Canada Moms Blog

Top 100 Finger Foods and Top 100 Baby Purees by Annabel Karmel - A SV Moms Group Book Club

One of the things us parents must do on a daily basis - whether you find it a joy or an annoyance - is to feed our kids. For babies just starting out in the food world beyond milk, it is just the beginning. As our kids get older, there can be the classic toddler picky eater syndrome and the excitement when we discover something they like. Join us today as we discuss the books Top 100 Baby Purees and Top 100 Finger Foods by Annabel Karmel. 

Special thanks to Elizabeth from Los Angeles Moms Blog, who sourced this book club for us, following her lunch date last summer with Annabel Karmel.

• Eunice from Random Walk Down Mommy Street says it's all in a day's work
• Sophia Leto from Moody Mommy reviews Annabel Karmel's books from an organic and vegetarian perspective
  
• Tiffany from Lattes And Life thinks she'll just never be that mom
• Robin from The Not-Ever-Still Life is complicating the diet
• Melanie from Tales From the Crib is baby's top chef? probably not...
• Thien-Kim from Cup of Creativi-Tea finds kid-friendly recipes from Anabel
• Linsey from Me Too You is The Cooking Mom...but only at preschool
• Jennifer M. from Ramblings of a Semi-Conscious Mastermind Mommy has a son that is picky-picky
• Elizabeth from Traded My BMW for a Minivan made Annable Karmel's Welsh "Rabbits" 
• Helen P from Milf Alert opened these books with hesitation
• Bonggamom from Finding Bonggamom finds new traditions, new dishes, new experiences
• Julie from Just Precious determines that yes, she can make baby food
• Amy from Occupation: Mommy asks what to feed baby
• Nicole from Not Just a Working Mom muses about the best laid plans
• Cristie from The Traveling Circus is sick to death of chicken nuggets and mini carrots!
• Alma from Marketing Mommy does twice the work for half the appreciation
• Grace from Formerly Gracie asks are you going to eat that?
• Stacy from Fabulous Miss S. will be kept busy for weeks with these books
• Heidi from Coast to Coast Mom is cooking her with kiddo
• Lisa H. from Hannemaniacs is a self-confessed baby food making lover and her kid eats anything finger food or not
• Maxine from The french Mommy born in California is cooking with her daughter and sometimes her friends too
• Paige from Canning with Kids has kids who were perfect victims testers
• Kristie from Real Mommy Reviews finds real yummy, real easy healthy recipes for baby and kids

Los Angeles Moms Blog is hosting the book club discussion this month. Please go here to leave a comment below to join in the discussion.

Past SV Moms Group Book Clubs have included:

• The Possibility of Everything by Hope Edelman
• The Mominatrix's Guide to Sex by Kristen Chase
• Coco Chanel & Igr Stravinsky by Chris Greenhalgh
• See Mom Run by Beth Feldman
• Close Encounters of the Third-Grade Kind by Phillip Done
• This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Topper
• Do One Nice Thing by Debbie Tenzer
• Birth Day by Mark Sloan, M.D.
• What Happened to the Girl I Married? by Michael Miller
• Testimony by Anita Shreve
  
• Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs
  
• Much to Your Chagrin by Suzanne Guilette
  
• It Started with Pop-Tarts by Lori Hanson
  
• Who By Fire by Diana Spechler
• The White Trash Moms Handbook by Michelle Lamar
• Writing Motherhood by Lisa Garrigues
• The Vaccine Book by Dr. Robert W. Sears
• The Other Mother by Gwendolen Gross

Click here to read all about the SV Moms Group Book Club.

America's Health Care Reform - One Step Forward

Last Sunday in the United States, the government signed into a law a bill that facilitated sweeping changes to the country’s current healthcare system.

Last week in Toronto, I had to rush my two-year-old to the hospital after she suddenly, alarmingly, clutched her neck and stopped moving. She was ok, but man did she give me a scare.

Both events got me thinking.

I got thinking about how very polarizing, controversial and hotly debated the former has been. And I got thinking about how very devastating the latter might have been – that is, if I had to actually deal with the former and not just write about it.

Admittedly, I do not know the minutiae of the health care reform issues on the table, but I do know and understand the big picture issues – I know and understand that millions of people in the United States cannot afford or qualify for health insurance, and therefore, must pay out of pocket when in need of medical assistance. I know that even when you can qualify for and afford health insurance, that insurance can easily be denied by a medical centre or practitioner because they are allowed to say that they don’t like the insurance you are probably paying a whole lot for. I know that my father needed FOUR different insurance policies just to be able to die, broke, in his hometown.

