Mother’s Day is a day that must be celebrated because…for most of us, it’s the day of the most special woman in your life -whether it is your own mother or your wife or simply a good friend of yours, so celebrate it! It’s the day that all mothers love and rightfully so. And for me personally, though I do appreciate the annual flower delivery, I especially would love a bit extra effort from the baby’s daddy to involve the kids into creating something with a sentimental/personal touch. Also I really don’t like the breakfast in bed idea as i like to sleep in!

Mother’s Day is a day that must be celebrated because…

for most of us, it’s the day of the most special woman in your life – whether it is your own mother or your wife or simply a good friend of yours, so celebrate it! It’s the day that all mothers love and rightfully so. And for me personally, though I do appreciate the annual flower delivery, I especially would love a bit extra effort from the baby’s daddy to involve the kids into creating something with a sentimental/personal touch. Also I really don’t like the breakfast in bed idea as i like to sleep in!

Make sure whatever you do, put some heart into it, mom’s appreciate the effort not the amount of money spent!

Here are some ideas from Nicola Enright-Morin of Canadian Living Magazine:

Traditional Mom

For Moms who appreciate conventional things one of these is sure to win:

• Floral — If your Mom really does love plant life why not try a small tree? If she lives in an apartment, try a Bonsai tree, but if you feel you can only say it with a standard bouquet, find out what flower is significant to her (for example her birth month flower) to make it really special.

Mile-a-minute Mom

Many Moms are so busy thinking of everyone else that they forget about pampering themselves:

• Breakfast in bed — An oldie but a goldie. It’s easy, inexpensive and sure to put a smile on any woman’s face.

• Spa treatment — Check with local spas for Mother’s Day specials you can both indulge in.

• Surprise Mom with a night out: the theatre, movies, something you would enjoy together.

Fly by the seat of her pants Mom

Not every woman loses her zest for adventure when she becomes a Mom, so if yours enjoys a thrill:

• Adrenaline junkie moms will revel in a day of extreme sports; why not try Scuba diving, rock climbing or if that’s too much for you how about kayaking or a hot air balloon ride.

Practical makes perfect Mom

Some Moms don’t have a frivolous bone in their body, so why not:

• Find out her hobbies and enroll you both in a night class — if that’s too time consuming get her some good books on the subject.

• How about a hands free cell phone set or spill-proof travel mug to make her life easier.

Easy to please Mom

These Moms always get neglected so it’s important to go that extra mile to make them feel extra-special:

• The gift of time — What this Mom adores most is being with you, so take the time to plan a special day for you both: shopping, a picnic in the park, a rambling walk. Think of your Mom’s favourite things and share them together — she’ll be delighted with your consideration.

Final tips:

Put thought into it — an old cliché but true. Pay attention to conversations you have with your Mom and sound her out for ideas — you’ll be amazed at the ideas you’ll come up with. At the end of the day you don’t have to blow your budget, you just have to make her feel special…Good luck!

It never ends – parenting, that is. I mean, you know that going into it. Once you become a parent, you will always be a parent. Even if one or all of your children dies, you are still a parent.

A former co-worker once pointed out to me that, when a spouse dies, we can convey both their status and the pain that got them there instantaneously with the words “widow” and “widower.” But we have no similar language to identify a mother or father who has lost a child – as if being a parent ends with the child’s life.

It doesn’t. Ever.

I was watching a movie the other night, a really touching piece starring Hilary Swank called P.S. I Love You. It’s about a young woman whose husband dies. It follows her as she wades her way through the first, very difficult year. As the movie winds up and she’s finally ready to get on with her life, she sums up life as a bunch of contradictions, one of them being, “It’s short and it’s endless.”

That’s pretty much what parenting is, too. Two out of three of my children are adults now – 24 and 22. They know how to take care of themselves. One has finished university, lives with his fiancée, and they’re both trying to get into medical school. The other lives in a suite we’ve created for her in the basement while she works her way through a BA. They’re both so responsible! They work and they study, they try really hard to be good people, and they succeed far more than they fail.

