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It’s December 1st and I didn’t do a thing

advent-calendar

I knew that it was Thursday, December 1st this morning. I remembered that meant Ed would be gone for his weekly radio panel before we woke up and I’d have to manage the morning hustle on my own. I even remembered that one kid has a field trip today and that tomorrow is a PA Day, so I should plan to pack as much into this school day as possible. And even though one daughter came down in bare legs — in Canada — in December — and I had to dash upstairs to grab leggings and then braid her hair while she was eating her cereal, we still managed to catch the bus.

I returned home a rock star. Put on the coffee and serve it hot because mama is going to own this day.

Then I logged onto Facebook and was bombarded by pictures of elves hanging out on kitchen counters or in Christmas trees and of gap-toothed kids grinning with pure joy as they opened the first door of their advent calendars.

Huh.

Are we all supposed to be celebrating advent, like, every year now? Because the only acknowledgement we’ve had of Christmas’ approach in this house is when I yelled at my kids to stop opening up the decorations because we weren’t ready to get them out yet. And to be honest, I have to yell at them to leave the xmas ornaments alone all year round.

Like, it’s FINE. I get why the Elf on the Shelf thing is fun for people. We don’t do it mainly because I hadn’t ever heard of it before a few years ago and I didn’t see the need for starting a new tradition. So it’s basically laziness. And I guess I’ve gotten a cheapo advent calendar some years. Sure, I dig countdowns. But I didn’t realize celebrating advent was a thing that so many people do.

I guess I always thought of advent as mostly a church holiday. Like, the priest wears purple robes or something (I’m not even going to google this to see if I’m right) and there’s an advent wreath with four candles and each Sunday a new one gets lit. It’s a time of joyous anticipation of the birth of baby Jesus. If I should ever find myself attending mass in December (hey, it can happen!), then I’m all, “Oh, yeah, Advent. I remember that.”

I know that advent calendars are nothing new. My mom would also pick up a cheap one every once in a while (but not every year!) during my childhood. I simply didn’t realize just how secularized and widespread this season of waiting … for Santa, I guess … had become.

For the record, I have zero problem with religious holiday traditions becoming secularized and embraced widely by whoever want to participate. That’s great. But when did this happen? Has it always been this way? Did you all grow up with advent calendars and elves? Where have I been living?

I almost feel like I should run out and pick up an advent calendar for my three kids to fight over because I am certainly not buying three of them. Or maybe I’ll just grab a bag of Hershey’s Kisses or something and hand them out as I cross days off the regular, old kitchen calendar. That works too, right?

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Raising kids in apartments. It’s going to be okay.

pregnant millennial apartment

Image credit.

It’s going to be okay, millennials. I know. I get it. The price of houses in this city continues to sky rocket, putting your dream of owning a home ever further out of reach as your biological clock marches ceaselessly on. It’s getting to the point where you might actually need to have your kids in apartments. Gosh, you might not even have a proper nursery.

The federal government of Canada has been all over the news this week because they are going to make it a little tougher to qualify for a mortgage. Basically, they want to make sure people can afford to carry their mortgage plus a little more in case interest rates go up. The government is scared to death that our housing bubble is going to burst and our entire economy will go belly up and countless people will lose their homes. So, okay, fair enough then. Let’s try to prevent that.

A recent CBC article on the new mortgage guidelines quotes millennial financial planner Shannon Lee Simmons as saying, “We are all going to be raising babies in apartments. That’s what it’s going to come down to.” That grim, eh? To be fair, Simmons goes on to say, “An infant doesn’t care if they are in an apartment. We care if they are in an apartment. But an infant doesn’t care.”

It’s true. An infant doesn’t care and neither does a child — unless they are told that there’s something wrong with living in an apartment. So let me reassure you. There’s nothing wrong with raising kids in apartments.

I lived with my own parents and three siblings in a two-bedroom bungalow in Toronto, a roomy four-bedroom house in Halifax, a three-bedroom railroad-style apartment in the Bronx, and a large three-story detached home back in Toronto. I myself have lived with babies (and then children) in a large one-bedroom loft sublet, a one and a half-bedroom converted store-front apartment, a big two-bedroom apartment, and finally a three-bedroom semi-detached house that we own. I walk the walk when it comes to living different places with kids.

