H1n1 vaccines, Canadian babies denied Baby Einstein refund, and other miscellany

I read with interest the story in the media this weekend of how the Walt Disney Company is offering refunds on the purchase of Baby Einstein DVDs, after the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood challenged the idea that the DVDs were a teaching tool rather than simply brain candy for toddlers.

Okay, seriously? People really thought that these DVDs were learning tools and not just a way to keep the baby entertained for 20 minutes so poor mom can take a shower or load the dishwasher or just gaze aimlessly into middle space for a precious hiatus?

But I was curious and I knew I wanted to blog about this story, so I did my due dilligence — which, apparently, the Ottawa Citizen / CanWest Global did not. The original article I read, which I read in the Ottawa Citizen on Saturday, says refunds would be made available to American AND Canadian parents, but when I went to the Baby Einstein Web site, I found that the offer is — as usual — good in the US only.

So let me get this straight — gullible American parents who feel they’ve been duped can be compensated, but gullible Canadian parents, who pay about $5 more per DVD by the way, are SOL? Nice.

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The good news is, we should be hearing about the “blueprint” for all-day kindergarten in Ontario today from Premier Dalton McGuinty. I’ve heard that it will be rolled out in a limited fashion within two years but full implementation will take up to five years. Hoping it comes to Ottawa for the fall of 2012, at least!

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I spent a lot of yesterday scanning Twitter for H1N1 chatter. Even anecdotally, I can see the tides turning in favour of the vaccine and in my opinion, rightly so. Even though I heard that the vaccine clinics were a bit of a debacle yesterday — seriously, they have people lining up OUTSIDE for up to THREE HOURS?!? — I am highly, highly impressed with the city for implementing a twitter account that updates the wait times at various vaccine clinics across the city. One of the smartest government applications of social media I’ve yet seen. Bravo!

And here’s a tip for those of you without a twitter account: you can still read the latest update by going to http://twitter.com/ottawahealth. For previous updates, just scan down the page.

I’m pulling the big boys out of school and blowing off nap time (lord help us) on Wednesday afternoon to bring the kids in to get the H1N1 vaccine. Say a prayer to the god of short lineups and patient children for us, willya?

By the way, I was listening to CBC radio this morning, and Kathleen Petty was interviewing a local pediatrician (or maybe family doc) who had just won a prestigious award of excellence. They were talking, of course, about H1N1 and the doctor provided in just a few sentences the information that I’ve scoured hundreds of articles looking for. The main indications of *any* flu are cough and fever, plus at least one of sore joints, runny nose, etc. She said unless you have cough AND fever, emphasis on the “and”, you likely don’t have any kind of flu but if you do have (or, if your child has) both cough AND fever, you should be proactive about keeping your self/child home. Finally, a rule of thumb!

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Thanks to everyone for your considered and considerate opinions on yesterday’s peanut butter toast post. I think that in the end, I agree with whomever suggested that the restaurant was certainly within its rights to honour the family’s request that no peanut butter be served, but that it would have been better handled had they informed people as they came in the door and not as their food was being served.

Edited to add: Please, if you haven’t already, read this comment from Jody. One of the most reasonable, well-informed comments I think I’ve ever read on the subject of peanut allergies. Thanks Jody!

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I’m just putting the finishing touches on my giant annual list of local Christmas and Holiday parades! I love doing this post each year — and there are some exciting changes to the City of Ottawa parade this year. More soon – stay tuned!

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!

All-day kindergarten recommended for Ontario

A couple of weeks back, I started writing a series of posts about the state of early education and child care in Canada. The first post was an introduction and summary of the Canadian Senate’s report called “Early Childhood Education and Care: Next Steps.” I was rather underwhelmed by the Senates main recommendations, which were for more bureaucracy. Before I had a chance to write up my next post on the series, the government of Ontario released a watershed (I hope) report full of jaw-dropping recommendations for early childhood education in Ontario, centred around the recommendation for full-day kindergarten for 4- and 5-year-olds.

