Tag: family

Camping with baby (ies)

~ Veronique ~ 3 Comments

We just left for our 3-week trailer adventure, towing our little house (emphasis on little) all the way from Ottawa to the maritimes with some fun stops along the way. One of the challenges of fitting 10 in a trailer made for 9 (on paper, reality is more like 7) is what to do with the babies. The trailer is either in eat mode or sleep mode with strictly enough room to do one thing at a time: prepare food or sleep. The outside is dirt.

Before going any further, let the record show that camping with babies is a royal nuisance and should be avoided. But if you can’t avoid it because, like me, you have other children for whom the definition of a good time goes beyond napping at regular intervals in their own bed, then you may need to find ways to compensate for the sheer lousiness of camping with infants.

(Some people camp with baby because they love camping and want to share their love of sleeping on dirt with their unappreciative infant/toddler. There is nothing I can say to help these folks.)

(As another aside, my 3 year-old just fell asleep singing “I want to go home to sleep” on the tune of Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift. So there.)

But yes, so you have to camp with infants or toddlers because you have ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER CHOICE and you are looking for tips to make your life more pleasant or at the very least less miserable. My first tip would be to get a cheap wading pool (cheap as in $15 is too much) and bring a bag of toys. The wading pools are the first things out of the trailer and the twins have a clean dry place to play. They can also be filled with one inch of water and placed in the shade at the splash pad on a hot day.

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Sleeping in tents with babies can and will be a pain in the neck. And the lower back. Co-sleeping has been our saving grace. For Lucas especially, home is where the boob is. And it may sound like a drag at home but it’s a boon on the road. Here he is snuggling-up to Sarah in the queen size bed we share.

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Of course, co-sleeping can be dramatic especially when you wake-up with your 3 year-old violently throwing-up on you. This morning’s shower was the best ever and it is with little sleep and some unplanned laundry that we hit the road for the second leg of our RV extravaganza!

My husband is a rock star

~ Veronique ~ 4 Comments

Not a real rock star, of course. But he rocks more than the other husbands and that makes him a rock star. Photo credit to my two oldest (and apparently talented) children, who are not supposed to touch the D90 under pain of death. You are so busted.

12-ish years ago, we bought a canoe at Canadian Tire. We used it a couple of times to go camping. In fact, my last memory of using the canoe was at Silver Lake. I peed on a stick that morning and found out we were expecting Marie. My last memory of the canoe is therefore tinged with morning sickness. With 4 then 5 children, activities like camping took a sabbatical and the canoe sat — or rather lied — unused in three consecutive backyards. Until now.

The pond
Tall grass

When the children saw the pond behind our rental house they immediately thought of great canoeing adventures. When their dad asked where he should set-up the trampoline in the backyard, David’s answer was immediate:

On the island! This way it will be double the fun!

Trampo-freaks entertaining the neighbourhood
Trampoline Island

(it has not occurred to my little country bumpkin that the patch of grass behind our patio door is our only backyard. The pond belongs to the Crown according to the developer and the developer according to the City.)

Cloudscape
Plane

Last weekend, my husband took the children for a turn in the canoe. The pond is a rainwater catchment area landscaped to serve as a recreational path and  bird sanctuary. The children returned from their expedition with tales of seeing Aaron-the-Heron (and his partner-in-majestic-flight Erin-the-Heron) up real close and meeting a little water mammal in the cracks of the man-made retaining wall. My husband was proud to be fit enough to portage his vehicle to and from the pond. I never had any doubts.

Our teenage daughter and son ran around the pond taking pictures of the expedition laughing as they heard kids yelling from their backyards: “They have a CANOE!!” Meanwhile I could just imagine the exasperated look on their parents’ faces. “Two years doing just fine telling the kids we weren’t allowed on the pond, and they move with their 8 kids and A CANOE… There goes the neighbourhood!”

Since September we have not taken nearly enough time to pause and spend time doing something cool with the children. This little expedition around our suburban paradise reminded me just how simple building memories can be. In a large family, all too often the heroism is not in the endless march of chores but in being able to stop long enough to do something else.

Road trip!!!

