Author: Rebecca Cuneo Keenan

Rebecca Cuneo Keenan is a writer who lives in Toronto with her husband and three children.

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My spring body image hack

My spring body image hack

Image credit via Flickr cc license

I accidentally bought the wrong size pants.

This happens sometimes, when your number one method of clothes shopping involves grabbing something off the sale rack and then sprinting across the store to catch your three-year-old before she falls down the escalator. It can also happen when your number two method of clothes shopping is showing up to the store ten minutes before closing and then buying whatever you happen to be holding when it does close.

So, yes, it’s not uncommon for me to buy the wrong size pants. But this might the first time I ever bought pants that were too big for me. You’ve heard of body dismorphia, right? You usually hear about it in relation to eating disorders; people will have an exaggerated perception of their own flaws. They’ll think they are overweight when they really are not, for example. Well, I kind of have that except, THE OPPOSITE.

Like, I’ll have put on ten pounds but every time I look in the mirror, I turn to the side and suck in my stomach and think, “Looking good!” I’ll see pictures of myself and think, well, that was a bad angle. I keep trying to squeeze into places I think I should fit. The number of things I have knocked over with my ass alone is humilating. And, of course, I keep buying pants that are too small because I know what size I take, thankyouverymuch.

But this time the pants were too big. I don’t remember if that was the only size left on the sale rack or if I was trying to come to terms with needing a bigger size or what. But they’re just a little … loose, y’know?

Like, I’ll put them on in the morning and they will seem to fit fine. But then I’m halfway to the bus stop and they’re starting to slide down my hips a little. My underwear is showing at the back. The crotch is getting a little baggy. I have to keep tugging them back up every few blocks.

Holy shit, do I ever love these pants. They don’t make me feel like I’m wearing giant-sized pants. They make me feel like my body is too skinny for these pants. It’s a feeling I have not experienced for a long, long, long time.

So all right, it’s kind of a sloppy look and these are definitely leisure-type pants. I wouldn’t recommend wearing clown pants to the office or to an important meeting or a fancy event. But if, hypothetically, you happen to work at home and you are mostly, 90% of the time, just schlepping around the neighbourhood anyway, then I totally recommend putting on some big-ass pants.

Do you know how much easier this is than actually losing weight? Amazing.

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9 must-haves to get through a Canadian winter with baby

Huge thanks to The Baby Show for sponsoring this post and letting me share all my best Canadian baby advice.  And don’t miss the PROMO CODE at the end!

The sun is throwing little slivers of warmth our way, snow banks are shrinking and pedicures are being booked. You can almost smell the spring in the air. Not so fast! This winter might be on it’s way out, but another one will soon be on it’s way in. And your days of breastfeeding on picnic blankets in dappled shade, strolling along city streets for hours on end and changing diapers on park benches will be over.

Getting through a Canadian winter with a baby can be tough. On the one hand, it’s the perfect excuse to hibernate in your warm and cozy home and never, ever face the bitter cold. On the other hand, you will go crazy if you do that. Don’t go crazy.

It’s important to get out of the house, and there are all kinds of brilliant products that will help you do just that. Don’t forget to put these on your “must have” list.

1. Big, fat, snow-climbing stroller tires

If you live in Canada, you really want a stroller with inflatable rubber tires that can ride over the snow fairly easily. (Unless you live in Vancouver, in which case you already know not to talk about your winter weather with other Canadians.) Exactly how heavy-duty your winter stroller has to be depends on how much snow your area gets (and how quickly it gets cleared). Check out a few different models to see which will work best for you.

Image credit via Flickr cc license

2. A stroller cover

For a Canadian winter with baby

Image credit via Flickr cc license

Rain covers for your stroller make equally good windshields and help to keep baby toasty on cold winter walks. If your stroller model has one designed especially to fit, it’s worth getting. Otherwise, a generic, well-ventilated,  stroller cover will also do.

3. An infant car seat cover

Image courtesy well.ca

These are the best. They’re like a winter coat or sleeping bag that fits snuggly over your baby’s car seat, so you don’t have to worry about bundling them up for car trips. Babies are also safer and more secure in their car seats without bulky snowsuits, so win-win.