Compared to the Senate’s call for more bureaucracy, I was delighted – practically gleeful! — to see the clear plan and call to action laid out in “With Our Best Future in Mind: Implementing Early Learning in Ontario.” The report, commissioned when the McGuinty provincial government was elected in 2007, contains recommendations that are so full of promise and potential that I’m almost afraid to hope they might be implemented.

Here are some of the things the report recommends:

“Every child in Ontario who turns 4 by December 31 would be entitled to attend two years of full-day, school-year Early Learning Program operated by school boards.”

“Parents would have the option of extended programming before and after the traditional school day and year, not as an add-on but as part of the Early Learning Program.” That’s integrated before and after school care!

The report also calls for schools to become “community hubs” offering many of the same services that the current Early Years Centres offer, including parenting support and counseling, pre- and post-natal support and information, early identification of issues and resources, etc. Schools will be open to the community from 7:30 am to 6 pm, 50 weeks of the year. “Crucial to the new vision for Ontario is the transformation of all elementary schools into community schools, open to their neighbourhoods and capable of providing families with opportunities for children’s learning, care, health, culture, arts, and recreation from the prenatal period through to adolescence.”

Imagine that! Schools open to the community! (Is anyone else vaguely disturbed by having to stand outside a fence practically off school property for school pick-ups and drop-offs? I understand the school’s concern for safety, but I do in fact feel vaguely alienated from my kids’ school!)

It also calls for fee-based Extended Day Primary programming – basically, enrichment programs in arts and sports for ages 6 to 8 and 9 to 12.

A final recommendation is the implementation of a 400-day paid leave for parents, including a six-week leave for the exclusive use of fathers and other “non-birthing” parents.

It’s a hugely ambitious plan, aiming for implementation beginning next year in 2010-2011. I can only hope the school boards and teachers’ unions that are currently criticizing the plan have the sense to recognize it as containing the kind of radical shift in philosophy that we will look back on and wonder why we didn’t do it a generation before.

I love the fact that this report gets it right by first suggesting a series of finite, clearly enunciated steps to be implemented more or less immediately, and THEN follows it up with a recommendation for the necessary ministries and legislation to support the revitalized system, instead of the other way around as recommended by the Senate report.

If you haven’t read it between the lines, I’m very excited about this report and just about everything it contains. Once upon a time, when the idea of full-day kindergarten was first floated by the McGuinty government circa 2007, I admit that I saw it mostly as a way to reduce my own out-of-pocket costs on child care. But, after spending a lot of time recently up to my elbows in public reports on child care and early childhood education, I can see that there are huge societal gains to be had in implementing these ideas and the potential for saving a few bucks on daycare is actually among the lesser of the huge benefits to be reaped. I’ll take a look at the research I’ve seen in the next post in what is becoming an increasingly elongated — but suddenly extremely positive — series!

Letter to the editor: child care and early childhood education

Submitted this morning to the Ottawa Citizen:

As the mother of three boys, ages seven, five and one year old, I read with interest Elizabeth Payne’s op-ed article (“When we are six“, June 4, 2009) about school readiness in Ottawa. I think Ms Payne missed a valuable opportunity to link the issue of school readiness to the state of early childhood education in Canada.

Earlier this year, with practically no fanfare from the media, the Senate of Canada released a report called Early Childhood Education and Care: Next Steps. The report was inspired by a 2006 report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that ranked Canada dead last of 14 countries participating in the OECD’s Thematic Review of Early Childhood Education and Care.

As noted in the Senate report, “the 50 reports that make up the OECD’s review of education and care services for pre-school-aged children comprise the largest body of comparative policy research to date in the field” and “allowed Canada to evaluate itself against international peers and provided a unique opportunity to drawn on best practices in early learning and child care policy and delivery.”

The report notes that of the countries studied, Canada ranked fourth overall for GDP and seventh overall for proportion of working mothers, but had the fourth-highest costs for child care and had the seventh-highest levels of child poverty. And, more on point with Ms Payne’s article, Canada came in last overall for attendance in early childhood education programs for ages 3 to 6 years old. Further, Canada came in 15th out of 20 countries on spending on social programs as a proportion of GDP and last of countries compared in spending on early learning and child care services.

