll never know what you’ll find from one place to the next.

There was one store that looked particularly interesting, and I was just bending down to lift our compact stroller (and its passenger) up the stone step and into the store when an elderly gentleman stopped us.

“Sorry, no strollers allowed,” he said, blocking the door.

I was so surprised that for a minute I only gazed up at him, openmouthed. “Are you serious?” I finally asked, thinking maybe he was having a bit of fun with me and unable to imagine that he was actually denying me (and my baby) entrance to the store.

He replied in the affirmative, and started to say something about safety, but I wasn’t really interested in the rest of his answer. Beloved, standing behind me with the big boys, offered to take the stroller up the street a bit while I went into the shop, but there was no way I was going to give that merchant my business.

We wandered further down the street, and browsed a few other stores, but the experience of being denied entry had tainted my enjoyment of something to which I’d been looking quite forward. There were many other shops with breakables and other finery that did not bar our entrance, and quite a few where I had to bend down and boost the stroller up a step or two. I’ve never, in all these years, been denied access to any sort of establishment because of a stroller.

I’ve been puzzling over this for a couple of days now. I wish I’d listened to see exactly what the safety issue of concern would be with a stroller. I mean, are wheelchairs barred, too? That would be unimaginable. And yet, they’re a lot bigger than my little travel stroller. Or is it a matter of babies with grabby hands? Lucas on the loose, should I have chosen to leave the stroller at the curb, is far more of a menace to finery than he is belted securely into his stroller.

It’s not that I feel like my rights have been violated, that it’s worth making a stink over, but it does seem to me to be an issue worth discussing. I don’t want retribution or compensation or even to “out” the store in question, but I am curious as to your thoughts. Should my stroller and I have unfettered access to any public establishment? Would you have fought for your ‘right’ to enter the store? Am I missing a very good reason why we should have been denied access? Would it have mattered if I were pushing one of those SUV-type strollers that people so love to hate instead of a compact little Maclaren travel stroller? Have you ever been denied access anywhere because of a stroller? Is there a time or place when strollers should be prohibited?

What say ye, bloggy peeps?

Teaching kids to save and share the fun way (a giveaway!)

Every now and then, a pitch stands out from the noise that is my in-box. Brent from MoonJar.ca caught my attention right off the top by referencing my new pitch policy. As an Ottawa-based, family-run affiliate, he was concerned that he might not have enough Can-con to catch my attention. (!!) He and I are apparently leading parallel lives: he has three daughters, all of them within a year of the ages of my boys, also lives here in Ottawa, also drives a Mazda5, also has a yellow and red swing on the tree in his front yard… it’s spooky, really, in a funny kind of Internet way. All of which is of no real consequence at all, except to say that I was immediately endeared to him, and I was almost afraid to look into his product because even though I immediately liked him so much I was worried that he might be hawking something I had no interest in or could find no connection to, and I wouldn’t be able to help him out by promoting it here on the blog.

I needn’t have worried.

So let me tell you about the Moon Jar moneybox. It’s the kind of quirky thing you see in specialty toy stores or at your cool friend’s house, the kind of thing that is both fun and functional, and makes you say, “Dang, why didn’t I think of that!” It’s elegant in it’s simplicity: a three-part bank in cheerful primary colours. One compartment is labelled “save”, one “spend” and one “share”. It helps teach kids about financial responsibility and opens the door to conversations about financial literacy.

Image courtesy of MoonJar.ca
Image courtesy of MoonJar.ca

Here’s the official company boilerplate:

Since 2001, Moonjar has created Award Winning books, toys, games and the well known Moonjar Moneybox. Their goal is to recycle and transform time-tested principles into innovative, simple and high-quality products for a new generation of learners. We provide FUN products for independent young minds and innovative tools that address basic life skills.

Our Products:

  • teach kids about money through Saving, Spending and Sharing
  • promote financial literacy and youth philanthropy
  • encourage families to keep their conversations going, about money and life.

We offer unique partnerships with Financial Institutions, Planners,
Educators, Non-Profits and Retailers in a variety of ways. Moonjars are
used in schools as fundraisers, as well as in classrooms, financial
institutions and community groups and homes to teach financial literacy to
children.