4. One-piece snow suit or bunting

Image credit via Flickr cc license

But when you do bundle them up for walks, nothing beats a one-snowsuit or bunting bag. Plop ’em in and zip them up. Yes, I wish they made these for adults, too. (Pro tip: Don’t leave your baby lying in the snow.)

5. Itty bitty hats and mitts

Image credit via Flickr cc license

Not only will these help keep baby toasty warm, they’re also some of the sweetest items ever designed. Go ahead and splurge on pretty knits now while they’re still young enough not to lose them.

6. Something extra for their footsies

Image credit via Flickr cc license

Whether it’s hand-knit baby booties made by great-aunt Jane or commercially made boots or slippers, you will need something extra to keep those itty bitty footsies warm on the coldest days.

7. A big-ass coat for baby wearing

Image courtesy dearbornbaby.com

My all-time favourite method of keeping a newborn warm on a cold winter day is simply to wear them and then zip up a giant, old coat around us both. (Baby will still need a hat, obvi.) There are now maternity coats on the market that are actually designed to accommodate baby wearing as well as a pregnant belly. I wish I’d known about those when I was pregnant the first time! You can also borrow or buy a winter coat a couple sizes larger than you usually wear.

8. Easy on and off boots for mom

 

I know many moms swear by those ultra-warm, fur-topped boots that lace halfway up your shins. They look good and keep you warm, after all. But when I’m trying to get out the door with babies and young children, I am all about warm boots you can step in or that zip up easily. Listen to me.

 9. Warm nursing tops

Layering gets tricky when you’re a nursing mom. Banish all pull-over sweaters to the back of your closet for now and make zip-up sweaters and cardigans your best friends. (It may be cold outside, but many indoor spaces are overheated. So you’ll want to be able to peel off layers as necessary.) There are also special nursing tops that provide easy-access opening for breastfeeding while keeping mom nice and warm.

 10. Tickets to The Baby Show

The Baby Show

Honestly, if you are overwhelmed by all the options on the market, The Baby Show in Toronto or Ottawa is one-stop shopping for all the the stuff you’ll need next winter (and some summer stuff too because they are not cruel.) You’ll get great tips on caring for yourself and your baby while scoring big-time on samples and giveaways from both local and national vendors. There’s a full line-up of expert speakers and you get hands-on demos of all kinds of products before deciding what to buy.

Ottawa dates: March 21 & 22  Tickets are $12 at the door ( and kids under 12 are free). SAVE $2 with promo code PGC2015 when you buy online.

Toronto dates: March 28 & 29 Tickets are $15 at the door ( and kids under 12 are free). SAVE $3 with promo code PGC2015 when you buy online.

Use the promo code for yourself, buy tickets for your sister or share it widely. It’s all good.

What am I missing? I’d love to hear about your wintery baby advice in the comments.

 This post is sponsored by The Baby Show. But I’ll take credit for all of the advice ;)

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7 ways you can learn from my Easter hunt mistakes

Thanks to Cadbury for sponsoring this post and reminding me to get my Easter hunt game on.

Believe it or not, we will be emerging from this deep freeze before you know it, ready to celebrate the reawakening of nature and newness of life that is Easter. And we will do that by hiding chocolate eggs that have supposedly been laid by a bunny rabbit all around our homes. It doesn’t have to make sense to be the most fun thing ever! I’ve been at this for nine years now, so learn from my many rookie Easter hunt mistakes and let the games begin.

1. Draw some boundaries.

Image credit via Flickr cc license.

 Remember that the goal of an Easter egg hunt is not to stump your kids and trash your house. Limit the area where the eggs will be hidden to a couple common rooms (we do living room, dining room and front hall) and your life will be vastly improved.

2. Know those suckers can melt.

Image credit via Flickr cc license.

 My favourite childhood memory is when we celebrated Easter morning in a hotel room and then continued on our road trip the next day and left all the chocolate in the car and it all melted into soupy puddles. Wait, no, that was horrible! Chocolate left near the window, heating vents or heat-emitting electronics can also cause melt downs. Be warned.

