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Hooked on screens

Original image credit.

“Kids? Guys? We have to get dressed for school! Where are you?”

I stumbled down the hall, looking into their rooms. Only Mary needed to be rescued from her crib and as I helped her use the toilet I could hear the familiar SQUEEEE SQUAWK CRASH of Angry Birds SomethingOrOther being played in the living room.

“What are you doing!? Are you even dressed?! It’s a school day. You don’t wake up and turn on the tablet!”

Some days I think we’re doing all right on the excessive media and screen time front and other days I’m not so sure.

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I kicked yesterday’s ass. What’s your excuse?

I’m sure many of you have seen the inspirational fitness picture that has half the internet in a uproar by now. Fitness entrepreneur Maria Kang is posed in a bikini top and barely-there shorts with her three young sons looking more fit than most of us can ever dream to be. Sorry, it’s not that I’m offended. It’s just that if looking like that were my fitness goal I’d likely find myself basking on a mountain of cream puffs instead.

But some people are upset. They think the poster is a form of fat shaming and the message that Maria is sending out is that we could all look like that if we would just stopping making excuses for ourselves. I’m inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she set out to inspire and motivate mothers who really do want to look and feel better about themselves. The “What’s your excuse?” line is directed at those of us who do make excuses and not those of us who are happy with our slightly less than She-Ra-esque bodies.

That said, I can see why some people might take offense. It is ridiculous to suggest that anyone should look like Maria after having three babies in four years. That’s especially true if working out and being fit is not part of your greater career aspirations.

So I really hope nobody feels belittled by the following pictures. I was simply inspired to celebrate my own day-to-day accomplishments and thought I should share them with you so that you can be motivated in turn. I’m not shaming you for accomplishing less than me, I’m just showing you what’s possible.

 

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Those are not the ABCs I had in mind

QSP incentives have to stop

He poured off the school bus and loped toward us with a goofy grin. He already had one hand in his backpack and was pulling out a folded up flyer. Oh no, I thought, here it comes.

It’s prime fundraising season for schools, which I completely understand and support. A variety of fundraising efforts are rolled out right in September and it can start to feel a bit much for the average family. (Didn’t I just send in a cheque for $100 for pizza days for the year?) But I get it. Come at us now, before the holidays hit, and then again in the spring. It makes sense. The school uses that money to enrich our children’s learning experience. Of course we will give what we can.

But hard-selling gymnasiums full of children on the dire importance of hocking magazine subscriptions needs to stop.

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Making hockey fit

This post is part of YummyMummyClub.ca and Dodge Grand Caravan’s ”Tales from the Minivan” program. I received compensation as a thank you for my participation. This post reflects my personal opinion about the information provided by the sponsors.

There was freshly fallen snow that I didn’t take into account when I decided to walk the girls to Colum’s hockey game.

“You guys go ahead,” I croaked, standing over the coffee maker in my pajamas. “We’ll walk over in a little bit to catch the end of the game and then maybe we can go out for brunch.”

It must have been an 8:30am game time because I don’t even bother with the 7am games at all. Sorry kids. My love knows no limits but my tolerance for frigid hockey arenas on cold winter mornings is about as high as my expectation of ever seeing the Leaf’s win the Stanley Cup in my lifetime. That is to say, low.

So I let the guys go ahead and took my time getting the rest of us dressed and getting myself sufficiently caffeinated. All bundled up, I strapped the girls into the sit and stand-style double stroller and pushed it right into a snow drift in the back lane.

?#@*&%!

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Time-sensitive notification. Open at once.

Last week I got what looked like a summons for jury duty. It’s actually, like, a pre-summons to determine if I’m eligible to serve, but same difference. My initial reaction was to scoff. I have three kids to care for from 11am on, every day, not to mention that I’m a self-employed freelancer. Nobody’s going to pay me for work I don’t do, civic duty or no civic duty.

I’d be able to get out of this, for sure. Right? Right?! I decided to look into it some more.

Twitter, no faster than Google and somewhat less reliable. I should be in advertising.

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Summertime unplugged

Big thanks to Foresters for sponsoring this post and inspiring this summer.

What would you do if you had to give up tech for a summer?

Don’t panic! Let’s make this easier.