~ Veronique ~ 2 Comments

Whoa! I haven’t posted since April 28th? I may have had excuses… Like a sick toddler, followed by a sick baby, extreme sleep deprivation and preparing for a short-fused move. Yes, we are moving. Packing-up. Vacating.

We are listing our house. Preparing to put it on the market. It’s a long story and I am thinking of starting another blog to chronicle this new turn in our family’s life. But in a nutshell this is a positive change in our life. We love our current house and especially our large-family-sized kitchen and backyard but life is about more than kitchens and backyards, isn’t it?

On the bright side, we are moving into a rental property which means that we have the luxury to move out before listing our house. If you know anything about real estate, you are probably attacking your keyboard to tell me that empty houses are harder to sell than full ones, to which I reply “Don’t forget how many children I have”.

Trying to pack a house with three very young children underfoot has been an exercise in frustration. I get a box started. Assuming I find the tape-gun, I start filling it up. Then the babies wake-up. 2 hours later, it’s time to pick-up the kids from school. When I return to my box, the children have found their most favorite (book, shoes, top, toy) EVER and the content of the box are strewn across Hell’s half-acre.

When my husband and I started to talk about listing our house I said: “You realize that you will move us essentially on your own.” He said yes. I meant it.

Needing a break from doing something slightly nutty (moving a family of 10 with infant twins), I decided to do something quintessentially normal: take my two daughters to a sports competition 700 km away. I couldn’t leave my husband alone with the twins and the toddler to pack-up the house, so I brought everybody, along with my mother for supplemental handy-womanry. For a woman like me, even “quintessentially normal” ends-up slightly nutty.

Pit Stop on the Four-oh-One. Met another Ottawa mother traveling with twins and her parents. We were both all business and we let the proud grandparents do the chatting.

It’s when I do “normal” that I realize how abnormal I am. I go to the hotel pool and I’m the only parent in the water. I look at the other parents sitting together poolside and I can see those I know telling those I don’t know that I have 8 children and the youngest are twins. I can see it by the look on people’s face, a mix of disbelief and contempt. As we return to our room to dry-up and change, I notice several families leaving together for supper or meeting to order pizza. Back to my room, I told my mother:

I don’t think people even realize that I would like to be included.  I think that although I see myself as a normal person with more children than most, people see me as abnormal, different, and are either intimidated or not interested.

To which my ever-wise mother replied: “Véronique, you are not normal.” Here I was, at a sports competition 6 hours away from home, with “only” 5 children, two of them babies, one of them running a fever, when most people can’t even imagine themselves with 3. Back home, my husband “only” had 3 children and was having a blast packing-up the house. If moving is ranked as one of life’s top 5 stressful experiences, someone should talk to my husband: without the three youngest, moving was positively restful! (Worry not I have since returned with my sick infant, my restless toddler and the other, quieter, baby and any rest that may have been felt has now been annihilated).

“We went to Toronto but all I saw was the canopy on my car seat” — Eve & Lucas

I’m glad we went. I may have mixed feelings about the wisdom of trying to pull “normal” stunts with my abnormal gang but it all went over  my athletes’ heads: they were thrilled to be there with their coach and their teammates. They were even spared the pediatric car ride, being given the opportunity to drive up and back with a friend.

“Present!” (the one in the gym suit is not the one competing. But she has the fire all right!)
Celebrating a strong showing — level 5 daughter placed in all her events — with late lunch. OK, we would have had lunch even without the prizes. But she got to choose where!
And here is our Level 5 star!
Turning heads in friendly Burlington!
Our Level 4 athlete was competing at 6 pm. Of course, we all got a bit tired.
Hairdo malfunction: the braids flew in her face during her beam routine.
The best part of the weekend was shopping the bargain leotard bin with her sisters. Gym suits are great to play street hockey too!

I haven’t worked a day in my life

~ Veronique ~ 5 Comments

Yesterday I received a call from someone at Sun News Network asking if I would give a short interview on why being a stay-at-home mom is hard work. It was to be in response to some comment made by someone about Ann Romney, the wife of Republican leadership hopeful Mitt Romney. Ann Romney stayed home to raise her five sons and all she got was this lousy t-shirt saying “I haven’t worked a day in my life”… or at least, that’s what the Democrat woman who should not be thought, perceived or otherwise considered to be tied to Barack Obama’s reelection campaign said.

