Happy New Year and being unprepared....

I usually start off my new year with my anti-resolution list, but this year, I decided to do something different. Okay, I really did not think much about the list. It was a very busy holiday season, with power outages, no heat, unexpected guests, and then a 'vacation' (you know, the ones that require a week to recover from). I barely had time to register that we have actually started a new year!

However, instead of just sitting around and contemplating my list of wishes for this year, I decided to try and start this year by just writing. Or as I like to call it, get my ass in gear instead of procrastinating by watching hours of Youtube videos, well maybe one more of that really cute puppy trying hard not to fall asleep.....

Anyway, a very long time ago, I wrote about travelling with a small child. I would now like to continue that thought by adding a couple of packing essentials: a thermometer; children fever medicine and children anti-nausea medication.

And how do I know these are essentials? Simple, I did not pack them.

My family and I went to a resort a bit north of our home over the holidays. We drove. The resort was in an area with shopping malls and big box stores. So I figured, if we forgot anything, we can always go out to buy it.

Of course, it did not occur to me that my child will get sick on the one day during our vacation where NOTHING was opened. Yep, my daughter started throwing up and feeling awfully warm on New Year's DAY! (Actually, if she was considerate and got sick half an hour earlier, I could had stilled made it to the drugstore before they closed....).

So my husband and I ended up spending our New Year's reminiscing about our youth... the last time he held someone's hair back over a toilet was mine... And we got to stay up all night, granted there was no party, but instead, a 2am cool bath to try and bring the little one's fever down. Let us say it was a memorable way to start the new year. I hope for much less exciting days and nights in the future.

Happy New Year Everyone!!

Oh! The small child was fine the next day, actually it was probably a great new year for her; she got about 10 hours of uninterrupted television watching, no one forced her to eat anything, and all the ginger ale that she wanted to drink...

Sometimes reading is overrated...

For the last two years my husband and I have been trying to get our child to read. After much encouraging, bribing, yelling, crying, begging, hair pulling... she is now willing to read on her own, and sometimes, she even enjoys doing it.

And then, I discovered that my child likes to read at the most inconvenient (and sometimes inappropriate) times or places.

I remember one incident that took place a couple of years ago while we were out getting dessert. Up until that day, I was able to avoid telling my small child about certain ice cream flavours (the ones embedded with a lot of candy, and therefore has a lot of extra sugar) because she could not read the menu. For this outing, my daughter suddenly decided she was able to read the words 'Easter Egg'. Prior to that words like 'a' and 'the' were sometimes beyond her reading ability. I was not quite sure whether I should be proud or annoyed.

Then just last week, my husband was walking down the street with her when they approached a light pole where someone decided to exercise their artistic ability and wrote a word for the world to read. That word of course was F*%#. And, my curious and now literate child decided that this was the perfect time to practice sounding out a new word. Being a single syllable word, and having years of practice with early readers describing different colour trucks, ducks and pucks (we are Canadian after all...), she did not have any trouble sounding out the “F” word; and then proceeded to say it out loud, and quite proudly, to her father in the middle of the street.

Maybe teaching her to read was not that great of an idea...

DISCOUNT CODE - Disney on Ice presents Princesses and Heroes

Halloween is over; there is a definite nip in the air; it gets dark at 4:00; all the signs that winter will soon be upon us.

And with winter, comes skating shows. This year Feld Entertainment is bringing Disney on Ice presents Princesses and Heroes to Toronto, for the holiday season (December 20 -29). This show has almost every single character in Disney's princess pantheon, along with their corresponding villains of course.

Last year, I took my daughter and her friend to watch Disney on Ice presents Worlds of Fantasy, and they had a great time.

If you and your family are interested in going to this year's show in Toronto at the Rogers Centre – here are two discount codes.

CODE 1 – MUM44 – 4 tickets for $44.00 for WEEKDAY shows

CODE 2 – MUM4 - $4.00 off for WEEKEND shows

There is of course fine print - Excludes Front Row, Rinkside and VIP tickets. No double discounts. Additional fees may apply. Weekday is defined as Monday through Thursday. Weekend is defined as Friday through Sunday. Limit of four (4) per purchase.