3. Age appropriate hiding spots are where it’s at.

Beside a chair leg or on a lower shelf is a FANTASTIC hiding spot for a toddler or preschooler. As kids get older, you can put the eggs in harder to find places. (With limits! No rummaging through the china cabinet!) And make sure you tell older kids to leave the easy-to-find eggs for their little sibs.

4. Give them something to put those eggs in.

Image credit via Flickr cc license.
We always leave a mostly empty basket with a chocolate bunny or two and a (gasp) non-chocolate gift from the Easter bunny. This means each kid gets to collect and keep her own eggs and eat them at her own pace. (Note to kids: If you wait too long, your siblings will finish their stash and then turn around on feast on yours too. I promise this will happen.)

5. REMEMBER where you hid them.


Image credit via Flickr cc license.

Don’t outsmart yourselves, parents, or you’ll be feeding Cadbury Dairy Milk to ants and mice and those pests deserve nothing more than old toast crumbs. Do you hear me, ants? No Dairy Milk for you!

6. Don’t wait until the last minute.

Image credit via Flickr cc.

Learn from my mistakes on this one, especially. Last year I had to go to no less than four different stores to find what I needed for Easter chocolate. This also meant I spent WAY more than what I would have otherwise and had to settle for whatever subpar chocolate was left on the shelf. I’m still upset about it.

7. Quality control

easter egg quality control

And, really, this is just another reason to stock up in plenty of time. You know those rumours about how Cadbury changed the Cream Egg recipe? While it’s true that the recipe in Canada didn’t change at all, I wanted to be extra sure. After a *ahem* generous sample size, I can assure you that they are just as good as ever. But you’ll probably want to try for yourself. I get that. Now on to finding out how good the Mini Eggs are this year.

This post was brought to you by Cadbury, however the images selected and opinions are my own. For more information please visit https://www.facebook.com/CadburyCremeEggCanada.

 

 

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I had no idea the Ontario College of Teachers was such a great resource for parents

This post is sponsored by the Ontario College of Teachers. Thank you, teachers!

On the first day of school, each September, crowds of parents and children gather in the schoolyard. At our school, they shuffle along, peering at class lists taped to the brick wall until they find their child’s name.

They breathe a collective sigh of relief. They are in the right spot. The child has found her class.

But it only lasts a moment.

“What have you heard about her?” they whisper to one another. Well, Isabella’s sister had her two years ago and there was a lot of homework. But Max’s mom says she heard that the kids really learn their stuff in her class.

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Autism is only one small part of the anti-vaccination story. It’s time we looked past it.

more to anti-vax movement than autism
Photo credit via Flickr cc license.

This is not a post about the relative merits of vaccinating versus not vaccinating your children. That question is not up for debate.

Throughout history, populations have been decimated by new viruses introduced by explorers and settlers from abroad. Entire tribes of Native people were wiped out after European contact with the Americas. And even where exposure to a disease had already been established, epidemic viral outbreaks continued to wreak havoc on large numbers of people throughout the world.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could somehow protect ourselves? Somehow build up immunity against those viruses without actually contracting them? If only there were some sort of shot that could magically protect us from the ravages of disease.

It turns out that we didn’t need magic because we have science. Vaccines have worked to prevent the spread of disease wherever they have been widely adopted. They have worked so well, in fact, that many of the diseases we are immunized against haven’t been seen for generations.

As medical science continued to develop more and better vaccines, parents happily vaccinated their children against more and more illnesses. Until now.

* * *

Suddenly, within the past 10 or 15 years, vaccination rates steadily began to drop.

Don’t get me wrong; there have always been outliers. There are religious communities like the Amish and Christian Science that largely don’t believe in vaccines or modern medicine. There are other fringe communities and individuals who are distrustful of the establishment in general and opt out of standard medical treatment like vaccines for various reasons.