In the end, the interview did not happen. The producer decided to go with the “opposite point” which I think means a stay-at-home mom who will give an interview about how she hasn’t worked a day in her life. Or maybe a working mom who thinks she has it harder than Ann Romney. Fair enough.

I found that quite funny because I am, to most people, “the opposite point.” I am on maternity leave which makes me both a working mom and a stay-at-home mom. But even on a more stricter understanding, I have seen both sides of the work-home balance. To most, I am an odd animal. Too stay-at-home for the working crowd, too working mom for the stay-at-home crowd. In the Mommy Wars, I am foe to all (although I prefer to think of myself as friend to everyone).

That whole episode about whether stay-at-home moms do real work made me laugh because when you talk to women who prefer to work outside the home, they will usually say that they need to remain engaged, stimulated, they need the challenge of work to avoid turning to mush. I stayed at home for 10 years while having my first four children. Then I went back to law school to get a Master’s degree and went to work after graduating. Now I am on maternity leave with three little ones under 3. I’m not convinced that work is a challenge compared to raising children at home. As I wrote to a Facebook friend who commented on the issue:

I used to look forward to the end of my mat leave* so I could get (a) more money, and (b) a lunch break. I guess I must have missed something.

(* I’m not looking forward to the end of my mat leave, it was just for effect.)

All mothers work hard, whether they work at home with their little ones or outside the home. What is often missed by the critics of the working mom (aren’t we all?) is that the quantity of housework doesn’t decrease because mom works outside the home. The working mom, while she doesn’t suffer the minute-by-minute aggravation of dealing with young children, has the same mothering/homemaking requirements as the stay-at-home mom. She just has a lot less time to accomplish them. This is a hard-learned lesson from being a working mom and one I will gladly share with you.

When I decided to return to school, I did so because I wanted to hit the workplace. My law degree was dated and I was coming out of a pretty rough time personally. After 10 years at home with my children, a combination of factors and people in my life — most well-meaning, others not so — had led me to believe that I was a rather lousy mother. Not cut out for this. I went back to law school and I excelled. My husband stayed home for the first year of my studies and we found an amazing caregiver for the second year and onward. Including my graduate studies, I have been working outside the home for 6 years.

What I realized was that even with an amazing husband who pulls well above his weight around the house, the job of a mother changes very little despite the time spent out of the house. I still had to cook, and clean and make sure that homework was done and that laundry was cycled. And while my children were mostly fed, clothed and up-to-date in their schoolwork (minus a few close calls), once all the basic stuff was done I had very little energy left to be a good mom. A patient mom. An upbeat mom. A listening mom. An understanding mom.

Who has it worst? Being a good mom is hard work, period. Working mom or stay-at-home mom, we all have 24h in our days. Now that I am home full-time, I can do housework, cooking and cleaning while the children are at school, between the demands of my three little ones. Now that I am no longer trying to clean-up our act during the weekends when the children are coming and going, I have more flexibility to do unimaginable things with my kids, like taking nature walks or just chatting. Moreover, I’m not nearly as grouchy when they drag dirt in. So who has it harder? It depends how you fill your 24h. Being a good mom takes time, but I know people who can do in a day what I can hardly do in a week. Work obligations compresses the time available to raise raise children and generally running the home show. In that sense, working moms have a greater challenge than stay-at-home moms. On the other hand, if it wasn’t for stay-at-home moms, how many school activities would never happen? Working moms owe a debt of gratitude to their stay-at-home colleagues who make the school/neighborhood/community world go round.

It’s not how many hours we have, it’s how we fill them.

Friday’s Mixed Nuts

~ Veronique ~ 3 Comments

1 one new English word I learned this week: distaff. In French, the word for distaff (“quenouille”)  is also used to describe the pollen-holding part of the reed (“roseau”) as in “Holy Cow there’s a lot of pollen in a distaff!”

