We have had a nightly visitor this week. She crawl into our bed, settle between us and says sleepily: "I"ve had a bad dream."
I can live with that part (in fact, I enjoy it). The problem is when I put her to bed, she says that as soon as she closes her eyes she can see the monster of her dreams waiting to come get her.
Does the phrase "boomerang lunch" mean anything to you?
If it does, I know that you can feel my pain. Our school has always had a no garbage policy, but now they have formalized it by calling it a "boomerang lunch" with posters and catchphrases. This means that everything that gets sent to school in the lunch bag comes home - including the garbage. There are no garbage bins available in the makeshift lunchroom -- not even for compost.
The news that Greg Wiggle is re-joining The Wiggles after a five year absence has made me ridiculously happy.
I'm not sure why I care, since it has been at least a year since a note of Hot Potato was wafting through the house. And Greg was never my favourite Wiggle anyways. He always had a dour, priggish way about him. And his magic tricks were awful. Anthony is the one with all the charisma (sorry Murray and Jeff).
Sleep. It's the most elusive, fleeting, annoying, talked-about, and aggravating part of (early) parenthood.
With your first, no matter how much preparation you have had, there is absolutely no way that you are ready for the relentless attack on your sleep patterns. You will cry tears of exhaustion and bitterness. You will reach out to friends, strangers and professionals for answers.
But there are no answers on how to get your baby/toddler/preschooler to sleep. Nothing you will buy, read or pray to will prove to be the magic thing that does it. But looking back, there are a few things that helped me get through those sleepless nights and get my kids to sleep:
It's January 3, 2012, and how many resolutions have you broken? It is like a domino thing: once you've broken one resolution that has to do with a bag of Miss Vickie's chips, then the rest all hit the ground. (That is just an example of course.)
Do you set resolutions for yourself? Or, just for others, so you have no hope of filling them? Like resolve that your husband will book a restaurant for date night once in a while or that your kids will say please and thank you all the time without a hint of irony or resentment?
I know that I could resolve to:
There are some gaps in my holiday shopping due to a lingering flu-like thing and you know, life. So you know what that means -- I will be doing some panicked last-minute shopping which can lead to bad decision making. That is, unless I can figure out ahead of time what are the best toys ever, that I can get with the least effort.
It's obvious once you think about it.
Working mothers are happier than stay-at-home mothers. At least that is what the latest study is telling us.
Working mothers, both part-time and full-time, suffer less depression than moms who are at home full-time. The study seemed to say that moms who work part-time have the best of both worlds since they have time for volunteering in school and time out in the world talking to other adults.
Have you ever been on a momdate? Or even more scary, a blind momdate?
If you were lucky enough to have kids at the exact time as all you friends than you maybe have escaped the momdate. But for the rest of us who were on different timelines than our friends, or who moved or who just grew out of our circle -- the momdate may have been the lifeline we needed to a new, and important relationship.
The expectations on women are to be perfectly primped all the time from our grey roots down to our perfectly shiny toes. And since we as a culture have a hard time separating women from girls. Those expectations slide down on to girls as well.
We have come to hate the ragged cuticle, the unvarnished toe, the straggly eyebrow and any sight of pubic hair. So, we drag ourselves to manicures, estheticians and worst of all the waxer to get everything taken care of, in our quest for beauty.
No presents please, just your presence is appreciated. It is my (belated) two year blogiversary. My second anniversary of blogging here at Embrace the Chaos was in October. But I have been so busy keeping up with the news and managing chaos that I haven’t had time to reflect on the goings-on here in my tiny corner of the Internet.
But I have learned some things along the way this year including:
Emma WavermanEmma Waverman writes five days a week about the chaos of modern family life here at MSN.ca. She is the co-author of the family cookbook Whining and Dining: Mealtime Survival for Picky Eaters and Families Who Love Them and is hoping to one day to finish her certification as a parenting coach. She lives with her three kids, ranging from tween to grade schooler, and husband in Toronto. Emma has written for a variety of national parenting and lifestyle magazines and papers. When she’s is not making typos, telling you what she thinks, and thinking about dinner - you can find her on Twitter at @emmawaverman. You can contact Emma at embracingchaos@hotmail.ca
Spoon feeding isn't making childeren obese!!! It is the garbage they are eating and the lack of exercise!
onMy daughter is 10 months and she is about 50/50 between spoon feeding and self feeding. She starts her meal with the goopy stuff that requires a spoon, and ends it with eating the finger foods. I can understand how spoon feeding could lead to obesity if its forced, but you've also got to teach your children to communicate/ learn how to read them. When I'm spoon feeding my daughter, when shes full, she tends to close her eyes and put her hand up. Try once or twice more, same reaction, shes done. Its not so much the method the food goes in the mouth, but the idea of "cleaning your plate" that creates the problem. If a person has a child self feeding, they can still make them eat beyond satisfaction. Not the method but the attitude!
on