They’re so grown up and yet my  memories of them are as clear as if they happened yesterday – my son at age 5 with a shock of red curly hair, standing at the top of the stairs in his little blue soccer pants and slip-on shoes, one blue and one red. All the grown-ups said to him, “I bet you have another pair just like that at home,” and he always smiled so patiently at hearing the same silly joke over and over again.

And my daughter – a friend of mine called her “a little ray of sunshine.” For the first eight years of her life, every picture she drew had hearts in it and every story she wrote was about love. Trying to describe her unique character, one teacher said of her, “She’s just such a … such a … she’s just such a Jayme!” (That’s her name.) And that was exactly right. She was a Jayme, and there was no one else like her.

And now they’re not children, they’re adult children, and they don’t need their parents anymore – except when they do.

Parenting adult children is very different from anything that came before. We bring these little beings into the world and it’s our job to love and protect and guide them and we give and we sacrifice and we do it gladly and they give so much back that it’s all worth it.

And then they turn into adolescents and they don’t want that anymore and it’s hard for parents, and it hurts like hell, and yet it’s right for them to rebel because that’s how they become adults.

But then they are adults, and you’ve just learned how to let them go – and they come back. And it’s confusing because you don’t know exactly what they want now. You don’t know how to parent someone who doesn’t actually need parenting anymore but still wants it sometimes.

You don’t know how to tell when they do want it and they don’t. You don’t know when to step in and say, “Wow, you’re really going to regret that!” and when to slap a big piece of duct tape over your mouth. And even though they’re all grown up, they still get angry when you don’t tell them something that really would have helped, or you do tell them something they really didn’t want to hear.

And what makes it even more confusing is that, as much as you sometimes want to tell them to just grow up, you don’t want them to. You want them to be little again – little red-haired boys in blue soccer pants, and little ray-of-sunshine girls presenting you with pictures of hearts and flowers.

But, of course, they can’t be little again, so the next best thing is for them to keep coming back, keep coming home, keep telling you their problems, keep expecting you to know when they want advice and when they don’t, because, after all, you should know that – you’re the parent, and parents know.

Parenting adult children isn’t anything like parenting young children or teenagers, and yet it’s everything like it. It’s frustrating and confusing and joyful and sorrowful. It’s short and it’s endless.

You become a parent and there’s no looking back. That’s what you always will be. Thank goodness.

Yes, we all hear about the precautions we should take but does it really answer our questions about what SIDs (sudden infant death syndrome) really is? It’s a very scary issue and for the small chance that it can happen to one of my babies, I find myself constantly worried as my son likes to sleep on his stomach. (I also have a childhood friend that had a SIDs baby boy who passed away at 4 months old).

—–

SIDS Infants Show Abnormalities In Brain Area Controlling Breathing, Heart Rate

Serotonin-Using Brain Cells Implicated In Abnormalities

Infants who die of sudden infant death syndrome have abnormalities in the brainstem, a part of the brain that helps control heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, temperature and arousal, report researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health. The finding is the strongest evidence to date suggesting that innate differences in a specific part of the brain may place some infants at increased risk for SIDS.

The abnormalities appeared to affect the brainstem’s ability to use and recycle serotonin, a brain chemical which also is used in a number of other brain areas and plays a role in communications between brain cells. Serotonin is most well known for its role in regulating mood, but it also plays a role in regulating vital functions like breathing and blood pressure.

The study appears in the November 1 Journal of the American Medical Association and was conducted by researchers in the laboratory of Hannah Kinney, M.D., at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School as well as other institutions.

“This finding lends credence to the view that SIDS risk may greatly increase when an underlying predisposition combines with an environmental risk — such as sleeping face down — at a developmentally sensitive time in early life,” said Duane Alexander, M.D., Director of the NIH’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

SIDS is the sudden and unexpected death of an infant under 1 year of age, which cannot be explained after a complete autopsy, an investigation of the scene and circumstances of the death, and a review of the medical history of the infant and his or her family. Typically, the infant is found dead after having been put to sleep and shows no signs of having suffered.