On our daily walk, we picked a "quenouille" and my daughter asked if she could pick it apart. "Sure", I said,"Here's a bowl."
Aaaaaah.... Lesson learned (or rather "remembered from childhood")

2 two pet-peeves (bear with me, I don’t have many): TV doctors wearing scrubs and lab coats. Really? I didn’t realize that you had to be sterile to explain how the excretory system works to a camera. And Gmail.  I can’t understand how a web service with a user interface that is so counter-intuitive can make so much money. Oh, wait, that’s right, they’re not making money from the users of the interface, they’re merely selling access to their users to marketers. I’ve been trying to find an attachement for a couple of hours now, I think I clicked on just about every icon on my screen. User interfaces like this are why it’s so hard to teach my mother-in-law how to use her iPod. “Yes, I can see the pictures but I don’t know how to open just one.” “Touch it.” “Touch what?” “The picture” ” What do you mean??” “Just touch the picture you want to see Grandma!” “Aaaaaaah! So easy!” All this time spent trying to open a stupid attachement is giving me too much opportunity to notice the targeted ads on the sidebar. Hey marketers, tell your clients that when I see their ad as I’m reading a personal email on a related topic, I’m spooked. Not tempted to buy their products. Spooked. And considernig closing my Gmail account. This book The Daily You by Joseph Turow is next on my reading list.

3 three feet is how far my baby daughter throws up when she burps. I love babies but not the part where I walk through life stinking of sour milk.

Better out than in I always say!
Mom? Could you, uh, like, put down the camera and maybe clean me up? Maybe?

4 four crying out loud!    When they say you shouldn’t type anything into a computer (and especially online) you wouldn’t want read in a court of law, that’s what they meant: Ottawa jogger sues blind runners for crashing into her . See that last paragraph?

“We Googled her name to see who she was and it showed that she ran a race in April 2010, so if she was hurt so bad that she said she’s been unable to run, why is her name listed for running a 10-k months later?” Dunkerley asked.”

5 five… I don’t have a five… Except, wait, five fingers way up (as in “High Five” ) to all the moms out there on the “mommy track”. Earlier this week I was asked by a TV research assistant how I was balancing out work and family. I’m not, I said. “Balancing out” work and family is a game of fractions where what you give to one you don’t give to the other. The idea of balance or equilibrium means that you are somehow giving equal parts to both plates. I like my work but I don’t want work and family to balance. Family comes first and in my case, it means that I write MP correspondence part-time with a graduate degree in law. I will never fly in the Prime Minister’s plane but I will always be home in time to make a healthy diner for my family. So give me a high five if you’re with me on the mommy track, over-educated and under-employed, and not resenting the workplace for being different than the family place. ‘Cuz the workplace is missing something crucial and that’s my children.

Teenagers: Learning from their mistakes pt 2

~ Veronique ~ Leave a comment

I concluded my previous post on teens and discipline by telling you about the essay as a discipline tool. You can find part 1 of Learning from their mistakes here.

Have you ever sent a child to her room to think about what she’d done? Do you really think, while she’s there, that she is pondering on the great wrong she’s done to you? If you do, I hate to burst your bubble. Your child is more likely reflecting on how great a victim she is. Assuming she is not reading, sleeping, surfing the Net or watching TV (but your children don’t have TV in their room, right?? If they do, we must have words). Let’s be honest: when we send a child to their room to “think”, what we are really saying is:

I’m really annoyed by your behaviour, please get out of my space while I regain my composure.

Agreed?

The result of sending a child to his room may not always be as intended but we are on to something with the idea of reflecting on one’s behaviour and understand where it failed. The problem with “go to your room” is that we are not nurturing our children’s budding moral development by shooing them off to “think” by themselves.

When it comes to teenagers, the development of a reliable sense of right and wrong is essential and time sensitive: a teenager in grade 10 (15-16) could be moving out to study in 2-3 years. If they are not learning self-control, impulse-management and developping a moral fiber, they can be in for a world of trouble. When I tell my teenagers to “go think about what you’ve done” I mean it in a way I may not have meant when they were little.

