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Our Little Goth

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Baby Dracula
Our 2 year old boy is a mini goth. The strange thing is that our son looks absolutely angelic with a mop of light brown curls, milky skin, rosy round cheeks and a rosebud mouth – so it’s become somewhat of an ironic family joke.

His first word was “mask” – referring to the small collection of Balinese and Sri Lankan masks in my husband’s office, which I think terrified and fascinated him all at once. He’d always point at them and want to be carried up for a closer view, only to cling to us in terror (mock?) after he got a good look. Not one for Sesame Street, Barney or Thomas (unlike his 2 elder siblings) His went straight from Baby Einstein to Nightmare Before Christmas. Corpse Bride, Coraline…he just loves Tim Burton’s works, and can you guess what his all-time favorite song is? Not “The Wheels on the Bus” or “If You’re Happy and You Know it”…..but “Monster Mash”. Click here for his favourite version: Monster Mash. In fact, if he sees me on my laptop, he’ll crawl on my lap and say “watch Monster Mash” until I stop whatever I’m doing and log on to YouTube.

So you can imagine that Halloween came early to our house this year. The sheer delight on his face was precious as we unpacked our boxes of Halloween decorations and he pretty much took charge (directing his 8 and 5 year old siblings of course) of placing every pumpkin, ghoul or ghost in choice locations in and outside the house. “Its Halloween! Its Halloween!” he says excitedly every morning when he comes out of his bedroom and looks at our spider-webbed stairway and tall witch on the landing.

He’s also quite firmly told me that his costume is NOT going to be the Cat and the Hat his elder siblings both wore at his age. “I be Dracula, Mom”. Oh, and he has also demanded for his choice of Halloween cake several times a day, telling both me and his Daddy ” I want Dracula Cake”. It’s hard to say no with that angelic little face and his naturally affectionate disposition. So tonight, as I tucked him into bed (Jack Skellington stuffed toy in his arms), I just couldn’t resist but whisper that Mommy would indeed get him that Dracula cake for Halloween. Help!

Photo via nicandres

Sassy Little Girls

By

TAD

Just the other day I got an email from my friend Katy telling me to check out the Tiny Art Director because it reminded so much of her daughter Max (who happens to be my Godchild). Maxine is an angelic looking 3 year old, who likes watching Igor in the morning and just had to have some scary dinosaurs at her birthday tea party. Katy said that she and her husband laughed, then breathed a sigh of relief when they read this blog, thinking that Max “Was not such a weirdo after all“.

And I totally agree with them, because my Nat was just like that at age 2,3,4. She even has a photo when she was around 3 where her expression and hair (and the angle) made her look just like that terrifying kid in the Ring. Her first word was “Wow” and she was such a tough, eloquent and opinionated little girl. She was sassy and certainly NOT your girly pink princess-loving little girl- and still is. That face on the book pictured above is very, very familiar to me, and I still get it now and then, despite her being in 1st grade.

[Read more…] about Sassy Little Girls

Stuck at Home and Celebrity Sprains

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Madonna's Sprained Ankle
Madonna's Sprained Ankle

Since my sprained ankle, I’ve been stuck at home for the past three days, trying very hard not to go mad. You see, I’m the kind of person who can’t sit down for more than half an hour at a time (uh-oh, now I know where my daughter gets it). My bottom actually starts hurting and I have to get up and busy myself with something, anything, on my feet. That’s why I love to cook, I find it somewhat gratifying to labour in the kitchen, over a hot stove for hours on end. No stools needed, thanks.

So you can understand that the doctor’s instructions of RICE or Dr.ICE for the past 48 hours has not been fun. Well at least I’ve been able to catch up with my photo album-ing (forget scrapbooking, that was B3K – before 3 kids!) which have been sorely neglected as my husband always likes to point out (he did so admire the book I did for our firstborn).

While the kids are at school and baby Wills is asleep I’ve also managed to catch up on my DVD watching, which has been impossible in recent months (ok, years). Like most other Mothers, we are no doubt at the bottom of the dibs-on-the-tv list- with kiddie shows, sports and even Baby Einstein taking precedence over things like that latest Spanish film with subtitles that make everyone in my household pull faces.

Speaking of television, I’ve also discovered that quite a few celebs have been seen up and around town sporting their sprained ankles, giving me a boost in thinking I can make it to the supermarket this afternoon and look as cool as Madge (pictured above). Poor thing, it happened right before her 50th birthday bash last August too. Another celeb sporting the same injury as moi is one of my daughter’s favourites, Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers fame. Nobody really know how he got it, because like Madonna, they seem to think there’s some reason for secrecy here.

Photo via The Daily Mail

Urban Legends About Kids

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tattoo
I love how urban legends sometimes (or oftentimes) believed to be true. In this day and age when information circulates so fast, we may not have the time to check the veracity of some stories. I ran across a post by asflutz on Strollerderby which highlights the top 10 urban legends regarding children. It is quite an amusing read, to say the least.

Here are some of my favorites – to be honest, I thought these to be true at one point. (Yeah, I can be very gullible.)

Pokemon episode gave Japanese kids seizures.
True, but only a “handful.” Although over 600 Japanese kids were reportedly rushed to the hospital with epileptic seizures induced from watching a particular 1997 Pokemon episode, only a few were actually diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy. But even if you’re one of those over-protective parents who think a few seizures from watching TV is a few seizures too many, Americans have nothing to worry about. According to Snopes, the offending scenes were removed from the episode, which anyway was never translated into English and will never air on American TV.