Marketers and Moms: Talk with us, not just about us

Finally, a Canadian conference about Marketing to Moms Online! I've been wondering for years when this was going to happen, and it's such a relief that there's going to be a forum where online Moms can really talk to Marketers and have an honest, open conversation. We're bursting with things to say, things about who we are and what we do and how we can truly work together for mutual benefit. There's so much misconception about "moms online" and what we do and how we behave and think.  It's wonderful to take advantage of the power in having a direct conversation, rather than having marketers just talk to other marketers about us instead of actually talking with us, or having some man present a study about "Meeting the 21st Century Mom".

Except, that direct conversation? is exactly what this conference is not doing.

I saw the link to the OpenDialogue Marketing to Digital Moms conference  from MomCentral Canada on Twitter. And when I saw the link, I was initially delighted. Thinking it was equivalent to Mom 2.0 or BlogHer Business - places where marketers who so covet the Mom market, who are dying to figure out ways to get under our skin, can actually talk to us - I thought, what a great opportunity.  A chance to talk to Canadian marketers!  And to tell them that we don't just surf. We write. We talk to each other. We find our niches. We rally around causes. We speak out against injustice, against misconception, against cruelty, against fools. We brand ourselves, and when we don't have big business budgets for branding, we figure it out for ourselves, or we turn to each other and give each other small business opportunities. We get together and start things, fun things, cool things, things that mock those that mock us (because, trust me, we're mocked a lot) and turn their arguments in to nothing more than bitter ash.

Workforce Wellness: Another name for don't ask, don't tell?

Way back when, before I learned my lesson, and before I came into the knowledge that freelancing was a viable option, I was a corporate shill. But I was a good little shill - I showed up early, and I billed out a staggering amount of hours. What's more, I worked a staggering amount of hours for free, all as a means of keeping on top of the ever-growing pile of capitalistic success. For my clients. I made, like, $30K annually.

It was for two reasons that I sometimes billed 65 hours a week and worked an additional 15: I was asked to do the work, and then, I was relied upon to do the work. Once I had been assigned a new area of responsibility, magically, no one else was able to take it on, and more and more weight was added to my lucky-to-be-employed shoulders.

A few years of that, plus some borderline abusive employers produced anxiety attacks. And now, five years after I've been out of the game, no longer finding myself clutching my chest and gasping for air, Steven Harper's government is rolling out a program to promote 'workforce wellness'? I don't buy it.

There is no Maternal health without Reproductive health.

It's times like these when I am truly, cringingly, embarrassed by our government.

It's no secret that I'm a pinko commie liberal. I believe in safety nets and socialized health care and helping those who are down on their luck. I believe in women's shelters and drug rehabs and needle exchange programs. I even listen religiously to the CBC. So it's not hard to find something for me to be angry about in most of our Conservative government's policies. However, this one goes beyond the pale, and not just for me. In their recently announced G8 initiative to promote maternal health in the developing world, the Tories have decided that birth control is not part of maternal health.

The Hare Truth

We are a family who has House Rabbits. 

I'll give you a moment to compose yourself as you laugh and wipe away tears. 

Yes. House Rabbits. Free Roam, litter trained, spayed and neutered House Rabbits. Kind of like Cats, with longer ears and a whole vegetarian vibe going for them.

I never planned on being a House Rabbit parent. No sir. I was fine with La Chatte, a neighborhood cat who adopted us upon our moving into HER home. I mean, it wasn't as if we were going anywhere, and she seemed nice enough. I was however, a little shocked. People just move away and LEAVE their pets? Really?

I later came to find that in Montreal, it is a huge problem - especially on the July 1 - Moving Day. Shelters around the city begin to be flooded with animals of all sorts whose owners decided that , Meh - just not worth the trouble to move the animal. 

Now, there is a pet store in our local Mall, which shall remain nameless. Every time we are in the mall, Emily Begs to go and see the animals. Lizards, Birds, Rabbits, Guinea Pigs, Rats, Ferrets...all the way up through $1200 purebred dogs. And I hate it. I hate the whole thing.  I watch children beg and plead for the cute animals...and sometimes they go home with them. 

But what happens after that? 

You Are a What? What's a Blog?

I had a post about telephones ready to go, but then Twitter went all 'OH NO SHE DIDN'T' all over an article in The NY Times with the snarky title 'Honey, Don't Bother Mommy.  I'm Too Busy Building My Brand," and I had to stop and read all the furor and posts in response and so on.

