My husband let it slip that he has an Xbox Kinect hiding in the garage. It's been there for weeks. I really shouldn't have been surprised.

He was tossing out some lame bribes using the Kinect such as: if you eat that broccoli I'll get you a Kinect. He is not much of a gamer so it's not for him. It's just that he is compulsive when it comes to new technology -- he must own everything first, especially when it comes to the kids. This is a reaction against his own childhood of having a black and white television with a rotary dial.(Imagine trying to explain to your kids getting up to change the channel of which there were only 13. Hysterics.)

I have only seriously cheated in school once in my life. There were other minor times, but only one huge lie of an essay paper. And of course I got caught.

It's interesting that I chose to cheat on an essay paper for my favourite teacher in my favourite topic - grade 11 history. I had missed three weeks of school because of complications from getting my tonsils removed. This left me seriously behind in my work and since I am not the most industrious of sorts, I had a lot of trouble catching up.

After many requests for an extension I was up against a wall on my term paper. So, I borrowed a paper from a smart writer friend and copied it. I handed it in, almost verbatim, and received a C on it. I was so shaken that I had gotten a middling mark when the paper got an A the first time round that I -- and I can barely even write this down -- I asked for a second look. That is the crazy confidence of a teenager.

There is a thoroughly modern idea that there is a "good divorce." That if the parents follow a list of dos and don'ts the kids won't be scarred, in fact they may even be healthier than in a stressed marriage.

But there is evidence to suggest that there is no such thing as a good divorce, and there is evidence to say that the kids are better off. The research is completely inconclusive and I certainly don't know the answer. I am a child of divorce -- my parents split when I was five, which was quite the news in the early '70s.

Sibling rivalry. Really it's one of the joys of parenting isn't it? The yelling, the fighting for no reason, the crying, the constant badgering of each other. One thing that keeps me sane when the kids are trying to kill each other is what a parenting coach told me: sibling rivalry is good because it teaches kids how to handle conflict.

See? It's good and you have been worried all this time that siblings hating each other was a bad thing. Phew.

Happy (almost) Holidays! 

I don't generally use Merry Christmas because I don't celebrate it and I don't want to assume that everyone who reads this blog does either. I teach my kids to say Happy Holidays, but they always ask me why everyone says Merry Christmas to them. They are not of an age where they understand that us non-Christmas celebrants are the minority.

I'm not anti-Christmas, I'm pro-inclusion. This makes me an enemy of the American Family Association who are policing retailers to make sure that they are putting the "Christ back into Christmas". They are encouraging shoppers to boycott stores who do not mention Christmas in their advertising.

I think that reading is cool again. That's a huge relief to me because I like to be a little cool and I like to read; and I really wanted my kids to love reading it the way that I do. But it is hard to be a reader when the messages all around you are that reading is for dweebs.

I don't think that I could have gotten through my elementary years without Anne of Green Gables who taught me it was okay to love words and be a little different -- and introduced me to my first pretend boyfriend: Gilbert (sigh). The Phantom Tollbooth put images and words to emotions and predicaments in such a real way that I still use the examples.

There is a plethora of choice out there when it comes to books. This list is a great start (we have read almost everything on it) but a knowledgeable bookseller or librarian who will work with your kid to find the right book is indispensable. The  magic that happens when a kid finds "the book" cannot be duplicated by any screen.

So what holds a special place on our bookshelves? (Note: the list changes weekly)

My son’s shirt is stuck on  his arm, and he wiggling like crazy. “Take off the bracelets, so I can get your shirt on!” I say in frustration.

“I can not take them off, they are in the right order,” he answers in equal frustration.

Ugh. Silly Bandz. They are piled up to my son’s elbow, they are littered all over the couch and I find them in every nook and cranny of his room. We started with one pack of 10 and now there are hundreds. Do they spawn in the dark?

It was January 7, 2000. I was seven months pregnant and headed to the bathroom before the commute home. I looked down and my pants (my favourite Japanese Weekend maternity jeans) were covered in blood.

I wasn’t in pain, no cramps, but there was the blood; lots of it.  To be honest, it didn’t occur to me that I was in any danger. I had always been sure that I was built to be pregnant and I was having a happy and healthy pregnancy.

My midwife was very calm when I called her, she told me that I should come straight to the hospital and she would be waiting for me. I called my husband and after a moment of “what are you talking about??”, he rushed downtown to get me.

Even in the car I wasn’t that concerned. I had looked up bleeding on the rudimentary Internet and learned that I was most probably experiencing some bleeding from my placenta. Good thing, I hadn’t kept reading because as soon as we arrived at the hospital I could see that I was being treated as if we, and I mean both my baby and I, were in danger.

Midwife did a quick scan, started muttering about the membranes, contractions and called in a perinatologist. Suddenly, I was having steroid shots to improve the baby’s lungs and being monitored closely for signs of labour as I was experiencing mild contractions. My husband and I realized at the same time that in a matter of hours we could be parents of a 32-week old preemie.

It’s the middle of the night, the phone rings and the counsellor picks up to hear an eight-year-old boy on the other end. He is alone and a little scared. He asks if someone on the other end of the line could sing him Happy Birthday.

That is just one of the 235,000 calls and emails that the Kids Help Phone received last year. The helpline is staffed 24 hours a day by counsellors who are professionally-trained therapists and social workers. They have heard absolutely everything from the mundane to the unbelievable but they try and answer every call with compassion and trust. They keep each call and post completely confidential and anonymous.

I hadn't used it since the days of fighting with my sister over bathroom time and lipstick so I had forgotten it had existed.

But then suddenly around dinner time about seven years ago, there it was: the yell. And it has stuck around ever since. It starts off low in the diaphragm and then works up and wow, just comes out so loud. And so angry.

And now, I can't lose it. The yell comes out when I don't expect it, sometimes I am even surprised by it's force.