But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about a significant number of mainstream parents, many of whom are well-educated, who decided to either forego or significantly delay vaccinating their children. (These parents may be into “alternative” health practices and lifestyles, but they live in urban centres, hold down jobs and send their kids to public schools. They are alternative like Nirvana was alternative.)

I want to know why.

The prevailing theory is that a widely publicized (and since discredited) study that was published by the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, linked the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella) to autism and caused widespread fear and distrust of that vaccine and vaccines in general. This is also the Jenny McCarthy theory of vaccine denial since she was an early advocate of the so-called link between vaccines and autism.

But I’m not so sure. Certainly, the suggestion that vaccines could trigger autism in some people gave many parents pause. And I can absolutely understand how a parent who has a child who suddenly begins to show symptoms of autism after receiving a vaccination could want to believe that theory. Still, I’ve known enough people who haven’t vaccinated their children to wonder if that wasn’t an oversimplification.

The autism theory, in other words, is one part of the story, but I think there’s more to it than that.

I think the rising popularity of natural childbirth throughout the ’90s and 2000s fostered distrust of the medical establishment and, at the same time, sowed the idea that we should be the ones making medical choices for ourselves and our children — and all those choices should be equally respected. The internet further facilitated the democratization of medicine as every lay man and woman decided they could interpret the science for themselves, thankyouverymuch. And, finally, I think the medical establishment itself was extremely slow to respond to these sea changes in a meaningful way.

* * *

Continue reading “Autism is only one small part of the anti-vaccination story. It’s time we looked past it.”
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Everything you ever wanted to know about my cleaning habits and more

Thanks to Oxiclean for sponsoring this post and keeping my kids in clean shirts.

How to keep uniform shirts white?

 So how do I keep those shirts looking this good at the end of the year?

Let me tell you a story about the day I found out my son’s school was introducing a uniform. Oh, it was quite the day. I laughed, I cried, I wondered how in the world am I going to keep a four-year-old boy’s white shirt white?

I wasn’t going to, was the answer. I didn’t even come close. The uniform calls for either white or navy tops and after all the white shirts came out of the dryer with faded stains and a general dinginess, I wound up replacing most of them with navy blue ones. It was just a safer bet.

Then my daughter started school and a friend passed down some uniform clothes her girls had outgrown. There were sharp navy jumpers, nice cardigans, and BRIGHT, WHITE shirts.

“How on earth did you keep the white shirts so crisp and white?” I asked.

“OxiClean,” she said.

“Oh,” I said.

And then I went out and bought some.

It’s kind of like magic. I just toss a scoop or two into the barrel of the front-loading washing machine before adding a load of white, then add detergent and launder the clothes as usual. Okay, fine, I usually forget to add the scoop first and then wind up crouched down on the floor with half a load of dirty clothes on my lap while I scoop the OxiClean Versatile Stain Remover Powder under the remaining clothes and that method ALSO WORKS.

I have begun buying white shirts to add a little variety to my children’s navy on navy wardrobe and, thanks to the wonder of OxiClean, I even have some to hand down to my baby who is starting kindergarten next year. (How did that happen?!) White shirts, worn by actual children, are good enough to hand down. Can you even believe it?

But that is not all. No, that is not all.

Continue reading “Everything you ever wanted to know about my cleaning habits and more”

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Of course new moms take everything personally

This card popped up in my Facebook feed last week.

I promise to never offer unsolicited parenting advice

Yeah okay sure, I thought. I remember what it’s like to have your first baby. I remember when any piece of well-meaning advice, any tidbit of info, felt like a sneering admonishment. I remember how I absorbed all and any criticism or suggestion into the very core of my insecure, sleep-deprived psyche where it would echo for weeks to come, feeding my bottomless anxiety.

So that is a good promise to make. And well-meaning intruders advisers really would be wise to think twice before offering up unsolicited tips to a new mother.

But, come on. That’s not going to happen. The world is full of judgmental busybodies. And even people who really mean no harm can accidentally say something that strikes a nerve with new parents. I’m sure I’m guilty of doing that myself.

