I can not find my phone anywhere. I have searched in the kitchen, in my purse, in the couch cushions. The chance that I have misplaced it is likely but my son's current obsession with playing solitaire on it means that I have now found it lying on the beanbag chair in the basement.

Adults' handy tech devices have become kids' favourite toys. Since we are a Blackberry family our toddlers to tweens are proficient at Brickbreaker and Word Mole.

My kids love my technology way more than me (I mean they love the technology more than I do, but perhaps they love it more than they love me too). I’m just glad I always have my phone on me for those inevitable long boring moments. I’m not the only one: the doctor’s waiting room is like an software testing room, every child is using some kind of App to get them through the hours of boredom.

It probably doesn't get much worse than the jockeying for position in the social  hierarchy during the school years. Or at least that’s my experience as the smart, nerdy kid. I hated grades 7 and 8 and the idea of my kids being in middle school kind of freaks me out. In each of my kids I see the potential to be both a bully and a bullied child.There has been a heightened awareness about bullying recently because of the tragic deaths of university students in the U.S. Celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres have jumped on board to try and address the issues of coolness, bullying and acceptance. Let’s hope their words can convince kids, and their parents that bullying and intolerance is not cool.I love Rick Mercer’s rant on bullying, as usual he speaks the truth as he sees it and wants kids to know that life gets better:

My family doctor recently closed her practice. I don’t know about you but I love my family doctor and I felt so hurt when I received the letter. It was so impersonal! How could she leave me after all that we had been through together?

This is a person who delivered my child,who knew me intimately, who heard about my tiny ailments, my fears of the future and comforted and assured me of my physical and mental health. I know not everyone feels the same way about their doctor. But I come from a family of doctor-lovers. My grandfather was a GP (and later psychiatrist – hence my genetic predisposition to an armchair shrink), my mother’s greatest hope is that one of her grandchildren takes the Hippocratic oath. Until then she has to depend on my best friend for medical advice.

I hear the pitter-patter down the hall, and the flying thump as she hits the middle of the bed. “Mummy, let’s snuggle,” says the sleepy voice as she wraps her arm around me and she is back asleep.

I am awake now, but I don’t really mind. She is my last baby, and after the years of fretting about having kids in the bed I now like it. In a few short years I will be sleeping through the night without disturbances (except the ones that come with aging) and I will miss our 4 a.m. snuggles.

So where do you like it?

You know what I mean.

Get you mind out of the gutter! Your purse. Where do you like your purse? Mine’s on the floor, or the hook or on the backseat.

Don’t you feel so much more aware about breast cancer now?

It’s my blogiversary. You didn’t know that word existed did you? It means that I have been blogging here at Embrace the Chaos for one year – which means I have written 252 posts about my life, kids and my perspective on parenting.

If you  have been reading for a year then congratulations to you, I guess you have a penchant for typos, overuse of brackets and the word and, as well as some half-baked ideas, judgments, wisecracks and once in a while a thoughtful approach to the crazy world of parenting.

When I sat down in October of last year to write my first blog I was completely overwhelmed with the idea of writing five days of week, I wasn’t sure if I could do it. But in the past year I blogged through swine flu, lice (three times!)and stitches, big decisions and small ones. I judged people, and was judged, I opened up about my sex life, my marriage, my family and my kids. And I learned a lot in the process about writing, about parenting and about myself.

Some lessons from a one-year blogger:

I got the call yesterday, you know the one you dread. When you see the school’s phone number on the call display but the person phoning you does NOT say: “Hi it’s such and such school but it is nothing to worry about.”

The lovely Maggie did not say that because my son was hurt. Not fake hurt, but hurt enough that the first thing she said is “Your son is hurt and you need to take him to the doctor. We think his collarbone is broken.”

Oh, phew his collarbone. He’s broken that before and while it is painful a simple broken clavicle does not need a cast or surgery or anything. (A broken clavicle is the most common break in children, thanks to my son who ups the percentage.)

Oh crap! He’s broken it before! And he broke his wrist four years ago. Is there something wrong with him? Like wrong?

Sometimes it feels like our kids are speaking a different language, or should I say, texting a different language? Because the way they communicate with each other is totally different than what we did at their age.

My son is 10, he is begging us for a phone, but not a “lame” phone a smartphone. So far we haven’t given in but I know my husband is weakening and even I know that by Grade 6 he will have (or should I say lose) a phone.

Most of us parents are making it up as we go along: the screentime rules; the Internet monitoring; the social media hovering. When it comes to media we are trying to play catch-up with our kids all the time. Which is a bit ironic since we feel that we should be protecting our kids from the very media that they understand better than us. (My husband will want to interject here and say that he understands it just fine.) 

You would have thought that you outgrew cliques in high school, but no. The elementary schoolyard is full of them -- and it's not the kids that I am talking about, it's the moms. By now every mom can walk into their schoolyard and find their peeps -- the like-minded, like-outfitted people that they can stand around with and gossip, kvetch and discuss burning kid issues.

My schoolyard breaks down into the following cliques (and keep in mind that one of the common traits of all groups is the wearing of yoga pants):

Do you have a dangerous Dora or Barbie trike hiding in your garage? By now you have probably heard about Fisher-Price recalling 10 million products for safety reasons.

The bulk of the recall is seven million Fisher-Price Trikes and Tough Trikes toddler tricycles. It seems that the designer of the tricycle didn’t take into account that a small child may sit on the key while grabbing a seat on the bike and hurt a “sensitive area”. Of the seven million bikes that are being recalled; there have been 10 injuries reported, six required medical attention and none in Canada. Some of the other recalled toys had wheels that could fall off and cause choking hazards, and the high chairs had small screws at the back that stuck out in order to hang the tray onto it that kids could hurt themselves on.