Unfortunately, the main recommendations of the Senate report were for more bureaucracy, including recommending a Minister of State for Children and Youth and a bureaucratic network to support the Minister. It’s a start, I suppose. More disappointing, though, was the abject lack of interest by the media in this vitally important topic.

The issue of quality child care is not just about babysitting or “beer and popcorn” money designed to buy votes. We need to start working now on a workable national system of integrated early childhood education and child care. That will help to level the playing field across socio-economic levels, not just throughout the city but throughout Canada.

(Seems about once a year I get my knickers in enough of a knot to write to the Citizen. I’ll let you know if they publish it!)

A call to action for my American friends

You know the topic of affordable, quality child care is dear to my heart, and I hope to continue my series on the Senate of Canada’s recent report on child care and early childhood education in Canada later this week.

Today, I received this note from MomsRising.org about the Family Tax Relief Act of 2009 that is currently before the U.S. Senate, and I thought it was important enough to share with you:

The Family Tax Relief Act of 2009 (S. 997) sponsored by Senators Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), would improve the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit for millions of families by more than doubling the maximum credit families can claim for child care expenses and making it fully refundable so that low and moderate income working families will also benefit.

Now, more than ever, families need our support. The Family Tax Relief Act of 2009 would make a real difference in the lives of millions of families.

Please forward this message on to friends, families, moms, and dads at your workplace and in your community. We need everyone’s voice to pass this important legislation.

Don’t forget to send a letter to your Senators now asking them to co-sponsor this critical legislation: Click here support the Family Tax Relief Act of 2009.

Thank you for your support of America’s families.

Because the need for affordable, quality child care knows no boundaries.

The Senate Report on Childcare in Canada: Part 1

At the end of April 2009, the Senate of Canada released a report titled Early Childhood Education and Care: Next Steps. I printed it out and have been lugging it around with me (it runs more than 200 pages) for the better part of a month. If you are at all interested in the issues of daycare, child care and early childhood education in Canada, and how Canada compares to the rest of the world, I highly recommend you make yourself a copy and find the time to read it. If you’ve never read a Parliamentary report, you don’t know what you’re missing! And if you can’t quite find the couple of spare hours you’ll need to polish it off, fear not, because I am going to break it down for you and share the highlights over the next little while.

When I read the Executive Summary, my first reaction was eyeball-rolling disappointment. The main recommendations are (spoiler alert!):

1. That the Prime Minister appoint a Minister of State for Children and Youth, “with responsibilities to include working with provincial and territorial governments to advance quality early learning, parenting programs and child care” and to research early childhood development and learning.

2. The Minister should be advised by a new National Advisory Council on Children, on matters of “how to best support parents and advance quality early learning and child care.” The Council would be populated by “Parliamentarians, other stakeholders, community leaders and parents, with appropriate representation from Aboriginal communities.”

3. That the government call a series of multi-jurisdictional meetings to establish a “pan-Canadian framework to provide policies and programs to support children and their families” and establish a “federal/provincial/territorial Council of Ministers…to meet anually to review Canada’s progress with respect to other OECD countries and to share best practices.”

4. The government should establish “an adequately funded, robust system of data collection, evaluation and research, promoting all aspects of quality human development and in early childhood programming, including the development of curricula, program evaluation and child outcome measures.”

Captivating stuff, isn’t it? The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Techonology took nearly three years to issue a report that calls for — more bureaucracy.

Because this is a topic dear to my heart, and because I think it’s important for every single Canadian to know at least a little bit about this issue, and because I like to think I have at least a moderate ability to translate government-speak into a language people other than the bureaucrats can understand, I’m going to take an in-depth look at this report in a series of posts over the next little while. By the time I finished reading it — and I read every single word because there is no end to the things I will do for my bloggy peeps — I was more or less in agreement with the Committee’s recommendations.

