Saturday, December 11 and Sunday, December 12 at 3 PM at the NFB CINEMA – 150 John St. Toronto.
The NFB (National Film Board) Mediatheque is screening family-friendly animated shorts for free this weekend. Just show up, no reservation needed. It’ll be about 70 minutes of classic and new animation. This makes lugging the whole gang downtown for some shopping entirely worth it.
The kids were so excited this morning. “Look, Mommy, it’s snow-y outside,” Irene practically sang as she jumped up and down in front of the window. Colum started crafting elaborate plans involving snow angels and snow men and all manner of snow-things.
I let them out into the backyard for two minutes while I set up Irene’s stroller to walk Colum to the school bus. In those two minutes, Irene thoroughly soaked her mitts, leaving her with little bright red fingers for the entire walk there and back, and Colum managed to wedge snow into the space between his coat collar and his hat. This after a full ten-minute bundling-up session.
After school, we will shovel the driveway and the walks and brush snow off the car and track puddles throughout the house.
They are so excited and I am not. But I really wish I were.
Who wouldn’t exercise more often if it was more like fun and less like torture? Fitness columnist Nat shares a great way to get some semblance of an abdominal wall post baby. ~Rebecca
by Natalie Kerr
Zumba has jumped onto the scene offering expectant and new mothers a fun-fused workout that delivers a strong core punch with lots of Latin flavours. It is a Latin-inspired dance/fitness experience which takes dancers and non-dancers alike through a mixture of easy and different dance movements. There is salsa, merengue, reggaton (my favorite) and more accompanied by brilliant international music. Zumba is all about the fun factor which makes it the perfect workout for moms looking for a little me time
We stayed over with some friends last weekend and spent a nice long evening preparing dinner and sipping wine and catching up. When it was finally ready we set the table and served up generous portions of beef and mushroom stew, beets, carrots and salad to two four-year olds, two two-year olds and four adults.
The stew was good. And then it was gone. We joked about how it was a good thing we didn’t invite my sister over after all and then about how you could make a good portion out of the kids’ leftovers. We laughed it off and kept chatting. Finally, I reached over and pulled Colum’s plate toward me. In an instant my friend grabbed her daughter’s plate and we happily threw good manners out the window. Did I mention the stew was good?
We just finished reading Stuart Little as our bedtime story, chapter by chapter over a couple weeks. It was really fun for the first couple days and then less so as two-year-old Irene became impatient with the lack of pictures and sophisticated language. Colum loved it, though, and so did I, so we persevered. Last night I was looking forward to making short work of story time and let each kid choose a small picture book.
Irene chose a story called Worse than Rotten Ralph about a trouble-making cat and Colum chose Dr. Suess’ Hop on Pop. Perfect. Except when I opened Hop on Pop Colum started to read the book himself and then proceeded to read the entire thing from start to finish, each and every word. Yes, it’s a simple first reader book and he’s very familiar with it. But he was really focusing on each word and working them all out with only minimal prompting from me.
I am so proud. It’s a swollen heart, dance down the stairs kind of proud. He’s only four and a half and I don’t know if this counts as reading per se, but it is close. Very, very close.
It never ceases to amaze me how my kids just seem learn things all at once and seemingly on their own. I thought Irene could only count to three until one day I heard her count to twelve. And then Colum just picks up a book and freaking reads it.
Blows my mind.
Of course, there was nothing fast about that story time either. Sigh. Irene will just have to deal, I guess.
Sat. Nov. 27 at 11am and 2pm; and Sun. Nov. 28 at 1pm and 3pm. Masonville Place in London, Ontario.
Join me for story time this weekend as part of Playhouse Disney’s birthday tour of Ontario malls. I will be reading one of the wonderful Stella and Sam stories by Canadian author Marie-Louise Gay to promote a new animated series based on the books. There will also be games, activities and giveaways happening all day; it’ll be fun!
The good people at Scotch Brite sent me a package of cleaning tools to test out, which meant I actually had to do some cleaning. It’s funny how much of a difference new gear can make, though. I was excited.
Traditionally, I use dish cloths for dishes, counters, and appliance surfaces and supplement with a scouring pad or SOS pad when needed. Of course, with my new stainless steel stove I had to be careful to avoid scratches. Enter the Scotch Brite scratch-proof sponges, scouring pads and soap pads.
I looked up to the top of the slide,
And there was my little boy,
Explaining how it was all going down.
First, he would roll the little green tractor down the slide,
And then, “We’ll all go down after it!”
The other three boys nodded excitedly.
They all rushed back to the top and this time it was somebody else’s turn.
“OK, now you push it down and you slide down first.”
He even made them wait for his little sister to catch up.
“Irene! Irene! Irene!”
They were all calling for her as she made her way to the slide.
Again and again,
Colum directed the little game,
Making sure everyone had a turn,
And they all played happily.
I worry about him being a loner,
But maybe he just needs to be a leader.
Did you think Facebook didn’t need to #suckit anymore? You were wrong.
Momzelle is a successful, small, local Toronto business run by the sister-brother team of Christine and Vincent Poirier. They sell made-in-Canada nursing tops that are specifically designed to allow for comfortable and discreet breastfeeding. While Momzelle does have a small store-front location (1593 Dundas St. W.), the bulk of its business is in online sales. So of course it had a Facebook page to help promote the nursing wear and breastfeeding in general. The page posted positive quotes about breastfeeding and informative news links and boasted between 600 – 800 weekly readers and 1600 fans. It also had pictures like this:
Christine received a form email from Facebook on Monday afternoon informing her that her page had been taken down for not following the rules. It either promoted heinous hatred, personal attacks, or obscenity. Christine promptly replied to the email stating that there must be some kind of mistake and filled out a complaint form. At the time of writing this post, 30 hours later, she had yet to receive a response.
So what gives? Clearly, there is nothing offensive or obscene about the kind of image posted on the Momzelle Facebook page. In fact, the entire point of the nursing wear is to allow women to breastfeed discreetly and not have to expose their breasts. Christine is confident that no actual person working at Facebook could have viewed her page and deemed it obscene. It must be that some Facebook users have reported the page as “sexually explicit,” she speculates, and that after a certain number of reports a robot automatically takes down the page. “I love Facebook,” Christine told me. “I advertise with them. I can’t believe this is a real Facebook decision.”
The struggle for Christine and Vincent now is twofold. They need to get Facebook to hear them and have an actual person review their page and hopefully have it reinstated. They also need to address the problem of broader acceptance of public breastfeeding. The fact that any number of people would report a page like that is mind boggling. It also goes to show that rejoinders that claim that women just need to cover up and be discreet are often false in themselves. The very idea of a baby suckling on its mother’s breast is enough to offend some people.
When she first got the email, Christine couldn’t help herself. “I felt so shamed, like I was told to get out of a restaurant.” Which is, of course, exactly what her product is designed to avoid.
257,747 (and counting) people have already joined the Facebook group Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene! (Official petition to Facebook). You should join too.
Update: Momzelle has a new Facebook page up and running now. They could sure use some more likes.
Update: Thanks to a influx of support, Facebook has reinstated the original Momzelle page.
If you’re thinking about another baby,
Then try to conceive before your last baby turns two.
Oh, it’ll be hell a challenging kind of heavenly for a solid year,
Trying to cope with an infant and a two-year-old,
But eventually it will become manageable and your family will be complete.
Because if you wait until after your last baby turns two,
Then you will never want to have another baby again.
Mommy loves you, little girl, but you don’t rule the universe.
Man.