What would you do if your whole family pledged to give up all tech for an hour a day all summer? I was, let’s say, cautiously optimistic when we took the Tech Timeout Challenge by life insurance provider Foresters back in June. My kids were downright panic stricken, to be completely honest. They think an hour is half an eternity. Oh to be young again. I was a little worried, however, about how we’d cope without using the TV or our phones, tablets or laptops even momentarily on a daily basis. We’d never really tried to be that unplugged before.

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How I spent my summer vacation: At the beach.

We didn’t travel to Europe or the Grand Canyon or the Galapagos Islands this summer. We didn’t even make it as far as Montreal. But we did get to spend a bit of time shuffling around as a family for pretty much the first time ever. This is the first year since 2006 in which we haven’t had a baby, moved house or written a book, so we were able to use at least a couple vacation days actually, er, vacationing. I know!

And while I’d be quite happy to never again have another baby or move house, there is a little beach-side cottage at Crystal Beach that I can totally see writing a book in. Well, I could if my children ever learn to swim and I no longer have to hover over them in knee-deep water. Also, if the beach cottage is air conditioned which it probably isn’t.

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How I spent my summer vacation: At The Ex

I took a week off there, didya notice? But now I’m back and in the time-honoured tradition of the first essay of the school year, I declare this to be “How I spent my summer vacation,” week on the blog. I even did you up a special little badge. How do you like me now?

This story really starts when I was about two-and-half-years old, however. My parents brought me to the grand, old Crystal Beach amusement park that has since closed down. I don’t remember this trip at all, but my dad tells me I had been clamouring to ride the Ferris wheel all day. We finally boarded the Ferris wheel — my heavily pregnant mother, my father and I — in the evening and I was incredibly excited. As the Ferris wheel turned, and stopped, and let on more people, and turned and stopped again, it rose higher and higher. My excitement gave way to apprehension and then, being newly toilet trained, I pooed my pants.

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It was a good visit

I was slouching on the park bench with a large coffee and my phone in hand. The kids were scattered around the playground that was splayed out before me, not needing my attention in the slightest. I was about to check my email and catch up with Twitter when a woman and her daughter walked toward me. I knew them from when Colum was in nursery school, just over three years ago. I wouldn’t have recognized the daughter in a million years and the kids didn’t remember each other at all, but us moms hadn’t aged a bit. Funny how that works.

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Vaughan Mills on Foot

I left Colum at Legoland for a birthday party and strode forth into the mall. My purse was slung over one shoulder and I hoisted my laptop on one hip, figuring I’d walk around for a bit before settling down with a coffee and my computer. That’s when I saw the sign: Aldo Outlet Sale Up to 70% Off. I was going to need to buy myself shoes at some point. Not taking advantage of the sale would be pretty irresponsible.

I gave my best guestimate of my bank balance, deducted the sum of bills that possibly, maybe would be automatically withdrawn at any point and then decided I should probably deposit the two cheques I’d been carrying around for several days before buying any shoes, sale or no sale. The mall directory didn’t list any banks at all, so I stopped at an information kiosk.

“Is there a TD Bank in this mall?”

“There’s one outside Entry One and past the plaza on the north side of the mall. It’s just over by the Boston Pizza.”

“Oh, great. So I walk this way to get to Entry One?”

The mall guy looked at me. “Aren’t you going to drive?”

“Oh,” I said. “Should I drive?”

“Well, you’d have to walk all the way through the mall. Then you’d have to cross the parking lot. And then,” he squinted from the excursion involved in imagining such a walk, “you’d have to cross the … and then the plaza … and the other parking lot … So, yeah. I think you probably want to drive.”

I’d only ever been to Vaughan Mills incidentally before. Once we went to a media preview of Legoland and once we stopped for lunch at one of it’s satellite plazas after visiting Reptilia. It’s a Goliath of a mall, just built in 2004 on a large swath of farm land (if childhood memories of trips to Canada’s Wonderland serve me right). Billed as “Canada’s premier outlet destination,” it’s basically a very large, egg-shaped mall surrounded by an enormous moat of a parking lot. Then there are further rings of plazas and suburban box-style shopping undulating out in all directions. It’s big on parking, short on sidewalks.

I had started back toward my car when I thought, “Screw it.” I wanted to walk. I had three hours to myself and it was a beautiful summer day and, besides, I had a sweet parking spot near Legoland that I didn’t want to give up. How bad could it be?

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