(You can see why I love this idea, no?)

Did you know, by the way, that Canada has just launched a National Task Force on Financial Literacy? I’ve seen many references to the fact that poor financial literacy is one of the major contributing factors to the global financial meltdown earlier this year. Now, I’m not saying that by using the Moonjar Moneybox, you’ll help Wall Street recover and stabilize the TSX, but IMHO we should take any opportunity to help our kids learn about taking on financial responsibility as early as possible.

I was curious, though, about how my boys would react to the idea of not only a “save” component to the plan, but a “share” one as well. (They’ve got the “spend” component down to a science, of course. Each week’s allowance is converted into how many Pokemon cards can be acquired and how much pooling of resources can acquire even greater numbers of Pokemon cards.)

When I opened the package of samples that Brent supplied, Tristan was looking over my shoulder in curiousity. (I think he was initially intrigued by the bright colours. He’s a magpie like his mother!) When I explained the various components of the “system” and the idea that if we started using the Moonjar moneybox for his allowance, he’d have to set aside a portion each week for saving and some for sharing with people who weren’t as lucky and fortunate as us, he was perfectly fine with the idea. Now, to be totally honest, we haven’t yet had a chance to implement the save/spend/share system because I wanted to get this information out to you right away. But so far, he’s intrigued and we’ve started talking about money — that’s more than half the battle, right?

And Brent was generous enough to give us a complimentary set of MoonJar moneyboxes to share with you, my bloggy peeps! Tristan has already laid claim on one of them, but I have one more Classic MoonJar and two Standard MoonJars (these ones are made of cardboard and you assemble them yourself) to give away.

To enter, leave a comment on this post with any one of the following:

  • a tip or idea on improving financial literacy within the family
  • your thoughts on the best spend/save/share ratio
  • tell me how allowances work in your house – no allowance, based on age, linked to chores, etc
  • one thing you wish you would have learned or done as a child to improve your own financial literacy as an adult

Entries will be accepted through 5 pm EDT on Thursday September 3, 2009. Three winners will be chosen at random based on the entries received. The first person chosen will receive the Classic MoonJar, and the next two will receive the Standard MoonJar. You must be willing to share your home mailing address with me so I can ship the prize to you.

By the way, I know some of you are elementary school teachers, and Brent says he is strongly focused on the teaching aspect of the MoonJars. They’ve got some good information on saving and spending on their resources page, and they’ve developed curriculum for elementary schools. Contact him for details!

Tips for surviving the arsenic hours while parenting solo?

Beloved is a college teacher, and so each semester we are at the mercy of the administrative sadists assistants who generate the school’s timetables. This year, they’ve got him teaching late three nights out of five, so from now through December on three nights a week I’ve got to cover the after-work through bedtime parenting shift on my own.

Not bad enough this comprises the making and serving and cleaning up of dinner, but also the supervising and checking of homework, the emptying of school backpacks and packing of lunches, the monitoring of school paperwork and communications, and the wrangling of Lucas the Menace. Plus all the other myriad chores that comprise the second shift after my day-job ends. Three nights a week. I have no idea how single parents do this all the time!

I’m not at my best during the arsenic hours in the best of circumstances. My body rhythms and brain functioning reach a peak somewhere around 10:00 am and then it’s just a long, slow descent toward bedtime from there. I’m at my lowest energy ebb between 4 pm and 7pm — right when the day gets the most intense.

I’ve gotten used to Beloved running interference with Lucas while I make dinner, so that’s where I’ll be missing him the most. Any thoughts on how to make these days run a little smoother? I don’t mind ordering takeout once a week or so, but I think three times a week is a little excessive. I can even task the big boys with some of the interference-running and some simple tasks like helping get things ready for dinner, but they’re like me — not really their shining selves in the grumbly hours between school and dinner.

The good news is that Beloved will at least make in home in time to help cover off the kids’ bedtimes. And I’ll be crawling blearily into my own bed about 10 minutes after they all go down!

Mothering and Blogging: The Radical Act of the MommyBlog (a book review)

About a million years ago, I used to do book reviews here on the blog. I think it’s been more than a year since I’ve put one up. Perhaps not coincidentally, it’s been at least six months since I’ve read anything other than a photography book (but man, I’ve read a lot of those!) or a trashy detective novel from my mother’s endless stash.

