SubscribeLast night was pumpkin carving/decorating night at our house. The munchkin used a variety of methods, including, but not limited to:
the munchkin's pumpkins (ineligible for the competition due to extreme cuteness)
the pumpkins
the pumpkins (each illuminated by two candles)
The power lies with you, readers. Make the right choice, for the winner will have bragging rights for one.whole.year!
Happy Halloween Everybody!
Private, for-profit day care is coming to Canada, but CUPE is fighting against their arrival and implementation. According to the report, since British Columbia announced a captial fund to create new day care spaces and (for the first time) allowed for-profit day care companies to apply, a Texas-based company (123 Busy Beavers) with corporate ties to ABC Learning Centres of Australia, has begun to set up shop. The company has also begun inviting Ontario day cares to have their businesses valued for potential sale to ABC, likely in preparation for expansion to the country's largest province.
ABC Learning Centres has a long and (from a purely business perspective) impressive history. Before they came about, 25% of all day cares in Australia were for-profit. In the last 20 years, that split has flipped, with nearly 75% being for profit now, and almost one third of those owned by ABC or one of its subsidiaries. ABC leverages the current trend in many governments to offer incentives and assistance related to child care into big business as a means to establish their centres, and then increases fees at a rate higher than that of wages (in Australia, child care costs have increased by 123% while income has only seen a 62% increase) to induce more government spending in child care.
Continue reading at Daditorial
In honour of tomorrow's big night, here's a list of 10 kid-friendly Halloween movies, depending (as always) on the age of your kid.
Two sad stories of infant fatalities with a similar root cause - sleeping in an adult bed - this week: one rolled between the wall and the mattress and the other suffocated under a duvet.
Here's some advice on how to deal with not being the preferred parent.
Parents are encouraged to make bedtime storytime help improve literacy rates.
In the "at least I don't parent like this" department: a mother in Florida pierced her daughter's genitals to discourage teen sex and a father beat his son for taking too long to do his homework.
This weekend we made the trip back home to visit my parents. Since they were not going to be at our place for Halloween (owing not only to the 4+ hour car ride between hour homes, but also their poor health), we decided to trick or treat for them:
Regular readers of my wife's blog know that she calls our daughter "the bunny" and therefore get the joke. Next year, we're putting her in knickers and a golfing cap and giving her a stoagie.
Then we discovered that the costume has a tail:
And then, unfortunately, we found a more effective method of locating said tail:
We brought out our Halloween lights and had a dance party, where the munchkin showed off her breakdancing moves:
And then Daddy got a little carried away with the whole "let's see how steady I can hold the camera and take an image of a toddler in complete darkness" photographic experiment:
And we decided to call it quits.
On Saturday evening, my mother had a slight medical emergency that required an unscheduled visit from a nurse. In an effort to prevent the munchkin from becoming too frightened, we gave her a pair of rubber gloves to play with. Never one to miss a good joke opportunity, I sent her in to see her mother, telling the munchkin to tell Mommy:
"Just bend over and try to relax."
Mommy was not amused.
On Sunday, we came back early for a dress up birthday party. We watched some football before we left:
All in all, a fun, if hectic, weekend. What did you all do?
Yesterday, the Toronto Star ran an article about the 83 year old mother of a local Member of Parliament (MP) who had to be taken to the emergency room for an infected surgical wound. The infection was the result of inadequate home care after being discharged: the nurses skipped scheduled appointments, and nothing changed with phone calls or complaints. The piece used the story to highlight problems in the Ontario home care system with the message that if MPs cannot get proper home care for their parents, how can the average citizen accomplish this:
"If this can happen to me, as someone who has been in public service for 20 years, this can happen to anyone."
-- Olivia Chow, Toronto MP
Continue reading at Daditorial
From a recent study comes a revelation that I found interesting: men are more bothered by being childless than women. However, as the author points out, it is likely because women are more likely to have to make sacrifices than men when children come along; which makes sense.
Here is some useful advice for hockey parents about choosing the right team for their child.
This is (at least to me) a fascinating piece about pediatrician Harvey Karp, and his claim to fame: civilizing a toddler.
Here's a blog post with some disturbing information: according to a recent study, black children are punished in school more often than their white counterparts.
Another weekend went by way too quickly (and sadly, involved my in-laws way too much) in our household. Here are the highlights (and low lights).
On Saturday morning, the munchkin and I went to a music class at the local library:
Regular readers will recall that we did this back in April for a few weeks before they broke for the summer. She was very excited to go to the "Daddy class" and participated pretty well (although she did have a hard time sharing the egg shaker - her favourite).
After class we went to the grocery store to get some ingredients (grocery list courtesy of a text message from MTM) for this:
What is that, you ask? Why, it's my world famous cheddar potato soup. The munchkin is an excellent sous-chef, you know.
Saturday afternoon saw too much rain to play outside, so we hit the local mall. The munchkin dressed herself:
Yes, that is a sun hat. No, it isn't August, nor is it sunny. Yes, we are indoors at the time of the photo.