In previous studies, researchers have hypothesized that abnormalities in the brainstem may make an infant susceptible to situations in which they re-breathe their own exhaled breath, depriving them of oxygen. This hypothesis holds that certain infants may not be able to detect high carbon dioxide or low oxygen levels during sleep, and do not wake up.

To conduct the current study, researchers examined tissue from the brainstems of 31 infants who died of SIDS and 10 infants who died of other causes. The tissue was provided by the office of the chief medical examiner in San Diego, California, and was collected from infants who died between 1997 and 2005.

The lower brainstem helps control such basic functions as breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, and arousal. The researchers found that brainstems from SIDS infants contained more neurons (brain or nerve cells) that manufacture and use serotonin than did the brainstems of the control infants, explained the study’s first author, David Paterson, PhD, a researcher at Children’s Hospital in Boston.

Serotonin belongs to a class of molecules known as neurotransmitters, which serve to relay messages between neurons. Neurons release neurotransmitters, which fit into special sites, or receptors, on surrounding neurons, somewhat like a key fits into a lock. Once in place, the neurotransmitter either promotes or hinders electrical activity in the receiving neuron — next in line in a particular brain circuit — causing it to release its neurotransmitters, which either excite or inhibit still more neurons, and so on.

Although the brainstem tissue from the SIDS infants contained more serotonin-using neurons, these serotonin-using neurons appeared to contain fewer receptors for serotonin than did the brainstems of control infants. Dr. Paterson noted that there are at least 14 different subtypes of serotonin receptor. In their study, the researchers tested the infants’ brainstem tissue for a serotonin receptor known as “subtype 1A.”

Tissue from both the SIDS infants and the control infants contained roughly equal amounts of a key brain protein, serotonin transporter protein. This protein recycles serotonin, collecting the neurotransmitter from the surrounding spaces outside the neuron and transporting it back into the neuron so it can be used again. Dr. Paterson explained, however, that because the SIDS infants had proportionately more serotonin-using neurons than did the control infants, they would also be expected to have more serotonin transporter protein. So even though they had equal amounts of serotonin transporter protein, the levels were nevertheless reduced — relative to the increased number of serotonin-using neurons — and, for this reason, unlikely to meet the needs of these cells.

Dr. Paterson added that from the observations in this study it was not possible to determine how much serotonin the infants’ brainstems contained when the infants were alive. He noted, however, that the pattern of abnormalities — more serotonin neurons, an apparent reduction of serotonin 1A receptors, and insufficient serotonin transporter — suggested that the level of serotonin in the brainstems of SIDS infants was abnormal.

“Our hypothesis right now is that we’re seeing a compensation mechanism,” Dr. Paterson said. “If you have more serotonin neurons, it may be because you have less serotonin and more neurons are recruited to produce and use serotonin to correct this deficiency.”

The researchers also found that male SIDS infants had fewer serotonin receptors than did either female SIDS infants or control infants. The finding may provide insight into why SIDS affects roughly twice as many males as females.

“These findings provide evidence that SIDS is not a mystery but a disorder that we can investigate with scientific methods, and some day, may be able to identify and treat,” said Dr. Hannah Kinney, the senior author of the paper.

A large body of research has shown that placing an infant to sleep on his or her stomach greatly increases the risk of SIDS. The NICHD-sponsored Back to Sleep campaign urges parents and caregivers to place infants to sleep on their backs, to reduce SIDS risk. The campaign has reduced the number of SIDS deaths by about half since it began in 1994. The campaign also cautions against other practices that increase the risk of SIDS, such as soft bedding, smoking during pregnancy, and smoking around a baby after birth.

Despite the fact that the Back to Sleep Campaign recommendations had been widely distributed by the time the study began, a large proportion of the SIDS cases in the study by Drs. Paterson, Kinney and their coworkers were correlated with known SIDS risk factors: 15 (48 percent) were found sleeping on their stomachs, 9 (29 percent) were found face down, and 7 (23 percent) were sharing a bed, at the time of death.

“The majority (65 percent) of the SIDS cases in this data set, however, were sleeping prone or on their side at the time of death, indicating the need for continued public health messages on safe sleeping practices, the study authors wrote.”

