Month: May 2009

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Head Injuries Too Common For Comfort

Hey you! Yes, you with the kid on your shoulder. And you throwing that baby into the air and then catching it. And you kids riding bikes without helmets. Stop it. All of you need to just stop.

At the risk of sounding like . . . no, scratch that, I know that I’m going to sound like an overprotective old shrew, but it is worth repeating. I guess that’ s why us moms sound like a broken record a lot of the time — we will just keep repeating this stuff until somebody listens. Or until it gets so far under your skin as to ingrain itself in your very essence and you will never, ever be able to engage in that behaviour without feeling fundamentally uneasy. (Now that I’m a parent there’s a whole torrent of warnings from my childhood that I simply cannot stomach: kids on balconies, kids running onto elevators — what if it’s not there?!, ink on skin, and young babies bearing weight on their legs, to name a few.) Some of these nagging warnings are just our own particular peeves, but some are real hazards. This is hazard number one.

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The Impromptu Day Trip

Once a week I like to recommend something fun for the family to do. I’m not picky. I’ll write about a good song or a crazy vacation, as long as I’ve tried it and liked it. There’s really no shortage of things to do for kicks. Still, every so often, I come up dry. So does everybody, right? Sometimes you want to get out of the house and do something, but you can’t for the life of you figure out what you feel like doing. Guess what? That’s okay, too.

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Learning to Fend for Yourself

DAILY SNACK

They were laughing, he was running.

They chased him around and around and it really looked like fun.

But it didn’t stop.

Are you having fun with these boys?

No. They keep chasing me. They’re being mean.

Oh dear. Tell them to stop. Tell them you don’t like this game.

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When TV Doesn’t Work

DAILY SNACK

I look up from the computer.

Okay, you’re sitting too close. Move, I said.

That is way too loud. Your sister is trying to sleep.

You can have some volume, you know. No, that’s too loud.

Yes, you can have chocolate. Yes, you can eat in the living room. Yes, you can watch another show.

Not so close, I said!

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Public Breastfeeding: Sex, Breasts, and Facebook

My mother breastfed all four of her children. And her mother before her, and so on. I am incredibly fortunate to have an unbroken tradition of breastfeeding in my family; and the support and understanding that comes with that tradition. Why, then, am I the first woman in my family to feel comfortable feeding my baby in public? To feed my baby at a cafe or a mall, on a bench or on some steps — wherever I am when my baby is hungry? Why did my mother duck into public bathroom stalls (can you imagine?!?) to breastfeed her babies? And what has happened since?

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Baby Holding

DAILY SNACK

She was so tiny as a newborn.

Her big brother sat up in the arm chair with a nursing pillow across his lap

And he held his baby sister and he was so much bigger and she was still so tiny.

Now, six months later, she slings one leg over his and leans into the arm of the couch.

She is robust, she is sturdy, she can hold her own.

And he is still the same.

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Does Crawling Matter?

Learning to crawl. I love this. L’il I flips over onto her front just as soon as she hits the ground. She lifts her head up high and reaches out toward a toy or some piece of junk that Young C’s hauled out of who-knows-where and left on the ground. She reaches and squirms and wriggles herself just a little bit closer. She starts screeching with frustration before long, I know, but her stamina is improving.

Young C never did this. He rarely rolled over and hardly played on his front at all. I do remember him sliding backward quite a distance over ceramic tiles once or twice, but he never did get the hang of moving forward on all fours. He was always focused on lifting his head up while on his back and trying to do little baby sit-ups. (Until he finally succeeded in rolling from his first sit-up into a somersault off the bed. But that’s another story.) He would insist on being pulled into a sitting position and did eventually develop a half-crawl, half-walk scoot move that would propel him a couple of feet toward a stray toy.

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Direction

DAILY SNACK

“Hey, Mom? Has anybody seen a street called Mortimer?”

We just drove up Pottery Rd and are pulling across Broadview onto Mortimer. We haven’t been here for months.

“Yes, you’re right! This is Mortimer.”

This three-year-old can give you better directions than most thirty-year-olds. Direction is important in life.

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Shhh! Concerts For Kids by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivanx/311213452/

Last Saturday Young C and I took our first solo trip (without L’il I). We took one bus and two subways all the way downtown to Roy Thompson Hall to go see a symphony concert. It was his first symphony and mine (I’m pretty sure). The Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) schedules a handful of concerts aimed at children aged 5 through 12 each season as part of their Concerts for Young People Series. Even though Young C is only just 3, he is really way into music, and we were offered a complementary pair of seats at the last concert of this season, so I decided to check it out anyway. (This particular concert was also the only one performed by the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra in place of the TSO.)

I knew that the half hour before the concert would feature intimate pre-concert performances in the lobby, and planned to arrive in plenty of time. A truly amazing sequence of slips, spills, and falls just as we were getting ready to leave set us back, of course. (You can never allot too much time for travel with kids. Never.) We did see the last five minutes of an Africa-inspired drum performance that Young C absolutely loved. We then found our seats as I reminded him again that he really needed to be on his best behaviour. Sit still and listen to the music, this is the symphony.

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Head Gear

DAILY SNACK

This is called the Thudguard and it’s really for sale. No joke.

Ever said, I should put a helmet on that kid? Of course. Ever really meant it? Of course not.