Open letter to my son on the eve of his third birthday

Golly gee, look who's turning three! You are, my Little Green One, and I still can't quite believe it.

Three years into this Twain-esque sojourn into parenthood, and I can quite honestly and confidently say two things: It's never easy, and it's never dull. 

From the moment that tiny blue plus sign appeared on the litmus, you've brought out the best and worst in me -- from the rock-bottom lows of post-partum depression and colic, through the haze of sleepless nights and seemingly endless teething, tantruming and 'grining', to the exhilirating highs of first words, first steps, and all those unexpected little gifts you've sprung on me along the way. Every delirious kiss and nuzzle never ceases to make me feel like the luckiest woman alive.

From the moment that tiny blue plus sign appeared on the litmus, my life changed forever. Positive. A positive change -- no question. After 9 years spent deliberating, was I positive I wanted to do this parenting thing? Damn straight. It took a while for it to sink in that no one is ever really 'ready' to be a mom. You just do it. It is in the process of parenting that you become a parent.

Being your mother has made me delve deeper into myself, to do my best in spite of my inevitable imperfection. To go on giving even, at times, when it seems there is nothing left of me to give. In spite of everything I've read, before you came along, I never realized I could love so fiercely or heroically. And those revelations just keep on coming...

Like this morning over breakfast when you announced out of the clear blue sky, "Mommy is a really good woman". If I am, my darling, then it is because of you. And it is a privilege and an honour to watch you grow into the "really good man" I know you will one day become.

Shit my preschooler says

Kids see the world with such fresh innocent eyes. It’s no wonder that what comes out of their mouths often vacillates between sheer genius and pure comedy.

Forget P.B. Shelley; our kids are the real poets who don’t know it.

Forget Jim Carrey; our kids come out with the most cracking, side-splitting one-liners.

Their timing is impeccable, the delivery bang on, precisely because they aren’t trying to be funny. They just are...

LGO is no exception.

Click here to read some of the gems he's come up with recently.

The brown diaries -- the final installment

For those of you familiar with my blog, Little Green One, you know the road to toilet independence has been a long one, paved with no shortage of obstacles. After all, there were, I’m sorry to say, not one but a total of three installments – which is proof that when it came to to potty dance, this mom was going at it
all wrong.

Click here to read the full article, as featured at A Mother World.

Who are you and what have you done with my son?

I haven’t been watching Spielberg lately, but I swear some extraterrestrial has come in the night and taken away the Griner (my groan-meets-whining toddler) and replaced him with the most delightful almost-three-year-old you’re likely to meet. Or not. Or maybe his mom finally got a clue. Yes, that’s probably it. Finally.

Click here to read the full article, as featured at A Mother World.

What goes up doesn't necessarily come down

There’s a dangerous trend on the rise among preschoolers. Forget obesity for the time being. Forget bullying. I’m talking about noses. Or nostrils, more precisely. What possesses kids to stick things up their noses, anyway? It’s as though they wake up one day and say, ‘Hey, what are these strange holes doing on my face?’ The answer: to shove things up, obviously. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time…

Click here to read the full article, as featured at Oh Baby! Magazine.

My Yummy new job

For those who haven't heard, I got a job writing content for the Yummy Mummy Club, the mom site run by Erica Ehm of Much Music fame. 

Unfortunately this means my own blog posts will be even more sporadic than they have been of late.  But I hope you'll continue to support my work here, there, and everywhere.  I'm obviously biased, but think the "Mummy Buzz" will prove a cool read indeed...

Click here to check out the first installment. The Buzz will be updated daily, bringing you hot mummy news as it happens.

Tiger tutor wanted

A-list celebrity Gwyneth Paltrow and her hubby, front man of the rock band Coldplay, Chris Martin, are seeking the services of a private tutorfor their two young children, 8-year-old Apple, and 6-year-old Moses.

According to British newspaper, The Telegraph, the pay is outstanding -- £62,000 (around $100,000) a year for clocking just four hours a day. The package includes star-calibre accommodation, nine weeks’ vacation, and a myriad travel and health care perks.

Now, before you go and polish off your resume, be sure you possess Gwynie’s prerequisite qualifications ad nauseum.