This Committee’s report was inspired by a 2006 report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that ranked Canada dead last of 14 countries participating in the OECD’s Thematic Review of Early Childhood Education and Care. As noted in the Senate report, “the 50 reports that make up the OECD’s review of education and care services for pre-school-aged children comprise the largest body of comparative policy research to date in the field” and “allowed Canada to evaluate itself against international peers and provided a unique opportunity to drawn on best practices in early learning and child care policy and delivery.” Did I mention dead last? Ouch.

The OECD highlighted strengths and weaknesses in Canada’s early childhood care and education system. The strengths included the one-year parental leave, Quebec’s early education and child care policies, a well-established kindergarten network for children aged five years and older, and “efforts of provincial administrations to maintain ECEC services ‘despite a withdrawal of Federal funding and a climate of suspicion of public services’.” The areas of concern included:

  • weak public funding of ECEC services, especially for children under five years;
  • the separation of child care from early education;
  • limited access to affordable child care services and particular issues related to access for Aboriginal children;
  • the quality of child care, e.g., very poor accommodation, child care workers’ protective and interventionist approach, lack of direct access to outside space;
  • the apparent predominance of unregulated care; and,
  • staff qualifications and training and other issues related to their recruitment and retention, e.g., absence of federal and provincial/territorial guidelines and low wage levels, and lmited tradition of professional development.

A few more statistics that I found both enlightening and alarming: among the OECD countries under review, Canada ranked in the top 10 in the following categories:

Wealth: ranked 4th in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita
Cost of child care: ranked 4th in amount paid by parents for early childhood services
Child Poverty: ranked 7th overall
Proportion of “working” mothers: ranked 7th overall for mothers with children under three years old and 8th for mothers with children under six years old.

Further, Canada came in 14th out of 20 for early childhood education attendance for children ages 0 to 3 and last out of 20 countries for early childhood education attendance for ages 3 – 6. We came in 15th out of 20 countries on spending on social programs as a proportion of GDP and last of countries compared in spending on early learning and child care services.

It’s not a very pretty picture, is it?

And that’s only skimming through 20 of 200+ pages of information. In the next couple of posts, we’ll take a look at what other countries are doing, why early childhood education is so important to every single member of our society, and what Canada should do next.

The case against The Case Against Breastfeeding

I was absolutely tickled when Kate over at One Tired Ema asked me to bring my posse of lactating Canucks into the conversation about an article in this month’s Atlantic called “The Case Against Breast Feeding.” You can go read the Atlantic piece if you like, or you can skip on over to Kate’s place and read her excellent summary and reply, and some really interesting comments. Be warned, though — block off some time, because it took me the whole bus ride home yesterday and then a bit more time today to get through it all!

The gist of it is this: as Kate so concisely summarizes, it’s an article “in which a white, upper middle class, urban mom of three–and journalist!–takes on The Popular Establishment, which purports to tell you that nursing is actually better than formula feeding.” She (the author, Hanna Rosin, not Kate) basically refutes the idea that breast is best and says all the medical findings are questionable at best. The literature she reviewed by borrowing a friend’s password to an online medical library showed “breastfeeding is probably, maybe, a little better” but that the studies are largely inconsistent compared to the way they are presented in the popular literature.

She then goes on to opine that we as a society are placing way too much emphasis on the importance of breastfeeding, and that our breasts are in fact ruining whatever slim chance we had at equality in the workplace and even in the home. She literally “seethes” (her word) at the burden placed upon her shoulders as a mother to feed the baby, and says “the debate about breast-feeding takes place without any reference to its actual context in women’s lives.”

Okay, so that’s the Coles Notes version. IMHO, she’s no different than the French woman who wrote the book about how motherhood is a trap for women a couple of years ago — she’s using inflamatory language and a shockingly unpopular opinion to stir the pot and rile people up. Hey, more power to her. It’s hard for me to imagine a mother of three — who, FWIW, seems to have nursed all three to a year — could actually believe what she says she believes, but she also seems to have been generally resentful to the whole process of nursing and maybe even motherhood in general. She says she’s “often tapping [her] foot impatiently, waiting for him to finish.” I cringed when I read that. Poor baby.

