Winnipeg Free Press

Is it just me, or do our kids have way too many toys. 

I don’t know what your toy room looks like but mine is uncomfortably crowded with multicoloured distracters that my kids don’t even play with. 

Well…it’s not that they wouldn’t play with them but in order to do that, they would first have to find all the accompanying pieces that go with each toy, which would mean looking through countless bins, some weighing more than the two of them combined.

And while I try to get in there every now and then and “organize” the madness, truth be told, to get this toy house in order I would need a treasure map, a miner’s hat and an unthinkable amount of patience.

Now I’ll just come out and say this.  I’m truly embarrassed at how many toys my offspring have accumulated in their short years.  And please know that I am taking full blame for this situation because, ironically, my kids, who are beautiful and perfect in every way, would be the last ones seen in a toy store clutching an extravagant plaything and screaming their faces off until their prize ended up hanging out of a shopping bag with their name on it.

I mean honestly, we were outside all afternoon and the two of them played with a ball and a stick for about 3 hours.

So why then does the basement of my house resemble the clearance section of a box-shaped toy warehouse?

Well here’s how some of our toys came to be:

1. Some we inherited from our kids’ older cousins. 

2. Some were acquired from the large Greek birthday parties we tend to host

3. Christmas and other special Greek holidays tend to bring in a few more

4. Well-wishing relatives/neighbours bringing over something “small” for the kids

5. “Educational” toys we have read/heard about or seen at friends’ houses and thought our children would also enjoy having

6.  “Guilt” toys we purchase every time we leave our kids at home with a sitter and their many toys

7.  Reading Saturday flyers

8.  Reading Sunday flyers

9.  Living near or driving past any form of dollar store

10. Walking into/driving by stores carrying “educational” toys that have been “reduced”

Needless to say, all these contributing factors have led to a junk pile of toys that my kids are neither interested in or benefit from.

I guess this is where I talk about what I’m going to do about it.  Well, I’m going to spend a little bit of time researching where one can donate in-tact toys and pass that information along to anyone else in my shoes (and I haven’t even mentioned my storage room filled with high-chairs, exersaucers, playpens, bassinets etc).

In the meantime, if anyone knows of somewhere we (parents of birth-preschool kids) can rid ourselves of our toys (and make some deserving kids happier in the process) please let me know because I’ve talked about purging before but interestingly enough, I’ve since discovered that some charities don’t accept toys for various reasons.

So I’m on a mission to:

A) Say no to more toys coming into my house even if they are “educational” or “40% off this week only”

B) Find out how the ones we do have can hopefully make a difference for some deserving kids

I’ll keep you posted and please advise if you know of any charities that accept gently used toys/baby & toddler accessories.

Oh and curb side pick up would be ideal!

Happy spring toy clean up everyone!

Demetra

Today saw snow-covered Little Tikes cars abandoned in fenced yards around the city. 

My little guy had his face glued to our patio doors for the better half of the morning.  The expression on his face said it all and I’m sure he wasn’t the only pre-schooler confused by today’s events.   

The other day I was sun tanning on my kids’ play structure (oh come on, I wasn’t the only one) and today, fuzzy socks.

And while this kind of weather would otherwise scream Movie Day, the on-again, off-again power outages in our neighbourhood interrupted Chicken Little more than was tolerable and brought us to Plan B: Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. 

In fact, it was a snuggly day filled with books, songs, Spiderman crafts and paper masks.

We had waffles in our pajamas, jumped for joy every time pee made its way into the toilet, played peek-a-boo with baby under a big sheet, ate popsicles in the middle of the afternoon and of course pretended we were The Wiggles more than once. 

And for a short break, in the middle of the afternoon, my mom came over to relieve me while I dashed over to the Children’s Museum to teach a drama workshop as part of Manitoba Book Week and to promote my book Acting Alone: A Drama Teacher’s Monologue Survival Kit (J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing Inc., 2006).

