Getting organized to welcome the school year

In just over a week, another school year will be underway. Will you be greeting it with happiness or dread?

It's hard to see the short summer season come to an end, but a lot of the parents I talk to will be welcoming the return to routine.

For those who work outside of the home, there's an enormous gap between the two months of summer holidays our kids get and the one or two weeks of vacation we have available to take care of them. Stay-at-home parents may feel they're running out of ways to entertain the kids by now, nevermind the budget for all those enriching camps and lessons. And for those in the middle trying to work from home, a dirth of childcare may have left them dreadfully behind on business tasks or burnt out from clocking late hours at the computer after the kids are in bed.

While I'd like a few more idyllic weekend outings with my kids, I have to admit that I'm among those who are looking forward to fall. I hate to say it because I adore summer trips to the beach and picnics and all that stuff. But my life as a parent who works full time isn't set up to allow for as many of these as I'd like. By the time mid-August hits, my career-mom guilt is at an apex.

So I like to focus on the awesome aspects of September, and enjoy preparing for the new school year.

I was inspired by the women I interviewed for today's story on getting organized for a great September transition.

I couldn't fit absolutely all of their great advice in the article so I thought I'd share here a few extra nuggets of wisdom that have really stuck with me.

IT'S NOT ABOUT BEING ORGANIZED SO EVERYTHING LOOKS GOOD

The enviably organized Stacy Crew, who quite literally wrote the book on being an Organized Mom, made this very good point.

"Getting organized is about so much more than having a house that looks like it belongs in a Pottery Barn catalogue. It’s about creating a lifestyle that allows your family to enjoy time together. If I’m sitting there trying to connect with my kids but I realize that I’ve got four loads of laundry to fold and dishes in the sink and blog entries to write, I’m really not going to be in the moment."

And this one:

"It's about simplifying and looking at the big picture. What life do I want for my family? What goals do we have as a unit? If it's to be doing every sporting activity out there, so be it, but a lot of families don't know why they're doing what they're doing."

YOUR KIDS CAN DO MORE

Family life coach Laurel Crossley, otherwise known as OptiMom, is a big proponent of not doing everything for our kids, but instead, empowering them to do things for themselves:

"Kids would like to be part of the process and most of us do everything for them except for maybe asking, 'What colour would you like?' My kids are extremely independent. I did that knowing they are going to have to go out in this world and do things on their own. They need to know how to do laundry, wash floors and get themselves a snack."

Your kids might not be ready to mop the floors just yet, but perhaps they could get their shoes on without your help. Bonus: It'll save your back.

YOU NEED TO FIGURE OUT WHAT'S FOR DINNER

Lindsay Harris, a busy mompreneur whose business Glow Baby helps other parents keep organized, emphasized just how stressful things can be when you don't know what's for dinner - particularly on school nights.

Our interview left me determined to be sure my on-again, off-again menu planning was 100 per cent on for the start of the school year. So this weekend I began to scratch out a plan for dinners the first two weeks of school. My plan is to repeat this two-week menu for the second part of September and then start fresh in October with new dinner ideas.

Tonight I'll remember to bring her Glow Baby Menu Planner home from the office and start using it for planning menus and making grocery lists.

After immersing myself in all things back-to-school these last few weeks, I've got to say that I think my time will be better spent on organizational tasks like stocking the pantry and freezer and decluttering the hats and backpacks by the front door, rather than on acquiring absolutely every bit of gear the kids will need for the whole school year. Winter boots can wait a few weeks.

Please check out our back-to-school page for more great ideas!

 

 

 

 

 

Mom the Vote at the polls today!

At the risk of stating the obvious, the final and most important thing you can do to #MomTheVote is make it to your polling station today to cast your ballot.

Seriously. Don’t let anything short of hospitalization or other family emergency get in your way.

Many of you could be looking upon your schedules today and feeling a little stressed. Casting your ballot between work and dinner, or while keeping the baby asleep in her stroller, may seem like just another task piled upon you.

I ask you to consider that only a comparably privileged existence can allow for that viewpoint. Think of the places in the world today where people are going to war for the right to do what we lucky folks can look upon as just another thing to cross off the list.

