November 2009

Go Tell The Spartans

November 30, 2009

I give up. I surrender. The battle has been fought. It has been lost.

We have tried everything, pretty much, to get Jasper to stay asleep in his own bed. Which is to say, we have tried everything within the limits of our physical and emotional endurance. We made a final push this weekend, a cry-it-out effort to hold the pass of our bedroom door and defend the peace of our bed, but to no avail. The boy found his way around our defenses and, like Leonidas at Thermopylae, we held our ground, we tried to hold our ground, but our forces were no match for his cries and his pleas and his Dadda Dadda Dadda Dadda MAMA MAMA MUM! And so we fell, and so we give up.

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Thankitude

November 27, 2009

I’m Canadian, so I celebrated Thanksgiving weeks ago, but still, it’s hard to ignore all the cheerful goodwill and gratitude in the air when American Thanksgiving rolls around. Also, the pie. That’s all anyone has been able to talk about this week: PIE, pumpkin or otherwise. And stuffing and turkeys and liquor. Oh, and gratitude. [...]

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And Down Will Come Baby…

November 26, 2009

Okay, so I threw it out there and I said that the parenting stuff that I tend to feel most guilt around is the stuff that I (almost) never write about here. And then I asked whether that was reasonable, seeing as I advertise myself as a mother who knows no shame, and who believes [...]

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Confessions Of A Bad Mother

November 24, 2009

Yesterday, I took part in a televised discussion about so-called ‘bad parenting,’ shame and confession. I wore a lot of eyeshadow. I never wear eyeshadow, so I was really kind of embarrassed by it. Later, when I asked my husband what he’d thought of the show, he said, ‘you had some really good things to [...]

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Havin’ My Baby

November 23, 2009

No, it’s not what you think. It’s better. Better, even, than one of Emilia’s still life art installations. She calls this one T-Rex The T-Rex With Purple Girl. It’s a reflection on the decline of feminism under post-modern capitalism. It’s all the awesome of bringing forth new life – of a sort – with none [...]

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Boot Skootin’ Snot Boogerin’ Nobody’s Sleepin’ Boogie

November 19, 2009

This is what 6am looks like at our house: saggy diapers and ukeleles and big, snot-smeared hugs. It’s also what 8pm, 11pm, and 3am look like. Yes, he sleeps in those cowboy boots. No, not for any longer than two or three hours at a time.

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Just Like A Prayer

November 18, 2009

I don’t believe in petitionary or intercessory prayer. I’ve written about my reasons for this at length, but it boils down to this: I don’t believe in, can’t believe in, a God who responds to such prayer. As I said some months ago, ‘why should God help us find a cure for cancer, and not [...]

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Five Reasons You Should Totally See That Vampire Movie

November 17, 2009

New Moon – the second film in the series based upon the Twilight novels (which I will not explain to you here, because, seriously, have you been living under a rock?) – opened last night and I did not go see it. Oh, I’ll get around to seeing it, eventually, but I’m not in any [...]

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Now We Are Four

November 16, 2009

Dear Emilia, This weekend, you turned four years old. You were so excited to turn four years old. For months you asked how many weeks it would be before you turned four, and for weeks you asked that we count down the days until you turned four, and for days you insisted that we tick [...]

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They Say It’s Her Birthday

November 12, 2009

Emilia’s birthday is this weekend. She will be four years old. Four year olds, she informs me, always have birthday parties. “So do five year olds. And sixes. I don’t what happens when you get really old, but I hope you still get cake.” I didn’t tell her that when you’re really old, like, thirty-something, [...]

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