Canada Moms Blog

It's not me, it's you

That’s it: I’m breaking up with Canadian February. 

It doesn’t make sense, right? I mean, of all the months to loathe, why chose the shortest month of the year? Why pick on the month that brings the heart-and-flowery goodness of Valentine’s Day? In Ontario, February even delivers a long weekend in the form of Family Day. Here’s the rub: we Canadians have come to expect our long weekends to involve sun, beers and barbeque. Long weekends are not about waiting in line with 1000 other families for the ‘privilege’ of baring your translucent flesh at the public swimming pool.

It’s nothing personal, February, it’s just that you are so conveniently sandwiched between two months that aren’t as hate-worthy. January represents the start of a brand new year; the tabula rasa of months, with a little warm-and-fuzzy New Year’s Eve glitter still clinging to its hem. And March, well that is the month that ushers in the promise of spring. It heralds the return of bunnies and baby chicks, earthy smells and thick green stems clawing their way up through the supple earth.

What do you bring to the table, February? Your formerly fluffy, pristine snow is sludgy and dirty. The composter is stuffed right to the top. The kids’ winter coats are irretrievably stained. My minivan smells like goats have been breeding in the back. I have completely run out of ideas for packing school lunches. I am done, February. Done.

Some Canadians make the move to go somewhere warm in February. I think that is a calculated risk. For instance, this year you might have thought a Disney vacation was in order to beat the February blahs. However, you probably didn’t plan on having to wear jeans and sweaters on your ‘southern’ vacation. Nice one, February. Your evil is not constricted by the laws of physics or geography.

Clenchaholic

At my dentist appointment the other day I learned that I am most likely clenching and/or grinding my teeth at night. I was dubious at first, wondering whether my dentist was just trying to squeeze more money out of me by recommending a custom mouth guard that will end up costing me more than $300. Yet both my dentist and hygienist pointed to clear evidence of nightly shenanigans in my mouth: receding gums and teeth wearing down more rapidly than the resolve of a mother attempting to grocery shop at 5:00 p.m. with three kids in tow.

Still, I walked away from the dentist office without making the follow up appointment. I don't really grind my teeth, I reassured myself. If I were doing it, I would be experiencing frequent headaches. My jaw would be aching. Surely my husband would have said something!

Full-Day-Every-Day Kindergarten is Coming to Ontario

Yesterday, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty named almost 600 elementary schools across Ontario that will be in the first wave to provide a full school day for kindergarten children. It turns out that my children’s school is on the list.

I have been paying particular attention to this issue because my third child, my baby girl, is set to start Junior Kindergarten (JK) this September. I’m really quite pleased with the fact that my child will be in one of the pilot schools. I should add the caveat here that she will be four-and-a-half years old when September hits. If she were born later, I would probably feel less confident about her stamina for coping with that much school. Given her age, and the fact that she is already somewhat used to a structured day thanks to attending preschool three full days a week, I think her transition to all day, every day will be fairly smooth.

Bedtime is Overrated

School starts again tomorrow and I am fervently hoping that my children have recovered from the Late Night Gorge Fest that seems to have been the theme of our Christmas holidays. If my husband and I tend to be pretty relaxed about bed time on weekends, over the holidays, we are consistently near-comatose. The older children never went to bed before 10:30 p.m., with the three-year-old often matching their pace. And, yes, at a New Year’s Eve dinner at our friends’ house, they all stayed up past midnight.

In fact, this is not the first time that my kids have stayed up past midnight on New Year’s Eve. The first year we let them welcome the New Year with us was a thrill; now, it is simply expected. Even the year that we were home-bound due to chicken pox, they all stayed up watching home movies and drinking ginger ale out of wine glasses. I suppose if they became crabby or started fighting we would feel compelled to put them to bed. As it is, they are consistently well behaved on New Year’s Eve.

This year they passed the time playing Wii, watching movies and making up dances for us to watch. As midnight approached, we all gathered in front of the TV, noise-makers in hand, sparkly tiaras perched on our heads. As the ball began to drop, we shared an enthusiastic countdown with our friends. At midnight I found myself not in the arms of my loving husband, but with an overjoyed little girl on my lap, big kid arms slung around my neck and more than one pair of lips to kiss. Happy New Year, indeed.

The Demise of Alone Time

I have a ten-and-a-half-year-old living in my house. Given his recent behaviour, which may or may not include flipping his skater boy bangs around and using the word “sick” in unfamiliar contexts, I have been paying particular attention to teenagers lately. Careful field observation of this species in their natural environment has revealed some interesting trends: they prefer to roam in packs; they overuse the word “like” in everyday conversation; and they text near constantly.

