Category: Uncategorized

Next level helicopter parenting. Yes, that’s an actual helicopter!

Post author By Rebecca Cuneo Keenan
Post date August 17, 2015
2 Comments on Next level helicopter parenting. Yes, that’s an actual helicopter!

This is the first in a three-part series about helicopter parenting and back-to-school tech shopping that I’m writing as Best Buy Canada‘s parenting spokesperson. Okay, so fine. This first part is mostly all about how I got to spend all day riding around in a helicopter.

“You’ve written about being a parent in the helicopter age before and also about kids and technology, and we think you’d be a great fit for Best Buy’s #permissiontohover campaign.”

“That sounds great.”

“And you’re cool with conducting TV interviews from a flying helicopter, right?”

” … ”

“Rebecca?”

“Uh, sorry. Sure, that should be fine.” ***

(*** Very loose paraphrasing of the actual conversation I had with Best Buy’s pr team.)

Take off! #permissiontohover

Take off!

So it was all set. I was going to be Best Buy Canada’s parent spokesperson for their back-to-school campaign and all I had to do keep it together on a helicopter ride. (Actually, it was eight helicopter rides and I had to be at Billy Bishop airport just after seven a.m., if you’re playing along at home.)

It’s important to follow your helicopter guide person so you don’t accidentally walk into the rear rotor which is practically invisible when it’s in motion. GULP!

Luckily, my first interview of the day was with the lovely Akheela from the blog Create With Mom. It was nice to warm up with a friendly conversation with a fellow mom blogger before meeting with the bigger media outlets. Akheela interviewed me first and then we went up in the helicopter together to enjoy the view.

20150812_090251

Lifting off! Hello, Ontario Place. Long time, no see.

Hello, breathtaking view of the skyline and the islands. Holy cow.

It was amazing! I practically bounced off the helicopter. The view was spectacular and the entire experience was even bigger and better than I imagined it would be. And the best part was that I was totally fine for the entire ride: no vertigo, motion sickness, or sudden paralyzing fear of heights. (Not that I was worried. Ahem.) Bring it!

And bring it, they did. For my next interview Winston Sih from City TV, a cameraman, and myself all squeezed into the sweet little Best Buy chopper with the pilot and we talked helicopter parenting and tech while hovering above downtown Toronto. But it’s capital-L loud on a helicopter, so we also shot the interview from the ground just to be safe.

The next couple hours were a blur of on-ground interviews and in-air helicopter rides with a variety of print and digital media outlets. I was holding it together pretty well, I gotta say. In fact, five back-to-back helicopter rides on an empty stomach might be just the thing to shake off any pre-interview jitters. But that sixth ride. My goodness, that sixth ride puts the easy in queasy. (No? The sea in nausea? The ick in sick?) My stomach was finally, “All right, lady. I’ve been good to you all morning, but at some point you’re going to have to feed me.”

Luckily, it was time for lunch. Then a couple more interviews and rides later and we called it a day. I’ll say! Remember that my morning commute involves stopping at the coffee pot on my way down to my basement ~~dungeon~~ office. I could not have been further from the basement last week.

I’ll be posting a couple more posts on what helicopter parenting means to me and sharing my top picks for back-to-school tech in the next couple weeks. But, for now, I really just wanted to write about this once-in-a-lifetime experience. So lemme leave you with a few more pics.

Classic T.O.

Eastern waterfront. Sugar beach is down there somewhere.

Shadows over Toronto.

You can only get this shot from a helicopter, I’m pretty sure.

Highways and condos and baseball diamonds, oh my.

Ferries! Mini ferries!

I also shared a couple videos on Periscope, in case you just can’t get enough helicopter action.

Big thanks again to Best Buy Canada for bringing me on board. Next week we’ll be talking about why it’s okay to need #permissiontohover.

Tags back-to-school tech, helicopter parenting, permissiontohover

Integrated custom content Uncategorized

I’m never guessing my bra size again. My new bra is heaven except better.

Post author By Rebecca Cuneo Keenan
Post date July 27, 2015

Super big thanks to Wacoal for sponsoring this post and finally getting me a bra that fits right.

I rode the escalator up to the fourth floor lingerie department at Hudson’s Bay and was awash in memories. The last time I’d gone to a large department store for a bra was when my mother took me downtown to Simpsons (which is actually now The Bay) to get fitted for my very first bra. My 12-year-old self died of embarrassment in the quiet elegance of those fitting rooms as an efficient saleslady ran a measuring tape around my chest, and was then resurrected in a white, cotton A-cup training bra that I could proudly flaunt in the girls changing room.