Graham Hughes/THE CANADIAN PRESS

So how are you going to make this happen? Have you put a voting plan in place? Mine is to leave the office a smidge on the early side (you’re entitled to three hours off if you need it), get my boys from their two schools and take them with me.

Their dad and I have been talking up the election and explaining the process, as we aim to do whenever there’s a chance to vote. It’s a great way to make the democratic process real for the kids. As perturbed as he is that he can’t cast a ballot himself (we did our best to explain using a theoretical Kids’ Party that would cancel school and make ice cream an official food group), Cameron, 7, is keen to understand how it all works.

He's been tagging along on voting day at every opportunity, even one rough time when he was a toddler complaining intermittently of “something [imperceptible] in my eye.” Even when awkward parking and snowsuits were involved. Even when a trip to a church basement fit about as easily into my evening as a root canal.

But you know what? When he’s allowed to vote, I’m absolutely sure Cam will make the effort. (Besides, we’d disown him if he didn’t.)

To cut corners tonight, I’ve planned a simple dinner of grilled cheese or BLT sandwiches with fruit for dinner. I know this meal will come together quickly after I get home with tired kids in tow and it's a relief to have something so easy on deck.

What’s going to work at your house? If your extra-curricular schedule is super demanding this evening, ask yourself what it would say to your kids if hockey or band was given more importance than exercising your democratic right?

Maybe you can even create a fun new ritual around election night – one that your kids can look forward to each time. Could you ride your bikes there together, or watch a movie when you get home? Could you arrange to meet a neighbour and let the kids run around on the grass while you take turns casting ballots? It doesn't matter what you do just as long as you get there.

So tonight, skip something. Order pizza. Go for a post-vote milkshake. Do what you have to do to make your voice heard.

20 blog posts, 20 comments, one day

Today I saw a post by Ali Martell about her longing for the days when blogging was just about writing, reading and sharing and maybe a little less about optimizing and taking pitches and all the rest. In it she pledges to read and comment on 20 blog posts each day and comment on them. Every day.

I'm not sure I'll be able to keep up but I gave Project 20 a go today and found it very enriching. What I learned: There's so much great writing out there and I'm only just beginning to scratch the surface.

Thanks to everyone who shared a link to their blog post. My aim here was to comment in all kinds of places and particularly on blogs where it would be appreciated. I adore getting comments on my little blog, and I hope it brought just a smidge of good feeling to some writers today to see my words below their posts.

It's definitely work to try to fit in that much reading and commenting, though not impossible. I edited fewer stories today because of this undertaking, but I enjoyed it immensely.

It's 10:15 and I'm just finishing up. Here are the links to the 20 blog posts I read and commented on today:

Cheaper than therapy - Project 20

Z recommends - An open letter to the Girl Scouts of the USA

Have Baby Will Travel - Character dining with toddler

A Mother World - J. Crew Ad: Painting sons toes pink a big deal?

Active Kids Club - All-day kindergarten: A child's perspective

Bit of Mom Sense - Healthy snacks and overcoming unhealthy marketing messages

Little Miss Mocha - Thinly veiled discrimination

After the Artist's Way - Clearly, I'm not French

The Tree Hugger - Weekday vegetarian: Artichoke, kale and ricotta pie

Yummy Mummy Club - Nick of Time: Should kids sell cookies for fundraisers?

The Kids Are Alright - Once upon a time I wrote about food

Neighbourhood Sprawl - That's a good joe

Through the Looking Glass - 52 in '11: I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

Yummy Mummy Club - Julie Cole, The Baby Machine: Online is public domain

Life with Bellymonster: Lost and found, dreams of a daughter

A peek inside the fish bowl: This is what marketing to moms looks like today

Print to Pixels: 18 again

The Boot Camp Blog: Anouncing my diet book

Lovely Bicycle: Female anatomy and saddle discomfort

Enviro Dad: An Earth Day call to action

Hmmmm. Looking over the list I can see that I commented almost entirely (Hi Eric!) on blogs written by women. If I do another post like this anytime soon, I'll make sure to be mindful of that in my reading and try to even it out.

