Summertime blues…

When I was a kid, I LOVED summer vacation – no school; sleeping in; hanging out with friends; hanging out in front of the TV; being a lazy blob… what is there not to love?

And then I became a parent…

I now view summer vacation with a slight sense of dread. Don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with my kid, but I also love the couple of hours that I have to myself while she is in school.I need that time to run errands and to clean the house; okay, who am I kidding, I need those hours to watch useless crap on youtube.

Now, she is officially out of school. And, not only do I lose my Internet time; I feel I must find ways to entertain her. Unfortunately, this leads to my second problem… I am a bit of an obsessive planner and scheduler (I blame this on my father). I will plan when my daughter has time to breathe if I can. Also, I like things to run on MY time – if ‘fun’ time starts at 10:00, then it has to start at 10:00, not 9:59, and sure as hell not 10:01…

Now, my child usually will not follow a schedule (willingly), no matter how prettily colour coded I make it – the child does not feel the sense of urgency about anything; I am pretty sure the house can be on fire, and she will still insist on taking half an hour to put on her shoes herself. I, on the other hand, will start feeling anxious if I am slightly thrown off my carefully laid out plan. Not that either of these extremes is a good thing.

This brings us back to why I use to love summer… the potential to do nothing, and everything.So, this summer, I am going to try to take it easy with my little one and see what she wants to do and go from there. We do have a couple of weekend getaways in the early stages of planning, and she does have a couple of weeks of camps booked, but the rest of the summer is FREE!

So, here’s to sleeping in, playing at the park, digging in the sand, biking to nowhere, going on adventures, doing absolutely nothing, and especially the weeks when she is at camp so that I get my couple of hours back.

so not for small children

I love this book

And, I can definitely identify with the father in this story, as I sit here watching my child NOT sleep. I know I will never actually tell my child to go the fu*k to sleep, but I admit it, I thought about it. I thought about swearing at her when she is really bad too, but I would never do it (at least not until she is much older). Granted I have never been much of a swearer even before the child - though you should watch out for a child that says bloody hell a lot….

Anyway, back to the book…the only thing better than this book, is Samuel L Jackson reading it! (look it up in youtube, it is GREAT!)

And, I too am going to go the fu*k to sleep now. Goodnight.

To my little darling...

Dear Little One,

I cannot believe that you are another year older! You are becoming such a big girl now, sorry, young lady! I barely remember what life was like before you. I do vaguely recall more sleep and being able to stay out past 9:00. But now, I will not trade you for anything in the world!

So my darling, here are some birthday promises that I would like to make to you. I promise that we will not always agree - I have a feeling this will get worse as you get older - but I will always try to keep an open mind and to listen to you. I promise that I will not be there to catch every fall, but I will always be there to help pick you up. And, most importantly, I PROMISE to LOVE you forever and ever (even if you do drive me crazy).

And here is my birthday wish for you: I wish you to grow up to be happy in whatever it is that you decide to do (even if it is becoming a fairy princess and not a lawyer...).

I still do not believe how big you are getting. And though I miss my little girl (I definitely DO NOT miss changing diapers), I am very much looking forward to meeting the little person you are becoming.

Love,

Mom

My two cents..

It is hard to avoid, or ignore, that controversy about the couple who decided to keep their baby’s gender a secret.

So, as a mother, I feel that I too should be entitled to put my opinion out there (insert sarcastic tone here…). Anyway, here is what I think: is the baby happy and healthy? If so, then let the gender secrecy continue. Unlike some opinions out there, I think this is far from child abuse; there are worse ways to raise children than hiding their gender. Do I think this is a little strange… YES, but I am far from perfect, so there is no way I am about to throw the first stone.

I do think this though, instead of downplaying their baby’s gender, the parents had inadvertently put it in the spotlight (I do place some of the blame on the media). Gender becomes the big elephant in the room.

When my daughter and I meet people at the park, we introduce names and ages (the kids, not the grown ups), and then the kids play with each other (okay, my kid usually stares at the other one for a long time…), and we move on. I do not ever consciously think: oh, the kid is a boy, so we must play like this, or vice versa… Now, with Storm, I think it will be hard for me to try not to guess. So instead of getting to know the little person, I too will probably be more obsessed thinking about that baby’s gender.

I definitely believe in letting a child develop his or her own identity, and likes and dislikes (and I try very hard to let this happen). I have a little girl, and I do not limit her shopping to only ‘girl’ stuff (I happen to think that little ‘boy’ t-shirts are very cute). I try pretty hard to balance her toys so that she has many options. Right now, though, she is definitely gravitating towards anything with the word princess on it. As my wallet is not infinitely deep, and I am 90% sure she is not going to play with an expensive toy truck, I am going to hold off on buying her ‘boy’ toys just to counter the number of ‘girl’ toys, for now.