I spent a quick hour with a wonderful group of grade 5 & 6 students and then was back on that icy road home to make supper, and share bath & bedtime duties with my husband.

When I walked through the door, my children were as I left them (although I know their grandmother slipped them a few more sweets in the interim), in their pajamas I mean, covered in sticky fruit juice and building forts with cushions.

Yup, it was a sleepy April day over here moms.  One filled with “broken” televisions, sugary treats before dinner and amounting in two weary kids that fell hard asleep minutes after being pulled out of a warm bath and slipped into miniature cuddly-soft bedtime attire.

Snow in April was certainly unexpected, however, after a hectic week filled with outings and activities, spending a refreshingly relaxing day indoors with my kids (devoid of TV and ringing phones) was even more unexpected.

Here’s hoping for warmer weather soon and even a couple of rainy days this summer so the three of us can have some more time to perfect our Wiggles air band routine…    

It’s been a week since The Wiggles blew in and out of town, but for one little guy, their visit lives on. 

Ok everyone knows by now that my entire family loves The Wiggles (if you missed it, my son’s craft that read ‘WE LOVE YOU WIGGLES’ was printed in last Saturday’s paper held by none other than Anthony Wiggle).

The fact that I got to speak to Murray Wiggle over the phone from his home in Sydney in the weeks leading up to their concert at the MTS centre was for me both a professional and personal highlight.

The expression on my son’s face when his heroes walked through the door of the conference room where we met these ‘Beatles for Kids’ in person was something altogether different.

Let me explain.  If you’ve met my little guy, you already know that he doesn’t tend to sit still for very long. 

“He’s busy!” proclaimed Joe Bryksa, the Free Press photographer assigned to take a picture of my family and The Wiggles before their afternoon concert last Friday.  That was after observing the apple of mine and my husband’s eye for about 10 minutes while we waited for our turn to quickly shake hands with the biggest stars in all of Australia.

In fact we get that a lot.

“Wow, how do you keep him busy all day!” is another comment we often hear from fascinated observers who get a chance to see our little tyke burn some energy up close.

“The Wiggles,” I reply.

Now, I’m being serious here.  These fellas got us through a very long and cold winter.  We have numerous DVDs that my son danced away to (he knows pretty much all their moves, even some impressively complicated ones) during those icy months.

And that’s why I like these guys.  Because, I’ll tell you I’m not a very big fan of TV.  Ours is off most of the day but The Wiggles are typically in if I’m making supper or needing a few moments to get something done. 

So what did Sir Dance-a-lot do when he came face to face with his idols? 

Stillness. 

“Peter, I really like your craft,” says Anthony.

Stillness.

“I like all the nice colours you used,”

More stillness.

“Peter say hi,” we coaxed.

Stillness.

And at the concert, where I made sure to book us into some nice aisle seats on the floor for the purpose of witnessing some pretty remarkable dancing.

Stillness.

Oh man did we laugh.  At one point I said to my husband, “I think we’re gonna have to follow these guys from city to city.”

Today was a brilliant day.  I can’t tell you the temperature because our TV was off and we were in the yard from breakfast until bath time.  My kids ran and played outside again - finally!  My son pretended to be Sam driving his big red car and insisted on wearing Murray’s red shirt and we listened to Hot Potato during potty time (not sure why this is our new potty song but I’m not about to question this whatsoever).

At bed time my son tried to negotiate his way into wearing his grass stained red shirt that he has grown so attached to.  We promised it would be ready for him to wear in the morning, as usual.

So I’m off to wash one very special red shirt for a very special three year old who doesn’t stop moving unless he’s meeting The Wiggles in person, watching The Wiggles perform live or dreaming of his favourite dancing Aussies. 

I’ve had my moments, lately, when I’ve felt like everyone around me has paused to look over their shoulders and inspect how I handle my kids in public.