In the ad, which was recently posted on a specialist website,the ideal candidate for the job must meet a long list of must-haves:  a background in classics (including Greek and Latin), fluency in a minimum of three languages (preferably including Mandarinor Japanese).  The applicant must also be able to play at least two instruments, and have a “passion for sailing and tennis, art history or martial arts”.

Is that all, you ask? Apparently not.  In addition to the stringent criteria above, applicants must also be cognizant in “the history of thought from a philosophical perspective”… Looks like Gwynie is giving Amy Chua a run for her money in the Tiger Mom stakes.

No X-boxes or Transformers in the Paltrow/Martin household, then.

Taking the world by Storm

So a Toronto couple has decided to keep their baby's gender a secret.  Only Storm's immediate family knows what's between Storm's squidgy legs.  Is it any wonder this story recently went viral?  That the baby's name is Storm should tell you all you need to know...  Well-intentioned parents land a truly crackpot idea and decide to run with it.  Their hope is that people will get to know Storm as a person, not a gender.  And while the ideology behind the decision is laudable, the reality of a 'sexless' baby is laughable. 

Click here to read the full article, as featured at A Mother World.

Bugaboo: why the new Donkey makes an ass out of you and me

When it comes to decadence and rampant commercialism, I’ll be the first to admit there are a lot of things I don’t get. I’m not a ‘bling’ sort of person. Naturally clumsy, I’ve never been one for heels. So the whole Sex in the City shoe fetish was lost on me. I would sooner spend what little disposable income I have on a family trip or a spa treatment. When it comes to pampering, that’s something I not only understand but wholeheartedly endorse. A timely massage or pedi can do wonders for a mother’s ravaged body and soul.

Needless to say, I’m mystified and more than a little ‘bugged’ by the latest Bugaboo craze. There are cars that go for cheaper than the new stroller, which is the ultimate status symbol of the urban mama and papa.

Click here to read the full article, as featured at A Mother World.

My Rhesus monkey

So, being my progeny, LGO was always bound to be a little strange. But my son is weird in his own inimitable fashion.  Not only does he have a real love affair with numbers (he still recites house numbers all the way down the street -- Rain Man, much?), he becomes attached to the strangest things.  Despite much swaying, he's never been one to cuddle with a teddy bear, though he has many.  Ever wishful, I placed Frank the Frog in his crib, only to find him severely beaten by morning.  Then we moved on to George the Monkey.  No black eyes, yet clearly there is no soft spot for the monkey, either.  LGO never seemed to care one way or another who or what slept in his bed... 

Until recently.  It all started when he made the transition to his Big Boy Bed.  He insisted on reading Goodnight Moon as a prelude to nod land.  Books are fine.  Books are great.  Books are a boy's best friend...  Except he felt asleep clutching the hard cover.  Every night since, it's been the same old lang syne.  'Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere, shhhh...'  Progressively, the objects of his affection have grown weirder.  One night he curled up with a plastic block, #9 being a lucky number and all. Maybe he know more about numerology than his dear ole ma.  The other night, it was a calculator, and tonight: an old cordless phone.

In my day it was a knitted white rabbit called 'Rabbie' that ultimately went gray with age and lovin' abuse.  There was also the satiny rim of a favourite blanket.  Soft, secure.  This is what you want in an attachment object, right?  After all, even the Rhesus monkey had the sense to go for the surrogate made of cloth, not wire.  But nope, this just doesn't fly with my LGO.  What does his choice say about him?  Or more worryingly, what does it say about me as his mother?  Am I as comfy as plastic or as soothing as cardboard?  I must remember to ask him in the morning...

What about you?  Is your kid especially clingy with a strange item?

Sleep, interrupted

LGO recently made the dreaded transition to the Big Boy Bed.  I'd been putting it off for months due to my don't-fix-it-if-it-ain't-broken mentality.  Further, my son had made no attempt to climb out of his crib-prison, so I wasn't worried for his safety as much as I was for my own sleep! 

As it goes, I was right to be worried.  We'd just returned from a trip to see The Grandparents, which invariably involves a major blip in his routine.  Since his bedtime had already been disrupted beyond recognition, I figured it was as good a time as any to bring down the bars and convert his crib to a toddler bed.

