My little Houdini

I have a 14-month-old who doesn't want to do anything that isn't a risk to life or property.

Set him down beside his stroller, Alister takes off giggling down the block. Leave the gate unlatched while you run upstairs to raid the change dish, he's teetering on the landing. Turn your back for a second, and he's on a step stool — his arm extended to the farthest edge of his reach and one foot half off the edge of the stool — endeavouring to retrieve a framed poster from the wall.

He breaks wine glasses. He has opened the oven door (yes, we need a lock for the stove!). He has no regard for traffic. He cares barely a whit for toys, but loves electric toothbrushes, remote controls and our cordless phone (if he pushes the right buttons, a nice lady comes on the line and says, "You must dial one or zero before the number..."). He has ruined one Blackberry and very nearly threw another in the bathtub.

He climbs onto the back of chairs, steps down, claps for himself, repeats. Sometimes he falls off things. Hard-earned lesson that keeps him on the floor for a while, you might think? No, he just uses the experience to hone is object-scaling skills.

This would all be fine, apart from the fact that we have other things to do than to stand within an arm's reach of our toddler. We joke that we need an extra adult in the house just to spot Alister in his quest for precipices and toxic substances.

Sometimes we allow him to make messes and waste things (or electricity — the fridge door is just full of interesting bottles and jars!) just because it will occupy him for, say, one minute. My older child, Cameron, wanted me to read him Batman book the other day, so we sat on a chair in the kitchen, where I could ensure that Alister didn't touch the stove where dinner was cooking. Alister attacked the Saran wrap drawer, pulling apart two boxes of sandwich bags and about 10 feet of wax paper. But that wax paper got me to the part where Batman escorted Joker to the squad car, so it seemed worth it. When Alister was unusually quiet in our ensuite bathroom this morning, my investigation revealed the tiny cost of peace.  "This uninterrupted dressing time was brought to you by... a couple of wasted Chapsticks," I told to my husband.

I know that this is a story that will sound familiar to any parent of an active baby or toddler. And I try to remind myself that it sucks to be two feet tall (imagine, a whole world of knee caps and counters you can't see over). Still, as a busy mom of two with not a lot of extra patience, it's sometimes hard for me to parent him in a way that conceals the fact that I think he's a huge pain in the bum (a cute, lovable pain in the bum, but a pain in the bum, nonetheless).

On the flip side, his adventurous also means he can play with his brother, who's four years older. His physical nature helps him bridge the age gap. He's tough enough to wrestle bigger kids and loves the mayhem of a crazy playdate.

And he's my last baby, and that's what I remind myself when a bowl of Cheerios is hurtling past my head.

Stem cells - a luxury good?

It was one of my yuppier parenting acts, I'll admit.

I froze my kids' cord blood, collected at birth, because, well, it seemed like one of those things you'd kick yourself for NOT doing if your child ever had a dreadful disease for which source of his own stem cells could be a lifesaver. We're lucky that we can (sort of) afford this.

In case you're not familiar, it works something like this (details slightly fuzzy because nature makes women forget some aspects of childbirth):

For around $900, a private cryogenic storage facility supplies you with a kit you take to the hospital. Your doctor collects blood from the baby's umbilical cord shortly after his first cry. Sometime between the phone calls to the grandparents and that first sushi run, the proud partner summons a courier to gallantly transport your child's genetic material to its frosty new home, where (fingers crossed) it will forever stay.

In order to continue chilling these little super-cells, the private company charges you about $100 a year (per kid).

Of course, when we were expecting our second child, there wasn't any sort of debate about whether or not we'd collect his cord blood. Just try to imagine the scenario where your younger child needs them and you only have a chance of a partial match from his brother's stem cells. "Sorry, son. When your big brother was born we were all on top of the cord blood and the photo albums, but we just didn't get organized when we were expecting you."

So during this bill-paying session, I made another comment about how when you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound with cord blood (or more like, when you're in for 90,000 pennies,  you're in for 9,000 pounds, once you have a second, plus about 100 pounds a year).

My husband grumbled, "Well, when they're grown they can pay for it themselves."

Me: "So, when they move out we'll simply explain that, 'We'll cover your tuition and residence, you pay for books and your cord blood?'"

I don't know about you, but given their incredible senses of immortality, I'm not sure 18-year-olds can be relied upon to make the right choice between Kraft dinner and their stem cells.

I kind of feel like this is just one of those things we'll need to keep doing because it's a little legacy project that we began. Sure, it might seem silly to others when, as senior citizens, we'll still be writing cheques to preserve the umbilical cord blood of our sons, ages 40 and 36.

But maybe then we'll treasure that little act of parenting simply because our children are all grown up, and there are no more snow suits to zip or parent-teacher meetings to attend.

         

Amusements parks and other business

I got nauseous on the "Berry-Go-Round" at the Ukrainian Festival in Bloor West Village a week ago.

Alongside its plates of boiled perogies and cobs of butter-drenched corn, our little local festival features a tot-sized carnival with rides geared to the bouncy-castle set. Climbing inside one of a half-dozen strawberry-shaped huts along with my five year old and three other riders, I felt well within my comfort zone. But within seconds, the mother sitting across from me and I were both willing ourselves not to be ill. In the final moments, I resorted to being a complete wet blanket and forbidding my son and the other boy on the ride from turning the wheel that spun the strawberry on its unholy little axis.

Needless to say I wasn't ready for the Behemoth when we hit Canada's Wonderland on the weekend.

Does anyone out there know why so many of us are less tolerant of dizzy-making rides as we age? Is there some deterioration of the inner ear that occurs to make us queasy on the Gravitron, and even to cause that little flip in the tummy when we try to relive our high-flying days on the swings at the park? Or is it plain-old fear of injury, the kind you simply cannot experience when you have barely a notion of your own mortality, or even that your bones are breakable? I'd love to know.

But maybe some of you had no time to contemplate amusements rides over the weekend because you were inside constructing a solar system out of papier mache or helping your child work through pages of rote math exercises. I encourage you to check out the interesting discussion that is happening in the comments on Kristin Rushowy's story about homework.

Please visit this blog often. I'll point you to some of the interesting stuff we have on the site (if you haven't yet checked out our great finder tools, including listings of all registered daycares, be sure you do), and share a little of my own parenting adventures (and misadventures) as well, too. I welcome your comments and feedback. This blog can also be a place where we discuss and debate some of the issues that come up in the news. If you're wondering where to find the latest on the Chinese tainted milk story, by the way, you can read it here.

And speaking of milk, Dr. Jack Newman's breastfeeding clinic could close because the private funding source is drying up. Let's hope this clinic — which has helped thousands of mothers overcome some of the difficulties that derail breastfeeding — finds another way to keep its doors open. Read Andrea Gordon's article here.