Snow Wonder

It seems we are poised to beat last year's snowfall totals, which were the highest in 70 years. The streets are clogged with piles of snow shoveled to the side, making it difficult to manoeuvre you stroller along the route to school each day, especially at the street corners, where small mountain ranges accumulate and we often enough get mired in the stuff.

Even worse, a reported three days out of every four since it started snowing in November have produced more snow, making it feel like we never get a break.

I am, at this point, beginning to harbour very fond fantasies about what spring and summer will be like. Imagine: the sun shining, me in skirt and cute shoes, not having to bundle anyone before leaving the house, just popping The Bun in a small stroller, rather than installing him and several blankies in the large, heavy one that at least boasts bigger tires for getting through the white stuff- and not having to lug that bog beast up and down the front steps! The sun shining, Pumpkinpie skipping beside the stroller, hair dancing golden in the light. The Bun and I going for long walks and visiting the park, where he can ride swings, sit and play in the sand, or splash in the wading pool on a hot day. *sigh* It's making my frozen little heart go pitty-pat.

'S no wonder indeed that I'm counting the days until spring!

Most Ridiculous Thing I've Ever Heard

The Bun is, as anyone who has met him will attest, a remarkably easy-going babe. One of the easiest I've met, in fact. He will cry briefly after his complaints have gone unheeded if he is hungry, and on occasion if he feels you have put him down for too long. The other occasion for his cries is right before he falls asleep, when he will often wail for 2 or 3 minutes. I have never heard this guy cry for more than ten minutes, and that was a rare and extreme case of seriously tired. I know, I am really very lucky - and I appreciate, believe me, because Pumpkinpie was, while an overall happy and sociable baby as well, not as relaxed by a good shot.

So the other day, while I was on the phone with my mom, I was also pumping, and he was in a bouncy chair, beginning to fuss in prelude to falling asleep. As I talked to her, his cries grew a bit louder as he grew closer to passing out, as he sometimes does. and this is the conversation that followed - the ridiculosity of which makes me shake my head and muttter WTF? and other less polite things under my breath. Seriously, mothers...

Bun: wahh!

Mother: Oh, are you having a difficult day?

kittenpie: No, he's just really tired and he seems to need to cry for a minute right before he falls asleep sometimes.

Mother: Well, has he been fussy for long?

kittenpie: No, he just started, he'll cry for literally a minute or two, and then go to sleep, even if he's in my arms. It's just something he does, he's fine.

Mother [wait for this one] : Well, do you think he has colic?


Honestly. The woman has clearly never even met a colicky babe. The Bun is about as opposite to colicky as you can get. Is the woman nuts? I mean, yes, she is, but still. She's trying to take me with her. Help! Is your mother crazy like this, too, or is it just mine?

Mark This Day

I mark this day with a white stone. It is a historic day. A day to remember and commemorate, a day which, to judge from the long days which came before might never have come.

On this day, despite earlier struggles that did not bode well, Pumpkinpie ate breakfast and got into her winter gear without being asked more than twice to perform any one step, and even did much of it unasked.

Praise song for the day, indeed.

Seriously, I Wouldn't Be Shocked.

Someone last week was commenting about some of the things I've written about being asked in libraries. Yeah, people can be pretty crazy, I agreed. And thought of this ad:



No, I wouldn't be shocked at all. Not at all.

Frozen Friday

The Bun went out wrapped on a duvet around his snowsuit this morning.
Because it's freezing:


Not Northern Ontario or even Ottawa cold, but still, damn cold. Cold enough that yesterday, the wheels on the stroller were frozen and would not turn, so we travelled by sled until I brought it inside to thaw out. Meanwhile, I muttered to myself as I pushed my way through solid, frozen mounds of snow, "Three more months."

Welcome Wagon

About two years ago, I wrote about my friend Alberta, delighted that she was expecting a wee babe to call her own, but worried that she would make herself crazy. I mean, we all do, we all start with high expectations and standards and struggle as we try to uphold them and then decide which things we must let go by the wayside, struggle to maintain even the most basic standards in the end. But Alberta is a perfection-seeker when it comes to herself, so I worried that she would find the letting go even harder than most.

She's done fine, though, of course - she always does. She's smart and determined and sometimes stubborn, which let's face it, sometimes helps. Along the way, I've mentioned what a great help and wonderful source of support and advice I have found the blogosphere, and I thought, too, that she would really like you people. So this holiday, she asked me about it, about how I found blogs and how I got started. And those of you who have read me for a while and know how carefully I guard my online life from my real life will know just how good a friend she is when you hear what I did: I gave her the address to my blog.