Information and free materials on ways parents and caregivers can reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome are available on the Back to Sleep Campaign Web site

Additional information about the search for ways to identify infants most at risk for SIDS in the accompanying backgrounder, “Searching For Those At Greatest Risk For SIDS”

The NICHD sponsors research on development, before and after birth; maternal, child, and family health; reproductive biology and population issues; and medical rehabilitation.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation’s Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases.

Heart Jello

If you’re looking for an easy special treat to serve on Valentine’s Day to serve your kids? Try some of these fun recipe ideas:

Jello Love

1 Lg box Jello

1 heart shaped cookie cutter

Preparation:

Follow recipe on box for Jello Gigglers. Chill in a long shallow pan. Cut out hearts when jello is set. Or you can step it up a notch and add some condensed milk and layer the jello with a condensed milk/gelatin mixture and create a fun layer affect.

FamilyFun Magazine’s “Eat your Heart Out” Jello Fun

Dissolve one package of flavored gelatin in 3/4 cup boiling water. Add 3/4 cup cold water, then pour the mixture into a 9- by 13-inch glass pan and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Stir together 1/2 cup boiling water and the condensed milk. In a separate bowl, dissolve all the unflavored gelatin in ½ cup cold water for 1 to 2 minutes. Thoroughly mix in 3/4 cup boiling water, then combine this mixture with the milk and let it cool. Add half the mixture to the pan of red gelatin, pouring it over a spatula to slow the stream, and refrigerate for 20 minutes. Continue alternating layers — gelatin mix, the remaining milk mix, the final gelatin mix — chilling each for 20 to 30 minutes to set it. Create individual servings with a heart-shaped biscuit or cookie cutter.

Heart Sandwiches:

Cream cheese, softened

strawberry or raspberry Jam

Red food coloring

Bread

Heart cookie cutter

Preparation:

Add a few drops of red food coloring to the softened cream cheese and mix until the color is a light pink. Spread cream cheese on the bread and top with the jam. Cut bread into heart shapes with the cookie cutter.

Hot Cocoa Love

Cinnamon heart candies

marshmallow hearts(small)

Hot cocoa

Preparation:

Pour hot water to make cocoa into a cup. Add some cinnamon hearts and marshmallow hearts on top.

Have a Happy Valentine’s day!!

Two years ago I moved into a house that has a garden that can be kindly described as uncared for. The weeds were waist high, and soon after we moved in, the weeds were so tangled behind the house that it became difficult to walk there. My stepson has described our yard as “sorta ghetto.”

In an attempt to make our property more usable and truly ours, I pulled out the weeds so that I could put down a pathway. Once the ground was bare and the landscape cloth down, I needed to put something on top to keep weeds from growing again. I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to do a family craft. Crafts are not my strong point, so I wanted to do something easy, and something all the kids could do with me.

I looked online at how to make stepping stones. As we live on a tight budget, I wanted to find a cheap alternative to the stepping stone kits sold in craft stores. At “About.com” I found directions for making stepping stones. I also gave in and bought two molds for stepping stones, partly for the instructions, and partly for the insurance that at least two stepping stones would turn out. I loosely followed the online instructions, and wove into them the instructions that came with the molds. I recommend going to About.com for the full set of instructions, which includes neat ideas of how to include photos in your stepping stones.

1. So then I gathered the three kids who live with us out on the deck and we got together some pie plates, the store-bought mold, concrete mix, water, a bucket, a spatula, and some dollar-store coloured stones. In the bucket we mixed the concrete with water until it resembled brownie batter. Sadly, I am very familiar with the consistency of brownie batter; if you are not, it means that the mixture should be quite thick but damp throughout.
2. We scooped the concrete into the molds and jiggled them to make them look smooth on top.
3. Next we decorated with the stones. My stepson put his handprint and some stones, while my stepdaughter made flowers out of the stones. My son, aged 7, spent approximately 2.1 seconds decorating his stepping stones, but they look lovely nonetheless. It was hard to give up the creative control at this part, so I focused on my own stepping stones and let the kids do what they wanted.
4. As our concrete was a bit wet, we used paper towels to absorb the water that rose to the top. We then found a sheltered spot where the stepping stones could dry without being moved, and without having kitty paw prints added to them.