In Good Discipline, Great Teens, Dr. Ray Guarandi suggests using essays instead of lectures to teach discipline. I met Dr. Ray some years ago when I was on the organizing committee for a parenting conference where he was the speaker. His talks are like stand-up routines: we laughed so hard it hurt. But don’t get fooled by the funnies: while his delivery is hilarious, his approach to discipline is serious. After the conference, we went out for dinner with Dr. Ray and I asked him: “That strong discipline approach sounds great in theory but the parents I know who have discipline problems with their teenagers never had a backbone. Shouldn’t they change their approach gradually?”. His reply really left an image that inspires most of my parenting nowadays. He said: “Did you ever drink sour milk thinking it was fresh? When you realize you have a mouthfull of sour milk, do you spit it out gradually or all at once?” When there is something wrong with your children, whether its too much backtalk, too much computer or failing grades, you need to face it head on. Here is a quote from Good Discipline, Great Teens that encapsulates Dr. Ray’s approach:

Dear Dr. Ray, Any words for dealing with a fifteen-year-old who is verbally demeaning to his two younger sisters (…), sometimes abusively so?

Yes. Stop him.

He does give more pointed advice on ways to stop the bad behaviour. But he doesn’t buy the “teens will be teens” schtick. At all. Yes, teens will be teens and this may involve some attitude, back talk and abuse. But it doesn’t mean that you, as parent, have to take it, indulge it or bear it out. Being called over and over on their bad behaviour — and believe me, I have two teens, I cannot overstate how often “over and over” means — is how we imprint on their developping brain what is morally and socially acceptable (and what will get them sued, fired or dumped).

But back to essays. Last December, my husband and I were confronted with a discipline problem involving two of our four oldest children. The offense involved going behind our backs to do something they knew they were not allowed to do. For a few weeks before they got busted, these two children were increasingly short-tempered, rude and difficult. I thought maybe they were overtired or reacting to the twins’ birth, whatever. In hindsight, I think that living a lie was eating away at their souls. When we confronted them, it was very important for us to convey that the material offense wasn’t nearly as big a deal as the lying. The way we approached this was to have a family meeting where we told them (again) about the family rule they had transgressed and why it was in place. We told the children that we knew that two of them had gone beyond our backs. The transgressors were grounded for at least two weeks (except for school and sports) and their computer priviledges were removed (the computer was the instrument of the transgression). Then we assigned them with two written projects. The projects had to be handed-in before the computer priviledges could be regained and the grounding lifted. Both children had to present a written apology with an explanation of what went through their heads when they decided to go behind our backs. They also had to write an essay (500 words for the youngest and 2000 for the oldest) on personal integrity, personal dignity and respect for parental authority. The oldest of the two also had to do a bit of research on why the family rule he-or-she had transgressed was important.

When they handed back their essays and apologies, I was taken aback with how much thought they had put into their work. Here are some exerpts, published with permission from their authors (as long as I keep them anonymous). On respect for parental authority the youngest of the two wrote:

You can see your parents like your boss at work. They tell you what to do and you must obey. But instead of paying you with money, they pay you with love. Another difference is that you will never get fired. In other words, they will always love you no matter what you do.

On personal integrity, the oldest of the two wrote (I really wish I could quote the entire essay, it’s that good):

Integrity. The first image that comes to mind is that of a brick wall. Solidly built, unshakeable and most of all, strong. Every component, every brick, is held together by mortar. Remove a brick and the wall isn’t complete. Remove the mortar and the wall doesn’t hold.

Personal human integrity isn’t all that different. Your values are the bricks, held together by honesty, your mortar. Without your values, your wall of integrity isn’t complete. Without honesty, your bricks will not hold together.

Giving them an essay topic allowed us to put the emphasis on the lesson we wanted the children to learn. The grounding and removal of priviledges were tools to make sure that the children had the time and leisure to work on their essays and also provided motivation for finishing the essays in a timely fashion. I am now thinking of using essays as a gateway for earning more priviledges. For instance, before allowing your child/teen to have a Facebook page, you could ask for a short essay (500 words is very manageable for a 10-12 year-old child) on data mining or online privacy protection or cyber-bullying. Making your teens do the research and writing will always beat a lecture, take it from me.

Light Blogging – Ralentissement

~ Veronique ~ Leave a comment

Ralentissement forcé causé par un méchant streptocoque et 5 jours de misère fièvreuse. Fatigue oblige: il fallait que ça arrive. Mais grâce au miracle de la médecine moderne (les antibiotiques) et une bonne dose de chouchoutage par ma maman chérie, je me remets d’aplomb.