Also a million years ago, I was a co-presenter with an amazing panel of writers and bloggers at the Association for Research on Mothering’s (ARM) Motherlode conference. Have you heard of ARM? This is how they self-describe:

The Association for Research on Mothering, at York University, Toronto, houses the Association for Research on Mothering, the Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, Demeter Press, and Mother Outlaws. The Association’s mandate is to promote feminist maternal scholarship by building and sustaining a community of researchers interested in the topic of mothering-motherhood.

These bits of ancient history intersected in a recent e-mail I received from ARM. Earlier this year, they released a book called Mothering and Blogging: The Radical Act of the MommyBlog. I received a review copy a week or so back, and I couldn’t wait to dive into it.

The book is a series of essays, ranging in tone from scholarly papers to personal narrative, all centred around the experience of “mommy” blogs. The essays also range in perspective from the blogger to the reader of blogs to, in the introduction, the relatively uninitiated.

I have to tell you, I didn’t read every word. Some of the essays appealed to me more than others. Of course, I devoured every word of the contributions from my friends and Motherlode co-presenters, Ann Douglas and Jen Lawrence.

In “Web 2.0, Meet the Mommy Bloggers” Ann Douglas, esteemed parenting writer and a long-time friend and mentor, writes about the darker side of the “mamasphere” — how the influx of marketers and marketing, as well as human nature’s baser instincts, make mothers compete against each other for a slice of the pie. The pie is not just financial recompense, though. She notes,

…social networking sites are able to attract hundreds of thousands of members who are willing to accept popularity — or even the promise of popularity — in lieu of cash payment for the content they provide to these sites. […] This can, in turn, create an atmosphere of competition rather than cooperation between mothers.

Jen Lawrence, a blogger I credit as one of my first favourites and a blogger I’ve tried to emulate over the years, submitted a reworked version of her Motherlode presentation. In “Blog for Rent: How Marketing is Changing Our Mothering Conversations” she discusses how the advent of the monetization movement circa 2006 completely altered the dynamic between bloggers and readers, and among bloggers themselves. She includes one of my favourite analogies of all time, with respect to marketing and bloggers. She says,

I think that blogging can be an incredibly powerful tool when it comes to building community, even if there are blog ads running down the sidebar. […] But I don’t want blogging to become just another guerilla marketing technique. I don’t want to be invited to a friend’s home, only to discover I was really invited to a Tupperware party.

I didn’t just love the essays in this book that happened to be written by my friends, though. I was completely sucked in by Melissa Camara Wilkins’ “Beyond Cute: A Mom, a Blog, and a Question of Content.” Her essay examines why she blogs, and the satisfaction she derives from being a part of the online mothering community. She perfectly surmizes one of the reasons I so love mommyblogs as a whole: “I’m not narcissistically writing about myself; I am recording my personal narrative and contributing to a collective, descriptive understanding of contemporary motherhood.”

Also on a personal note, I was drawn in by May Friedman’s essay, “Schadenfreude for Mittelschmerz: Or, Why I Read Infertility Blogs.” Since I cut my teeth reading those same infertility blogs, I found Friedman’s perspective (as a “quite fertile” reader of infertility blogs) rather intriguing. And I read with a sort of openmouthed wonder Jennifer Gilbert’s “I Kid You Not: How the Internet Talked Me Out of Traditional Mommyhood.” She explains, in witty detail, how reading mommyblogs convinced her that “mothering was a thankless, Sisyphean exercise that involved prying jellybeans and loose change out of a child’s nose from sunup to sundown” (*snicker*) and simply not the life she wanted to live.

When I first started reading this book, I cringed at how dated some of the references felt. I don’t know a lot about the publishing industry, but it must be hard to get out a book that’s cutting edge when references to things that happened less than two years ago seem like ancient history. Then again, there have been a lot of pixels posted about the nature of mommyblogging again this summer, so like every other fad in motherhood, whatever is old is new again… the cycle is just a lot faster now!