There for a bra fitting once again, as a 36-year-old mother of three, I certainly knew how important a proper bra fit is. I’d seen headline after headline warning that most women are wearing the wrong bra size. I’ve had friends get fitted and find out they’d been wearing bras two sizes or more too small. I knew it was true.

First bra, first win.
I wonder if I can take Maggie bathing suit shopping with me.

And yet there I was, going in for my second-ever fitting, 24 years after my first. It’s probably because I was young enough, with small enough breasts, before I had kids that a supportive bra was never an issue. I could grab something off the rack and as long as it kind of fit, it was fine. Then I got pregnant and was busting out of my 32B cups by the end of my first trimester. My the time my milk was fully in, I was more-than-filling a 36DD nursing bra. I had bright red stretch marks on both breasts, spreading out from my nipples like angry rays of sunshine. Then, slowly, as those first, milk-full weeks passed, and then as my baby ate more and more solids and nursed less frequently, and then finally weaned, my breasts got smaller and smaller. As did the rest of me, to be honest.

I repeated that cycle three times in about seven years, my breasts like tired old water balloons. I didn’t want to get fitted at a boutique store and spend good money on a bra that might only fit for a couple months. And even after I weaned my last baby *ahem* two years ago, I didn’t want to know my real bra size because I was about to drop a quick 20 pounds ANY MINUTE NOW. It would simply be irresponsible to lay out real money for a bra when I was clearly about to lose all that weight just as soon as I could find the time to workout, probably tomorrow. So I made do by guesstimating at my bra size and pulling crappy, ill-fitting bras off the rack. That was about to change.

Maggie Hess won me over right away. Warmth, enthusiasm, and expertise radiated from her petite, five-foot frame. She’s a Wacoal consultant who works out of several Hudson’s Bay locations in the GTA, fitting women for the perfect bra and winning over a host of loyal clients. She had me take off my shirt and then measured me around the outside of my bra. I’m not surprised she used to be a dressmaker; she’s so deft with that measuring tape. I told her I was looking for an everyday bra, something in a nude, probably. (But of course “nude” is only nude for a very limited range of skin tones. So Wacoal calls that colour “sand.”)

Maggie returned with what she called her trial bra. If I tried on that style, she would be able to see right away what size I needed. Sure enough, Maggie took one look at me and said, this is too big. She came back with her arms laden with all kinds of bras in 32D. (It looks like even though I’ve lost most of the baby weight, the boobs are here to stay.) They fit like heaven. One seamless white t-shirt bra in particular felt like I wasn’t even wearing a bra. “Oh, this makes me feel ten years younger,” I said. Maggie laughed. “You are young!” I told you I liked her.

There were no shortage of Wacoal bras that fit me beautifully, but what about the rest of you guys? Maggie says they carry lines that start as small as a 30 bandwidth and lines that go up to a 40H or 42DDD. They even have minimizer styles that help compress a larger bust so, yes, you can just wear a button-up shirt with out flashing half the office, thankyouverymuch.

Wacoal does not carry maternity bras, so nursing moms should wait until they’re back in standard bras. But I started thinking back to that first fitting with my mom at Simpsons and how I would love to take my girls to Maggie for their first fitting. I ask Maggie if she gets girls and what kind of products Wacoal offers for them.

Some of the softest, little wireless styles. Those first three would be perfect for a tween girl.

Maggie came back with an armful of soft, wireless bralets. Some with the clasp in the back, just like a grown-up bra, and others with a more sporty look, depending on what kind of girl you have. “It’s so important to get a proper fitting from a young age,” Maggie says. “I’ve seen girls who might be slight, but already have developed large breasts and what they are wearing is giving them no support.”

I learned that all the support comes from the band. If your band is too loose, you will feel strain on shoulders. You should not be able to fit more than two fingers under the back of your bra band. Just like you wouldn’t dream of buying a pair of shoes without trying them on, you should always try on bras. Not all makes are sized the same. I tried one Wacoal bra, for example, that was designed for a younger woman and needed to move up to a 34C even though I fit a 32D for most of the other Wacoal bras I tried. And nothing is permanent. As we age, gain or loose weight, have babies, and otherwise go through different life stages, our bra size can change. It’s good practice to get fit once a year, just to be sure.

So what did I wind up walking out with? Not the seamless t-shirt bra I came in for. Somehow, Maggie knew that this was what I really wanted after all.

Now, that’s not my grandmother’s bra.

