Tag: Holidays

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Visit the ROM for the Holidays

Families visit the ROM.

Giveaway closed. This post is also a giveaway! Enter to win a family membership to the ROM.

Families visit the ROM.

The kids are off school for a full two weeks after Christmas this year and you will be wanting something to do. Don’t worry, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto has got us covered. This year they have put together 14 days of programming for families to enjoy throughout the winter break.

From Monday, December 26th to Sunday, January 8, the ROM will become a winter wonderland, displaying glowing lights, festive traditions, exclusive galleries, and the last chance to visit the breathtaking glass sculptures of the CHIHULY exhibit. Other highlights include inflatable balloon sculptures, touchable objects like volcanic glass or a polar bear skull, a musical show with Sonshine and Broccoli, and decorating a holiday tree. The museum is also open for extended hours; 10 to 7 most days (10 to 5:30 on Dec. 31 and Jan. 8).

And know that if you have young kids and live in Toronto, a family membership to the ROM is a veritable lifeline. How wonderful to have a warm and enriching place to escape from the cold or duck into for a couple hours on a rainy afternoon. The ROM has a great hands-on kids area as well as, you know, a large display of dinosaur bones and actual Egyptian mummies. ROM Members get express entry and unlimited free access to exhibitions and galleries, attend exclusive previews, enjoy members-only discounts, plus much more. Now is the time to pounce on this for yourself or as a gift. Until December 31, save $20 on a Family/Dual Membership for up to two named adults and four kids under 17. Visit rom.on.ca/membership and enter the promo code HOLIDAY.

Giveaway closed. Enter below for a chance to win (1) ROM Family Membership that is valid for one year.

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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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Happy Thanksgiving

It’s Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend which means all I have to do is make a cheese sauce to bring to my in laws for dinner. Sweet.

Remember as kids when there was this yawning eternity between holidays you couldn’t even bear to wait until the next one? Now one holiday leads into another and I feel like I am constantly stressing about an upcoming birthday or occasion. Like, I  haven’t even put away the coffee urn from Mary’s birthday party (shut up) and I’m already buying Halloween costumes and thinking about what we’ll do for Irene this year. Plus there’s Thanksgiving, a family wedding and holiday planning is already rearing it’s tinseled head.

I should probably try to revel in the present a little bit more and plan to do so this weekend. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, whether you’re going whole hog turkey, pot luck or take out.

In “can’t get enough of me” news, I wrote a couple things elsewhere this week:

  • A defense of letting a big kid ride in the stroller for Today’s Parent
  • And a personal essay about how I used Barbies to keep playing with dolls (read keep engaging in narrative-driven creative play) long after I should have been “too old” for dolls on the Barbie I Can Be FB page
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Holiday crafting with Rebecca

Here’s a fun holiday craft you can try.

Christmas craft fail

First you shape willow branches into the form of a ball. Paint and apply glitter.

Kidding! I got these at Dollarama. I thought it would be fun to hang them on the tree in the front yard since our house is older than dirt and doesn’t have any electricity running to the outside. Not an exterior outlet for Christmas lights. Not even a porch light.

Mary was napping and Ed was washing dishes so Colum, Irene and myself went out to tidy up the front yard and string up the ornaments. It went a little like this:

Continue reading “Holiday crafting with Rebecca”

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‘Tis the Season to Give a Crap

The holidays are here again, so brace yourself for the inevitable tug of war between charity and commercialism. The Christmas season should be about giving to others, we all know that, but we also want to give to our own family. This Christmas Colum is old enough to really look forward to the loot, to write a letter to Santa and to be wowed by the presents on Christmas morning. And I really want to wow him. So I think, sure I’ll give to others after I have taken care of my own family. I think, I support giving and charity, I do, and it’s really great that other people are so into that kind of thing. They must have more money and time and fewer responsibilities than I do.

But then I think of my mother and my mother-in-law. These are two women who have raised four children each and worked full-time jobs and balanced budgets and somehow managed to put food on the table and shoes on our feet no matter how scarce money was. They also managed to be everywhere at once: the skating rink and ballet classes and school plays and baseball games. From the PTA and Boy Scouts (Donna) to nursing relatives on their death beds and sitting on the floor of a Greyhound bus while eight months pregnant (Mom), there is nothing these women wouldn’t do. Their entire lives have been guided by a sense of giving and self-sacrifice. They volunteer their time and energy and money as a matter of course, never stopping to wonder if they have enough to spare. Whenever and wherever a need arises, these women automatically ask themselves, “How can I help?” (Not “Should I help?” or “I wish I could help.”) And then, swiftly and quietly, they do.