If you’re at all interested in how mommyblogs are shaping our mothering conversations, I highly recommend this book — or at least, big chunks of it. And the nice thing about such varied styles and perspectives is the fact that the chunks that appeal to you are likely not the same ones that appealed to me. Like the mamasphere itself, it offers an intriguing range of voices and opinions, some contradictory and some conciliatory, some vexing and some inspiring, some educated and some entertaining. In this case, as in the mamasphere, the whole is as intriguing as the sum of the parts.

The one with the Pokémon backpack

Way back in early summer, Tristan saw a Pokémon backpack at Walmart, and every time the subject of back-to-school came up this summer, Tristan pined for that Pokémon backpack. He was due for a new one, as his Disney Cars one had held up remarkably well through both Senior Kindergarten and Grade One, so I had no problem with him getting a new one this year.

I was picking up a few things back-to-school items at Walmart (I do try to avoid it, but sometimes the siren song of convenience and cheap are hard to resist) one day, and saw the backpack with which he was so enamoured. I reached out to pick it up, and knew the moment I touched it that it was crap. It was thin, plasticky, and looked like it would fall apart in a hard rain. It was only $10, though.

For a few minutes, I played out possible scenarios in my mind. I bring home the backpack, and Tristan is ecstatic. It would definitely help overcome any potential back-to-school blues. The boy is seriously obsessed with Pokémon — not a day goes by that he doesn’t crank out two or three or eleven Pikachu and Tristan-the-Pokémon-Trainer drawings. $10 is easily worth that much joy.

But — the thing is going to fall apart inside of a month. Will he be heartbroken? Will we have to duct tape it back together on a regular basis, so that by December it’s more repair than backpack? Will we be able to negotiate an acceptable replacement? Will his homework be strewn all over the playground on a regular basis?

I decide on a carpé diem kind of approach, and figure we’ll deal with whatever repairs or replacements are required later. I pick the backpack up and put it in my cart, and that’s when the wave of chemical smell hits me. The thing *reeks* of that plasti-vinyl PVC stench that you just know must be toxic. (Oh look, it really is toxic. Lurvely.)

I put it back on the shelf. I can’t expose my kid to this. He’ll carry this every single day — and keep his lunch in it. I look at Pikachu. He’s been coveting this backpack all summer. Am I that mother, the one who denies her kid all the funnest stuff because of her personal agenda? I pick it up with the intention of giving it another sniff, but I don’t even have to get it up to my nose to smell it. I put it in the cart and pace around the store a while.

Eventually, I decide that I’ll buy it but not show it to him. I’ll look around online and in some other stores and see if I can find a Pokémon backpack that’s somewhat less nuclear than this one. I shop around a bit, but can’t find anything similar. I do find a really nice red and blue Roots backpack (I have a pathological addiction to Roots products, I’m not sure why) and buy that one too. It’s really nice, with lots of pockets and hooks and places to stash a seven-year-old’s treasures — but it’s not Pokémon. When I get in the car, I can actually smell the PVC smell from the bag sitting in the hot car, it’s that strong.

The whole way home, I agonize. I really, really don’t want him to have this particular backpack, but he has had his heart set on it for months. I can always tell him that they don’t carry them, that I couldn’t find them, but we’ll likely run into the problem all over again next time he’s in Walmart. He’s getting too old to trick. I get home and leave all the packages in the car. I surf eBay and a few other online places, all the while wishing (for the first and likely only time) that my computer had smell-O-vision so I could sniff the various wares for sale, but I don’t see anything remotely enticing.

Finally, I decide that I’ll leave it up to Tristan to decide. I’m not sure if I’m empowering him or chickening out. Maybe both? I tell him that I looked at the Pokémon backpack, but that I really thought it was a piece of junk. (He gets that his mother has quality issues. “It’s a piece of junk” is a frequent reason for being denied something shiny that has caught his eye.) I explain my concerns about the chemicals, and the smell, and the quality. I cross my fingers and tell him that I did find a backpack that I thought was really nice, but not Pokémon. I’m watching his face pretty closely, and have watched comprehension and disappointment flicker through his eyes. Now his face brightens as I suggest that maybe we can get a Pokémon keychain (see previous comment re: junk) to decorate this bag.

