To be honest, I sort of imagined my Oscar debut to come with a rush of excitement and a thank-you speech in hand, with me saying something like: "Thank you for loving my script. I can't forget my husband and kids who have stood by me," blah blah blah.

But instead, I was talking about quinoa with Sharon DeVellis, and Galen Weston from Loblaws and on a national commercial. But that's okay because it was still on the Oscar broadcast. And it was a really exciting experience to be in some commercials too! (You can see them here.)

But how did it happen?

In my 13 years of parenting, I have watched more hours of kids TV than I can count. Often the shows don't even register anymore. Or at least they only register when they are offensive because of overly sexualized and rude conversations (see Zack and Cody and many others).

When my daughter started watching Doc McStuffins, I thought, that's pleasant. And forgot about it. But after reading this article about how Disney Junior's Doc McStuffins has started a movement amongst African-American female doctors in the U.S., I'm planning to putting it on 24/7.

Did (or do) you imagine a little girly girl holding hands with you as you skip down the street to have tea? Or did (do) you imagine explaining the parts of a truck to your tough little son?

Were the dreams dashed by the reality of having a baby that was not the same sex as the one in your fantasy life? (Not that you can't skip and have tea with a boy or inspect trucks with a girl -- I certainly do.)

It happens: it doesn't make you a bad parent. Often people do have a secret longing to have one sex over the other, but usually people can work through their disappointment quickly to love their child, no matter what he or she turns out to be.

My parents split when I was five. For the first years, I didn't know any other families who were divorced. I don't think I even knew the word "divorced".

I can't think of a TV character or book that provided a model for me. Those eventually came, but much later. Now divorce is much more common and my kids talk easily of their friends who shuffle between their mom's and dad's houses.

Sesame Street is one of the few constants linking my childhood to my kids, so imagine my surprise to know that they haven't really touched the divorce topic until now.

I can't imagine my childhood without Free To Be You And Me. I can still recite most of the songs from the album and the purple cover is ingrained in my memory as clearly as my brown gingham bedspread.

It's hard to believe that Free To Be You and Me came out 40 years ago (which makes me the perfect demographic for it's feminist messages). I thought everyone must have soaked in the progressive Free To Be You and Me messages. Imagine my horror when I met people at university who did not know what I was talking about when I mentioned Atalantis or William wants a doll! Let alone the talking babies who needed a diaper change.

Princesses are having a hard week -- the newest and littlest Disney princess is being called out for not being ethnic enough. And then a Supreme Court judge tells Sesame Street viewers that being a princess is not a career.

Bully, bullied, bullying. We hear it a lot these days. We hear it as reasons why singers sing, why dancers dance, why news anchors get to have on-air diatribes for four minutes. And I hear it from my kids all the time.

So-and-so bullied me. Josh got bullied. It's hard to unwind what the word means anymore. Does it mean that someone got made fun of? Or punched? Or that it is a systematic process with intent to make someone feel less-than?

A TV host, doctor, and father of three tried a daring experiment: he underwent simulated labour pain to see if he, on behalf of men everywhere, could take it.

With an obstetrician and physiologist at his side, Dr. Andrew Rochford hooked up electrodes to his abdomen that were timed to mimic the contractions of a woman in labour for the first time.

The newest buzz about Jessica Simpson doesn't have to do with her own wardrobe choices and her body image. But her baby Maxwell's.

Jessica was on the new Katie Couric show, debuting her "new post-baby body" and her whole "I'm just you, I'm no supermodel" rhetoric. There was a tease about a bikini shot coming up and then, after the break there was a picture of little 4-month-old Maxwell Drew in a yellow crochet bikini. 

As a child, my mother, sister and I would sit and watch One Day At A Time, a sitcom about a family that looked a lot like ours (but didn't act like ours!). The Thorn Birds was also a major event on par with a family occasion that got the three of us sitting on the couch together, glued to the TV.

Does that happen anymore?