The whole pot of tea

I've made a promise to myself. At least once a week, I'll brew a whole pot of tea. And I'll drink it while it's still warm.

It's an incredibly mundane resolution, but it represents so much more than just the caffeine indulgence.

Monday to Friday I make single cups of tea, puttering around before leaving the house for work, juggling loads of laundry and breakfast requests. Sometimes I boil the kettle several times before actually remembering to pour it over the tea bag in one of my favourite blue mugs. Just as often, it gets cold while I make "eggy sandwiches" or oatmeal.

At the office, I buy a second cup of tea at the little tuck shop on the first floor of the Toronto Star building. I usually only manage to drink half or two-thirds of it before it gets cold.

But my new aim is to slow down long enough to (almost) single task as I drink a few cups of tea. For the last two weekends, I've headed to my home's enclosed porch to drink my pot of tea while reading an actual book or newspaper. Not on my laptop. Not on my iPhone. Instead, on my bottom under a blanket (while the mornings are still cool), for the duration of approximately three cups.

As parents, the idea of a few moments to read and sip a favourite hot drink can seem so elusive. Granted, it's easier for me to accomplish this than it is for some. I no longer have a baby who needs to be breastfed every few minutes. Because I share custody of my kids with the boys' great dad, I have a some structured time in my week when I'm not with them (painful at first, but something I've come to appreciate for its silver lining).

However, I maintain that it IS possible for anyone to slow down long enough for a pot of tea or a second cup of coffee. Maybe you'll still have munchkins running around. Maybe you don't have a partner with whom to trade off, or perhaps you're just so in the thick of baby care or early-morning hockey practices it doesn't seem realistic. But all of us can make a choice to indulge in something small and virtually free. If you're on your own with tiny children, maybe you'll have to get some help from the Backyardigans while you sip and read (or have a hot bath or whatever would feel good for you).

What strikes me, though, is the number of people who do share parenting with a partner, but who don't seem to be able to break away for the shortest amount of time. There's a complex matrix here of attachment, guilt, control and inertia. We don't think we can slow down so we don't. But we're actually just making choices to keep doing things the way we always have. And we can make a different choice to grab a little time for ourselves.

Sometimes it appears as though spending every second engaged with the family or our household chores is the noble thing to do. It's hard to get away from that to-do list and the urgent demands of a little one seeking someone to be Mater to his Lightning McQueen. Perhaps it would help to think of the time we carve out for ourselves as insurance against losing it on our kids when we're frustrating and can't bear to listen to another squabble or colicy cry. Because there is absolutely a cause-and-effect relationship between utter lack of personal time and our patience and tolerance.

So let's do this together. What would recharge you just a little? How can you make it happen?

 

Using the good

I realized, with a bit of surprise the other day, that I have a problem with "using the good."

Since I like to serve my 3-year-old yogurt parfaits in my good martini glasses (which, incidentally, turns out to be a good way to get rid of one's fancy martini glasses) I thought I was a veritable poster girl for "using the good." For seizing the day, at least as far as cloth napkins and good china are concerned.

I keep my grandmother's tea service on a tray on the counter. But, admittedly, it's not used as often as I intended when I put it there.

The thing that made me realize I'd been hoarding at least some of the good instead of using it, was a humble bar of soap.

See, people give me these gorgeous soaps for birthdays and special occasions. And instead of tucking into them next time I head to the bath, I spend a year or two admiring their packaging, which I lovingly display on my bathroom vanity or in little lined baskets.

What the heck for? I realized. Is there really going to be an occasion some time in the future where I will need to be better moisturized when I come out of the shower? Why save little luxury items instead of just enjoying them and using them up? It'll bring a little sensory pleasure to the day and cut down on clutter.

I'm not sure what exactly this has to do with parenting, which is the focus of this blog. But I do know that if it's important to me to teach my boys to value a candle-lit dinner and make ordinary experiences more delightful, I better live that way myself!

So moms (and dads): Could you dig out some bath salts (single-malt scotch) and use a little of the good after the kids are in bed tonight?

 

Push-ups for 7-year-olds?!!