I am not going to respond to the NY post, far better writers have done that...read Mom 101's response to the article or Kelby Carr's piece where she sums up nicely why the main stream media treats bloggers who happen to be mothers this way:

"We get marginalized for a few reasons, including:

• We are women who are, perhaps for one of the first times, far better at something than men in many cases and far better in an industry that is making a major impact. I should explain that I know many, many men who are talented, brilliant bloggers, but that isn’t surprising. For women to stand out in an industry that major corporations are clamoring to get involved with just sits wrong with some people.
• We are excelling in the media landscape, which doesn’t sit well with traditional media.
• We are turning our backs on the mold that has been created for us.
• We are threatening to traditional publishers, mostly old white men who couldn’t write a blog or use Twitter if you put a gun to their heads.
• Newspaper circulation keeps declining, while blog readership and authorship keeps growing.
• Writing snarky articles about mom bloggers encourages mom bloggers to share links and drive readers to the newspaper’s web site. (Here’s a hint, New York Times… we would share positive coverage just as much, if not more).

We are trying to make a living by creating content, and for that we get demeaned, criticized, talked down to, made fun of, and stereotyped as unethical money and swag grabbing whores.

I know of a few other organizations that make their money creating content. Namely, mainstream media."

The Maple Leaf? Whatever!

You've got to admit, Canada is a country unlike many others.  After putting together a closing show for the Olympics that was so full of Canadian in-jokes and somewhat Canadian (but resident in America) stars making those jokes, a show so obscure that most Americans rated it as lame or boring, we are now exposing ourselves by arguing about the National Anthem, of all things.  I find the whole thing somewhat amusing, but in a head-hanging, squirming kind of way.

American friends, when Parliament opens a new session our Governor General reads a Speech from the Throne, written by the current political party in power. In the speech of a few days ago, the government caused the Gov. Gen. to announce that we would review our national anthem with a view to cutting out the sexist and offensive elements therein.  This only a few days after the country had gone mad singing the thing as our athletes won medals.  How lame brained was that? 

Two days later, the government backed off and said it would not do the review after all, mostly because their mail, phones and email had all become clogged with people telling them that this was a really, really stupid idea.  Meanwhile, anyone that could not get through to their MP and, I suspect, a few who did, wrote a letter to the editor.  I have just finished reading Saturday's batch, plus a few articles by various pundits, and I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

So, what is all the fuss about.  It seems to have started with a female senator who complained that the anthem as is was not inclusive of women.  The first two lines, you see, are:

Oh, Canada, our home and native land,
True patriot love in all thy sons command.

Leaves out the daughters. Tsk.  Cannot have that.  I note in passing that it also leaves out any new Canadian not actually born here, of either sex, but that did not seem to be the senator's problem.

Well, yes, both the men and the women did win hockey golds last week.  We noticed. When the women stood up to belt out the anthem, what I noticed was that several of them were singing different words.  You see, the anthem has been revised before, to smarten it up a bit, and a lot of people do not know the new words.  Not to mention that the French version has a different theme and different sentiments. 

The French version came first, back in the late 18th century, and English translations of it are just awful, without exception.  And so, around a hundred years ago, an effort was made to develop decent English words, to level the playing field a bit.  At that period, English Canadians were just as likely to be singing God Save the King or The Maple Leaf Forever, but Oh Canada got pushed forward and adopted as the official anthem because the other two were pretty annoying to French Canadians.  God Save the King for obvious reasons and The Maple Leaf Forever because the words you heard at the closing ceremony of the Olympics were not the words we used, even in the forties and fifties, when I was growing up.  The chorus runs:  The first verse, then, was:

In days of yore, from Britain's shore,

Wolfe the conquering hero came

and planted firm Britannia's flag

on Canada's fair domain. 

There may it wave, our boast our pride

and join in love forever. 

With lily, thistle, rose entwined,

the Maple Leaf forever.

At the time we all happily sang this ditty in Ontario schools, our flag was, in fact, the British red ensign.  Australia had the white one.  Or vice versa.  It was not until our centennial year, 1967, that we finally adopted, as a genuine, home grown Canadian flag, the red maple leaf you saw all of us wearing last week.  But you can see that our Francophone brothers and sisters would not be in love with those words, specifically because Wolfe was a British general who defeated a French army outside Quebec City and claimed the territory for England.