Here’s why it’s going to be okay:

  1. Remember that a small house is just like an apartment except more yard work. We have significantly less storage in our house than we had in our last apartment.
  2. Yards are over rated. Did I mention the yard work? When you have little kids parks are where it’s at anyway. They get you out of the house and talking to people in your neighbourhood. They foster a sense of community. They have playgrounds! Duh.
  3. The thrill of ownership will eventually wear off and then you realize that the bank actually owns your house and won’t do a thing about the upstairs bathroom. It sucks when your furnace stops working in the middle of a snow storm. It sucks even more when you have to find the money to replace it.
  4. People have been raising families in apartments forever. So while there’s nothing wrong with your idyllic dreams of, er, backyards, basements, and no more elevator small talk, those are not prerequisites to a happy and fulfilling life. In a city like New York almost everybody, rich or poor, lives in apartments. In a city like Toronto where 41% of all households lived in a high-rise apartment in 2011, it’s still pretty freaking common.
  5. One-level living is the best when you have a toddler. I honestly didn’t even own a baby gate until the third baby came along in a house with stairs. And getting up at night to feed the baby is much easier when the crib is crammed into the corner between your dresser and the wall.

There is one downfall to renting with kids in this market, though. It’s the main reason we made finding (quite truly) the last affordable house in Toronto our priority six years ago. That downfall is housing security. I’ve known many young families in Vancouver and Toronto who have been evicted from their home so the owners can either renovate (and then jack up the rent) or sell. It’s a hassle at the best of times, but when you have kids settled into a good school with close friends and neighbourhood activities, it becomes a nightmare. Add to that ever-rising rents and families often have to either pay through the nose to stay in their area or uproot everyone.

So, yes, it’s fine to have a family in an apartment. It’s great! But I would avoid apartments in converted houses where the risk of eviction is the highest. Apartment buildings are a solid bet. Buying a condo (the biggest you can afford) is another option. And working out some sort of co-ownership of a multi-unit house is yet another route I bet we see more and more people taking.

I just hope we can achieve some sort of soft landing to this real estate madness or saving for a house will be the least of anyone’s concerns.

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If the pill is linked to depression, I raise you motherhood

Hot off the presses! A new study has been released that could vindicate social conservatives’ long-standing distrust of birth control for teens. The study shows that hormonal birth control does, indeed, increase the risk of depression. Some pills are worse than others and the patch is worse yet. Teens are the hardest hit demographic here. Those taking the pill are 80% more likely to also be taking antidepressants than their non-pill-taking counterparts. The study was published in the JAMA Psychiatry journal and IFLScience has a pretty clear breakdown of the results.

But before we all go running around in a tizzy, I’d like to take a moment to remind everyone that MOTHERHOOD IS ALSO A RISK FACTOR FOR DEPRESSION.

Motherhood is also a risk factor for depression

Remember, if teen girls on the pill are 80% more likely to also take antidepressants that does not mean that 80% of teen girls on the pill are on antidepressants. It simply means that if one non-pill-taking teen out of 10,257 (if I’m interpreting these numbers correctly) has been prescribed antidepressants, then 1.8 teens who are on the pill will be prescribed antidepressants.

I certainly don’t want to belittle teenage depression. A staggering “12% of female youth, age 12 to 19, have experienced a major depressive episode,” according to the Canadian Mental Health Association. That’s huge. That’s truly a big number.

It is so big that it almost matches the 13% of pregnant women and new mothers who have depression.

In fact, if you look at the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention’s list of risk factors for women and depression (that I’ve included below) (ahem, emphasis mine), it is clear that motherhood and depression are closely linked. In fact, getting pregnant in itself would make any woman vulnerable to these risks.

Risk Factors for Depression

Experiences that may put some women at a higher risk for depression include

  • Stress.
  • Low social support.
  • Difficulty getting pregnant.
  • Being a mom to multiples, like twins, or triplets.
  • Losing a baby.
  • Being a teen mom. !!! 
  • Preterm (before 37 weeks) labor and delivery.
  • Having a baby with a birth defect or disability.
  • Pregnancy and birth complications.
  • Having a baby or infant who has been hospitalized.

