DAILY SNACK
Gone are the days when I alone held the interior decor reigns.
Say good-bye to the rotating showings of today’s best paintings.
There were cries of protests and eyes brimful of tears when I taped up a new painting in place of an old.
So down came the new and back up went the old.
And we shall forever be stuck at two and three quarters.
Okay, I’ll admit it. I kind of like it when my kids are sick. Well, when the three-year-old is sick, anyway. (Nobody likes a
sick baby.) I’m not talking about anything serious or drawn out and I’m certainly not talking about anything that involves the loss of bodily fluids. But a low-grade fever? And maybe a scratchy throat? C’mon, it’s not so bad.
DAILY SNACK
I can’t remember.
Is this the second time I’ve found the bouncy chair on top of the baby?
Or was it her brother the other time?
Hey Rebecca!
My 2 month old will only stay asleep for 10 minutes on his back before he is awoken by gas or a shake of his own arm. Recently I discovered that he will sleep on his tummy (he falls asleep on my chest this way) for up to three hours. All of the baby books forbid tummy sleeping at all for the first year, but a friend told me her pediatrician said it is ok if the baby can lift his head 45 degrees… how can I resolve my conflicting mommy guilt while getting some much needed shut eye??
This is a post on how frustrating (impossible?) it is to work from home while caring for your children. The fates must be 
smiling on me because they so aptly illustrated that point by having my children pull me away from the post I was composing. I left my computer with such haste that I failed to save my work. My browser then crashed and all is lost.
This goes part way toward explaining why I have recently counseled two friends to scratch the work-from-home schemes they have been hatching.
DAILY SNACK
“I really wish I had my rain boots on.”
“Yes, there are a lot of puddles out here, aren’t there?”
“If I had my rain boots on, it would be so much fun to splash in the puddles.”
“I guess it would be.” I look away to open the car door.
SPLASH!
“Oh no! Mommy! My new running shoes and my feet are soaking wet!”
DAILY SNACK
“Mommy, I washed my hands with the soap from the front door.”
“The soap from the font door?”
“Yes. And I used it all and then I dried my hands on this towel.”
And then it hits. The overwhelming scent of an entire bottle of Purell wafts up the stairs and into the bathroom.
“Oh. Um . . . okay, let’s rinse those hands off again.”
And somebody open a window.
Update, Oct. 2016: The Toronto Symphony Orchestra still runs Young People’s Concerts for children aged five to 12. They also offer fantastic content (for people of any age) available for streaming from YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify, and iTunes. The podcast reported on below does not seem to be available any longer.
This recently came across my desk (and when I say desk I mean dining room table because I’ve given my desk over the teetering stacks of “important papers”): the Toronto Symphony Orchestra puts out podcasts to accompany their Young People’s Concerts which are geared toward the 5 – 12 years set.
The podcasts are hosted by the orchestra’s educator Roberta Smith and run about ten minutes apiece. File these under educational, though, because they are pretty lean on the fun. I do give the TSO points for not kowtowing to the latest trends in child marketing and bending over backwards to engage the kiddies, though.
Earnest as they are, I can imagine an attentive child learning from these and even enjoying them. My three-year-old son loves educational TV shows and his favourite instrument is the double bass. So naturally he was quite happy to listen to the most recent podcast, “The Melodic Life,” over breakfast. He says, “It was good, Mom. Because it had lots of music. Now can we listen to trumpet music?” At free, these are certainly worth a try — especially if your kids are into serious music.
DAILY SNACK
“Mooommmeeeee! Mooommmmeeeeeiee ….!”
“What! It’s Quite Time for heaven’s sake!”
“There’s a bug . . . a bug . . . on Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.”
“A bug?” Sigh. “Okay, here I come. Oh, sweetie. It’s just a piece of fluff. You really are scared of bugs, aren’t you?”
“But I’m not scared of fluff.”
So the verdict is in and it looks like we should all be hoovering up the vitamin D supplements on a daily basis. Especially
breastfed babies. New studies are heralding this standard vitamin as the panacea prevention against everything from cancer to osteoporosis. The only natural source of D is the sun (and some mushrooms), so we really need to boost our input during the winter (October to March) when the sun’s rays are particularly feeble in countries like Canada.