This post was generously sponsored by Wacoal. If you live in the GTA, you can make an appointment to see Maggie by contacting you local Hudson’s Bay. Wacoal is sold exclusively at Hudson’s Bay in Canada and on thebay.com.

Tags bra fitting

Food and Travel Uncategorized

How to eat out with kids. I’m sorry.

Post author By Rebecca Cuneo Keenan
Post date July 23, 2015
1 Comment on How to eat out with kids. I’m sorry.

So who’s right, the restaurant owner who yelled at a toddler or the parents who let her “fuss” for over 40 minutes? I don’t know; probably neither of them. I’ve been in both positions and I’ve probably fallen short of ideal behavior as both a restaurant employee and as a parent. It’s not easy to eat out with kids.

Let’s look back at that one time I was working on the second floor of a certain Queen Street West restaurant in Toronto with an upstairs patio. At this particular restaurant, the servers made all their own drinks, bussed all their own tables, sat all the guests, ran all their food through the entire length of the downstairs dining room and then up the stairs to one of three dining areas. We also had to bring all dirty dishes and even glasses (!) back down to the kitchen ourselves. We did have a computer upstairs for placing orders that would get printed up in the kitchen, but any other communication with the kitchen staff who had varying levels of proficiency in English would require another trip down to the kitchen.

Right, so one sunny summer afternoon we got slammed. It had been busy all day which means that we were already short on bar stock and cutlery roll ups and all the other good prep work that is done to make your job go more smoothly, and we were all running on fumes. Some sort of festival or other (hey, this was more than a decade ago, I can’t remember) let out and the restaurant filled up. One of the tables was a family with young kids, though I don’t think any of them were babies or toddlers.

They sat on the patio and I took their order which was macaroni and cheese off the standard menu (we didn’t offer a kids menu) for the kids and probably burgers or sandwiches for the adults. I entered their order into the computer, brought their drinks and moved on to the approximately 15,000 other things I needed to do.

I did not:

warn them that we were slammed, so their meals would likely take a while
offer to put a rush on the kids meals so they would come up first
tell them that the cooks sometimes garnished the mac and cheese with chopped parsley and ask if that was okay
bring them crayons and paper (since the restaurant didn’t carry those anyway)
acknowledge their children in any way, shape, or form

Nor do I think it was my responsibility to have done any of those things. If I weren’t so busy, I would have been better able to accommodate extra needs. If I were waiting tables now, having had three kids of my own, it might occur to me to check about the parsley and offer to have the kids meals come first. But I was in my early 20s and, quite frankly, those extras were not in the job description at this particular restaurant.

Ultimately, I remember the parents complaining about how long the food was taking and being especially outraged that I hadn’t at least brought their kids’ meals first. All I could do was stand there panting and dripping with sweat and apologize for the wait, offer more bread and more water, and suggest that in the future they let their server know they would like the children’s food to arrive first when they place their order. I’m pretty sure I didn’t get much of a tip.

Part of the problem is that the kind of restaurant people feel comfortable bringing their children to is often also the kind of restaurant that is least able to accommodate them. (I’m not counting chains that cater to kids here.) Most people don’t take their kids to fine dining restos with a maître d, a full set of support staff for the servers, and a table to server ratio that is small and manageable. You don’t do it because it’s expensive and you don’t want to spend $30 for your kid’s bloody macaroni. You don’t want to risk bothering the other diners. And because if you do go out to that kind of restaurant, you don’t want your meal ruined by having to be constantly vigilant about your child’s behaviour. I get it. But, having worked in both kinds of restaurants, let me tell you that it is a hell of a lot easier to anticipate the needs of customers of any age when the menu is priced high enough that you don’t have to serve three times as many people with little-to-no support.

But here we are, parented up and desperate for some bourbon-infused french toast, and just a small taste of poached ducks eggs nestled on a bed of housemade cheese biscuits with a coating of lemony, herbed hollandaise. What’s a mom or dad to do? Well, you can all but forget about that new hot brunch spot for now (if you actually want to enjoy it). Sorry, but line ups are a no-go.

A few simple rules to keep in mind.

Of course, if you’re like me, you’ll find yourself stuck in a line up with three starving kids and nary a crayon in sight on a Saturday night because organization is not your strong suit. So you take antsy kids out for plenty of walks. You sacrifice your good lip gloss to be used for napkin doodles. You order as soon as possible. (Seriously, read the menu before you even walk inside.) You clean up those clumps of spaghetti from underneath the highchair before you leave. And I can promise you: that meal will suck. But eventually they do grow up and then you’ll really learn how expensive eating out as a family can be.