A week later we popped out the stones and laid them at the start of the garden path. The next round of stones we make will be more daring, I think, with coloured concrete and maybe some more writing. I wouldn’t buy molds again, nor would I use pie tins next time. I think I will use the molds I already have and supplement them with the bottoms of plant pots. I figure if I am going to get dirty mixing concrete, I’m going to make a full batch of them.

Overall, we had a fun family craft that brought us together on a Sunday morning, and that produced art that will help brighten our property. Next time the kids go down the path to get their bikes out of the shed, I hope that they smile when looking at the stepping stones we made, rather than grimace at yard, even if it is a little less ghetto.

I didn’t grow up with a brother or a close male friend, so when it came to boys, I was pretty clueless. This isn’t to say that I’m a girly-girl – I’m not – but when it comes to how males think and why, I am often confused. This confusion was increased by the belief that I held: gender may exist, but differences between them did not. When the book
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus came out, I still didn’t buy the idea that men are fundamentally different from women in how they think about things and how they behave. I thought those differences were mostly an act of socialization, not of biology. Boy, was I wrong.

When I had my baby boy, one of the first things I noticed is that unlike the little baby girls in playgroup who mewed their dissatisfaction, mine howled like a warrior. He didn’t as much cry as yell. This was my first clue that boys are actually in fact different. From that point on I have been on a journey of discovering that boys are actually different, and that those differences are not only okay, they’re lovely. To support my learning, I’ve been reading about boys. There are three things that I’ve learned that have helped me parent my son and stepson through tumultuous times and even just the normal transitions of growing up.

1.    Boys need a “tribe”
Just like parents need lots of support, so do boys. In The Wonder of Boys, by Michael Gurian, the author talks about the three families that can and should help raise a boy: the family at home; the extended family of relatives, teachers and friends; and, the culture and community that the boy lives within. “Together,” Gurian writes, “these three families comprise a boy’s tribe.” All three influence a boy, and these influences need to be taken into account by the parents. Providing access to a wide group of people, especially in the first and second “families,” shares the parenting work and allows boys to feel part of a loving, educating tribe.

In my son’s life his second family – the extended family and friends – play a larger role. He spends a lot of time with his grandfather doing science experiments, and enjoys the symphony with his grandmother. My son also spends a significant amount of time with his father’s parents and sister when he visits Japan each summer. My son, now seven, sees a number of circles of “family:” one is Luke and me; another is Luke and me plus his stepfather and step-siblings; a third is his Japanese family; yet another is my parents and sister. I like to think that his families are like the rings in the Olympic flag: overlapping and connected, but different and equal.

2.    Boys need to be taught self-management skills
I was surprised at how early my boys have needed to be taught, explicitly, the skills of self-management. My son has a chart to help him get ready on his own in the morning; my stepson, fourteen, has worked with me to develop an after-school and evening schedule to help him stay on top of his laundry and homework while still having time to relax and have fun. According to Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer, author of Raising Confident Boys, parents may “unconsciously feel uncomfortable teaching boys to use the washing machine, cook or iron. Boys can be so clumsy, too. We’d rather do the job for him than see him struggle, ruin it or go out looking scruffy or without something because he’s forgotten to think ahead.” This is definitely true for me: I remind the boys to pack their lunch, brush their teeth, and wear clean clothes. Reminding them may help them that particular day, but because I do it every day, I’m not teaching independence.  This lesson has been, and will likely continue to be, the hardest one for me to learn.

3.    Boys need to know how to tap into their “boy power”
When I was a single mom – part of the “single mom syndicate,” as my ex would refer to it – I was given a book called Raising Boys Without Men, by Peggy Drexler. The idea that I found most captivating in this book is “boy power.” The author describes this power as the “artful combination of physicality and sensitivity.” Encouraging boy power includes fostering sensitivity and good communication, but not at the expense of time spent in rough-and-tumble play. I like to think of it as a kind of yin-yang thing.