All of this is fine but the icing on the cake, for me, is the upwelling of support for the present English version of Oh Canada.  This from a nation of people whose athletes are singing different words in the English version and most of the Francophone gold medallists I saw were singing, kind of tentatively, also in English.  You can just bet they don't sing the French version much.  

I guess, as a good native daughter of Canada, I should just, with glowing heart, sing whatever words I can remember.

This is an orginal post for Canada Moms Blog.  Whenever she stops singing, Mary G can be found blogging at Them's My Sentiments.

My Olympic Hangover

Well, the games are over. I had a good time watching from my front-row living room seats every night for 17 nights. I laughed, I cried, I cringed and I cheered. I jumped up and down like a crazy person. I screamed. I yelled. Did I mention I cried? I had more mood swings in those 17 days than I did when I was pregnant and I thought my husband ate all the chips.

 

Names like Joannie, Alexandre, Heil, Jacey Jay, Hamelin, Virtue and Moir are now etched in our collective consciousnesses. Sid became everybody’s kid, and that last gold will shine on in our hearts and our history books. I’m quite sure I’ll be relaying the event to my children – who didn’t realize they were witnessing history and not just their mother freaking out 7 minutes into overtime in the gold medal game – in decades to come.

 

We waved our red and white mittens at each other, a hundred thousand little flags greeting the world and welcoming them to a country we were for once, outspokenly, proud to say was ours. For the first time, maybe in forever, I felt like Vancouverites didn’t hate me because I was from Toronto, and that it might not be hazardous to sit in the first row in front of Ashley McIsaac. We experienced a patriotism that the blurred the lines between provinces and in the memory of urine-soaked indignities. It was magical.

The Possibility of Everything by Hope Edelman - A SV Moms Group Book Club

Does your child have an imaginary friend? What would you do if you thought - or knew - your child's imaginary friend had a bit too strong of a hold on her? Jet off to Belize in search of Mayan healers to banish the friend? What a story this is. And a real life one too. Join us today as we discuss The Possibility of Everything by Hope Edelman.

Hope has also graciously done a Q&A with the SV Moms Group bloggers. Read the Q&A here.

• Lori from New Jersey Moms Blog leads us off as she is parenting by feel
• Florinda from The 3 R's Blog: Reading, 'Riting, and Randomness has a perception of danger and possibility
• Marianne from Writer-Mommy thinks its hard to be three
• Cristie's from The Traveling Circus eyes were opened by this faith journey
• Jennifer from Connect with your Teens through Pop Culture and Technology examines believing in the unknown
• Darryle from I never signed up for this... starts to talk about her own journey with a healer for cancer
• Michelle from Wife and Mommy asks what wouldn't I do?
• Lisa from blog on the wall is keeping faith
• Kristine from Mommy Needs Therapy or a Bottle of Wine wishes for magic
• Lisa from Hannemaniacs says bring on the bush doctor
• Cindy Fey from We All Fall Down knows she need to let her daughter be who she is without projecting her fears on her
• Michele Spring Fajeau Read Out Loud discusses faith, hope and healing
• Jessica from It's my life... thinks about the lengths mothers will go to help their children
• Nicole from Not Just a Working Mom related to feeling like a single mom sometimes
• Amy's from Occupation Mommy daughter's imaginary friend is named Sally
• Meghan from Meg's Idle Chatter has a mother's instinct
• Jessica from This Mom Rocks It talks about the art of parenting
• Linsey from Me Too You asks if twins need an imaginary friend?
• Heidi from Coast to Coast Mom is a workweek widow

New Jersey Moms Blog is hosting the book club discussion this month. Please go here to join in the discussion.

Past SV Moms Group Book Clubs have included:

• The Mominatrix's Guide to Sex by Kristen Chase
• Coco Chanel & Igr Stravinsky by Chris Greenhalgh
• See Mom Run by Beth Feldman
• Close Encounters of the Third-Grade Kind by Phillip Done
• This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Topper
• Do One Nice Thing by Debbie Tenzer
• Birth Day by Mark Sloan, M.D.
• What Happened to the Girl I Married? by Michael Miller
• Testimony by Anita Shreve
  
• Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs
  
• Much to Your Chagrin by Suzanne Guilette
  
• It Started with Pop-Tarts by Lori Hanson
  
• Who By Fire by Diana Spechler
• The White Trash Moms Handbook by Michelle Lamar
• Writing Motherhood by Lisa Garrigues
• The Vaccine Book by Dr. Robert W. Sears
• The Other Mother by Gwendolen Gross

Click here to read all about the SV Moms Group Book Club.