Depression can also occur among women with a healthy pregnancy and birth.

So before anyone starts begrudging girls their birth control, for their own good, let’s make sure we’ve taken a good, hard look at the alternative. If robust mental health is the goal, then you can make the case that the pill protects against both motherhood and depression.

This is not to say that your birth control isn’t responsible for your crappy mood or that women with depression shouldn’t consider whether hormonal birth control is the best bet for them. As Holly Grigg-Spall says, writing for The Guardian, “I initially felt elated to read this study. Not just for myself, but for the hundreds of women I’ve interviewed over the years. Mood changes are one of the top reasons many women discontinue using the pill within the first year.” Every woman is keenly aware of the relationship between her hormones and her mood (for lack of a better word) and anxiety levels.

More power to women to make informed choices about their own reproductive health. I just don’t want to see this study leveraged the other way, against the youngest and most vulnerable among us.

 

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Schools should stay out of our lunch boxes

schools lunch rules

Step away from the pretzels, lady.

Oh schools, how do you overstep? Let me count the ways. There’s this modern-day obsession with indoor shoes that mandates parents buy two pairs of runners for each child, of course. There’s the near-constant monitoring of the clothes our daughters wear. And, of course, there are the de rigueur scolding letters that admonish parents to pack nutritious and litterless lunches.

The latest imposition by a school administration comes to us from Durham Region, a Toronto suburb. A story about parents whose children have had food confiscated by teachers was originally reported by the Durham Region News and republished yesterday by the Toronto Star. Parents claim that a range of snacks and lunch items including chocolate chip granola bars, leftover pizza, and even crackers with cheese and kielbasa have been deemed unhealthy and taken away from children.

Can you even believe it? Sadly, I can. My kids have never had their snacks taken from them, but they have been subject to rules about what they can eat when. “Please, mama, don’t send me that granola bar for morning snack,” my daughter begged one year, “We aren’t allowed to have them until later in the day.” They’ve also been made to feel bad about enjoying a handful of Goldfish crackers at school or at home because a teacher called them junk food. It’s a tough line to walk — the one that separates teaching children about healthy eating from shaming them — and more than a few teachers have misstepped.

But health is the new religion and nutrition is it’s morality. The purity of the children must be upheld! It’s one thing for me to eat a Big Mac and a Twinkie (though still despicable — craft beer and indie doughnuts much more acceptable), but to feed my innocent children McDonald’s!? Send them to school with *gasp* a store-bought baked good? That is to rob them of their innocence and to send them down a dark road with an uncertain BMI at the end.

Even though kids should, of course, eat healthy food, banning snack foods for not being wholesome enough is out of bounds. For one, the teacher has no idea what the child eats outside of school. Pretty much the only processed and prepackaged foods my children ever get are occasional school snacks. I cook from-scratch meals that are chock-full of vegetables and whole grains nearly every night. They are also active kids who play sports year round and enjoy all kinds of healthy foods. One daughter would love nothing more than for me to pack seaweed, all-natural sauerkraut, and veggie pita pockets every day. Except those are not enough calories for her! So I sometimes throw in a granola bar or even a rice krispie treat and call it a day.

Those prepackaged snack foods are convenient and when you are trying to juggle a million different priorities as a parent sometimes having the Costco-sized box of banana bread, granola bars, or “real fruit” gummies is the only thing keeping the train on the tracks. I work from home part-time and all three of my kids are in school all day and I still cannot get by without store-bought snacks. Did I mention that I cook from-scratch meals nearly every night? That my kids are active in sports and extra curriculars? That I do have to spend some hours working? Right, so forgive me if I didn’t get a chance to squeeze my weekly baking in, too. Now let’s imagine I work full-time or that I am a single parent with an inflexible work schedule who is doing her best to pack her children lunch.  It is impossible and downright unacceptable for anyone to tell an attentive and caring parent which choices they need to make.