Not so she can read me, I mean, I'd tell her anything anyhow, but so she can meet some of you from my blogroll (which is long overdue for an update - I am thinking of moving from the old blogger template style which is getting cranky about updates to the new layout design thing, but have to think about how to do it most easily - so if you aren't on there, you may be sometime soon) and get to know some of the awesome cadre of bloggirls I am so happy to have come to know.

She's started her own blog, just now, just dipping her toe in the water of the vast ocean of the blogosphere. Remember how that felt? That first tentative whisper into the vast dark of the internet, wondering if you'd ever hear even the faintest echo back, feeling slightly self-conscious, and then being delighted the day you got your first comment, someone welcoming you into the fold? I bet you even remember the blogger who left that first little note of hello that left you amazed and hopeful, that drew you in a little further (hi, Mary P!).

So I'd like to ask you all a favour. She's a wonderful lady, my best friend since the age of 13, the sister of my own age I never had, warm and smart, interested and interesting. I think she'd fit in with you all just perfectly, and I'd like her to feel at home enough to stick around. I'd like her to feel just how warm and welcoming the world of bloggers can be. So would you drop by and leave her a little note of welcome for me?

In fact, let's make a little game of it, a comment box meme of sorts - who can resist a meme? So that she can get to know you and see how each of us has weathered parenthood, let her know which month of your archives would bring her to your stories of the age her daughter is at now: 16 months. And since she is, as she notes in her opening post, struggling slightly with figuring out how to fit in all the pieces of parenting and working and partnering and also having something for herself, if you have a post in your past that talks about how you sought or found some answer for this, drop that link in for her, too. Hell, I'll come around and read those myself, as I don't know anyone who has all the answers for that.

I'll go first. Well, I didn't start blogging until Pumpkinpie was nearly two - about 22 months, so I don't have nay archives of stories to offer up by way of support or commiseration, though I can give those to her verbally because I am lucky enough to know her. Instead, I give her a double fistful of posts on my various parenting dilemmas these past few years. If nothing else, she'll know I'm as boggled by some of this stuff as she is, as any of us are.

So bring it on, internet people. Let's raise up another blogger among us. (And thanks - I know you'll make her feel among friends. You are good people out here.)

Wordless Wednesday: All Hail the 'Fro-Hawk

He's so going to want this hair back when he's sixteen.

"Special Gift"

A few weeks ago, a few days after The Bun turned three months old, I got a box in the mail. A box from Enfamil. I had received some pamphlets from them earlier, pamphlets that toed the line, promoting breastfeeding first and at the back, suggesting that if you can't breastfeed, they think their formula is the next best substitute. That didn't bother me a lot, to be honest.

But this package? It had a baby and some blocks on the outside, I suspected it might have some cute little blocks inside as a marketing give-away or something. It said on the outside, after all, that it was a "special gift for you and your baby whether you breastfeed or formula feed." So what I was not expecting? Was a can of formula.

The WHO's International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes prohibits this sort of thing explicitly. From their own FAQ publication regarding the code:

The Code explicitly states that "there should be no advertising or other form of promotion to the general public" and that "manufacturers and distributors should not provide … to pregnant women, mothers or members of their families, samples of products…" Promotion through any type of sales device, including special displays, discount coupons and special sales, is prohibited. Furthermore, no company personnel should seek direct or indirect contact with, or provide advice to, pregnant women or mothers.

So how does this happen? How does a company completely ignore the code that should govern their industry? How is it that since The Bun's birth I've received the "informational" pamphlet, then the can of formula, and since then, another pamphlet. I'm sure at least one contained coupons, as well. All of this is against this code. Where in their organizational structure does someone make the decision to act as a company of assholes and market aggressively and in contravention to an international recommendation? Is it a marketing company they've hired, or someone within their own hierarchy? Even if it is from an outside group, they would have to sign off on it, so that in no way excuses anyone. Is their own CEO aware of this? Supportive of it? It seems that profit far outweighs good corporate citizenship for this company.

This is totally burning me up every time I think about it. So I'm leaving the can on the counter for now, where I keep seeing it so I won't forget to write a nasty letter to the company about how they have ensured through this blatant disregard that if I am ever in need of formula, I will most certainly not be choosing theirs. And then, when I have had time to write that howler of a message, I will donate the can to a food bank, in case there is a mother out there who really can't feed her child milk and might need it. Because I don't even want to use their formula for free, and I have the ability not to.

Shame on you, Enfamil.

No Really, Hallowe'en Candy is GOOD For Kids!

It will make your child too clever by half.
It's all in how you use it.No, really.
Smarties may just be the most aptly-named candy going.*
Check it out:

Sorting


Graphing


Patterning


Colour Theory

*No, Americans, those nasty little powdery things aren't Smarties. Those are Rockets, sillies!