So when I started seeing initiatives that encourage bloggers to use their corporate and social networking connections to pay their good fortune forward I thought, good. I mean, after the recent scourge of name calling and finger pointing that has been dominating mommy-blogging circles in the lead up to and the wake of the new FTC regulations (the assumption that we are all corporate whores, essentially, willing to give it up for free crap), this is a breath of fresh air. Initiatives like Her Bad Mother’s Give Good Blog or Mamanista’s Bloganthropy encourage bloggers to champion a cause and to exploit any corporate contacts in doing so.

Yeah, bloggers should totally do that, I thought. I would too if only I were more widely read and had more companies knocking at my door. But wait. I did use my blog to host an online raffle for breast cancer research at the Princess Margaret Hospital. And I did reach out to family-oriented businesses, many run by moms who are friendly with the blogging community for awesome donations. And they did come through. I actually used my blog to raise over $2000 in personal donations to the Weekend To End Breast Cancer. When my good friend Gillian lost her baby, I blogged about that and made up a button that links to the Sick Kids Foundation’s donation page and stuck it at the bottom of that post and in my sidebar. Huh.

Maybe I can do something after all. So then I emailed Kathryn Easter from Mom Central Canada and said, Hey. You know that giveaway we’re doing for Disney on Ice? What are the chances we can get another set of tickets to give to a family that is spending the holidays at Interval House, a safe haven for abused women and children? And Kathryn said, Let’s do it up. (I’m totally paraphrasing, you know.) And so we are.

I tell you all this not to toot my own horn. (Although I guess that is the biggest effect, isn’t it?) Mostly I tell you all this because if I can actually do some good with this blog and its regular readership of my family and friends and the hundreds of porn-bot followers I have on Twitter, then imagine what you can do. You don’t need a hugely successful blog to make a difference. You don’t even need a blog at all.

My mother and mother-in-law didn’t have blogs, after all. Hell, they didn’t even have Facebook. (I know!) And they still managed to find a way to do good things for people in need. So if we all just try to be a little more like them, then we don’t even need a formal declaration. We just need to act.

On that note, let the holiday season begin.

(Image courtesy of saxon on Flickr.)

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Easter Means …

Easter means,

Winter’s last snow, more times than not, and coughs and colds and sniffles.

New running shoes and spring jackets and rolling up my sleeves for a good spring clean.
Fish and chips on Good Friday.
Lots and lots of chocolate.

Bunnies. Spring chicks and ducklings, too, but mostly bunnies.

Continue reading “Easter Means …”
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Oh Crap. Can We Start This Year Again?

Toy BoxWe’re well into the New Year, but I can’t quite seem to shake the holiday haze. Despite having had a good week to settle back into our routine, everyone’s sleep schedule is still off kilter and many of Colum’s programs are still between sessions. The result: a very happy and easily adjustable toddler and a frazzled mom. The truth really is that as long as he gets enough food, sleep and attention, Colum’s good to go. Having fallen behind in house work and finances and my writing projects (like this blog for one), I’ve completely lost focus and direction and am running around like some headless fowl. I know I’m not the only one. Here’s a good account of how getting back to a simple routine can make a harried mom happy.

I have three partially written blog drafts on my desktop, two versions of my resume half done, and scraps of paper with bits of prose scattered everywhere. I keep doing three quarter of the dishes, so my kitchen is never clean, and leaving heaps of clean yet crumpled clothes lying about. And the toys! Trying to sort out which toys Colum’s outgrown from those he still plays with and deciding what’s worth keeping and what to toss is a nightmare! Nobody told me that parenting meant so much sifting and sorting of toys and clothes and gadgets. And heaven forbid Colum should ever catch me trying to pack away an old rattle or push toy; it instantly becomes his most favoured possession and I lose all faith in my toy-sorting criteria.