Good luck.

Uncategorized

On not blogging and hating the internet and coming crawling back anyway

Post author By Rebecca Cuneo Keenan
Post date July 17, 2015
3 Comments on On not blogging and hating the internet and coming crawling back anyway

I long ago made it a rule not to blog about not blogging. No more posts that start off with an apology for having been away, follow with a litany of excuses and end in a heap of empty promises, I said to myself. God. What kind of abject narcissist thinks people have been stopping by her url on the reg, ever refreshing their screen, hoping for some new wise crack about her kids anyway? If you want to write something, then go ahead and write it, I continued telling myself. Otherwise, just shut up.

Okay, so. Screw that rule.

The problem with taking a blog breather is that I feel pressured to make the first post after the break some kind of special. I don’t know why. It’s not as though most people even notice when you haven’t been blogging. But here I am. One three-quarters done post about dieting that I was excited to post several weeks ago, sits in my drafts folder, feeling staler by the minute. (Not that it’s lonely, my drafts folder is full of half-baked blog posts I didn’t have the attention span to actually finish.) Several bigger story ideas float around in my head, too, but those are destined for non-blogging platforms. I have a few odd writing jobs to distract me, an up-ended summer work schedule, kids and vacations and home repairs to manage. I have excuses is what I’m saying.

And being sick of the internet is one of them. Is it even possible to get more disillusioned with the internet than we already are? All the endless streams of mediocre-at-best fluff that’s put out because websites need content, content, content — on the double! — but are only willing to pay minimum rates for maximum output. Please, for the love of all mankind, spare me your three intro paragraphs about what summer means to you and just tell me how to make that freaking sour cherry lemonade. I already hate myself for clicking on the link; don’t drive me into a bottomless depression.

Then reading a brilliantly written story like Kathryn Schulz’s earthquake piece in the New Yorker simultaneously fills me with hope for the future of the written word and makes me want to set fire to my, um, internet connection and swear to never write another “quick take” as long as I live.

But in the end, I’m not ready to forsake my online existence just yet. I simply need to get back into this space and share some stories, thoughts or goddamned lists if that’s what I feel like writing at least a couple times a week to keep from getting twitchy.

I had some pretty big and far-reaching posts earlier this year and, hey, I’ll take ’em. But this is a blog which (for me) means fast, loose, and dirty most of the time. Even the posts I’ve worked hardest and longest on are put out in a kind of flurry. The internet runs on the here and now, so I might spend hours and hours writing and researching something but I still push it out as fast as I can and see what happens.

So while my relationship with the internet is complicated, here’s my big empty promise to sit down a couple times a week and try to craft a sweet little blog post because I miss it. It keeps me on my toes.

Uncategorized

Summer saving tips to keep you afloat

Post author By Rebecca Cuneo Keenan
Post date June 23, 2015
1 Comment on Summer saving tips to keep you afloat

Clockwise from top: St. Lawrence Market, classic playground structure, skipping in food truck parking lot, and Maple Leaf baseball at Christie Pits

Forget about diapers. Forget about formula. Forget about shoes and clothes and food and everything else that’s supposed to cost a fortune when you have kids.

Summer takes the cake. When you have kids summer goes from the season where maybe you overdo it on the patio circuit and stretch the budget a little bit to this crazy expensive cyclone of spending money hand over fist and nobody ever talks about it.

Let’s break down how my bank account is getting a serious workout this summer, for example. First, there’s summer camp. I don’t mean that we’re sending our kids away to some ritzy month-long “experience.” I’m just talking about your run-of-the-mill city-run day camp that is basically a place where I can send my children while school’s out in order to keep working. Four weeks of day camp times three children costs me around $2000.

Of course, I’m only sending them for half the summer so I will have to take on fewer freelance projects which means less income. That drop in income will certainly come in handy during the family vacation which we take during the summer. Doh! Couple that with all kinds of fun outings and events that will scrape away at the bottom of my wallet just in time to buy everybody an all-new school wardrobe because these people just won’t stop growing. (And I’m not the only one who just shelled out for next year’s hockey registration fee, am I?)

$ $ $ $ $ $ &#!@?!

The good news is that I am here to help. I mean, not usually. Usually I am here to weep and cry and laugh at my own dumb luck. But today, right here and now, I have helpful information.

I attended an event for bloggers and there was so much helpful information being shared around that room that I couldn’t help but absorb a tiny bit of it.