As crazy as it sounds, I shied away from my son’s displays of sensitivity. His father didn’t like that my son picked out of someone’s “free pile” a doll house for his action figures, nor did he like the hand-me-down toy kitchen my son was given, and my son adored. “You’re encouraging him to be a girl,” he said – and although I stood my ground on the kitchen and doll house, there was a niggling worry that I was in fact making my son into what he was not, rather than supporting my son’s natural instincts and interests.

Now that I’ve read about boy power, I feel more confident in parenting my boy’s sensitive side. Although I can’t provide a baby brother or sister for my son to be gentle with, I was able to provide him with a daycare that focused on fostering sensitivity and with multiple opportunities to interact with other people’s babies. Having pets has helped, too: together we care for the animals and consider what their needs are.

In all, parenting boys has been a huge adventure with a steep learning curve. I sometimes envy my friends’ ability to comb a daughter’s hair and pick out cute clothes for them, but in all, I’d have to say that the kids I have are a lot of fun. It turns out, the three pieces of wisdom above –have a wide circle of support, master self-management, and recognize our internal yin-yang – can be applied to almost anyone, regardless of gender. I know that I can use a little more self-management! The first thing I need to work on: managing myself to not over-manage my boys’ lives.

When our son was born, my then-husband and I had to figure out our roles as parents. Later when we separated and divorced we had to figure out our roles as sole parents. This transition happened when we were also trying to determine who we were as not-married people. Worse, we had to figure out how to parent a child who has a mom and dad in different time zones.

At first I found the pressure of sole parenting – parenting on your own – overwhelming. How could I do it all well, when I had to do it all? While I met and befriended other mothers in the same position, I felt that I was still missing that one person to bounce parenting ideas off of, or to share with the cute things that my son did. There was no-one who knew my son as I did, or who experienced living with him as I did.

I envied those divorced friends of mine who were able to have a few nights a week when their child went to their exes’ homes. A break, I thought, would give me some perspective on the issues I was facing in my parenting. But for those of us not lucky enough to live in the same postal code as our ex – and yes, that is lucky in many respects – we need to find how to parent when we are either responsible for everything and involved in every aspect of our child’s life, or when we are communicating with our child only through Skype, email, and the phone.

When I was with my son, I found that spending so much one-on-one time with him jeopardized my perspective on what I was doing well, and less well, as a parent. I also felt that the relationship could become too intense. We spent time with other single moms and their only child, leading to a new kind of couple: Laurie and Luke, Mira and Nate, Jackie and Emma. Child and parent, we were bonded together in a new kind of relationship, prone to the spats and bickering that are common among married couples. The traditional division of child and parent occasionally blurred.

Then comes the summer, which my son spends with his dad in Tokyo. I miss my son so much that my stomach hurts. Sometimes I double-up with the pain of missing him. I have to put my energy into doing those things that I otherwise had to put off because I am so very busy when my son is with me full-time. I work on the garden, paint the closet and write to friends. I also shift into a different parenting mode: I pop postcards to my son in the mail, call to find out how his day was, and Skype him so that we can read books together and make silly faces at each other. Sometimes I think it would be easier and less painful to have less contact, but I know that it’s important to my son that while he is with only one parent at a time, he has the both of us, always.

Time together allows a parent and child to find out how to be with each other, how to negotiate their differences and how to heal the inevitable wounds of being apart. And really, I think it’s lucky that my son’s father is as involved as he is, given how far away he is. Being the far-away parent for two months of the year helps me remember how my ex must feel, seeing his son through the webcam and knowing how very much of his daily life he is missing out on sharing with him. By making the contact between my son and his father frequent and easy, I ensure that I receive the same treatment when I am the one far away.

I know that such an easy respect of the other parent is not everyone’s situation. A friend of mine was shocked that my ex and I have found such an amicable way to allow for each other to parent and connect with our son. He told me he wants to bleach the driveway after his ex drops off his kids. I get that: divorce is fraught with pain, humiliation and often, financial difficulty. It’s hard not to hate in such circumstances. I indeed hated my ex for a while, and hated sharing our son even more. But I’ve come to a place where I understand that more important than what he did to me, and what I did to him, is what we can create together: a balanced, healthy child who feels a deep connection with both his parents.