Fake “tattoos” and stamps for kids are laced with LSD.
False. Although parents today are just as afraid as our parents were about kids falling under the prey of drug dealers, this famous tale from the 1970s has yet to be supplanted by a more modern version.

Drug dealers smuggle cocaine into the U.S. stuffed into the bodies of dead babies.
False. This gruesome story has been around for more than 20 years, and has been reported as fact in respected publications such as The Washington Post and The New Republic, but there is no record of this ever having occurred. Versions keep popping up with each shift in the war on drugs, with dead children allegedly being used to smuggle narcotics into the Middle East or over the Mexican-American border.

Come on, don’t tell me you didn’t fall for at least one of these! Got any urban legends you want to share?

When Kids Get Creative

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girl craft
I was browsing other parenting blogs and I just found this post by Daring Young Mom hilarious. She was sharing an experience with her daughter wherein she withheld TV privileges for a while. Instead of throwing a temper tantrum, her daughter put her creative juices to work and went on to make a TV of her own out of crayon and paper! Imagine that!

It made me think of the times when the creativity of children come out because of “adverse” situations. I remember one time when my sister and I were kids and we wanted to have a Power Wheel. Yeah I know this was normally for boys but they looked like a lot of fun. Anyway, our parents would not buy us one no matter how much we asked and begged. Our solution? We got this tiny coffee table in our living room, removed everything on top of it, and turned it upside down. We both got in and took turns driving our “home made Power Wheel!” Lucky for us the coffee table was light enough to push around.

Sometimes, I think that not giving everything our children ask for is a good thing. Just because they want something does not mean that they should have it. They may be disappointed at first but with their resiliency, I am sure that their creativity would surface and they would come up with something that would make them quite content.

How about you, any “creative” stories that you might want to share?

Pirates vs Ninjas

By

dd

Ok, I admit that maybe I am a teeny-weeny obsessed with pirates these days. My sister insists that I am, and although she was down with a nasty bug, managed to send me this email about the “Pirates vs Ninja” debate.

Its rather interesting if you asked me. The pirates are winning, with 263 votes, as opposed to the ninjas with 258. Here are some of the insightful comments on debate:

For the Pirates:

” Ah, the anachronism that is the ninja! Are there even any ninjas
left in the world, to fight the pirates? I am pretty sure that
the true ninjas went the way of the samurai (speaking of which,
in the movie THE LAST SAMURAI, ninjas and samurais duke it out,
and I am pretty sure that was anachronistic too) I say NAY!

Yet modern pirates abound! See The Outlaw Sea: A World of
Freedom, Chaos, and Crime by William Langewiesche. Pirates still
kick trash, even in a world of atom bombs and blackberries. In
fact, pirates probably use blackberries. Blackberries, eyepatches
and parrots. Yar, matey! “

For the Ninjas:

“Ninjas have the advantage on land. I mean, you can’t even see
them until it’s too late, and then you’ll never see them because
you have no head.

But on sea, pirates are dangerous. But a ninja could sneak on
board. And pirates are too loud. Yell and say yar, and are
usually drunk, so it is all ninja!”

[tags]pirates, convince me, pirate vs ninja, debate [/tags]

Talk Like A Pirate Day

By

xx

If you’ll notice from my previous posts, despite my pirate-fervor, my ability to “piratespeak” is simply pathetic. I can muster an “aarrgh” or a “shiver me timbers” with as much pirate gruff as that chap Orlando Bloom….which is no way the mother-pirate of the pirate lass celebrant is meant to be.

So getting into the spirit of things, I started doing more research on brushing up my “pirate”, and just discovered that “Speak Like A Pirate Day” occurs on September 19th, the day after my birthday! Lovely. Why have a holiday for these romanticized skurvy-ridden criminals? Heres what the folks at International Talk Like A Pirate Day convincingly say:

Make no mistake. We do. But it’s a little hard to articulate why, especially when you’ve made the mistake of referring to your wife as a scurvy bilge rat and tried to order her back into the galley.

Talking like a pirate is fun. It’s really that simple.

It gives your conversation a swagger, an eln, denied to landlocked lubbers. The best explanation came from a guy at a Cleveland radio station who interviewed us on the 2002 Talk Like a Pirate Day. He told us we were going to be buried by people asking for interviews because it was a “whimsical alternative” to all the serious things that were making the news so depressing.

In other words, silliness is the holiday’s best selling point.

Before we go any further, there’s something we need to be clear about. Pirates were and are bad people. Really reprehensible. Even the most casual exploration of the history of pirates (and believe us, casual is an accurate description of our research) leaves you hip deep in blood and barbarity. We recognize this, all right? We aren’t for one minute suggesting that real, honest-to-God pirates were in any way, shape or form worth emulating.

So what is it exactly that we’re celebrating here, if not pirates? What, you’re wondering, is the point?

We’re going to be painfully honest here, perhaps fatally so.

The point is, there is no point.

Its the last line that sold me. I love a little nonsense in my sometime serious world of parenting. Besides, it will thrill my little sea urchins em sure. Next post get ready for my favourite pirate lingo.

[tags]talk like a pirate day, pirate talk[/tags]

KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930’s 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s

By

dd

This is something I just got in my email, which I had to share with you all. Read it and get a new perspective on the new millenium’s parenting – which suddenly doesnt seem so great after all.

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930’s 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank koolade made with sugar, but we weren’t overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING !

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day and we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD’s, no surround-sound or CD’s, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms…….

WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned

HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

If YOU are one of them . . . CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as
kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?!

The quote of the month is by Jay Leno:

“With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks….Are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?”

[tags]kids, growing up, survival, jay leno[/tags]