To purchase tickets - http://www.ticketmaster.ca/venueartist/131114/1638731

For more information about the show - http://www.disneyonice.com/

I admit I actually like winter. Okay, I do not really enjoy the cold, but I love snow, and we are a family of skiers.

This year, I hope to go out and try skating more. We went only once last year, which meant my daughter used her brand new skates only once... I am definitely buying used this year.

Maybe, if I take her to Disney on Ice, it will motivate her (and us) to go and strap our skates on.

Feld Entertainment may be providing me with complimentary tickets to this show, in exchange for my time and efforts in attending the show, and reporting my opinion within this blog. However, the opinions about the show, and everything else are 100 per cent mine.


Giving in....

Last week I gave in...

I gave into child pressure; I gave into peer pressure; I gave into the marketers and advertisers.

I bought my child a Rainbow Loom. Okay, technically, my kid bought herself a rainbow loom – she chose to use her allowance now instead of waiting for Santa to bring her one.

For some odd reason, my adult brain feels that I should justified this purchase. My kid does not care, she is just happy – she was starting to get sick of making her bracelets (I did buy her a pack of elastic refills) using pens.

Here are some of my reasons for why the Rainbow Loom is a good investment...

1. It is only twenty bucks. Actually, it is a little less than twenty dollars. Twenty seems to be my magic amount to spend on a toy that may not be played with for more than a month.

2. My kid was going to spend her allowance on a Barbie doll, which I know would probably not be played with for more than a week...
   
   
3. Making bracelets is helping her with her fine motor skills and hand eye coordination
   
   
4. She is learning to follow instructions
   
   
5. Hopefully, she will learn to see the pattern of how these elastics combine (math skills) and make up her own designs (creativity).
   
   
6. It keeps her quiet and busy.
   
   
7. At least she is not watching television while she is being quiet and busy. Granted, she is now staring intently at my iPad trying desperately to follow the instructions from a nine-year-old girl.
   
   
8. It is something she can do by herself. Okay, I admit that this has yet to actually happen, as a lot of the bracelets and charms seem to require parental involvement. Though I quietly admit that looming is sort of fun, I am anticipating the day when I no longer hear “MOMMY!! HELP! I can't do this....”

9. Her bracelet creations are tiny and are easy to put away (hide). Lego castles and other three dimensional “art works” are both hard to store and often cause great deal of distress when it is time to disassemble or disposal.
   
   
10. As a friend told me – stepping on these little elastics is a lot better than stepping on a piece of Lego.

Do you loom? Or, Do you feel like you have to justify your purchases, or can you just go out and buy something because it is fun?

Lockdown drills....

Last week, my daughter came home from school and gave me a lesson on fire safety.

Listening to her talk about escape plans; stopping, dropping and rolling; and the importance of changing batteries on smoke detectors brings back memories of little me nagging my parents about the exact same things.

However, what is dramatically different from my early days in school is that my little daughter not only has fire drills these days; she has lockdown drills.

Yes, lockdown drills.

I remember my heart just about stopped the very first time she told me about the lockdown drill. She was in junior kindergarten at the time. She described to me how she and her little friends must go to a specific corner in her classroom, crouch down very low, and keep very quiet. (I am thankful for her teacher for glossing over why she and her little friends must do this.)

What has the world come to that a four-year-old has to practice hiding quietly in the corner?

This year, one of her instructors mentioned to the kids that someone might enter the school with a gun (I am pretty sure it was a passing comment, not meant to be fixated upon). Unfortunately, my daughter naturally jumps to the worst possible scenario for most things. So of course, she told me all about how bullets go through walls and windows, and that someone might be coming to shoot her.

I hugged her, then we talked about it, and I told her that the chances of this ever happening was extremely, extremely, slim. I told her the school was very safe, and there were lots of people to keep any bad person who wants to enter out.