Does this mean I accept his way of parenting? Not really. Sometimes it drives me crazy what he lets our son get away with, and the food he gives him to eat. But unless I want to try to control that which I cannot, for my own sanity I have to let it go. The saying “choose your battles wisely” has guided me to try to influence the biggest issues in parenting our son, but letting the rest slide, After all, if my son is safe, I have to trust that he’ll be okay. And if I trust that he’ll be okay, I can find a kind of peace in parenting across time zones.

Celebrations have always been important in my family. I’ve always believed they’re part of healthy child development and, no matter how humbled I’ve felt by other aspects of parenting, I’ve taken pride in our ability to create and sustain meaningful traditions.

The success we’ve had in this area hit home a few weeks ago when I was talking to my youngest child, who is almost 14. She was telling me about a new friend whose family is from Korea. This friend asked my daughter what Christmas at our house is like and my daughter happily told her.

Christmas in our family starts on December 1. Actually, for my husband and I it starts a few days earlier, when we buy little Advent gifts. You see, when our older children were small, they had many food-related health issues and we couldn’t just buy those ready-made Advent calendars with chocolates. One year, I saw an idea in a craft book for making tiny parcels with a few morsels of candy in each and hanging them all by coloured ribbons from a big, red bow. It’s a lovely decoration, it allowed me to choose candies they could eat, and it was fun for them to get up every day of December, open each little parcel, and share the sweet treasures inside — before breakfast, no less!

Once the Advent calendar is up, it’s time to make Christmas cards. One year when our two older kids were little, I had the idea to cut up cards we’d received the previous year and make new cards out of them by pasting them together in little collages. Over the years, my older kids outgrew this tradition and it is now a mommy-and-me activity with my youngest. We’re getting pretty good at it — especially my daughter. Her designs this year took the concept to a whole new level.  I joked with her about making a business out of it, but I wasn’t entirely kidding. Some of her cards are small works of art, and the time we spent together considering how best to pair this landscape with that combination of santas — priceless.

Sometime after December 15, the tree goes up. It’s not a designer tree; most of the decorations are unique and bring back specific memories. In particular, every year since my kids were small, my best friend has sent each of them a decoration that represents some aspect of their lives that year — a tiny singer for when one daughter was in choir, a little chef because the other daughter loves to cook, a guitar from when my son was in a rock band. And then there’s the white dove that goes atop the tree. No star or angel for our secular tree, just a dove as a symbol of our hope for peace on earth.

I could go on and on — and I’m sure in talking about our Christmas to her Korean friend, my daughter did. She told me that when she was done, her friend looked at her and said, “It sounds like something out of a book.” I’ve never thought of it that way, but I guess to someone looking in on it from outside, it must seem like that.

Before I had children, I had a lot of story-bookish ideas about the kind of parent I wanted to be. Suffice to say, I’m not that parent. And if there are times in our family life that are like a story, there are also times that I really don’t feel like making another Advent calendar or more Christmas cards, and that I’d like to have a designer tree someday.

But if the celebrations that mark the turning of the pages of our lives are good enough that our children can’t wait for them to come around again, and are happy to tell their friends about them, then I think we have done something very, very right — and not only for our children. I think as parents, it’s really important to cherish those moments of celebration when everyone was smiling and all was right with the world. Because it’s in those moments that we know that, no matter how often we have felt and will again feel truly humbled by the challenges of parenting, there are also times when we’ve managed to make our family life storybook perfect, after all.

I’m a strong minded-woman but when it comes to parenting, I often second-guess myself. I feel like I’m not being the best mom I can be, because I’m busy, overwhelmed, and so on. When it comes to behaviour that is not bad, just irritating, I am guilty of occasionally opting for the status quo rather than expending energy and time to make the necessary change. This is especially true when that change involves me changing and sticking with a new plan.