“Oh yeah,” he says, and enthusiasm lights his face like sunshine after a storm. “We can get some stickers, and I can draw some pictures.” And just like that, we’re good. I’m so relieved and so proud I want to cry.

The next morning, I notice the new backpack sitting by the front door. It has a Pikachu keychain dangling from one zipper, and a few other Pokémon tied to the straps with long bits of string. A fresh picture of Pikachu and Tristan-the-Pokémon-Trainer has been scotch-taped to the front, and there is a Pokémon trading card tucked in the mesh bottle holder. It is, by far, the most lovely Pokémon backpack I’ve ever seen.

We called him Lucas Sawyer, but his real name is Chaos

The word chaos keeps creeping into my life lately.

A friend recently asked me if the jump from two kids to three was really that much of a change. After I finished snickering, I replied, “You know how with two kids, life can have these intensely chaotic peaks, with streches of peace and calm in the middle? Yeah. Three is just all chaos, all the time. No peaceful stretches. Just. Chaos.”

And then my dad has taken up a new pet phrase. He says, “I don’t do chaos.” Interestingly, he seems to have adopted this pet phrase after spending a good portion of his summer with a house full of grandchildren. Coincidence?

Life with three kids is busy, true, but the chaos comes almost exclusively thanks to Lucas, my just-turned-18-months-old perpertual chaos machine.

I love the toddler phase, I really do. No parenting phase is so peppered with daily hourly delight, with instant gratification, with a deep and overwhelming exasperation. My jaw drops open in wonder regularly, and I am in awe of his capacity for learning, for comprehension, for love, for anger, for curiousity, for stubbornness. He is a living ball of excesses, and leaves in his wake a path of chaos and destruction that has very nearly broken our parenting spirit.

83:365 Mischief in the pantry

My boy finds mischief the way hogs find truffles — he’s biologically drawn to it. He has a radar that senses unlatched gates and cupboards, and a magnetic attraction to everything that’s inappropriate for a toddler to have. The latter includes choking hazards like Lego and peanuts and grommets, inedible consumables like shampoo and Wii remotes, and garden-variety trouble like pets’ water bowls, potting soil and permanent markers…. and that only covers the michief he found before breakfast the other day.

Sigh.

I imagine he keeps a daily tally sheet in his head. “Okay, so far today I’m up seven exasperating actions to five adorable ones. I better step up the cuteness, or they’re going to leave me at the curb with the trash. Hmmm, what have I got in the arsenal for today? Oh, I know, I’ll run up and throw my arms around her knees while yelling a gleeful ‘Mummmmeeeeeeeee!’ That’ll buy me at least three more transgressions before dinner.”

Living with a toddler is all about extremes. Or maybe it’s just this toddler. I’m so tired and wired and sheerly wiped out that I can’t remember last Tuesday, let alone going through this twice before. Or maybe the toddler phase is like childbirth: we’re biologically and psychologically hardwired to forget the trauma almost as soon as it passes, to ensure the continuing perpetuation of the species?

I can handle the relentless mischief, and I can handle the constant repetition. (“Lucas, no. Ah ah ah. Mommy said no. Lucas, NO. Lucas! I! Said! NOOOOO!” Lather rinse and repeat about 16 times every hour.) I can handle the tantrums, both his and mine. I can handle the need to anticipate, to intervene, to redirect, to substitute, to divert, and to mollify on a near-constant basis. I can even handle his new favourite game, “Let’s drop stuff like cheerios and Bob the Builder and things I found between the couch cushions into Mommy’s coffee and see if she notices!”

(Although that last one takes a Herculean amount of adorable-ness to counteract, I must admit. Lucky for him, he’s up to the task.)

What I can’t handle? The screech. He’s entered that whining, screeching phase that makes me want to stick knitting needles in my ears. He screeches when he’s vexed. He screeches when he wants something. He screeches because it’s been forty or even fifty seconds since the last time he screeched.

I can handle the chaos. Truth be told, there’s a twisted part of me that might actually like the chaos. The screeching? May well be the thing that finally separates me from my tenous hold on my sanity.

It’s just a phase, right?

Parent’s Day at the pool

Today is “Parent’s Day” at the boys’ swimming lessons. I hate Parent’s Day, I really do.