Anyway, all of that has been done to death around the blogosphere — just do a search on “the case against breastfeeding” and Google practically oozes the vitriol of the nursing masses — but there is one nugget in here that really interests me, and Kate drew it out.

One of the points that Rosin makes is that the American Academy of Pediatrics officially recommended in 1997 that babies be exclusively breast-fed for the first six months, followed by six more months of partial nursing supplemented with the introduction of solid foods. And we know that in the US, most women get maternity leave in the range of three to 12 weeks. I’ve often commented that I simply can’t imagine how new mothers are coping with being back at work and having a newborn at home. I think this is about the only legitimate point I’d give Rosin: demanding that mothers of young babies be fully functional in a day job AND nurse a baby six or eight times a day AND do all the other things a mother is supposed to do really does set up some unrealistic and often unattainable expectations.

Of course, the answer is change the policies, not change the recommendation to breast-feed exclusively. But I’d like to do a straw poll here and ask: how has your maternity leave affected your ability to — or, desire to — breastfeed your baby? If you’ve been around a while, you know the early days of nursing were hell for me three times over. If I had to be back at work a month after Tristan was born, I’m not sure I would have had the wherewithal to keep nursing.

And there’s the other side of the coin, too. Kate asked me specifically if the year-long maternity leave has affected my career path and my feelings of “equality”. It’s a good question, but also brings out my main criticism of Rosin’s piece: so many factors are at play here, it’s hard to suss out one piece of the puzzle and say it’s the mitigating factor.

I’ve had three years of maternity leave in the past seven years. Because I’m blessed with a job that gives me a full top-up to my original salary from the base that employment insurance provides, we’ve taken no financial ‘hit’ because of my years off. (*says a silent prayer of gratitude*) I returned from my first maternity leave into a new job with my old employer. It was a job I’d been working toward for almost a decade, and I was thrilled to finally achieve it — and then I was back on mat leave within the year. Within six months of returning from my second mat leave, I won a promotion. When I was pregnant with Lucas, I was identified as a potential “high-flyer” in our agency, someone to be groomed for an eventual management position. I was actually supposed to come back from maternity leave into full-time French training so I could start down that road, but as you know I pulled myself off that path by taking a different position and dropping down to four days per week. I’m still with the same employer, just doing a slightly different job.

My maternity leaves don’t seem to have affected my employers’ (writ large) opinion of my capabilities and potential, and I’ve been moving progressively up the ladder. I make just about as much now at four days a week than I was making when I was pregnant with Tristan and working full time. I love my job most days and I work hard, but I’ve made no secret of the fact that my family comes first. I’ve pulled myself off the fast-track in search of balance, and it was one of the smarter decisions I’ve made where working and mothering intersect.

So, the answer is of course having children and taking time to raise them and having them be the primary focus in my life has affected my career path. If our time spent, in Kate’s gorgeous phrase, “tooling around in the Badlands of Infertility” had come out differently, I would very likely be in a very different job, likely more senior, and I’d definitely more focused on my ‘career.’

And there would be a big aching void in my life, because being a mother is all I ever wanted out of life. I’m proud that I’m successful, and that I’m seen as someone with potential and worth investing in. But I’m also proud that Kate sees me as a mother whose opinion in this debate is valuable. And I don’t have to tell you how proud I am to be a mother.

In five or six years, Lucas will be in school full time and I’ll be able to refocus on this whole career thing again. If I were a more ambitious sort of person, maybe I would be resentful and see my role as a mother in terms of sacrifices I’ve made instead of joys I’ve earned. Certainly, that seems to be where Rosin’s head is at.

Do we have equality in our home? Hell, no. But we have balance, and I think that’s better. Some things are heavier on Beloved’s shoulders and some on mine, but we share those burdens. That’s why our relationship works, I think — we’re perfectly compliementary, but that doesn’t mean we’re perfectly equal. It works for us.