I knew my son needed to improve his self-organization skills. This skill set has been on my parenting “to do” list for a while, but I hadn’t got around to it yet. There were always so many other things to work on, and my “to do” list usually exceeds my capacity on a daily basis. As well, it is easier to do the simple but less important, short-term stuff on the list – the stakes are lower, the effort less.

So when my son’s report card came home, I suspected that it might contain a comment or two about my son’s lack of organization skills. We’re lucky that he has a fantastic grade one teacher who notices not just the performance of a child, but what attitudes and behaviours are holding the child back from achieving more. Reading comments from someone else, but someone who spends a significant amount of time with my child, provided the motivation I needed to make a serious, long-lasting change in my son’s behaviour.

The skills my son needs to learn can be summarized as doing “first things first.” To help him with this, I’ve developed a list of what needs to be done in the morning to get ready for school. I then had my son add a picture for each item to increase his interest in the chart and to help him “read” it by himself. He then checks off what tasks he does, in whatever order he chooses to do them, but he is responsible for making sure all of them get done before he plays with his toys. When I told the teacher about this at the parent-teacher interview, she said she would make a similar one for him that lists the activities he needs to do to start the school day.

By being a parent of a school-aged child, I’m learning that I can use the report card. It doesn’t have to be a judgment of my child’s abilities; rather, I can use it to assess my parenting “to do” list to see if something lower down on it actually needs to be the priority. While helping my son with his reading and writing are very important, so is learning a way of being at school and at home. Taking care of first things first is a good motto to carry throughout life, and an excellent lesson for my son and I to learn from this particular report card. By focusing on this particular skill set, I can remove some of the judgment, second-guessing and stress that parenting can cause me. And that means a happier me – and a happier mom is better for everyone.

Holiday Sugar Cookies

My favorite recipe site: Allrecipes.com has released a free printable cookie recipe book! Sweet… & Merry Christmas to all. These recipes are yummy and fun to try and the PDF at the end of this post even includes Packing and Mailing Cookies Tips and Advice for those who would like to send freshly baked goods to those they love in another city!

And so it goes…

“If
there’s one time
of year when cookies
take over the kitchen, it’s the
holidays, so we’ve gathered recipes
for highly-rated holiday cookies
to help you get things rolling.
You’ll also find tips for baking and
decorating cookies, mailing cookies
to far-off friends, and hosting a cookie
exchange party. It’s everything you need
to bake up some festive holiday cheer!”

Top 10 Cookie-Baking Tips

(included in the .pdf)

1. SUCCESS DEPENDS ON YOUR INGREDIENTS.
Use large-size eggs,unsalted butter and nuts, and pure fl avoring extracts.
Toss out old baking powder, baking soda, and ground spices (they go fl at and lifeless with time) and refresh everything for your holiday baking.

2. MEASURE ACCURATELY.
Most cookie recipes call for all-purpose fl our; don’t sift unless the recipes says to do so. Lightly spoon fl our into a dry measuring cup and level with a knife.

3. CHILL DOUGH FOR CUT-OUT
COOKIES. Soften it up at room temperature for a few minutes before rolling out. Try rolling dough between sheets of waxed paper or plastic wrap to reduce sticking.

4. PREHEAT YOUR OVEN!
Temperatures vary from oven to oven, so use an oven thermometer to check how yours performs. Want to brush up your baking skills? Visit Allrecipes.com and search Tips & Advice for Baking.

5. LINE BAKING SHEETS AND PANS
with parchment paper for stickfree baking and easy clean-up.

6. PLACE DOUGH ON COOL COOKIE SHEETS.
For a cookie-baking marathon, have one sheet baking, one cooling off, and one lined and ready to go in the oven.

7. LEAVE 2 INCHES OF SPACE between cookies so they don’t spread into each other.

8. ADJUST BAKING TIMES TO ACHIEVE THE COOKIE TEXTURE YOU CRAVE. A little less time produces chewier cookies; a little more time makes them crispy.

9. BAKE bar cookies in the pan size indicated in the recipe.

10. COOL COOKIES COMPLETELY BEFORE DECORATING.
CLick here to download the full cookies.pdf