Every single parent whose child had food confiscated had packed them a lunch. They had gone to the store and purchased food for their children. Then they had taken the time to pack the food into a lunch box so their child would have enough fuel to get through the day. THERE ARE CHILDREN WHO HAVE NO LUNCH. There are hungry children who are sent to school on an empty stomach without any lunch whatsoever. Please, for the love god, let’s save the so-called healthy replacement food for them.

And if there’s any better way to ensure children grow up to have unhealthy relationships with food than singling them out in front of everyone, shaming them about the food they brought, and then taking that food away from them, I don’t know what it is.

But, but, but … I know. I know what you’re going to say. But what about childhood obesity? Don’t we have to do something about that? Maybe. But this isn’t the answer.

Perhaps we should let the schools provide the healthy snacks. We’ll give the school boards the equivalent budget and time allowance that a single parent has. The school staff can take the bus to the supermarket in February, knowing that they need enough food to last for at least two weeks, until the next pay day. They can stand in the aisles weighing the cost and shelf-life of fresh produce and unsweetened, protein-rich Greek yogurt against shelf-stable snacks like granola bars. They can worry about spending money on food that the kids won’t eat and how that means they’ll need even more food later and where is the money to pay for that food going to come from? They can stand in the granola bar aisle and look at the dizzying array of options . . . that all contain nuts. Then they can decide whether they want to buy the chocolate chip granola bar or go with the jam-filled Nutrigrain bars for a change.

Then, when they get back to the school after making sure the students have at least something to snack on, let’s just hope some busy-body doesn’t take the food away from them.

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Is five the magic number?

Five magic number

So I have this one kid who just doesn’t care about what anybody else says, she’s going to do her own thing.

She loves all animals, real and make believe. She loves tiny little toys with smiling faces, especially if they are her favouite foods. Ice cream cones with faces make her beam with joy. She’s crazy about minions despite (or because of) never having seen any of their movies. She’s always cutting things out and at age five has better fine motor dexterity than many adults. She has a great sense of humour (I mean, she laughs at my jokes) and boundless energy for running and climbing and tumbling.

She is a true delight and I am proud of her head-strong determination. Except not when we’re trying to get dressed in the morning. Or get our shoes and coats on. Or get in the car. Or when I’m called in for a meeting with the vice principal because she just won’t listen and the teachers are worried about keeping her and the other children safe. And certainly not when she gets out of bed for the thirteenth time right when I finally sit down to watch Stranger Things.

Just this past summer a camp counselor called me because she had to be carried out of the pool and refused to get changed out of her swim suit. “So let her keep it on,” was my solution because I have learned not to pick any battles when it comes to that kid.

But now (knock on all the wood) she seems to have turned a corner. She has decided to start listening. She has decided that she wants to cooperate and, I think, she is better able to break away from whatever she is engaged with in order to do that.

I lay out her clothes in the morning and she is the first one out of bed, dressed, and downstairs for breakfast. Last year, we had to chase her around the living room with her school pants.

Both her teacher and her lunch monitor at school tell me that she’s like a whole other kid. Last year they needed to let her do her own thing and this year she actually participates.

And then, last night, we had a very quick visit with my parents. When it was time to leave, I said very calmly, “Okay, we have to go get your sister now, so you need to put your toys away.” Immediately, she cleaned up all the toys, put them back, and then proceeded to get her shoes on.

I’m standing here blinking because I can’t quite believe this is the same kid.

I’m sure she still has a defiant streak somewhere deep down (and, honestly, that’s a good thing), but this turnaround means that routine transitions no longer have to be a battle. It means, really, that those early parenting years are behind me. And after ten years of wrestling kids into snow pants, I am more than ready.

All I ask is a for a small little break before we hit the tween years.

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I’m mourning the end of punk. On kids and hair dye and moms and tattoos.

kid mohawk temper tantrum

Image source.

I’ve started to see more and more little kids with all kinds of fun hair colours: green, blue, purple, you name it. It’s not just hair colour either. There are also boys with mohawks and little girls with their sides shaved wearing all kinds of punk-band t-shirts and high-top Chuck Taylors (and, okay, so those are adorable on little kids.)