And yes, sometimes I too wish I never told my mother what my baby’s gender is just to limit the amount of princess stuff that enters our lives. So I do understand a bit where these parents are coming from. You can control your own behaviour, but there is no way you can control how others behave with your children, especially grandparents.

But in the end, I think the most important thing is that the kids are happy. And, given a choice, I think I prefer their method of parenting, than the parents who push their kids into beauty pageants and other events that goes to the other extreme.

A short note...

Dear Readers,

Hello!

I want to write you a short thank you note for coming to read my little ramblings.

I can hardly believe it; I am almost up to 100 readers! Yes, I realize that many other blogs get more than 100 visitors a day (probably in less than an hour), but this event still makes me feel a little bit special, especially since I did not expect anyone to read this thing.

So to everyone, THANK YOU again, and I hope that you enjoyed what you read. I promise I will try to write a bit more often and to keep things interesting. And, I would love to hear from you too!

Now I shall wait patiently for my first comment…

The changing me....

As I stood there, alone, at the corner, impatiently waiting for the light to change, it occurred to me that since becoming a mother, I have become a better-behaved person. Note that I did not say a better person… I still have evil thoughts about the jerk that cut me off, and the dink that did not pick up after his/her dog….

So there I am standing, tapping my foot, when suddenly I thought why in the world am I not crossing? There are no cars to be seen for miles, and other people are walking and giving me funny stares.

Now I am thinking, while I was crossing against the light, that my little one has me very well trained. In order to teach her traffic safety, I am now willing to walk half a block out of my way to cross at a light, and will stand there, like a statue, staring at the red hand, even if there are no cars around.

This led me to realize that since I had the kid, I have also started to drive at the speed limit (not that I was a reckless driver, I just drove fast, possibly because I was always late). And, not only do I wear a helmet, I now obey all traffic laws when I am on my bike.

Then, there is also the constant hand washing and stress on cleanliness. Of course I washed my hands before I ate or prepared food etc… but now I wash my hands if I even think they might be dirty.

I have made other changes as well. I try to be more outgoing and friendlier to show my little one that she too can make new friends. I am trying to be more patient. I have learned that children work on their own schedules, which is to say things get done when it gets done… I am learning to control my temper, at least outwardly even if I am seething ball of rage underneath.

I am sure that having a child has changed me in many more ways than what I have listed above, but I just cannot think of one at this time. How has it changed you?

Oh! Yes, I remember another one, I can function on less sleep (though not as well as my college days…), but my memory is shot.

I am still a work in progress…and I hope these changes will not only help me be a better-behaved person, but a better person as well, and most importantly, a better mom.

I have become a walking Disney ad....

My sort of first review…

Recently, I have discovered that I have become a walking advertisement for Disney. I never thought this was going to happen, but there I was, spewing the wonders that is a Disney Cruise.

Maybe I am still experiencing some sort of post-vacation bliss (unlike my last vacation). However, you would think this blissfulness would have ended after doing three loads of laundry, discovering that I have to cleanup after myself (and the family); purchasing and preparing my own food; and finding out that there is no room service button on my phone…

I guess this is why I really enjoyed this cruise; I actually felt like I had a vacation!

Sure the ship was gorgeous, the weather was great, the shows were spectacular, and the food was yummy (a little too yummy, as I found out that I did not need to use a belt by the end of the week…). But most importantly, unlike our last vacation, we were able to have time away from our child. It was nice to spend some time alone with my husband, even if it was just sitting on deck to read a book together.

This vacation, after learning my lesson from our previous one, I wanted a set of grandparents to come with us. But it turned out I did not need free babysitting after all (I am still glad they came). The price of the cruise included a children program (for those three and older, and toilet trained). And my child LOVED the program. Given the option between hanging out with her folks or going to the ‘club’, she picked the ‘club’ every time. I am not sure if I should be happy or offended about this…

I really have to hand it to Disney for the effort they put in to make children happy, which in turn makes parents happy. Their children program was great, my little one got to spend time with kids her age, make crafts, watch movies, dance with Snow White, read to by Belle, and play with all sort of other characters! For parents, the program is very flexible; we can drop her off for five minutes or for the entire day, as the club is open until midnight on most nights (but we never did). AND you can leave the ship! So the night that we docked until 1am at Key West, the grown ups left the ship and went out for a drink!

As much as I love her, and want to spend time with my child, I need a little bit of time away from her to recharge my own batteries. So this vacation allowed us to spend time together as a family, and be able to do our own thing. I think this is the recipe for a great vacation, at least for this family.

And yes, the Disney cruise was loud, but what do you expect with a boat full of small and excitable children, and the lineups to see the characters were long, though I heard it is still much better than the line up at the parks, and it is a bit pricier than some other cruises, but this cruise pass the ultimate test:

When asked if she would like to go another Disney Cruise, my daughter said “OF COURSE” with a big giant smile.

Now if only I can win the lottery to pay for the next one…