Weekly Photo Challenge: My 2012 in one picture
As a full-time momma of an 18 month old and an almost-5 year old, my 2012 revolved around cuddling, chasing, refereeing and laughing with my children. This picture captured a moment in mid-2012 when the chaos paused, the crying ceased and the whining quieted. I was reminded of why I do this…why I wanted two, why I feel so blessed to have both a boy and a girl. I’ve got thousands of pictures I could have chosen but this one seemed to sum it all up.
What Your Toddler Really Wants For Christmas
While roaming the aisles of a big-box toy store the other day, I realized that my 18 month old daughter could care less about 99% of the stuff for sale. I know what she wants for Christmas and it’s not a dolly that sits on the toilet or a pink plastic household appliance. Here’s a list of what every toddler really wants to see under the tree:
- A Kleenex box. The biggest one you can find, with the cardboard piece already ripped off the top. Free reign to pull the tissues out when she pleases, shred into tiny pieces and fling around the house.
- A box of Christmas oranges to dump, line up and move in and out of the box to her heart’s content.
- A toothbrush to chew as much as she wants, swirl in the toilet and poke her big brother with.
- Her own roll of tape. She can rip the tape out over and over with no one saying, “Give it back to mommy, please. Give it back to mommy” and prying it out of her tiny hands. A roll of wrapping paper from the dollar store will also go over well.
- A family sized box of rice to spread over every room of the house, just for fun. She already knows how to do this. She learned it last week in Sunday School.
- A Lego set for her to step on and throw against the wall while laughing with glee.
- An extra $10 to put towards the water bill so she can play at the kitchen sink and yell, “water! water!” as she pours, stirs and splashes joyfully.
- An expensive fabric angel decoration to hug and kiss with spaghetti-sauce-stained hands & face.
- An old plate to take to the cement floor in the garage, lift high over her head, and smash to smithereens.
Ah…the perfect Christmas.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Changing Seasons
Do you remember the very first time someone threw an armful of leaves on your head? My daughter thought it was the funniest thing ever.
Special Photo Challenge: Inspiration
This is my blogging inspiration: my two adorable, hilarious and loving children. This was taken on a particularly sleep-deprived day last fall when I could hardly put two words together. The early autumn sun was shining, the ocean stretched out before us and all was well.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Green
This was totally spontaneous. My little guy grabbed his preschooler scissors, plunked himself down and started pruning for a good 20 minutes. 🙂
Catch 22
Starting a blog about things that go wrong while raising children is so much fun. I’m constantly having wild experiences with my children that provide the best writing material I’ve ever had.
The irony of the whole thing is that I literally have about one hour of free time each evening to do what I want to do. So it’s the time of my life with the most to write about but the time of my life that I have absolutely no time to write it.
Our little family has been through some real ups and downs. Right now we are in a great big “up”- one of those times when life is so sweet and wonderful that you almost don’t want to breathe because you know things can change in an instant. One of those times that I feel my heart could burst at any moment with awe at the grace I feel to have such blessings surrounding me.
It’s the ultimate catch-22: the little blessings that wake me up at all hours of the night, keep me running, stepping on Lego, cleaning up stinky messes, playing referee and leave me begging for solitude some days, are also the little blessings that make me love in a way I didn’t realize was possible. In parenting the highs are high and the lows are low. If you don’t have the lows you can’t appreciate the highs in the same way.
Multitask-a-rama
This morning at around 7:30 a.m. I suddenly realized that I don’t think it is humanly possible for me to multitask anymore than I already do. During one moment in time this morning, I was:
- googling “symptoms of whooping cough in children”
- reading four text messages from my best friend
- brushing my teeth
- trying to stop little A from swirling her dolly in the toilet
- planning supper in my head
- figuring out what time we needed to leave the house
- putting my foot on the toilet seat to stop little A from swirling her dolly in the toilet (again) 🙂
Try it one day. Stop to think about how many things you are doing at once. Make a list and post it here if it’s interesting (or funny)! Related articles
- Only 2% of People Can Multitask Successfully [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com)
p.s. No one has whooping cough.