While some tots admittedly make the transition easily, others, well, are -- shall we say -- more resistant to change.  I had been forewarned.  I knew the slightest adjustment in a little kid's world is a huge deal.  I knew it wouldn't be painless.  Still, I hadn't expected it to be quite so painful, either. 

Usually the trouble with the Big Bed is that it gives the inmate ultimate freedom to roam and wander out of bed at will.  In preparation, I made a few modifications; I removed all the toys from LGO's room, except for books.  Needless to say, he freaked out when bedtime rolled around, yet not once did he try to get out of bed.  Hubby and I scratched our Green heads, then banged them on the wall.  What was the problem?  After all, we reassured LGO, it was the exact same bed, minus the bars.

Keeping with the prisoner analogy for a moment, there is this weird phenomenon that occurs with longtime inmates:  when the bars finally come down, all he wants to do is crawl back inside.  Inside comes to represent security.  There is safety, comfort even, in the enclosure.  So with this in mind I switched on LGO's lullaby machine, armed him with a 'cellmate' (an oversized teddy named Pappadum) and his comfort book of the moment, Goodnight Moon.  I found a nightlight and plugged that in, too.

That night, for the first time in weeks, LGO slept through.  Hands down, it was the best Mother's Day gift I could have asked for.  After all, sleep doesn't make you fat, or wilt and die.  But it can make you a nicer person.  Or in my case, a nonviolent person. 

Sleep -- never, ever underrate it.  Never, ever take it for granted.  You never know when, and for how long, you'll lose it.

Art attack: will my child be artistic?

I’m no Tiger Mom, but lately I’m beginning to think there is a little bit of Tiger in all of us… We all want the best for our kids. And most of us, whether we admit it or not, have a pretty firm idea of what that best comprises — usually to see some trait or talent from our youth revisited in our children. If you were the Paula Abdul of your heyday, then maybe you harbor secret hopes of raising your own Laker Girl. Or say, for the sake of Canadianism, you have fond memories of cheering from the chilly sidelines of the old Forum, you fantasize about your son being drafted to play for the Habs. 

Click here to read the full article, as featured at A Mother World.

Little Green dancing machine (or this is how we two-year-olds roll)

Most new parents will tell you their social lives died a sudden, tragic death the moment they had children. Not so for me. Ever since my son turned two, he’s been a regular party animal. The life and soul of every play date.

Once upon a time my social calendar looked bleak; I lamented the absence of dinner party invitations and the dearth of little black dress events. But these days I'm a veritable butterfly. And guess what? I have only my two-year-old son to thank.

Click here to read the full article, which won second place in the Voices of Motherhood contest run by Canadian Family and Yummy Mummy Club.

I kissed a girl... and I liked it

In light of all the swooning going on over a certain Wedding -- and even though I personally couldn't give a rat's ass about the bride's dress -- I thought I'd inject some romance into your day, Little Green style... 

 

I was a mere bystander watching the scene unfold before me: how they stood so close together. Her eyes met his, and he held her there for a moment. Everyone else around them falling away, as if they were all alone in that vast gymnasium. His hands brushed hers, and held hers for a moment... She moved closer, dangerously close. She teased him with her proximity. He waited until he couldn't stand it any longer. 

 

Sensing what he had to do, what he had been wanting to do all along, he pushed closer. All at once his lips pressed against hers. All that feeling, and it was over in a fleeting second. 

 

She backed away swiftly, and stared at him. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve. In a fleeting second, his heart shattered. He'd been sloppy. A little heavy on the saliva, maybe.  He had disappointed her. He wasn't what she'd wanted, after all. Had he misunderstood? Or had she led him on? 

 

One thing was for sure. He was two-and-a-half-years-old, and from now on love would never be the same.

Recharging the energizer mummy

I don’t know about you, and while I wouldn’t have had it any other way, I feel like my life post birth has changed much more radically than my husband’s has. And I’m not sure whether that’s because I carried my son in my body for nine-and-a-bit months, or because I never returned to the office after my maternity leave expired… Whatever the reason, there comes a time when the balance needs to be redressed.

Click here to read the rest of the article, as featured at Oh Baby! Magazine.