I think I’m a fairly participatory parent, as far as swim lessons go. I don’t bring a book or wait in the lobby. Nope, once a week, I’ll perch on an inevitably damp bench and sit in 900% humidity, paying careful attention for the sporadic occasions when one of them looks over so I can throw them my most enthusiastic thumbs-up and encouraging smile.

But why, oh why, do I have to get wet? Why can’t I just sit on my damp bench and sweat in peace? I’m happy to listen to whatever the teacher has to say, to reinforce the lessons whenever possible and offer ample opportunities for practicing the week’s lesson at whatever pool we’re lucky enough to inhabit during the week. But really, do I have to get into the pool?

I remember Tristan’s first set of independent swimming lessons… I’d (gasp!) forgotten it was Parent’s Day on lesson five, and was so mortified to be without a bathing suit when we arrived that I almost jumped in in my jeans. (I was such a pleaser back then.)(I’ve so gotten over that now.)(Mostly.)

No such luck this time around. The boys are beside themselves, torqued beyond the usual sky-high level of excitement, because today is Parent’s Day. (Simon already says Tuesday is his favourite day of the week, because it’s swimming lessons day. He said having me come in the pool is almost as exciting as Christmas. No chance I’m staying dry tonight.)

As if one Parent’s Day weren’t enough of a challenge, I’ve got concurrent Parent’s Days… I get to divide my half hour between Tristan’s and Simon’s classes, in two different pools (luckily, in the same complex at least.) Beloved gets to stay home and put the baby to bed.

Tristan’s class is working on jumping off the 10m platform. I think I might accidentally spend most of the half hour with Simon’s class, practicing my back float.

Random bullets after the crash

Just over two days later, and I’m surprised to find myself still mildly traumatized over the whole “my van is on fire” thing. I keep alternating between feeling breathless with gratitude that it wasn’t worse, and sick with regret. Funny how these things seem to come over you in waves.