It’s a paranoia that all parents, not just parenting columnists, have that makes us feel uneasy, even when we know that in our heart of hearts we are performing our duties to the best of our abilities.

I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes I too listen in to see how parents are handling challenging episodes with their children.  I’m always intrigued to see different parenting styles in action and, more often than not, I genuinely learn something, even when philosophically I don’t agree with the way a certain situation was handled.

Here’s what we all need to remember, no matter what parenting camp we come from: good parenting, the kind that involves consistency and that good old fashioned follow-through is often not pretty to look at.

No one feels like the mother of the year standing beside a screaming child, even if said mother may in fact be the most compassionate, caring individual on the planet.

In fact, the hardest thing any parent can do is risk being hated by their child, even if only temporarily, in order to teach the difference between right or wrong in any setting, no matter who is gawking.

Some parents ignore, others give time-outs or count to three.  At the end of the day we all just want our kids to grow up to be respectful individuals.

The other day I caught a glimpse of Jamie Lee Curtis on Oprah.  She was applauded by a studio audience when she suggested that parents nowadays, afraid to hear their kids cry or experience disappointment, have changed the game of parenting.

First of all, I don’t think that parenting is a game and secondly, I think this generation of parents is indeed raising respectful, confident children.

And yes parenting has changed due in part, I’m sure, to the fact that we as parents are more educated than ever before.  We are also older and one would hope wiser.  Having turned the page on corporal punishment, we are seeking more holistic ways of reigning in kids that will not bruise their self worth.

Curtis, a successful author of children’s books, stated that she sees herself as the new “myth breaker”.  I disagree wholeheartedly.  I took her comments to be derogatory, unfounded and discouraging to parents.

It’s this kind of mommy bashing that is bothersome to me because it is counterproductive to furthering better parenting practices.

I’m sad to see that Curtis took a jab at her own in this way.  And it’s even more unsettling to think that a room full of women applauded her statements on national television. 

I was at the salon getting my hair done over the weekend (ok I was touching up my grey roots) when I heard a funny sound come from my cell phone.

It turns out it was a text message.  I had never received a text message before. I was quite confused by this.

OK so I should explain that:

a) I rarely have my cell phone charged/on (something that drives my family crazy).

b) I let my kids use my phone daily to “call” The Wiggles but I personally don’t generally use it to call anyone unless I’m calling my husband to tell him to bring me ice-cream because we’re out.

c) I’ve never taken a picture/video/sent an email/changed my ring tone/played Tetris or figured out the fine art of texting (I think this is a verb nowadays) on any of my cell phones (I go through them quite regularly - my last one perished tragically after it was dropped in the toilet. Today yet another defenseless DVD player was decapitated before our very eyes - thankfully we saw this coming and after the assassination of our last player we purchased the cheapest  model in the store, maybe even the planet).

d) The text I received was from my brother whose single life in the Big Apple is a far cry from mine.  His text read ”Steamer? Come to New York!”

Turns out I’m not as cool as I used to be, you might even say behind the times as far as technology goes (I got so frustrated with my digital camera a couple of months back that I started phoning around asking if anyone still sells Polaroid cameras).

So I sat there, under the hairdryer, and attempted to figure out how one texts (again I think this is an actual word these days) someone. 

Turns out it was not as hard as I thought it would be.  I wrote back “I know” and I even sent another one to my husband that read “Hi”. I then phoned them both to make sure they received my messages.  And with time still remaining, I did the unthinkable and checked my email making sure to look around and make like this was something I did every day.

The entire session took me about three quarters of an hour which I thought was reasonable. I even momentarily entertained the thought of purchasing a Blackberry (you know to use between nursing and cleaning up bubble juice from the floor).   

That was Saturday.  Today is Thursday.  My phone is probably under some toy truck somewhere.  Battery dead.  Cord nowhere to be found.

I wonder if anyone has texted (this is probably not a word) me today. 