That night, we were treated to the comedy stylings of munchkin - jester to the stars. Here she is doing an impression of her cousin:
(And for the record, no the cousin does not wear glasses, in case anyone was wondering.)
Sunday morning, at 8:20am our phone rang. It was my FIL. He had decided that (despite telling me last weekend that there was no rush) he wanted his internet hooked up, and would I mind setting up his router (What router? I hadn't gotten his router. See: no rush.) if he brought it over. A novel idea except a) there was no router and b) he uses DSL, so I had to do it at his place. So, we went to Best Buy to grab a router (their town has no tech stores):
"Daddy, I really like this tv."
Me too, munchkin. Me too.
Anyways. We spent the better part of the afternoon and evening there with the munchkin playing with MTM's old toys while I struggled with the crappy router documentation and even worse DSL documentation (Bell.Must.Die.) before finally getting it all up and running as desired. Really, yesterday afternoon could be a comedy of errors, at least for those who would get the technical jokes.
So that's my weekend. What were you up to?
Yesterday afternoon, I was leaving the office when I discovered my car had a flat due to what appeared to be a shard of metal sticking out of it. After failing to move the lug nuts realizing the spare was under inflated, I called CAA and had them swap tires for me.
As I was waiting for CAA, I called MTM to have her locate the closest Canadian Tire to get the tire repaired or replaced. After helping me with that, she proceeded to (in as nice a way as a wife could) indicate that she was not surprised because typically I am more cavalier with my driving than her as far as what I run over, and that I was bound to get a flat because I "don't notice things that could puncture a tire" when I drive.
For the record, this is what they pulled out of my tire:
To put it in relative sizing:
Did I mention I drive to work in the dark?!? Of course I didn't see that thing! (On the upside, however, since the tire was from there, Canadian Tire patched it, replaced the spare in the trunk (and screwed it in tight) and washed the car for me. All for no charge because it was covered under "warranty". Seriously.)
Last night, MTM and I had a date night, which sounds all romantic and everything, except that it wasn't with each other. MTM went out with a friend from high school while I had a date with the munchkin. Now, when you take a girl out, it is considered good etiquette to allow her to choose the restaurant and the evening's festivities. To that end, we ended up here:
(Oh come on, people! Everyone with kids knows where this is!)
Unfortunately, her meal came with this:
Seriously? That is the toy that is appropriate for a kid that gets a Happy Meal at McDonald's? No. That is what I would expect to find inside a place with the phrase "adult entertainment" flashing in neon on the outside (not that I would know about such things).
When we were finished our meal at Chez Ronaldo, I asked the munchkin where she wanted to go next.
"Toy store!"
So, we went to Zellers, where we test drove a big girl bike:
We came home and, occasionally fighting back tears for Mommy, bathed and got ready for bed. Since it was a date night, we closed it out with a special late bedtime which allowed us to enjoy Diego while we cuddled in a recliner.
She went down without a peep, and stayed that way until MTM came home and fulfilled her promise to wake her for a late night cuddle.
I did a guest blogging stint for Moms Speak Up yesterday. If you have a chance, you can read my post about a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine that has found that most children are receiving inadequate health care. (It would also be awesome if you left a comment there.)
Last night (after voting in the provincial election, which, according to what I have read and heard, one out of every two local readers didn't, which makes no sense to me, but whatever) I came home and had the brilliant idea to overseed and fertilize the lawn for the winter. Why was it so brilliant, you ask? Because it was raining outside. (In my defense, it has been an exceptionally dry season here. So, when I saw a long-term forecast for rain and thus ideal grass-root-developing weather, I jumped at the chance.)
So, I offered the munchkin the opportunity to "help" me with the process, moreso knowing that she'd jump at the chance to play in the rain than have any interest in the grass seed. I also figured it would allow MTM some "me" time.
It started out well:
But then she decided to start picking up some of the piles of seed she dumped previously spread seed:
Eventually, this degenerated into a game of "kick the bag":
Finally, we completely lost interest and made for the garage in search of something more exciting. We came out with this (the sun umbrella that we clamp on her wagon):
Which she then carried around the front lawn:
All in all, it was another successful attempt at lawn maintenance. Plus, it gives us a science experiment next spring when we see whether the pile-it-on (munchkin) or the spread evenly while chasing a toddler around the yard (Daddy) is the more effective lawn planting method.
I came home to find the munchkin "decorating" a pumpkin with markers on Friday afternoon.
Later that day, the munchkin and MTM did a hand-painting craft; and then the munchkin wanted to paint Mommy's hand.
When we arrived at the cottage on Saturday, the munchkin immediately put on her lifejacket and asked for a boat ride.
Then, things got a little crazy.
On Sunday, she got to play in the forest surrounding the cottage.
At one point we lost her in the bush because of her camouflage pants.
See? She's actually on the pony!
The chicks actually came over to her when she put her hand on the plexiglass.
I took this thinking I'd make an anti-Facebook button with it.
This is the horse she pet; it looks small here compared to real life.
The green-saddled carousel horse she chose.
It was windy and dusty; this was her solution.
Anticipating the parade (I just really like this shot).
Choosing the perfect little pumpkin.
See? She's actually on another pony!