A commercial for Similac is also making the rounds this week. It shows all the stereotypical mom types hanging out in cliques at the park like some sort of “back to high school” nightmare. There’s the breastfeeding moms, the formula feeding moms, the baby wearers, the yoga/fitness moms, the working moms and the stay-at-home dads. Then a baby carriage starts rolling down a hill and everybody chases after it with nothing but love and concern in their hearts because we’re all parents first, you see. Brought to you by the Similac Sisterhood of Motherhood.

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Stuff I’m Digging: TSO Young People’s Concert Pianorama

TSO Pianorama

I’m a big fan of the Toronto Symphany Orchestra’s Young People’s Concert series. This series is aimed for kids 5 to 12 and is a fun way to introduce children to music beyond Taylor Swift.

The upcoming Pianorama concert sounds like the perfect way to spend a wintery Saturday afternoon. It  features superstar pianist Emanuel Ax and young pianists from around Toronto. The 15 different piano players will trade off between movements, round robin style,  as they perform playful pieces, such as Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and The Carnival of the Animals.

There will also be special appearances, via video, from the Toronto Zoo and activities put on by the Toronto Zoo in the lobby 30 minutes prior to each concert.

February 7 at 2pm and 4pm
Roy Thomson Hall 60 Simcoe Street
http://www.tso.ca/en-ca/concerts-and-tickets/2014-2015-Season/EventDetails/Pianorama.aspx
$20-$32
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Not everyone’s excited about kids riding free on the TTC. Here’s why we should be.

ttc streetcar

Image credit

The new mayor of Toronto, John Tory, [insert Rob Ford tribute video] just announced a huge increase in public transit spending and service that includes every-ten-minutes-or-better service, 50 new buses, four new express lines, 11 new 24-hour lines (!) and FREE TTC rides for kids 12 and under. And, oh yeah, the price of fares is going up by 10 cents like it does every so often anyway.

How awesome is that? People were going to be stoked. I just knew it. I could hardly wait to jump onto Twitter and see all the buzz.

Good point, I guess providing services to your citizens is pandering. I never thought of it that way before.

Me too! WAIT A SECOND … do I sense a touch of sarcasm there? Good thing we force them to go to school most of the time or goodness knows where kids might turn up.

Lemme do my best this guy impression: Are you giving CHILDREN free rides on the SUBWAY?! That’s it, I’m out of here. Cannot deal.

Well, that’s just mean.

Another guy insisted that his four children don’t have to ride for free and everybody else shouldn’t have to be subsidizing them. Well, good for you. I’m glad you can fork over the kiddie fare for the one time a year you take the subway to the Santa Parade. I know single moms who take the TTC halfway across the city every single day to bring their children to daycare that say otherwise.

Finally, one guy just wanted to know where he could get a fake id that says he’s 12. Now THAT is the spirit.

Continue reading “Not everyone’s excited about kids riding free on the TTC. Here’s why we should be.”
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Sometimes breaking the news of a pregnancy is really sweet. Sometimes it isn’t.

A Bun In The Oven and other horror stories There’s this sweet video of a young couple in a photo booth that’s been making the rounds. The man thinks he’s just there to snap some pictures and then the woman holds up a newborn hat with the word “baby” on it. He gets all weepy and there’s a lot of hugging (and it does go on, to be honest), and it’s clear that he is overwhelmed with joy and love.

Like I said, it’s a sweet video. Here it is in case you like that sort of thing.

It reminds me of the first time I told my husband I was pregnant.

I put a solitary bun in the oven before we sat down to eat. Then, during dinner, I exclaimed that I forgot something in the oven. Could he go get it?

He walked over, opened the oven door, took out the bun and placed it on the table without saying a word.

“It’s a bun in the oven,” I said.

“Yeah, I can see that,” he said. “I’m going for a walk.”

Then he left the apartment.

It was almost the same!

(Which goes to show you that you can be surprised, confused and even upset upon learning about a pregnancy and then go on to be a fantastic parent.)

Okay, let’s have them. What are your best “breaking the pregnancy” stories? You can share in the comments, on Facebook, Twitter or leave a link to your own blog. Whatever. It’s just for fun.