Oh well.  I probably won’t have the time to respond until the next time I find myself sitting in an awkward leather chair waiting for my hair dye to dry…

I always know spring is right around the corner because I have a fierce need to either get rid of everything in my house or label it.

Last year, around this time, I became obsessed with storing everything we owned in clear plastic bins or see-through garbage bags.  It was a bizarre time I must admit.

This year I’ve been afflicted by a new neurosis. 

“What’s that?” my husband asked last Saturday while I was down on my knees cleaning my daughter’s breakfast cereal from our floor tile.

“A steamer,” I replied.

“God help us,” he said, turning around and exiting the room in the same direction he came in just moments before. 

A wise decision really.

I do get a bit nutty come this time of year.  It’s like there’s a full bottle of Mr. Clean in the air and it’s mysteriously beckoning me to wash crayon off of beadboard and find out where all the missing socks have gone.

And I know I’m not the only one who feels this urgent need to pull everything out and shake it just because it’s March.

Everyone who I have spoken to lately, of the mommy variety, is either repositioning furniture or discovering the lint catcher in the dryer for the first time.  It’s a confusing phenomenon to say the least and one that connects us all no matter where we fall on the domesticity spectrum. 

You are not alone ladies.  Just think when you’re cleaning out that junk drawer this week how many women around the world are involuntarily doing precisely the same thing you are.  It’s a time when vacuuming and dusting eliminates the need for Hot Yoga and charities with pick up trucks replace drycleaners on our cell phone speed dials.  Why wash what we can give away?  

But please don’t fret moms.  Hang in there just a little bit longer.  Soon it will be time to put our feet up and enjoy a cold beverage while our husbands pull out their weed wackers and power washers, an event worth waiting all year to watch.

Happy Spring Cleaning everyone!

Demetra

Before I became pregnant with my son, over four years ago, I quit the juice (coffee that is) cold turkey and never looked back.  When my daughter was born a little over a year ago, I started on that road to addiction once again hoping it would help me keep things together, stay awake and maybe even make the day go by faster.

It turns out it did none of those things.  Instead it turned me into Angry Mom because as much as I tried, I could not keep up with the demands that I placed on myself during the day and the more I tried to stay up at night in order to complete my lengthy to do lists, the more tired, and consequently dependant on coffee, I became.

The other day I came face to face with my dependency and let me tell you it wasn’t pretty.  If you’re a coffee junky, you’ll relate to what happened to me when I missed drinking my morning cup of java at exactly the precise minute my body expected its entitled fix.

Well it was a messy day to say the least.  I had a throbbing head-ache, snapped at everyone in my family at least once (don’t get me started on what I said to the telemarketers) and it really didn’t matter how much coffee I drank in the afternoon, the damage was already done. 

I turned into the meanest, ugliest Angry Mom there is.  

I was so angry (at myself mostly for getting to this point) in fact that I decided I wasn’t going to take it anymore.

So today was Day 1 of Angry Mom detox.  I woke up, took my Tylenol before (very important) my withdrawal head-ache took shape and having had the foresight to line up childcare with my mom and husband the night before, involuntarily collapsed on my bed for the entirety of the afternoon.

It was sad and magnificent all at the same time.

At 10:30 p.m. I can report that, although my head is still a little foggy, I’m well on my way to recovery and couldn’t be happier. 

And if I can successfully obliterate Angry Mom in the next couple of days, I know both my husband and kids will also be much happier (not to mention those telemarketers).

Even today, I noticed immediate results.  Things that have been setting me off lately (like tripping over toys/crafts/clothing) didn’t even faze me. 

Tomorrow however, like always, is a new day.  But one thing’s for certain; I’m not going to be a slave to my coffee machine to get through it (in fact I’ve packed the thing away where it can no longer hurt me).  And for all those skeptics who wonder how I’m planning on staying awake now that I’ve strangled my percolator with its own cord and thrown it in a dark and cold storage closet, I have this to say: when I kicked this nasty habit the first time, I never in my life felt more relaxed, alert or productive. 