Light blogging ahead due to a mean streptococcus and 5 days of febrile misery. Fatigue does take its toll. But thanks to the miracle of modern medicine (antibiotics) and a strong dose of mothering from my own very best mother, I am getting back on my feet.

The Pits of Post-Partum

~ Veronique ~ 2 Comments

Let’s make one thing clear: the only reason why my posts on Facebook and Twitter are upbeat and positive is because I am generally upbeat and positive and I don’t want to be seen as a whiner. But the other day, when I asked my husband “The people who do it all well, how do they do it?” and he answered, wisely, “Maybe they aren’t”, I thought how social media is great at making us look exactly how we want to be seen.

It’s an interesting paradox in that we can reveal as little or as much as we want over social media. Some people are open books and others appear completely one-dimensional. Some are always whiny, others always rant-y, some always SHOUT and other pepper everything with  exclamation marks!!!! I realized, while reading over some of my Facebook Friends’ posts, that I could be equally guilty —  if guilty is the appropriate word because I don’t think that posting too little is a sin — of making life with newborn twins in a large family look like a walk in the park.

Let me preface what I am about to write by saying that I am not looking for advice (unless you want to provide it). This post is not meant to make you feel bad for not helping more. It is not meant as a pity party and I don’t need you to write to let me know that I am not fat, lazy and stupid (unless you really want to). But looking back at the last 2 months, I get the impression, confirmed by every mother of twins I have met, that I won’t remember much from the first 6 months of my babies’ lives. And so this post is as much to let you know how it really goes down around here as a personal chronicle of the good, the bad and, yes, the ugly, of those infamous first 6 months.

In the last 2 weeks, I have really hit the wall. The twins are 6 to 8 weeks and our family life has to return to a semblance of normalcy. In the last 2 months, I have barely slept. This is a true fact. With a singleton, you don’t sleep a lot. With twins, you don’t sleep at all. On the rare occasion when I get-up in a controlled mood – not even good, but not flying-off-the-handle – I realize how much parents influence the mood of the family as a whole. These days, it seems like everyone is barking at everyone and I can’t escape the fact that this is the tone I am setting. Each member of my family needs so much more than I am able to give right now, extreme fatigue and the relentlessness of caring for twin infants are limiting me physically and emotionally. My youngest children need more of me. My oldest children need more from me.

Every book will tell you that housework can wait but what about the things that can’t wait? Like keeping my toddler from killing herself, teaching my son that he doesn’t have to whine all the time or trying to understand why my teens or pre-teens are in a funk? In the Pits of Post-Partum, it’s not the dirty toilet that overwhelms me. While housework does make me feel like I’m not quite keeping up, it’s all the missed and messed-up opportunities to be an adequate parent that grab me by the throat. The more tired I get, the more help I need but the more tired I get, the more uncooperative my children become. It’s a vicious circle that I won’t break without investing more time in forming the children; not only correcting their lack of cooperation but also giving something in return, like gratefulness, understanding and appreciation.

There is literally 100 important things competing for every minute of time when I am not  caring for the babies. And the more time goes by, the more things don’t get done. The constant gasping for more time is the biggest challenge of our large family. At any given moment, there are two kinds of stuff: stuff that needs to be done and stuff that isn’t getting done. I have developed a quasi-allergic reaction to idle time. Angst washes over me whenever I find myself idle with apparently nothing to do because it means that I’m forgetting something: a load of laundry, some boiling water for the bottles, a kid’s lunch.

In the Pits of Post-Partum, I don’t only anguish over the things I’m not doing now, I’m also worried about the things I should be doing soon, like exercise and lose the 20 extra pounds the twins have left behind. But right now, I can’t imagine having the physical energy to exercise or the mental energy to diet. I keep snacking on high-energy food while doing a double-take every time I see myself in a mirror. I still look 5 months pregnant for goodness sake!

And yet, even in the Pits of Post-Partum my beautiful family is what I am the most proud of. When we go out as a family I just want to yell “LOOK PEOPLE! 8 KIDS! I have 8 KIDS!” And maybe therein lies the rub: in the Pits of Post-Partum, I feel in short cycles tremendously blessed and terrified that I may be coming-up short.

It says we only live once. There is no second chance.