At the risk of sounding like a romantic killjoy, I have never been big on Valentine’s Day. It probably stems from the fact that I went to an all girls school as a child, where telling every one of your female classmates you wanted them to “Be Mine” felt, well … a little misdirected. Read more
As I lay in bed trying to digest another Thanksgiving dinner, sweating out the gravy literally oozing from my pours, I felt grateful not only for the family and close friends willing to drive 160 km north to share it with us, but for the unique and memorable moments that came this weekend courtesy of neighbouring cottage kids. Read more
Growing up in an all girl, artsy-fartsy household, the only contact sport I was ever thrust into as a kid was the physically demanding My-Sister-Has-Me-Pinned-To-The-Floor-And-Is-Dangling-Gob-Strings-Over-My-Face-While-I-Thrash-Frantically-For-Fear-Of-One-Landing-In-My-Mouth game. Not the road to Olympic glory let me tell you. Read more
I do not support child labour. Although my daughter does work as a voice actor on an animated kids’ show … which, come to think of it, they do pay her for … okay yeah, so maybe I support it a bit. But when it comes to personally profiting off the backs of my children, I am totally against it. Unless, of course, they needlessly break a limb as a result of somebody else’s negligence and you have to deal with the nerve-shattering scream-crying (theirs too) as you try not to run over innocent pedestrians while careening your car through rush hour traffic on route to the hospital, cursing at every red light because you can’t get there fast enough to alleviate your child’s suffering or your own spiking blood pressure. Then it’s totally okay. Read more
Yesterday afternoon I made the three-hour trip into the city so I could spend a couple of days in town getting errands done before school starts next week.
As I drove down our street, I spotted a good friend walking home from work about two blocks from our house. He was purposefully crossing the road behind me when I caught sight of him, so Read more
I realize by writing this I’ll appear a horribly thankless Canadian mother, but I am SO DONE with summer. By the time I post this story, school will have been out for 52 days, 18 hours and 10 minutes in Toronto (not that I’m counting … daily). So like all parents trying to fill two relentless months of unstructured childhood, we have camped, cottaged and cavorted in the great outdoors until my obsessive UV protection practices have all but sunscreened the prints off my own fingers. Read more
Mommie Dearest
We’ve all been there. That breaking point in your parenting day when, after the twenty-seventh time asking your child to stop their incessant (insert sanity-draining behavior), your patience snaps like a dry twig. What should be a levelheaded response to disobedience suddenly turns into the wire hanger scene from Mommie Dearest. Read more
“LOOK Mama, LOOK!” Delia demanded as she plunged into another frantic underwater handstand. Had there been a lifeguard within eyeshot, a full-blown rescue would have ensued. I offered my requisite clapping from the poolside deck. Read more
Last Friday I woke up in Paris. Oh, not literally. And sadly, not to the café latte and sinful croissant I should have been offered, given the circumstances. At 6:55 a.m. my nine-year-old daughter Delia burst into our room and sounded this verbal alarm:
“MAMA!” Bang… consciousness. “You did remember this is the day I have to hand in my Paris project, right?!”
WHAA…? Dislodging the second earplug from its canal, I tried to piece together the vast lapses in memory that had brought me to this frenzied start to my day. Read more
On the first Monday in May this year, my children made history. No, they didn’t make their beds. Like thousands of kids across the country, they stood in their schoolyard at exactly 1:00 p.m. with fellow students and staff, voices skyward, singing the newest single by Barenaked Ladies and their unlikely new collaborator, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield.
You’d have to have been living under a moon rock this spring not to have heard about the song “Is Somebody Singing”, particularly if you’re a Canadian parent. My kids’ music teacher had introduced it to them on Youtube as the official song for Music Monday 2013, promoting music education in schools. The video showed the live recording of the song with Hadfield singing his parts from space, and for a generation not so easily impressed by the wonders of the digital age, my kids were utterly captivated. Read more