Yesterday I read a post on Brit + Co written by my friend Kat Armstrong about why she let her five-year-old bleach his dark brown hair and then dye it green. She talks about giving him control over his own body, learning about natural consequence, and fostering independence and confidence.

Yeah, okay, fine. I think her kid looks great. I have zero problems with other parents letting their kids do whatever they want with their hair and clothes.

I just feel bad for the teenagers.

No, really, I do! And that’s why I would try to discourage my kids from experimenting like that right now. Because when I was sixteen I had blue and green streaks in my hair and wore combat boots and punk-band t-shirts and, honestly, I felt pretty bad-ass. It wasn’t just about fashion. It wasn’t even simply about self-expression. It was a (completely harmless, let’s be real) way for me to flex my teen rebel muscles and tell mainstream society to screw off.

So what’s a disgruntled teen to do now? When there are kids in grade school rocking purple mohawks is it even cool anymore? It’s certainly not particularly bold or defiant. You know what it is? It’s just fashion. That’s all. Plain and simple. Punk fashion that’s packaged and marketed and sold back to us as though it were our own idea. It’s downright anti-punk.

I even thought about dying my own hair some fun colours a while ago. Maybe some streaks or just something bright on the ends? Except I thought back to my teen self and thought, eh, what do I have to prove? It wouldn’t prove anything, of course. Nobody would blink an eye. It’s just a fashion trend.

I mean, god, even tattoos are just fashion now. Who doesn’t have a tattoo? (Well, me. Because I’m rebellious like that.) Do you even know how many 40-something, minivan-driving moms I know who have gotten a tattoo for the first time in the past few years? So many! And, of course, good for them. There are some gorgeous works of art and deeply felt personal symbols out there and I love to admire them. But you gotta admit it makes getting a tattoo decidedly less edgy.

So clearly that ship has sailed. When little kids are sporting green spikes and you’re as likely to run into your mom at the tattoo parlour as you are the beauty salon, you know it’s too late to do anything about it. Mainstream culture has completely and utterly co-opted the punk aesthetic and it is a driving commercial force.

“All these young people are going to be lining up for tattoo removals,” they said in the ’90s. Nah. They just keep getting more. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Everyone’s doing it, after all.

But I guess I’m old fashioned like that. I’m going to tell my kids that if they want to dye their hair, they’ll have to wait until they are old enough to go behind my back and do it anyway. That’s how it was when I was a kid.

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Lesson 545: Don’t engage in discussions about poo

“Come on now. Lie back down. You need to get enough rest for school tomorrow.”

“I hate school days! They’re made of poo.”

“But maybe it’s beautiful sunshine-y poo.”

“Wouldn’t that make it burning poo?” came the question from the top bunk.

“Burning poo! Burning poo! Burning poo! Burning poo!”

“I’m sorry,” she said from up top.

“BURNING POO! Hahahahahahahahahaha”

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Tomorrow is Labour Day. Maybe I’ll take it easy.

 

We can do it

Tomorrow is Labour Day, a day in which we celebrate the hard-fought victories of labour unions throughout history by taking the day off work.

Thank goodness all I have to do is:

  • One dozen loads of laundry; one for every time my four-year-old got out of bed tonight.
  • Reorganize the kids’ school clothes so that when they throw them all onto the floor and just wear the same basic thing every day, it’s easier for me to put them away again.
  • Sort through the lunch containers and water bottles and slide into a mid-day existential crisis.
  • Bake batches of muffins to be frozen for school snack for my snotty kids who are too good to eat the supermarket granola bars I pack them and curse the day we moved into this hipster neighbourhood.
  • Teach my seven-year-old to tie her shoes in one day because we already bought the ones with laces and we are firm believers in the high-pressure/panic mode of learning.
  • Reaffirm my commitment to high-pressure/panic as a motivational force as well as a mode of learning by meeting multiple work deadlines.
  • Break for an emotional meltdown because the end of another summer means their childhoods are passing me by and all I want to do is spend every waking moment with my wonderful babies.
  • Transition smoothly into a nervous breakdown because I can’t spend another moment catering to their whims; what about my dreams!? When do I get to work toward my own intellectual and creative goals? It’s like I’m a prisoner in my own home!
  • Calm down by baking yet another batch of muffins.
  • Try to get to bed on time. No, really. Okay, so I said “try.”
  • Wake up in a cold sweat because, oh crap, won’t they need pencils?
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You can’t win them all

girls baseball glove

I didn’t go to the tournament today. I didn’t go today, but I did go to most of the last one. I did go to half of the one before that and the one before that. And I will be there tomorrow.