  • Lucas continues to be fine. He’s got the faintest red scratch on his neck from his seat belt, but is otherwise unscathed. Thank you, universe, for protecting him.
  • Ironically, almost all of my injuries are a result of the safety features of the van. I have a couple of spectacular bruises, one on my thigh that I can’t quite account for — I think it might have been the lap belt, or maybe the van door — and a couple of burns from the air bags, one on my hand and one on my leg. My knee has a burn on top of a bruise, which is really kind of painful – I think the air bags for the driver’s side are under the steering wheel and that’s what hit my knee. I’m a little bit bodily sore, but no worse than you’d be after a hard workout at the gym. Again, thank you universe.
  • The insurance company hasn’t yet sent out their appraiser, but the EMS people and the tow truck guy all seem to think the van will be a total write-off. Since the front end was engulfed in flames, I have a hard time seeing how it would be recoverable. We were leasing it, and the lease would have been up in February or March. The nice guy at Chrysler confirmed that they’ll either provide a new vehicle for the remainder of the lease or, more likely, pay out the lease and we start again from scratch. That’s a bummer because Chrysler no longer has a leasing program, so we’d have to buy outright if we go with another Grand Caravan.
  • I’m torn on the issue of replacing the van. My strongest instinct, which is most surely a coping mechanism, is to restore order. That means getting EXACTLY what we had before, same year and same colour. That’s my strongest impulse, but I’m pretty sure it’s not in any way based in reason. I’m conflicted — by all accounts, such a relatively minor accident should NOT have caused that kind of fire. On the other hand, Lucas and I are safe and relatively unscathed.
  • Regardless, we need something. We briefly toyed with the idea of going back to using only one car, but that’s simply not feasible any more. Right now, even though we have insurance coverage for a rental, we can’t find a minivan in the region to rent, so we’ve had to cram all three car seats into the back of our Focus wagon. It works, but we have to take out one booster, belt a kid in, and then put the booster back and belt in the middle kid. An inelegant solution, and it won’t be long before they’re trying to kill each other, being confined cheek-to-jowl like that.
  • Another thing to be grateful for — that this happened a week after and not a week before the family vacation.
  • Today, I’m going to head out to the impound lot to see if anything is recoverable from the inside of the van. This makes me want to cry every time I think about it. I miss my van, I want it back. When the crash happened, Beloved found one of Lucas’s Bob the Builder toys when he took a quick look at the inside of the van and it was soaked with the water from the firefighters. This makes me want to cry, too.
  • Not only will this cause us a great amount of inconvenience in the next little while, but it stands to cost us a pretty penny, too. Since the lease will likely be paid out, we now face the regular expenses associated with buying a car — downpayments, etc. And my fine, which is only $100. And the deductible. Sigh.
  • Plus, we had a really sweet deal with the lease, if you’d remember my mad negotiating skillz, and I’m just not sure I have it in me right now to bother with all that. I can’t imagine that we’d get a monthly rate for a purchase anywhere near the low rate we had for a 27-month lease. I wish I could just call somebody up and order a new van over the phone, knowing I was paying the best possible price. And we can’t even get started on that until the insurance company appraises the old van and negotiates with Chrysler on the outcome, a conversation I am not allowed to be a part of.
  • Oh, and while the insurance does cover the cost of replacing the car seats, with a reduction for depreciation (sigh), it doesn’t cover my poor, beleaguered iPod. I’d have to claim that under my house contents insurance. When I bought it, it was less than the cost of the deductible, and you can’t even buy a 2G nano anymore. I simply don’t feel that I’m entitled to spend another $200 to replace it, on top of all the other expenses we’ve suddenly inherited right now. Sigh.
  • I’m whining, aren’t I? I know, I know, I am supremely grateful that everything turned out okay, and that it could have been so much worse. It’s all just so overwhelming and I really want it all to go away. I guess I just thought that the point of insurance was to restore things to more or less exactly the way they were before the accident and that is not quite how it’s turning out.
  • Back to the gratitude side: I am so grateful to all of you for your sweet comments and notes over the past few days. I think my favourite was François, who let his toasts burn while he read our story. Maybe I can submit that to the insurance company, too? I thought maybe some of you had wandered away for good — nice to hear from you again!
  • And I have to say that almost everybody I have spoken to has been extremely kind and tried their best to be helpful, from the people at the insurance company and the brokerage to the car rental places to the leasing manager at the car dealership to the woman at Ford who is rush ordering us a part so we can put Lucas’s car seat in the middle of the back seat of the Focus, perhaps keeping the big boys from killing each other. Everyone has been beyond professional and has tried their best to help us out.
  • If you take away anything from these posts, please let it be this: always, ALWAYS take a minute to make sure the straps are secure and properly placed in your car seat. Don’t let them get twisted, they have to lie flat. The buckle should be at the child’s nipple level, and tight enough that you can only fit two fingers between the strap and the child. You might have to adjust this if your child is wearing a jacket or just a thin t-shirt. Please do.
  • I’m a lucky, lucky girl.

More thoughts on full-day kindergarten

I thought it was worth a second post (here’s the first) to link to some of the fantastic opinions people have expressed on the subject of full-day kindergarten in Ontario.

In our little corner of the blogosphere Rebecca at a bit of momsense is still on the fence. BeachMama isn’t on the fence at all – she doesn’t suppport the idea.

Randall Denley in today’s Citizen provides a rant contrary opinion from the grumpy old men contingent, and Elizabeth Payne (one of my favourite Citizen columnist) provides a more balanced and thoughtful — not to mention favourable — insight. Best quote to date, IMHO, goes to Elizabeth Payne for this one:

Bail out a badly run and outdated car company and people will shrug their shoulders. Try to build a system in which all children have access to good-quality care, and an equal start in life, and wait for the howls of outrage.

I’ve been loving your comments, here and elsewhere in the blogosphere. And I’ve been prudently ignoring the comment sections on articles about full-day kindergarten in the major media. If I believed the majority of those comments, I’d be thinking I’m a “self-indulgent, latte-toting, lazy mother who had more children than she could afford to raise and is now looking for to the state to raise them for her.” Nice.

Edited to add: hoo-boy, it’s not just the anonymous comentators who are opinionated wing-nuts. Alberta’s Minister of Finance thinks ‘raising children properly’ requires one parent to stay at home. Yikes!