From the archives...

I’ve never really thought of myself as green, per se. In high school I belonged to a local group called the ‘Green Team’ but only because a couple of my friends were in it, and at the time REM was all the rage.

My parents aren’t exactly eco warriors, although they ‘composted’ and ‘blue boxed’ long before either became a household term. During the brief interlude that is the Canadian Summer, they keep a decent veg patch — nothing posh, just some green and yellow beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers to rival any superstore produce, both in terms of aesthetics and taste. All of this is passé, of course. It was nothing they did consciously, or even conscientiously. It was just the way they lived. There was no sacrifice or smug labour involved.

But things on the green front have moved on considerably. And I fear, for my son’s sake, that I am getting left behind. Put simply: the Little Green Household is not doing enough. It occurred to me the other day as my toddler was helping ‘recycle’ a fistful of flyers. We — and here I also mean the collective me-and-you we — could really be doing more, couldn’t we? The question is, what?

Click here to read the rest of the article, as previously featured on A Mother World.  Happy Earth Day and Easter, everybunny!

Word to your mutha

My son is the unacknowledged king of the simile. He is a poet, and he don't know it. Like a lot of his compadres, he comes up with the most startlingly astute observations when I least expect it. For instance, the other day he was wearing a pair of undersized army pants. (Don't ask: I instantly regretted buying them, although, it has to be said, they do look unbearably cute on him.) He glances down, all thoughtful, points to the motif and says, 'It's like puzzle pieces'. And another time: pointing to a tag on his top. 'It's like a flag'. And so on.

But my ultimate favourite bit of toddler lyricism came earlier this week. Allow me to set the scene: for some reason I always let LGO jump on my bed in the morning. Don't know why -- possibly because I was never allowed to as a kid, and really, it seems like a fairly harmless release right now. Who knows, maybe I'll think differently when he's 12 and cracks the box spring... Anyway, this whole bed-jumping routine also serves one incredibly vital purpose: it allows me to get dressed and ready. So the other day he pauses mid-jump and spies a white, modestly padded bra on the bed. Without a moment's hesitation, he holds the cup and declares, 'It's like an igloo'. Why, yes, I thought, it is exactly like an igloo -- a very, very small igloo. Still, leaves me wondering whether it's too early to sign him up to his first creative writing workshop. Bet he'd blow away all those Emo undergrads.

On occasion, however, his powers of perception -- though right on the money -- aren't quite so welcome. The truth hurts. And trust me, no one does truth like a preschooler. Because preschoolers haven't yet got that inner censorship button. In other words, they don't yet know how to lie, or grasp the social function that lying sometimes serves. That particular talent comes with age and years of experience; just ask anyone in public office... And anyway, we've all heard the stories -- the kid in the mall who practically shouts, 'Hey, mommy, that lady over there is really fat!' or 'Hey, mommy, why doesn't that man have any hair on his head?' Well, I guess the honesty-at-all-costs game starts at home.
 
Recently, my son has discovered the art of playing pretend. Needless to say, we never know who's going to show up at the dinner table each night. Will it be a rooster, a cat, or a sheep? Or, as was the case the other evening, will the anthropomorphic target become yours truly? 'Mommy,' he declares upon seeing me wolf down a second helping, 'is being like a pig...' Errr, honesty? From where I'm sitting: not always the best policy.

S.O.S. S.V.P.

If you're anything like me, help is a four-letter word.  Don't worry, I'm here to... er, help.  What is it about today's moms, anyway?  Why is it that most of us would gladly undergo root canal than ask for a hand with our domestic load?  It seems to me the equivalent of male bravado to shoulder more than we can at any given time, to pretend we can cope when we clearly can't, and like the proud mare, to never, ever admit when we feel overburdened, even when we reach the point of collapse. 

Asking for help wasn't my strong suit when my son was first born.  And judging by last week, it's still something of a sore point.  First, understand that this past winter has kicked my butt like Chu Yer Own Fat, and then kicked me again while I was already down.  The other day, instead of saying mea culpa to my beaten body, I did what I do best:  ignored its cries and plodded on with the 101 tasks I had to do before shut-eye time.  I forced myself to engage in some face time with the laptop.  I drank (yet another) cup of coffee, drugging myself against reality. 