So here’s looking forward to being my old self again, going to sleep at a reasonable hour and not feeling like my head is going to pop off every time I step on Pop Up Pirate.  

Oh and if you’re an Angry Mom and trying this at home, please remember that the first 48 hours are the worst (they’re brutal really) so take your brand of head-ache medication BEFORE you get the absolutely HUGE head-ache that accompanies Angry Mom detox and trust me there will be one.

So having said that, sweet dreams all.  I can’t last a moment past 11 a.m. tonight which is another benefit of kicking this habit.  My unrealistic expectations of getting in another full day’s work after the day is already over are just not possible if I am tucked away in bed sleeping…

Demetra  

It seems like everywhere I turn these days there’s a new TV show sprouting up where the heroines, who are always beautiful, intelligent working women, look down their noses at stay-at-home moms who are always depicted as idiots of some kind.

It’s a new age, where motherhood is now somehow perceived as subservient to other pursuits and women who continue to regard child-rearing as a full time profession are seen as the weakest of the weaker sex. 

And if you happen to be a stay-at-home mom, there’s no need to tell you what you already know; life has an interesting way of mirroring primetime and you’ve probably encountered this bizarre new byproduct of misinterpreted feminist theory firsthand at social gatherings when you’ve been greeted by the half-head-tilt smile after revealing your pro-bono occupation to an individual or group who has not had the pleasure of walking a mile in your Skechers.

“Oh that’s nice” is something you’ve heard more than once I’m sure.

So here it is stay-at-home mommies past and present.  Pour a glass of wine, put your feet up, email your girlfriends and after having a good laugh, remember above all that there are still plenty of women and men out there who recognize what you do as one of the most valuable contributions anyone could ever make to society - and that’s empowerment!

In the year 2008, if you are a stay-at-home mom, people often assume…

1. You envy/resent women who “work”.
2. You don’t “work”.
3. You’ve never heard of Nelly McClung.
4. You’re uneducated and know how to mend pants.
5. Your friends consist of other uneducated stay-at-homes who mend pants.
6. You aspire to raise boys who will grow up to become doctors and girls who mend pants.
7. You sit around all day and drink tea.
8. You have time to sit.
9. You find Dr. Phil riveting.
10. You have time to watch Dr. Phil.
11. You bake.
12. Your friends bake.
13. You get together with your friends to bake.
14. Playdates are excuses to sample the host’s baking.
15. You have time to work out, go for facials and learn a second language.
16. You throw/attend/wish to attend Norwex/Passion parties.
17. You have a Baby Einstein lending library in your basement.
18. You should volunteer more than other moms because you have more time.
19. You have time to go to the bathroom.
20. You can’t wait for your kids to be old enough for school so you can “work” again.
21. You think your children will have vivid memories of their first 3 years of life with you.
22. Your kids tuck themselves into bed at 6 p.m. at which point you enjoy candlelight dinners with your husband in your spotless kitchen.
23. Your decision to devote every shred of your energy hugging, kissing, singing, reading, playing, educating, entertaining and comforting your children through their first years of life was not in fact the biggest and best career move you’ll ever make.

Cheers to you mommies!

Demetra

It’s Sunday evening and I’m just now recovering from my daughter’s first birthday party last night.

Let me qualify “party” so that my close friends and relatives are not offended. 

After hosting 3 over-the-top-tiny-tots parties for our son, my husband and I decided to organize a very low key party, consisting of close family and godparents, for our sweet girl’s 1^st ever birthday.

Dinner was ordered in and served on paper plates and clean up consisted of throwing away said paper plates.  My kids laughed and played with their cousins; they wore the most adorable outfits; we had an opportunity to catch up with the people in our life that we sometimes take for granted; we took dozens of photos that captured my little princess eating her first birthday cake, my son wearing her first tiara, my parents holding their 5 grandchildren and for the first time in a long while, I can actually say I had an opportunity to sit back, relax and truly enjoy my family.