So, Kate, the short answer is yes, it seems quite likely that Canada’s generous maternity leave policies affected my ability to continue to nurse my babies for as long as I did in a positive way. And no, I don’t think the one-year leave of absence has had a detrimental effect on my career path. I’ve dialed it down myself, but that’s a choice with which I am not only satisfied, but delighted. And just wading my way through all this reminds me again that I am coming from such a place of priviledge, and even many of my Canadian sisters have not been nearly so blessed as me.

Phew, this ran long, didn’t it? But it’s a fascinating topic. Tell me, or tell Kate at her place, what you think: has a longer maternity leave interfered with your career and how do you feel about that?

It’s all about balance

It’s been a full month since I’ve been back at work, and we’ve settled into a comfortable routine that seems to be working out well for everyone. I think that this four-day week thing was a brilliant choice, and I’m so happy we were able to make it work. It’s made a huge difference in my feeling of connection to the boys’ daily lives and my ability to balance working with mothering. Three cheers for balance!

Five things I love about being back at work:

  1. Unencumbered freedom. I can get up and go for a coffee or a chat with a colleague whenever I want, stop in to shops and wander aimlessly on my lunch break, and nobody wants to crawl into my lap when I’m trying to go to the bathroom.
  2. Hot coffee. At home, coffee inevitably gets cold before I get half way through because I’m distracted by a hundred other things. At work, I often finish a cup while it’s still warm. Bliss!
  3. Grown-up clothes. Shoes that go “click-click” when you walk, make-up, and clothes that you need to iron and hang to dry or (gasp!) dry clean: all things I had more or less forgotten about in the last year!
  4. Being downtown. I love this city, and I love where my office is located. Coming downtown every day makes me feel connected to the city and the people in it in a way that I don’t feel out in the suburbs. And being able to leave it here every day and go home to those same suburbs is equally delightful.
  5. They’re getting along fine without me at home. Having a great nanny and not having to worry about what’s going on in my absence makes everything easier. (Wasn’t sure whether this belongs in this section or the next!)
  6. Okay, one more: using my brain for something other than finding the lost TV remote or calculating the nutritional value of pop tarts. (Although, that also sometimes belongs in the next section, because the mom-brain is getting to me lately and I wonder some days if I have enough brain cells left to actually do this job!)

Five things I hate about being back at work:

  1. Commuting. The buses are still farked up, running inconsistently and ridiculously overcrowded. I’ve had to stand the entire way downtown every morning and the afternoon bus is so crowded I almost missed my stop yesterday because I couldn’t work my way through the crush to get to the door. All this joy for the ridiculous price of $101 per month.
  2. It’s lonely. Odd, considering I see a hundredfold more people each day while downtown than I do on an average day at home, but even in a crowd I am by myself. Most of my day is spent in crowded solitude or working quietly at my computer.
  3. Sitting all day. I’m so used to moving all day long, chasing the baby and putting on laundry and picking up toys and walking back and forth to the school two or three times a day that just sitting here for hours at a time – while relaxing at first – makes me kind of twitchy!
  4. Trying to get a full day of domestic stuff done in four hours. By the time I get home, make dinner, feed/eat dinner, tidy up daily disaster, get lunches and bags ready for next day, put out clothes for next day, give various boys baths and get pyjamas ready, it’s almost my bed time. Doesn’t leave much time for fun with anyone, either.
  5. I miss the kids during the day. Sigh.

I had a much easier time coming up with the five things I don’t like than the five things I do like about working. Matter of fact, I could have extended the “don’t like” list by another five or ten items without much thought! But, all in all, I think it’s working out fine and I’m grateful that we’re on the path to that elusive but oh so important balance.

Mother and child reunion

I step quietly into the house, not consciously intending to spy on the boys or the new nanny, but knowing that they aren’t expecting me home quite so early. I hear laughter, and realize while expelling a sigh that I’ve been holding my breath with dread. It’s the end of my long first day back at work after my maternity leave, and I’m not sure what to expect.