Then, just as my preschooler woke up from his nap, my body lashed out.  I literally couldn't muster the wherewithal to attend to him.  In desperation, I called my next-door neighbour, a busy but for the grace of God retired woman.  Luckily for me, she was at home and available to rescue me from the fruit of my own doing. She came over and duly sat with my son for an hour while I crawled into bed and closed my eyes.  Bliss.  See, I told myself, that wasn't so hard, was it?  Oh, but it was. Even as I lay there, inert and ughhhh, some remote part of me felt ashamed to have called her.  Ashamed to have got myself to the point where I needed to call her. 

Somehow I had become a helpless and pathetic damsel up in her tower.  Not at all the hyper organized, control-is-my-middle-name ubermom that usually gets projected to the rest of the world.  I felt weak, and yet at the time I was so conked out I couldn't stop myself from reaching out and begging for assistance.  No doubt I'll cringe (and blog) over the Lose Face episode later, I told myself, when I feel well enough to tend to my bruised pride.

How about you?  Have you ever 'cracked' and asked for help.  When and what drove you to such a ghastly act of dependency?

Mommy: the really useful engine

It was the nicest compliment I’d received in a long time. Not foxy. Not clever. Not kind, even. But really useful. For those of you unfamiliar with Thomas the Tank Engine, allow me to enlighten your poor sheltered lives for a moment. Thomas, based on a series of old books by Rev. W Awdry, tells the tale of a little blue steam engine from a little island remarkably like Britain, only sunny. For some odd reason, Thomas and his ‘steamie’ friends are positively revered by the under-four set. And my two-and-a-bit-year-old is no exception to this enduring trainspotting obsession. He knows every engine by heart according to its colour and number. He asks to watch Misty Island Rescue at least five times a day and, I’m slightly loathe to admit, can recite whole sections of the film verbatim. If you have a girl, count yourself lucky. But then, I guess payback comes with puberty…

Click here to read the full post, as featured at A Mother World.

How deep is your blog?

Just how much information on the WWW is TMI?  (No more acronyms going forward, promise.)  After reading the latest blog horror story -- in which a mom outlandishly admits to the world at large that she prefers her son over her daughter, and then some -- I've been thinking about the big reveal and wondering if honesty really is always the best policy, at least insofar as it relates to the Internet. 

While Twitter and Facebook have arguably tightened the e-community, the social networking twins, no doubt about it, have brought out the narcissist in all of us, from the constant shameless plugs to the most mundane minutia. (Seriously, I know you've all witnessed the cringe worthy I'm Eating This status updates, too.)  I'm as guilty of navel gazing as the next person, possibly even more so.  I've often ran off at the mouth about things I probably shouldn't have, or wouldn't have, in a saner moment. 

Countless times I've opened the closet on my dark materials and talked about just how effing tough motherhood has been for me so far.  I've talked about depression and colic and many more ugly-as-sin topics on LGO.  Mainly, I'm proud to do so because I feel it's not only therapeutic for me to give those demons a good run every now and then, but because it's equally therapeutic for you to read it and occasionally nod that you really do 'get it'. 

But let's face it, some thoughts are just too dark, even for the web.  Some dirty laundry is best left to fester in the basement, or at the least, aired out where it belongs: between the four walls of a psychotherapist's office.  Will I live to regret some of the confessions made in the public domain under this domain name?  Possibly.  No, probably.  Still, I would hope there has never been any doubt about how much I love my son, ever. 

Writing for the web, though, somehow doesn't feel as real as writing for the printed page.  Don't know about you, but paper just feels more indelible and final.  Yet I know I'm kidding myself, and that the Internet may be even more dangerous due to the sheer numbers.  Once those words are released, there is no catching or retracting them.  The end result is instant, occasionally incendiary and nothing short of pandemic -- think Tiger Mom.  Rather than feeling the need to write a follow-up 'justification post', perhaps the aforementioned horror story mom (and any blogger for that matter) would do well asking herself the following questions:  Am I ok with my kids reading this now or in years to come? And my parents? My third-grade teacher? My neighbour from three doors down? before pressing PUBLISH.