So I’m taking a couple days to re-schedule my hours and I hope to find a few extra per week for work that doesn’t involve wiping jam off every available surface. Here’s to a happier new year in the coming weeks.

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Too Late for This Year, But …

Okay. I’m leaving for the big in-law dinner in the burbs any second now, but I want to share one little idea. I’m proud of this one.

Get your kids to make wrapping paper by drawing on craft paper! This makes the little one’s feel involved and is so very sweet and it’s eco-friendly to boot.

Also, I’m learning that being Santa is as much work as it is fun. But it brings back that old Christmas-y excitement of my childhood and I love being a mom at this time of year.

Merry, merry Christmas! I’ll be back in a couple days with the post-game analysis.

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Trees, Trees, Trees

Growing up, we always got a real tree, but never more than one week before Christmas. (And often not more than a day or two before.) There was, therefore, a long-standing tradition of scrambling around, from one parking lot to the next, searching for any remaining trees. My husband and I have more or less carried on that tradition, but without the luxury of a vehicle, since we’ve been married.

So when my mother-in-law asked whether we wanted to drive out of the city and cut down our tree this year, I was skeptical. It was more than two weeks early, and I just didn’t know what Christmas tree hunting will be like without that special holiday desperation in the air. Figuring that it’s only fair for my husband to get to indulge in his childhood holiday traditions (no matter how predictable the outcome) from time to time, I acquiesced. And it was okay.

The tree farm was a good hour’s drive from the city core, and the smallest tree starts at $45. But our tree is beautiful and Colum got to spend the better part of a day getting it. Driving into the “country”, trudging through the snow, “helping” Grandpa saw the tree down, and watching the farm worker truss it makes for a real experience. Whether searching the city streets or choosing a tree to cut down, the point is to make a true occasion out of it.

Post Script: We have decorated our tree now, and the ornamentation is delightfully bottom heavy. At one point there were five shiny balls all hanging from one branch. They have since been dispersed during the daily ornament shuffle, and I’m predicting at least a few will turn up during spring cleaning.

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Holy Trick or Treat, Batman!

I was all set to write a vitriolic rant against the idea that kids should go to Halloween parties rather than trick-or-treating. Over the past few years (admittedly, before I had a kid) I seem to remember a lot of ado about the nutritional and safety related dangers of trick-or-treating. This campaign against the practice of encouraging our children to roam the streets at night, going door to door, and begging for candy from strangers seemed to coincide with a marked decrease in the number of children ringing my doorbell (and my parents’). And I was livid. How dare they mess with one of the all-time great childhood pastimes! (Trick-or-treating was one of the things North America had all over the rest of the world, but it seems to be spreading.) Proper parental supervision and rationing of the loot is enough to offset any concerns — so relax!

Happily, even though I was all set to rant on and on, it looks like trick-or-treating is back and stronger than ever. Last night we took Colum out for the first time and stumbled upon the magical fairy-tale land of trick-or-treating. Our route was a straight shot down Pacific from Dundas to Humberside — cutting from the heart of the Junction to the Northern tip of the more affluent High Park area. All down the street every second or third house was fully decked out with multiple Jack-o-lanterns and skeletons and witches and ghouls, you name it. (Later that night we had to stop twice to unravel insane amounts of fake cobwebbing from the wheels of the stroller.) Most people were sitting out on their porches or steps, many in full costume, and handing out generous amounts of good treats. But the street! The sidewalk was packed shoulder to shoulder with parents and kids of all ages hustling up and down walk ways and zig-zagging across the street. Neighbours were calling out greetings and gushing over each other’s costumes. Oh, it was good fun! Colum was so into it, he refused to stop. We were out for over an hour even though he was so tired he could barely walk a straight line.

I don’t know what’s changed, if anything. We lived in the same area last year and while Colum was too young to go out, I took him for a walk and there were hardly any kids in sight. Maybe we went out walking too late last year. Or maybe it was the unbelievably mild yet crisp fall weather we had last night. The just-past-full moon shining over a half-shed canopy of maples and oaks while piles of leaves crunch underfoot. It could just be the huge numbers of young families in this neighbourhood or that it was a Wednesday. It seems that Halloween is gaining ground as the high secular holiday of the year and people are just really into. Whatever the case, it looks like trick or treating might be back in vogue and I love, love, love it!