I was pretty flat-chested at 13. At that age I was in a minor panic that I'd NEVER sprout breasts and that I'd continue making walls jealous for years to come.

But I sure didn't care when I was seven.

I've got a lot more to stay about girls and esteem in an upcoming blog post, but a story we have today just begs for comment.

Ever-spotlight-grabbing Abercrombie & Fitch's latest move is to market a padded bikini top to girls 7 to 13.

This follows the company famously selling sexy T-shirts that say "Who needs brains when you have these?"

I hope the group of spunky kids who launched a "girlcott" against the company get a groundswell (no pun intended) of support.

As moms, let's just remove the store from our list of back-to-school shops until they do better.

READ MORE ABOUT THE PADDED BIKINIS HERE.

READ ABOUT MORE THINGS THAT HAVE PARENTS TALKING IN THE MUMMY BUZZ BY ERICA EHM.

 

 

Cute kid quote of the week

Cameron, 7.5, has already hit that stage when he doesn't want any sort of embarrassing kiss or hug goodbye on the playground (*sob*). Now I'm lucky if I can get a nanosecond of eye contact before he runs into the school. He's a loving boy, but he doesn't want his 3-yr-old brother's many declarations of affection to get too mushy or embarrassing either. So Cam has been meeting Alister's "I love yous" with various iterations of "ditto."

Alister: "I love you, Mom."

Cameron: "I say that too."

Alister: "I love you, Cameron."

Cameron: "Same thing expressed previously."

 

Grossology: Parent edition

A number of character-building experiences await me in the laundry room.

I wish I were kidding.

Usually I adhere to a strict policy about not discussing things scatalogical on this blog. I get enough of that at the dinner table. So do many of you. My overall feeling is that the less said about this stuff, the better.

At the same time, there is comfort in knowing that one's shitty experiences are shared, right?

I should start by saying that this tale isn't nearly as shitty as some. Not by far. This is no story of a long-weekend sponsored by Norwalk. It's not even a story of the morning after the night before at Mandarin.

It's just a tale of the slightly ridiculous and gag-worthy.

Some of you have already heard me complain about being under the weather lately. The sinuses that wouldn't clear got scary, face-swelling, jaw-stiffening and ear-clogging on Friday night. It's been both a godsend and a bummer that this has coincided with my mom's highly anticipated visit from Victoria, since it has meant extra hands to help with the kids and the presence of my OWN real life mother to tell me to take a nap.

Part of the highly-anticipated bit has been a special-introduction dinner. The meet-the-parents kind. Only in this case it's meet-the-parent. Singular. All this to say it's not the kind of dinner you cancel just because you're a little woozy from your antibiotics and you can't hear out of your right ear.

But when he arrived with his own child in tow, special guest had to introduce himself to special grandma because I was in the upstairs bathroom, discovering that my three-year-old had soaked the back of his two layers of T-shirt by semi-falling into the toilet.

"Oh, hi," I said barrelling down the stairs with yucky T-shirts balled up, excusing myself for not being able to touch anyone while I just nipped into the laundry room for a wee second.

Barely two minutes later I was back upstairs, gaining a better appreciation for the extent of the imperfect mounts and dismounts executed by my youngest son, normally fairly competent in this arena. The rest of his clothes were done for. The toilet needed to be scrubbed. The child needed to be bathed.

However else would one begin a dinner party?

With boy's bottom speed-bathed, I returned to the main floor with a second bundle of laundry and a child dressed in only underwear.

Dinner progressed as could be expected, with three children seven and under eating absolutely everything my gourmet-cook mom had prepared and absolutely nobody related to me standing on his chair to better make a point.

Mere seconds after the cookie bribes were dispensed at meal's end and an under-the-weather Cameron had retired to the couch, his little brother exuberantly belly-flopped on him (in an attempt either to either hug him or begin a wrestling match - who can tell with boys?) causing Cam's sniffly, dry nose to bleed. Rather a lot.

Of course in hugging and comforting him, we both got covered in blood. After the bleeding stopped, Cam changed all of his clothes and I changed my sweater, trudging back downstairs with a miffed but mostly recovered big brother and a third bundle of laundry.

