kim through
   the looking glass

Me! For the following brilliant piece of parenting that transpired a minute ago in front of my kitchen sink:

“Nonono, Gil. See, what’s going on here is that I want to fill Gwen’s water bottle and you want to look at it. I’m bigger - I win. Back off.”

Yep. Mom Of The Year - right here!

I posted earlier in the month about feeling like superwoman. Today? Not so much.

The week was off to a rough start - a wedding on Saturday, Brad’s grandfather’s birthday party on Sunday (complete with a 2.5 hour drive EACH WAY) and Brad gone for an overnight work trip Monday night. Add to that a 5AM wake-up on Wednesday morning, very hot and humid temperatures, stir in a little 45-minute screamfest by Gwen last night along with 4 wakes by Gil, two soaked onesies, and a tipped potty on the bed?

You get today.

Today when it is 29C (84F) feels like 40C (104F!!!!) with the humidity. Today when the window A/C unit has not had the opportunity to be installed. Today Gwen has been having tantrum after tantrum.

Today, I am not such a good mother. Today, I am just trying to keep it together - to not raise my voice (too loud), to not say things that I will regret, to enjoy the presence of my children.

On my last post, I mentioned that naptime is now the easiest part of my day! Lisa commented:

“I wish Michael could go to sleep on his own. Is there anything you did to help her with this?”

I want to say firstly that although I love that naptime is easy, I miss snuggling with my little girl.

A lot.

Beginning in my pregnancy, Gwen stopped nursing to sleep at night. Still did it for naps, but started wanting to snuggle with daddy for sleep. Since she was so good at doing it for nighttime, I began to encourage her to snuggle with me to fall asleep about halfway through the pregnancy. We would nurse until she was sleepy, and then we would snuggle in the rocking chair and I’d rock her to sleep. Read the rest of this entry »

I know it’s totally cliche, but it’s true. Mere weeks after the birthday letter I wrote, Gwen has changed so much!

• She is completely potty trained (!!)  and is almost toilet independent - only needs help with wiping and pulling up underwear/shorts/pants. She only wears a cloth diaper to bed, mostly because she spends part of the night with us and we don’t want to be covered in pee. However, she wakes up dry about 90% of the time these days - generally waking us in the night to pee if needed.
• Her sentences and vocabulary are growing by leaps and bounds! She has started saying “pease” and “pank you” with regularity and has picked up on my “oh geez!” when something’s happened A couple of days ago she said, “Oopsies! Train fall down - I crash it!”
• Naptime has become a 5 minute affair - after lunch around 12:30 or 1 PM, we go upstairs, go pee, get changed (if needed), turn on the fan, hop into bed with boy, have a kiss and hug, and then I leave the room and she falls asleep by herself. It’s both amazing and sad all at the same time.
• She can jump! With both feet off the ground at once! So fun!
• She is starting to understand the concept of numbers and counting - when I begin counting and pointing at something, she picks it up and continues, “two … three … nine.” Four and five are currently a mystery

Shots in the Dark (watch it HERE on youtube!) is a Canadian-made documentary about vaccinations and their undesirable effects. An excerpt from the film synopsis:

“Far from rejecting the documented benefits of vaccination, Shots in the Dark makes very clear that, in the name of the greater good, great suffering has been inflicted on the most vulnerable members of society. And the film asks the necessary question, at what point is this trade-off unacceptable?”

What a great question. I don’t know anyone who would suggest that vaccinations are not useful. And I love that the film doesn’t bring that into question. They go much, much further than that and discusses topics such as:

• Why are so few people are compensated for vaccine reactions
• Why there is any doubt about whether or not vaccines can cause illness (Seriously. Why? Read the vaccine insert - it’s well documented that vaccines can cause undesirable side effects!)
• Why big pharma is allowed to calls the shots when it comes to vaccine research

I urge everyone to watch this revealing video series (there’s 8 parts on youtube - each about 10 minutes long). I’m not trying to make anyone anti-vaccine. I’m just all about informed consent, and I do NOT believe that informed consent is being obtained in most cases of vaccination.

I just stumbled across this (3 minute) excerpt from Jan Hunt’s The Natural Child: Parenting from the Heart audiobook: The Parenting Golden Rule. I love that it describes common ‘discipline’ techniques as occurring between two people - a husband and wife. It really puts these methods into perspective!