I never really know what to do in situations like these. I want to have important and sometimes scary discussions with her. I do not want her to bottle her fears. On the other hand, I feel that by talking about it too much will just be a constant reminder of her fears. I asked her regular teacher what to do, and she told me to talk about it IF she brings it up in conversation.

Luckily for me, by the end of the day, my daughter, more or less, erased the lockdown drill from her memory, which is much better than the week long nightmares that resulted from last year's fire drill.

Too bad I cannot erase the lockdown drill from my memory. I just want to pick her up, hold her tight, and possibly just start homeschooling her.

I realize that I cannot and should not shelter or hide my child from all the evils in this world, but I would like her to feel that everything is made out of magic, rainbows, candies, ribbons and happy endings for just a bit longer.

Time and Food

It has been more than a month now since school started; my family's (okay my) routine has somewhat been established; and yet, I sit here and wonder: what it is exactly that I do all day?

I know I am not sitting around eating candy, watching soap operas or reading trashy magazines (okay, I do that sometimes, but definitely not too often), but at the same time, I do not feel like I am actually accomplishing anything.

I tidy and clean, and then the small hurricane comes home from school and the house returns to its normal chaotic state. I thought I would write more, but this is the first time I have written in months. I also thought I would exercise a bit more, but then I would feel guilty if I moved the spider that has made my running shoes her new home.

Seriously, where does the time go? Now that my kid is in school all day, I thought I would have so much more free time. I actually thought that I would be bored, as I am the type of person who cannot sit still for very long (unfortunately my daughter has inherited that trait from me). Yet it still feels like the moment I sit down, I have to get right back up to pick her up from school again.

The only thing I can come up with is my life now revolves around food. I am now forever trying to think of what to make for lunch and dinner; going out to buy the ingredients to make the meals, and then coming home to prep the meals; oh! and let us not forget the actually cooking part. Oh! And then cleaning up after....

I applaud all those women who can work, take care of their families and prepare meals! I do not think I am programed to do this (dealing with food part). I lived on a diet of instant dinners throughout my entire university life! The most cooking I did was boiling water to make Kraft Dinner, instead of using the microwave, and tossing together a bag of pre-package salad. I would have never imagined that food would be taking over my life.

I would appreciate any and all mealtime tips, especially if it means that I can have some free time to go eat my candy and watch some trashy talk shows.

Now, excuse me while I am off to prepare lunch....

selective memory...

When I was in school, I once took a film course, and in one of the units we talked about non-linear story telling – when you tell a story out of sequence, like the movie Memento (though I argue that Memento is a linear story, just told more or less backwards...)

Anyway, do you know who are the best non-linear story tellers? CHILDREN!

My kid was recently invited to a movie birthday party. She had a great time!

Though trying to get her to explain to me the plot of the movie was like pulling teeth from a fully awake tiger... And, it was not just her, we were driving her friend home as well, and he offered little help in deciphering what actually happened in the movie. The two of them just remembered random bits of the movie; completely out of order, of course. Basically, they only told me the parts they liked.

This got me to think if young children's memory of their daily lives is similar to how they remember movies and television shows – that is they only remember things in some random order, and only recall things that they like. Or as Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice once said “Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”

This may explain why my daughter can recall every embarrassing moment that happened to me in the last three years and yet cannot seem to remember to sit properly or to eat faster, as I often have to remind her during dinner.

Oh! And my favourite repeated lecture – “Please, think before you speak or act.” I swear, I want to tape that particular 'talk' and whenever I need it, I can just hit the play button and walk away so that I do not have to hear the sound of my own voice again. Maybe, my kid honestly just do not remember these lectures chats, or lost the context associated with these talks because they do not make her happy.

Though I am not happy with her selective memory, I am also a bit jealous at the same time. I am not the type of person who can live in the now. I am always thinking about the results/consequences of my actions (and sometimes future actions), or regretting my past mistakes (yes. sometimes I have trouble sleeping at night).

So sometimes, I look at my daughter when she is playing and think that it must be nice to be able to just enjoy the moment, and maybe later that night, forget all about the bills, the chores, the worries, and just fall asleep thinking about the fun things we did today.