"Okay, well.... that's done!" I chirped, turning to some task at the kitchen counter.

"I hate to tell you," said my mom, "but your neck has, um, a big smear of blood."

A quick check in the bathroom mirror revealed that I was indeed sporting a bit of a zombie look. The other dinner party hosts would be SO jealous when they heard about this!

It was a successful dinner, though, despite the unexpected presence of some body fluids. A little blood and stuff doesn't really faze any veteran parent - am I right?

So I shouldn't have been fazed when, two days later, my young potty procrastinator missed the toilet, fouling the white bath mat in the grossest of ways, seemingly at the very instant that I removed the bunny from his cage so I could clean it (not my favourite job), an act that caused our rabbit friend to pee on the bottom-bunk quilt in protest.

Could it be that in the interim between whisking away the yucky bath mat and wiping human bottom, my pet had gone who-knew-he-could-pee-that-much crazy on the formerly adorable quilt? Yessiree.

That's what I'm talking about people. It's no afternoon in the trauma room, but there times when I can't even believe so many kinds of gross can occur in the space of five minutes.

And I don't even own a dog.

Got a similar story of your own? Please share it in the comments. Just not while I'm eating lunch, okay?

 

 

 

 

 

 

What if 21,000 were attending YOUR kid's party?

We reported today on the British girl whose 15th birthday party nearly became epicly epic.

Rebecca Javeleau created a Facebook event for her party and invited about 15 friends. But she failed to make the event private, and 21,000 RSVP'd.

It's a classic case of "But, Mom, I only invited a few friends and they each invited a few friends." Only the ability of those few friends to reach others is infinite when powered by the click-to-share convenience of social networks.

About as many people said they would come to the teenager's party as live in her hometown, Harpender. That raises questions, not only about how little there is to do in Harpender, but about what role parents should take in monitoring and educating their children in appropriate use of social media, and how to respond when things go wrong.

Rebecca's mother, Tracey Livesy, told the Telegraph that her daughter "would be lucky to get a birthday card from me" and that "I've taken away her computer so she won't make that mistake again."

This prompted a discussion on Twitter with two friends @littlemissmocha and @Mommyality.

Littlemissmocha, a blogger and mom otherwise known as Jen, questioned whether the right approach was to take away the girl's computer. Afterall, teens can always access another computer - at school, at a friend's house. And shouldn't the parent's role be to educate their children about internet privacy?

I agree with Jen. The girl's mom should take the opportunity to show her daughter the privacy settings on Facebook and other websites she uses. If the mom doesn't know herself, she should tap the knowledge of a friend who does.

The girl's party is obviously cancelled. That's a logical consequence. But missing the (forgive me) "teachable moment" by simply removing computer privileges is a mistake.

I'm a firm believer that we're not raising children. We're raising adults. That means it's our job to equip kids with the knowledge they need to survive without us. Part of survival in a modern world is being being tech-savvy enough to protect our privacy online.

Rebecca's mistake was the result of ignorance. My hope would be that, after her mother helps lock down the Facebook profile, she takes her daughter out for cake. Every kid deserves birthday cake.

 

The Water is Wide

I know things aren't going well when I start singing Irish ballads. There's nothing about "The Water is Wide" or "Danny Boy" that's particularly spirit lifting.

No, these songs are for mournfully staring across expanses of ocean or their metaphorical equivalent.

But while I try to use this blog not just to inform on parenting issues but to celebrate the efforts we make and encourage others to raise a glass in their own honour, I haven't been doing that myself. Or maybe I've celebrated other people at the expense of my own sleep and sanity. Or listened to the stories of others before listening to myself. Or just plain old taken on too much, like so many busy parents do.

At the risk of absolutely beating the H2O metaphor to death, my well is low. Really low.

If it was any of my friends making this confession, I'd organize some sort of pedicure intervention or night about town. But as is the habit of so many caregivers, we listen to ourselves last. Ignore our own signals and trudge on with the busy work.

So this is me solemnly swearing to do something restorative for myself each day this week. Starting with leaving the office on time today.

I hope you can do the same.