Canada Moms Blog

Operation Sandman Has Hit a Roadblock

The longest parenting struggle we've had with our child revolves around her bedtime. Before she could walk and talk, she could cry forever and couldn't fall asleep without one of us right by her side. Then after she could walk and talk she became the master of sleep delay tactics.

She really doesn't like to sleep. This really confuses someone like me who loves to get as much shut-eye as humanly possible.

Just Like Mom

Everyone catches themselves sounding or acting a way that they thought they never would, right? Behaving in some way that when someone acted that way towards them, they swore they would never do that when faced with the same situation.... right?

Good, because it's been happening to me a lot lately and it's driving me nuts.

So how and who am I acting like that is driving me so insane?

Like a mom. More specifically mine.

Junior Kindergarten, Here We Come Lately

Gigi starts junior kindergarten in a few weeks and unlike some of the other local parents, I am (tentatively) happy that she was placed in an afternoon spot (tentative feelings explained below).

It's understandable why the morning kindergarten positions are more in demand. I can see the advantages of wanting to send a kindergarten child to school in the AM especially if there are other siblings that go to school full days and getting all the kids out the door and off to class en masse is easier.

Also it's never too early to prepare a child for what the next dozen or so years of life are going to be like, five days a week, nine months a year. Discipline is good and since that includes waking up, getting ready, and out the door on time, no time like the present to start practising.

Canada Moms Hit The Road

Yeah. And it's gonna sound something like this:

(Yes, I KNOW. It's not the pur laine Canadian Tom Cochrane original. But: a) Emilia, being more devoted to the Nation Of Preschoolers than to her Canadian citizenship, prefers the Cars soundtrack version, and b) Tom Cochrane and EMI Music Canada aren't really all that sharesies with embedded video.)

(Check out the details at the Moms Road Trip website. We start in Halifax tomorrow and head east - maybe we'll be coming to a Motel 6 near you!)

She Likes Big Butts and I Want to Die

My three year old daughter’s fascination with butts rivals any man’s love of booty. She likes to talk butts and she will not lie – and she always uses her Outdoors Voice. Her constant loud talk about butts and what they do is making me blush like a schoolgirl. So yes folks, in a nutshell, I’m a prude who is raising a miniature frat boy. Can you die from blushing too hard?

Take for instance her latest rendition of Old MacDonald:
Old MacDonald had a farm e-i-e-i-o
And on that farm he had a butt e-i-e-i-o
With a butt butt here and a butt butt there
Here a butt, there a butt EVERYWHERE A BUTT BUTT!

Or the talking butt game. Where she suddenly whips off the bottoms, bends over and grabs her cheeks a la Bart Simpson and makes her sweet tushy say: LOOK AT ME!

The Kids Love to Party

Last Saturday afternoon the Bunch Family hosted another fantastic dance party in honour of Mom and Canada Moms Blog was there to celebrate going live. Heck, we don't even need an excuse to celebrate, we just like to party.

My daughter Gigi had a blast and after inhaling her first ever cone of cotton candy floss she was seriously tripping hard. It's a good thing we had a dance floor to use (and trust me, we used it because the DJ and tunes were great.)

The Hair Warrior

Remember the feral kid in Mad Max 2, the one with the wild hair who growled at Max’s awesome dog and wielded a mean boomerang? Yes, that one.  And while we’re remembering that kid, remember when Mel Gibson looked like this? I’ll take a moment to reminisce and reflect on crushes of childhood past. Oh how things have changed.

Anyhow, that particular feral movie character has been popping into my mind more and more frequently when I’m hanging out with my daughter. No, I’m not saying my child is feral. In fact, far from it because at three and a half Gigi plays well with others and is very civilized. But is her hair feral? Well, maybe. Often Sometimes the feral kid from Mad Max fame has a tamer hairdo than my girl.

Lame? I object.

Want to know what really gets on my nerves? If you are still reading, I’m going to assume yes and I will tell you: I really, really get in a tizzy when people say “Canadian television is so lame”.

WHAT? LAME? How can you say that a nation who has produced Rocket Robin Hood and The Littlest Hobo creates lame programming? And I am saying this in all seriousness.

I grew up in the days of bunny ears on the back of telly. It was the late seventies and a rough technological existence, one I have not forced my daughter to endure.  But I never felt deprived because Canadian television treated me well. As a child, I had the Hilarious House of Frightenstein, The Kids of Degrassi Street, The Edison Twins, You Can’t Do That on Television, Swiss Family Robinson, endless mini-episodes of Hinterland Who’s Who, Bumper Stumpers, and of course, my favourite game show: Definition. Definition ruled, and if Jim Perry had ever told me I won a years supply of Campbell’s soup, I would still be talking about it. Now that I've said the word Definition, I have the Dream Warriors stuck in my head because they eulogized that theme song perfectly in “My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style”? You're welcome for the placement of that catchy ditty in your head.