Archive - October 2011

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Singing and Signing
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Linguini Facial
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Kids and Poison Control Safety
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Dealing With Difficult People

Singing and Signing

  My daughter is not a fan of long car rides. Our saving grace is music. As they say, music soothes the savage beast. Not that Avery is at all beastly, but strap her into her car seat and drive for more than half an hour and she definitely becomes a little savage-esque.   Her favourite CD is Name Your Tune. She can (and has) listened to it a thousand times. Children are egocentric. They LOVE hearing their name in the context of the songs. Truth be told, if I heard a few “Lisas” thrown in, I’d dig it too.   My friend Erica (head mummy over at The Yummy Mummy Club) did a voice over for Five Little Monkeys – Avery’s most requested tune. It’s strange hearing Erica’s familiar voice serenading us in our mini-van. When she sings, “I can seeeeeee you,” Avery gasps and says, “She sees me??” Makes me smile every time. Later, when Erica says, “Be very careful,” Avery responds, in a whisper, “Very careful.”   Shout out to our friend Scott too! He’s the manly voice in the Monkey duet.    Thanks Candace for making such an amazing product. I’m putting “Name Your Tune2” on[…]

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Linguini Facial

I made a healthy, home-freaking-made-from-scratch meal and I was ready to impale myself on a dull spoon midway through dinner. My little girl eats like a bird. A baby humming bird.   Lately we’ve made great strides, both in food diversity and in weight gain. It’s a roller coaster—good days and bad. I’m okay with that. But, when your child refuses to eat something she normally loves, it’s irritating. For the love, who refuses linguini??   I tried everything. All of our usual tricks. Even our latest and greatest… paying off each bite with a butterscotch CHIPIT.   I can handle a little food refusal. What I can’t handle is when my child wrestles her dish (which was suction cupped to the table for stability) with such furry and determination that it launches suddenly upwards, flinging the entire meal like an aerial assault by an army of searing hot saucy snakes, into her mother’s face. I enjoy a facial, but I draw the line at a pesto prima vera treatment.    I threw in the towel, after wiping away the sauce with it, and retreated to my office, leaving daddy to deal with the pasta shrapnel. Tomorrow would be a[…]

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Kids and Poison Control Safety

In my youth, I would crank a wicked tune by metal band “Poison” and lose control. These days, my Bret Michaels poster* has been replaced by a fridge magnet with the phone number for Poison Control. Until yesterday, my calls have been for relatively minor inquiries like, “What should you do if your child should eat a handful of Hershey’s Kisses…with the foil on?“   Last night my daughter awoke with a fever. I immediately gave her a dose of children’s liquid acetaminophen. I put the bottle back in the latched chest on the top shelf in our locked hall closet. This is where we keep all medications—well out of reach. I left a bottle of ibuprofen on the bathroom counter ready for the morning. We alternate between Tylenol and Advil so we can safely overlap doses. I figured if I left the bottle out, there would be no hazy sleep-deprived confusion about which type to give her next. Smart right? Not really.   In the morning as usual, Avery got up and went to the bathroom. I was two minutes behind her. When I caught up with her, she was standing on her step stool, holding the OPEN medicine bottle, smacking her[…]

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Dealing With Difficult People

Some people are just plain disagreeable. You know the type. They ooze negativity and criticism. Mall parking lots and grocery line-ups are littered with them. Obviously, we don’t know what others might have going on in their lives. Perhaps they are usually pleasant, but happen to be temporarily bitter for a legitimate reason. I’m not counting them. I’m talking about the crotchety ones who are nasty on a daily basis. It’s futile to try to avoid these toxic humans. They’ll find you. And when they do, they can turn your happy smile into a painful grimace in an instant…if you let them. My mom emailed me an article about dealing with difficult people.  I’ve included excerpts below, with comments. What did you just say? Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz,  Hamilton Spectator   They are your sneering coworkers, your prying neighbours, your insulting in-laws. They are the nasty people who make environments toxic. But you can beat them without joining them. How to deal with nasty people: See it for what it is. Rather than internalize the criticism or dwell on what you might have done to deserve the attack, recognize that the nasty person has personal issues. Dwelling is a hard habit to[…]

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