Murphyisms of the week (Murphy’s Law #12)
Two moments this week made me think, “Murphy’s Law” in a big way:
1. Even if all children are happy and occupied the moment before I immerse my hands in the gooey mess of hamburger-making, the minute I’m covered in ground beef, Little A will have Lego catwoman’s head in her mouth and will refuse to spit it out.
2. Do not let children play with cellphones! Little A was in her strap-on chair at the kitchen table. Brother B was teasing her with Big White Teddy. She grabbed BWT’s head and pulled. Brother B grabbed BWT’s back and pulled. Little A started falling forward. I started yelling. I yelled louder and did that slow-motion-but-really-fast-moving thing to grab her and prevent a disaster. I yelled some more. It all turned out fine, until I realized Little A had my cell phone and had auto-dialed the health unit. The phone was still on. It had been on for 24 seconds. The 24 seconds in which I was yelling.
All morning I waited for a call from some authority who would question my parenting skills. Thankfully they must not have had caller ID. 😉
Not tickled pink
I like the colour pink. I love dressing my daughter in pink. It brings out her rosy complexion and bright blue eyes. What I don’t like is that in 2012 girl = pink.
When I had my son four years ago I didn’t think much about colour. One day he was dressed head to toe in blue, with a blue spaceship blanket and a blue soother. Someone in Walmart said to me, “Oh, what a beautiful baby girl!” That made me laugh.
My baby pictures include lots of yellow, green, red, white and blue, since I wore my brother’s hand-me-downs. My toy box was a colourful mess of gender-neutral Fisher Price toys, a blue dollhouse, six Cabbage Patch dolls and a huge assortment of multi-coloured Lego. Going into a toy store in the 80s was a colourful, wonderful mixture of toys that girls and boys could choose from. Two of my favourite “toys” were a real hammer and saw from my aunt Kate.
Walk into a Toys “R” Us today and the girls’ aisles are a sea of pink: dolls, kitchens and house-cleaning equipment. I adore watching Little A take care of her dolly and mimic me (and her Daddy) around the house. She is equally delighted with her brother’s castle and knights, farm set and rusty metal sandbox trucks. I’m sure she will go through a princess phase, but for now it’s fun to see her not care what she plays with.
Brother B loves to do “boy” things: race his (obnoxiously loud!) vehicles up and down our hardwood hallway and build Lego pirate ships. On the other hand, he treats his doggas like precious babies and is fascinated by the “girl” toys creeping into our house. Sometimes I listen to the way he talks to his sister and I am proud. He is gentle, empathetic and kind. Of course other times he hits, knocks her over and makes her cry, but that’s to be expected.
Looking at the website for WOW toys, little girls should play princesses and fairies, take care of horses and make cupcakes. They can be pilots, as long as they choose a pink airplane and wear pink clothes. The only non-pink, non-stereotypical girl set in the “Girls Toys” section is an ambulance. Anything else that is active or slightly risky is in the boys’ section.
Maybe I was a tomboy because I grew up on a farm and had strong female role models but I remember playing “restaurant”, “hospital”, “library” and “Lego city” imaginary games with my brother for hours. I also loved taking toys outside in the spring and making floods and disasters in the mud at the edge of the barley field. I remember other games that involved chasing my brother with a big stick but that’s a story for another day.
My children choose their own toys. I hope as they grow they can be who they want to be, the way they were created to be, even if society tells them otherwise.
What do you think about pink?
Related articles:
- Belinda Parmar: Pink Really Does Stink (huffingtonpost.com)
- http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/03/02/sexy-toy-make-overs-polly-pocket-care-bears-and-barbie/
- Are LEGO Friends good for girls? Let’s talk about it. (coolmompicks.com)
- The Female Factor: Toys Start the Gender Equality Rift (nytimes.com)
murphy must have had kids 