I just don’t get it. I don’t comprehend the need to always be in touch. I don’t appreciate why one would need to be texting on one’s smartphone while sitting at a table with a bunch of friends actively engaged in conversation. It feels like multitasking gone too far.

Parenting Cramps

Somewhere between the births of my second and third children, I decided that I would take up running. I figured it would be a low-investment, high-return exercise regime. With two young children at home, throwing on running shoes and heading out for twenty minutes of solitude and sweat would be way easier to fit in than attempting the gauntlet involved with trying to get to the gym.

My initiation to my new fitness pursuit involved tagging along with my neighbour when she went to her Learn to Run group. The concept was simple enough: meet up with a group of newbie runners and follow the instructions of the group leader, a more experienced runner.  And by “more experienced” I, of course, mean a perky, blonde, barely twenty-year-old goddess who had probably never heard the words “kegel” or “uterine prolapse.”

Whatever.

What *really* happens in Vegas

Thanks to the extreme awesomeness of grandparents, my husband and I recently went on an extended weekend getaway to Las Vegas. We accompanied four other couples to celebrate a friend’s 40th birthday. Each night, the ten of us would come together for dinner, drinks and a kind of low-key debauchery one would expect from a group of people who, between them, left fifteen children back home.

On our last night in Vegas, we split into two cabs in order to get to our destination: ladies in one, men in the other. As we five friends sat waiting for our husbands to join us we decided that a group picture would be nice. After all, it’s not often that we all get dressed up and go out together. It’s amazing how an absence of baby drool and cheesy handprints can really class up an outfit, you know?

Canadian Road Trip

We just got back from a road trip with our three kids.  A very long road trip. I’m talking 40+ hours together in a vehicle.

The reaction that we get from other parents when we tell them about this road trip amuses me. Most people look, if only for just a moment, as if they just threw up in their mouth. And I get that, I do. I’m not saying that there weren’t times during the drive that I didn’t stare longingly out the window at passing airplanes. In fact, at several points during the journey, I seriously contemplated whether I would be critically injured if I jumped from the moving truck and made a break for it.  And on the way home the interior of our truck started to smell suspiciously like goats had been breeding. So, yeah, there were low points.

However, if we had flown to our destination on an airplane we would have missed some pretty cool stuff. My daughter wouldn’t have been able to keep track of how many windmills she saw as we drove through four provinces. We wouldn’t have stopped to take cheesy pictures at The Big Apple in Colborne. My son probably wouldn’t have taught us the words to the I Love My Lips song. We would have missed walking on the ocean floor at the Hopewell Rocks in New Brunswick during low tide. In short, we would have missed seeing a lot of cool stuff across Canada.

The Wonder Years

My dad was hanging out with me and the kids the other day and we were marvelling over how my eldest just turned 10. My dad asked me if the last decade felt like a bit of a blur and I conceded that, yes, it definitely did.

 In the past, I have likened the period of raising young children as existing in a bit of a fog. It’s been a delightful journey but, at times, the fog was so thick, the journey so harrowing, that I was forced to just focus on navigating the small stretch of road ahead without crashing.

Around the time my third child turned two-and-a-half the fog lifted, dramatically and without warning. I now have three big-ish kids in the house. There are no more diapers. Nobody needs to nap every day (well, unless you count my husband). We all eat the same kind of food. There are fewer tantrums, more agreeable co-operation. One of my favourite parts, though, is the fact that we can do so many more activities together. Of course, we have been doing things together all along, but I’m talking about the kinds of activities that I used to enjoy before I had kids.

Making Sweet Memories

When I was a kid, my family used to pick strawberries every June. We crouched amid the rows of green leaves seeking out the partially obscured plump, red bounty.  Once our baskets were full, we would head home where my mom set to work baking a cake from scratch. After dinner, she served us slabs of still-warm cake smothered with sweet berries and slightly sweetened whipping cream. We were always allowed seconds on strawberry shortcake night. For me, it’s a food memory that signals the start of summer; the heralding of so many varieties of tender, sweet local fruit yet to come.

Shockingly, I have never taken my own kids strawberry picking. I blame the fact that we live so close to an awesome farmer’s market where we can conveniently pick up flats of just-picked berries along with other seasonal produce. However, I have started my own tradition: making jam.