I’ve long suspected a food intolerance in Gwen. After introducing solids, she began to gain weight slowly, she always has bags under her eyes, she was a frequent night-waker, etc.

So, last week, I decided to try an elimination diet - our main concerns were gluten, tomatoes, and food dyes, based on some iffy experiences we’d had with larger-than-normal volumes of the latter two and a hunch for the gluten - after all, my sister has Celiac disease and my nephew was allergic to wheat as a baby.

The elimination diet began on Monday of last week, and I am both happy and sad to report that Gwen’s months-long intestinal upset was almost immediately cleared up. The only episode of upset she appeared to experience was Thursday night/Friday morning, so I thought for SURE that it might not be gluten, since she hadn’t eaten any on Thursday. Fast-forward to later Friday morning when we went to the park with our peeps and I brought up the incident. Nadine (can I call you by name on the blog?), who also has Celiac disease, had eaten the same thing as Gwen the previous night for dinner and also experienced a mild gluten reaction.

Sigh.

While we’re not 100% sure yet (I’d like to give the gluten-free diet another week and then introduce it again and see how it goes), it appears that our house might be joining the ranks of the gluten-free.

Honestly? I’m just happy that Gwen seems to be feeling better!

Here’s a list of the interesting things I’ve been reading over the last week!

• On Seeing Children as “Cute” (John Holt) describes how if adults were as clumsy and inexperienced as children that we would never treat them so condescendingly:

” Children do not like being incompetent any more than they like being ignorant. They want to learn how to do, and do well, the things they see being done by the bigger people around them.”

• Information about car seats and infant safety. An excerpt:

“The studies on infant car seats and hypoxia (below) all come to the same conclusion: leave the car seat in the car. While manufacturers have made it easier than ever to go through a whole day with the baby in the car seat (including travel systems and snap-on stroller bases), they are not doing so based on the available research (and why should they, when it would hurt their bottom line?).”

• Toronto Police lie about “weapons” seized during G20 protests:

“Chief Bill Blair, who told reporters the items were evidence of the protesters’ intent, singled out arrows covered in sports socks, which he said were designed to be dipped in a flammable liquid and set ablaze. However, the arrows belong to Brian Barrett, a 25-year-old landscaper who was heading to a role-playing fantasy game when he was stopped at Union Station on Saturday morning. Police took his jousting gear but let Mr. Barrett go, saying it was a case of bad timing.”

• The Yarn Harlot’s Canada Day Post about what Canadians are:

“Canadians are unaware that labelling “homo milk” (homogenized milk) is unique. (Tip for Canadians. If you’re in the US, homo milk is called “whole milk”. If you ask for homo milk they’ll giggle.)”

Enjoy!

Today is one of those days!

Brad worked from home today and it was wonderful to not rush about in the morning in preparation for him to go to work and it was awesome to enjoy his company in short spurts throughout the day.

I needed to just write down how well my day went!

I got up early - about 5:45AM thanks to the smiley-est alarm clock EVER. I showered, headed downstairs for a couple of pieces of toast and to prep for morning smoothies, going off to morning prayer @ 7AM.

Back at 7:40AM, I made smoothies, and Gwen’s currently preferred breakfast: a big bowl of yogurt with berries in it and a thick slice of carrot-raisin-nut loaf smeared with butter. Brad decided to work from home and we enjoyed leisurely smoothie drinking

I had a fabulous visit with my friend Jen and her sons Anderson & Taiten in the morning, after which a botched attempt at ordering pizza ($34 for two medium pizzas? No thanks, Pizza Pizza!) led us to enjoy eggs and toast for lunch.

Gwen went down for her nap - for the second day in a row without me sitting beside her! What a big girl she’s becoming! After her nap, Gil was asleep, so I laid him down and went with Gwen to the library - just the two of us! It was a blast!

When we came home I began dinner prep and we had delicious quesadillas. Then, Gwen and I and Gil headed to the park.

Just to re-cap:

• two loads of laundry washed, dried, & folded
• 2L of yogurt made
• 3 large loads of dishes done
• three family meals (plus toddler snacks!)
• one mommy-daughter outing
• one after-dinner trip to the park

All-in-all, I’m declaring today a complete success!