I don’t want to make a big deal of rushing into the house and freaking Lucas out any more than I have to, so I slip off my coat and walk with affected nonchalance into the living room, tossing affectionate greetings to Tristan and Simon as I beeline toward the baby. He’s been playing happily on the floor with his toys, and my anxiety lessens considerably at seeing him so content.

I expect some form of reaction; I’ve never been apart from him for this many waking hours, and on the occasions when I have left him in the child-minding area at the gym, he has cried harder upon my return than he did in my absence. I brace myself and pause to let him absorb my presence before I sweep him into my arms. He beams in delight when he realizes I have returned, and when I pick him up he melds his body into mine. He engulfs me in his baby version of a bear hug, his arms and legs clinging so tightly that I’m sure if I let go he would hang suspended from my side like a baby chimpanzee clings to its mother as she swings from branch to branch. He lays his head on my shoulder, tucking it under my chin as if he’ll never move away again, and I can feel his relief at my return radiating from him. His perfect stillness as he wraps his body into mine takes my breath away, and I am surprised to feel the rush of tears welling in my throat.

He has never hugged me like this before, and I can do nothing but stand and sway with him in my arms, caught in this breathless moment of love and relief. He’s okay. I’m okay. We’ll all be fine.

Back to work thoughts

Hard to believe it, but three weeks from this coming Monday, I’ll be back at work. If it weren’t for the fact that I’m fixated on the new plan to work a four-day week, there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth going on right about now, but I’m actually feeling okay about the whole thing. Given my druthers, as my mother would say, I’d’ruther be independently wealthy and able to stay home with the boys full time. Since that isn’t going to happen, the four-day thing gives me at least a semblance of balance and allows me to enjoy the idea of going out and playing with the grownups again.

I know I haven’t updated at all about our nanny search, but that’s looking quite positive right now, too. Back in November, after some truly horrendous interviews (including my favourite, the young woman who looked at Lucas sitting quietly on the floor and asked, “So, what exactly does he *do* all day?” not once but twice!) we actually found ourselves with three good candidates from which to choose. We ended up selecting someone who has a little less nannying experience but a lot of daycamp and bible camp and daycare experience simply because I got a really good vibe from her personally. She’s sweet and easy to get along with, and seems quite taken with the boys. Yesterday, she came over for a test run with Lucas while I hustled off to the gym for a half-hour, and I came home to her sitting rather stiffly on the couch and looking quite uncomfortable trying to hold her posture while Lucas snored sprawled across her. Way too cute and a very reassuring start!

Since the work-life balance thing looks like it might work out just fine, and the nanny thing looks like it might just work out fine, you’d think I’d be golden. Ha! Not so much. The fly in my ointment is the six-week old transit strike that’s bedevilling the city. Back when the bus drivers walked off the job in early December, I spent many days thanking my lucky stars that the strike happened while I was on maternity leave and not beholden to OC Transpo. February seemed miles away at that point, and I couldn’t conceive of a strike that would leave the city without buses for eight weeks or more.

Those of you who live here know the story and those of you who don’t likely don’t care for the details, but the gist of it is that yesterday the drivers resoundingly rejected the city’s last offer, and they’re now saying that the strike could carry on for weeks if not (gasp) months. Not only do I rely on transit to get from my suburban home to the heart of downtown every day, but our lovely new nanny also relies on transit to get to work. Without buses, I’ll either have to carpool or drive myself, and we’ll have to pick her up and drop her off every day. With me starting as early as I do, we’re likely looking at Beloved having to load all three kids in the car, pick her up, drop everyone off at home, and then drive his usual almost one-hour commute to work while she walks the big boys over to school. What a nightmare!

On the bright side, aside from the ridiculous transit strike, things seem to be falling into place for a rather pleasant transition back to work. *touch wood* I happened to get to see a lot of my colleagues yesterday for a work-social function, and it really was nice to be able to see everyone again. I’m lucky enough to work with some truly great people, and I’ve missed them over the last year. And, right on cue, my 35 minutes of nap time are done and the world’s cutest baby is cooing himself awake upstairs…