But today her brother had a game here in the neighbourhood and since her dad is actually one of her coaches, that leaves me to take him. Besides, these tournaments mean long days for her little sister and there’s enough to get done this weekend without spending an entire day away from home.

She was mad. I knew she would be, but part of you needs to believe that one day they’ll behave like rational creatures.

“You’ve only been to half my games this year!” she yelled. “It’s not fair! You miss three of my games for one of his!” Clearly, this was my way of showing who I loved the most. Any fool can see that the number of games missed divided by the number of games attended and then multiplied by the magnitude of wrath incurred gives you your parental love factor. Never mind that as a family we easily spend ten times more time/energy/money on her love for baseball than her brother’s casual interaction with the sport; never mind that we scheduled our entire summer (camps, vacations, etc.) around her schedule; my staying behind today is obviously a sign of where my loyalty lies.

Okay, fine. The last time I missed a game, she hit a home run. But that’s not likely to happen again, right?

Nope, I’m holding firm. There are five people in this family and it is simply not reasonable to expect all of us to make it out to everything. She’s not the only one made a commitment by joining a team. My son has fun playing on his local house league and I also enjoy watching him play. I refuse to feel bad about it.

So, of course. Halfway through the day, he sends me a picture of my daughter beaming with pride and weighed down with a huge medal. An opposing coach had signaled her out as the MVP of the game.

And I missed it.

She’s going to be so mad.

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Happy new (school) year. Here’s what it will look like.

 

Labour Day weekend is upon us. It’s a time to reflect on the coming new year. And, well, it’s going to go a little something like this. Sorry.

ABC

September

Back-to-school! About time! The kids are driving me bonkers. We’re so ready for a fresh start. We’re going to nail it all this year: lunches and homework and chores, bring it.

October

Well, this year is a bust. Lunches are last-ditch scramble every morning, the new homework stations are a mess, laundry mountain is back, and what??? I’m supposed to be signing their agendas every day?

November

WHY IS THERE NO HOLIDAY THIS MONTH?! Screw it, I’m taking American Thanksgiving. My ancestors landed on Ellis Island.

December

“Just hear those sleigh bells jingle-ing. Ring ting tingle-ing too.” Keep up the joy. Keep it up. The holidays are fucking magical and you will stay up until 3am baking cookies to prove it.

January

The kids are back at school. You’re a new woman now. All the resolutions. This year for real! Just. So. Hungry. And sober.

February

Snot should not be able to freeze to the outside of faces. Why do we live here? It’s so cold. So, so, so, so cold. There’s no end to the snow pants. Wrestling kids into snow pants is now your life. It’s what you do. Just accept it. Suck it up.

March

Seriously?! Is spring never going to come? At least there’s March Break. Let’s staycation! We don’t need to travel to overpay for insanely crowded attractions and meltdowns on public transit.

April

Oh god, the school year’s almost over and have the kids even been doing their homework? You’ve been running on steam, pulled in a million different directions. There’s only one thing to do. You have to seize onto this one random math assignment and freak the hell out over it. You ARE a good parent.

May

Winter sports meet summer sports and now dinner is eaten in the car and lunches are stale crackers, raisins and that stray cheese string you found in the back of the fridge. Almost at the end.

June

Sob. I just need a break. I’m so done with the daily grind of homework, lunches, sports, music, laundry, dinner, repeat. We’re falling down at the finish line here.

July

What the hell. This new routine is STILL a grind: camp drop offs, more lunches, sunscreen, hats, water, and wet swimsuits.

August

What a great vacation. We didn’t sit still for a moment. I’m exhausted. And broke. And way behind on work. I need a vacation from my vacation. lololol