Today I took my son out for a one-on-one day consisting of the WSO and The Children’s Museum.  I wanted him to also have his own special day this weekend.  It was the first time in a long while (too long really) that I was able to enjoy being alone with my little guy and give him my complete undivided attention.  We bonded over Beethoven and craft time and, I’m not ashamed to say, when the day was over I cried from the inside out. 

It was an all and all low stress weekend filled with good food, good company, good entertainment and good wholesome family fun.

And it’s 10:00 p.m. and I’m off to bed if anyone out there can actually believe it.

Tomorrow, however, is a new day.  One that consists of finding everything in my house that I hid before the party, ironing, folding and putting away last week’s laundry, opening all the mail and bills that I put off until this weekend was over, convincing myself to not eat leftover cake for breakfast and wrapping my head around the fact that in just a few short months my son will be 4 and in 4 even shorter years my children will both be in school and I will no longer be the mother of two pre-school children but someone who will be much richer for having had the honour of watching two beautiful, uniquely individual people come into their own before my very eyes. 

I feel like my life is a moving picture - one that is mostly on fast forward, sometimes on pause, and on days like today, playing the most beautiful background music to my most perfect life.
 

I’ll admit I’m prone to making ‘to do’ lists.  This, the week of my daughter’s first birthday party, is certainly not going to be an exception.

“Email it to me” my husband says before going off to bed last night.  We’ve done this before you see.

I guess the problem with list-makers, such as myself, is that we not only make lists for ourselves to complete but we also make it a point to instruct others around us as to their role in our list. 

Bossy?  Maybe.  But as much as some people don’t want to admit, someone has to make the list.  Right? 

Let me ask you this.  If a woman writes a list in a forest and doesn’t have a fridge to post it on or the opportunity to explain every item on that list in great detail to her husband, could the boxes that accompany the items on that list get ticked off just the same?

It’s an idea I’m not willing to test this week.

I will tell you this.  While I’ve been the primary list-writer in this marriage for close to six years, I have recently changed the way in which I itemize those ever-important-but-seldom-appreciated lists.

Thanks to the advice of someone close to me, who has read a self-help book or two in his day, (and would like to remain nameless - o.k. my younger brother who has some of the same time management issues I have) I’ve come up with a more efficient way to cross things off my ever growing this-is-my-life list.

The advice I was given is that the best way to make list items go away is to assign them actual time slots on the calendar (far less overwhelming than having a long list of things to do but no actual time allotted to get them done).

So I thought I would give this theory a test drive.  I went out and purchased a calendar the size of my desk (no I don’t own a fancy electronic device that keeps track of my dates for me and beeps when I’m supposed to be doing something - feel free to refer back to my January 16th blog, I guess that’s why I’m not a member of the Cashmere Mafia, for further clarification) and I’ve been using this new system to organize my many ‘to do’ items that need to be accomplished over the course of the week.  These items include anything from returning phone calls, to folding clothing to even taking a break for myself.

If things don’t get done one day, I bump them (just like an appointment) to another day.  Is this a foolproof plan?  Not really.  I’ve still managed to miss actual appointments and some things keep getting the bump because of their unappealing nature (like I’m not sure I even want to organize our storage closet or use the treadmill in the basement).

This week, however, everything on my list is important.  I’ve trimmed the fat sort of speak.  If it doesn’t have something to do with my daughter’s first birthday, it’s been bumped to March (sounds harsh but March is really next week).

And items have obviously been itemized in order of priority.

Yesterday the most critical details on my list were tackled: 

1.  A pretty pink tiara

2.  A pretty pink dress fit for a princess.

Everything else on my list is really just there to ensure that the pretty princess in #1 and #2 has a fantastic day!

Oh and not to forget my son and his needs this week.  Wiggles tickets!  It’s almost 10 a.m.  Got to go!