You are not alone. 55% of Canadian parents with kids under 18 have additional expenses during the summer. And 71% of them will spend up to $999 per kid.
That money needs to come from somewhere. And ideally, that “somewhere” won’t be a growing pile of debt. The top two ways Canadian parents pay for summer expenses are by saving up in advance and cutting back other expenses.
There are ways to save you might not have thought of. Some tips are using credit card rewards toward summer activities (like theme park visits, for example), taking advantage of early bird discounts where possible, budgeting and saving throughout the year (with the help of savings tools provided by the bank, if you like), shopping around for more affordable programs, and making sure you are claiming any tax deductions from summer programs.

But my favourite part of the evening was when a room full of Toronto-area mom bloggers started brainstorming different freebie and cheapo options for the summer. I’m pretty sure we could have gone on all night. Here are some highlights:

Make it a games afternoon by hanging out in a cafe that offers board games, like Boards and Ladders in the Annex
Sundays are family day at the Gardiner Museum of ceramic arts with lots of activities family activities on offer (and kids 12 and under are always free)
Visit the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse and Franklin’s Garden for free on the Toronto Islands (if you can resist the lure of Centreville)
Sugar Beach has soft sand spotted with pink sun umbrellas right on Queen’s Quay. And my gang also enjoys the new playground at Sherbourne Common, a short walk away.
All the parks and beaches. Sometimes just visiting the local park one neighbourhood over is enough of a thrill.
Sunnybrook Stables, Woodbine Racetrack, Riverdale Farm, Mackenzie House, Allen Gardens, Harbourfront free movies, TD Reads reading clubs, Maple Leaf baseball at Christie Pits

The list goes on. What’s your favourite way to save money and have fun in the summer?

Tags families, Family attractions Toronto, free and cheap, summer

Uncategorized

The real reason I dig a dadbod

Post author By Rebecca Cuneo Keenan
Post date May 4, 2015

Image via Flickr cc license.

Beards and man buns can step aside because the latest dude trend is the dadbod. It all started about a month ago when Mackenzie Pearson wrote an article called “Why Girls Love The Dad Bod,” on The Odyssey. Then last Thursday New York Mag’s The Cut tried to figure out what exactly a dadbod is and whether or not women are into it. This all-important line of inquiry was then continued by Salon, The Atlantic and just about everybody else.

Dadbod is exactly what it sounds like. It’s what the male physique typically looks like after clocking 40 hours in a cubicle and ten hours of commuting to and from the burbs every week. It’s what happens when you’re finally grown up enough to consume however many beers and burgers as you damn well feel like, and the only reason you wear athletic gear is to coach a t-ball game.

You don’t actually have to live in the suburbs, or even be a dad to look like one, of course. In fact, the term usually refers to young men who manage to rock a dadbod even though they are not actually dads. You just need to be kind of soft around the middle. You have arms like saplings and no part of you could possibly be described as “cut.” Chances are pretty good that manscaping is also completely off your radar.

If this is you, then congratulations. You have a dadbod and, yes, chicks dig it. But it’s not because we appreciate your laid back attitude, and it’s not because we want to raid your fridge, as The Cut suggested. Pearson was more on the money when she wrote that girls love the dadbod because, “We like being the pretty one.”

The reason I’m all about the dadbod has nothing to do with what is says about you and everything to do with what it says about me. Your dadbod makes my mombod look better, basically.

When I squeeze into my tummy-controlled one piece at the beach and douse myself in baby powder to prevent inner-thigh burn, I like to look over at my male companion and think, “Oh yeah, baby. We could look worse.”

Nobody wants to play Lyle Lovett to their partner’s Julia Roberts, know what I mean. For one thing, just standing next to a smoking hot guy with actual abdominal definition is going to make us look dumpy by comparison. What’s more, it makes us feel less attractive.

It’s not that we’re more attracted to the dadbod, you see. Do you really think we watch Olympic swimming because we care about whether some guy can shave a fraction of a second off his butterfly? Of course not.

The reason I dig a dadbod is because how your body makes me feel about myself is more important than how it makes me feel about you.

Uncategorized

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.

Integrated custom content Uncategorized

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

Post author By Rebecca Cuneo Keenan
Post date March 18, 2015

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

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

View image | gettyimages.com

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

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 ;)

Uncategorized

7 ways you can learn from my Easter hunt mistakes

Post author By Rebecca Cuneo Keenan
Post date March 13, 2015

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

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.

Uncategorized

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

Post author By Rebecca Cuneo Keenan
Post date February 10, 2015
25 Comments on 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.

* * *

Tags autism, natural childbirth, vaccines