ERMAHGERD, PUMPKINS.

Tags

family outings, Hallowe'en, parenting, pumpkin patch, pumpkins, toddlers, Vancouver

I love Hallowe’en, but I haven’t had time to get into in over the last few years. I used to do up the whole house in creepy cobwebs and make Kleenex ghosts, but I’ve lost the urge. Hopefully as Owl ages I’ll get back into things.

Meanwhile, we took our little extrovert to The Pumpkin Patch as a way to entertain him, and he had a BLAST.

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He ran everywhere, including into the corn maze, and got bored before we found the way out. He gobbled a hotdog and an entire apple, he saw cows and donkeys and lots and LOTS of Pumpkins.

We got a big one for ourselves and a little one so he could proudly carry one himself. I’m thinking of getting him to scribble on his and then carving out the scribble marks.

But the best part was getting this photo, which we instantly Memed in case he becomes The Next Big Thing.

 

Perfect Husband Re-Earns His Name

Tags

amazing gifts, hotels, motherhood, Perfect Husband, relaxation, time alone

Poor Perfect Husband hasn’t been feeling very perfect lately. Sitting around doped up on percocet watching me take care of Owl, cook, clean, and work was hard on him, especially when I began to get sick.

Of course, he was ill, so while being a temporarily single mom was challenging, I didn’t blame him in the least.

But he still felt bad.

So what did he go and do?

He booked me a hotel room. 

 

A hotel room with a four poster king sized bed and a whirlpool tub, and a lot of Roman-style decor.

I said, “I have ALWAYS wanted to sleep in a bed with curtains.”

He said, “I know.”

He dropped me off at 4 pm, gave me a kiss, and said, “see you tomorrow around 10:30 or 11ish.” Then he took Owl’s hand and they went home.

That’s right.

I get 18 hours TO MYSELF.

In a deluxe hotel room.

With a jacuzzi tub.

When I arrived, I didn’t know what to do first. Blog? Read in the bath? Eat a pomegranate?

First I figured out the WiFi. I mean, priorities, right?

Then I dealt with figuring out and ordering room service, thus getting my daily anxiety exposure and any need for human contact out of the way as soon as possible.

Then I downloaded a new game onto my iPod. A 16 bit style Oregon Trail remix for the zombie apocalypse.

Then I wondered, “why am I still wearing pants?”

It’s going to be a good night.

And I brought supplies.

Now I just need to eradicate the guilt and I’ll be set.

My Like It: Owl’s Speech

Tags

language, language development, parenting, speech, speech development, talking, toddlers, words

As ardent a behaviorist as I am, watching Owl’s speech develop has really demonstrated to me the limitations of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. I am not a Noam Chomsky fan, but I have to say that his idea of an innate language mechanism has some real evidence behind it.

I learned this stuff in Psycholinguistics, but it’s fascinating watching it develop in a human right in front of me.

For one thing, it’s clear that Owl’s language is not simply imitative. Personal preference is a major factor.

For example, Perfect Husband and I always call trains “trains” and Owl uses the word correctly. However, he prefers to call his own toy trains “choo-choos”, a term he picked up at daycare and clearly has a personal preference for.

PH and I have never rewarded his use of the term, and he knows that his “choo-choos” are trains. He just likes saying “choo-choos”.

Choo-choos!

Owl has several words like that;Words that he has latched on to and chooses to use even though they aren’t terms that PH and I use.

Like, we always call his daycare “school” but he refers to it exclusively with a made-up name which is a combination of his Daycare Lady’s name and his favourite Helper’s name.

And his language structure is clearly not imitative.

He understands our sentences but his own constructs are unique and don’t follow English grammar rules.

The most obvious example is also the most common: the way he says that he likes things. He likes to tell us what he likes, often announcing it happily quite out of the blue.

He always says “my like it,” and then names the thing he likes.

“My like it! Milk.”

“My like it! Food.”

“My like it! Music.”

Perfect Husband and I have never said a sentence that way, and I am sure that the ladies at his daycare don’t phrase things that way either. It’s just HIS way.

Speaking of odd phrasings, his use of pronouns is interesting to observe, too.

He understands “me” vs “you”.

If I refer to “you” he knows that I mean him, but he doesn’t use “you” productively in speech yet, except in canned expressions like “thank you.” Nor does he use “he” or “she”. He still uses name labels.

“Dat Mommy’s water”

“Dat boy’s car.”

But he does use “me” and “mine” correctly.

“Daddy, help me, please!”

“Dat mine!”

Instead of “I”, though, he also uses “my”.

“My do it myself.”

“My no like it, dat one.”

I don’t know if he has simply made a port manteau of “me” and “I” or if he mishears us when we say “I”.

In the meantime it’s really darn cute.

My like it!

That’s Enough Crises For Now, Thanks World.

Tags

bad days, bad weeks, cars, health, parenting

They say bad things come in threes.

Two weeks ago, I checked my phone after a busy day at work only to discover a string of texts and missed calls from Perfect Husband, first telling me about stabbing stomach pains, then mentioning a trip to the walk in clinic, followed by a trip to the emergency room, followed by updates saying that he was being given Oxycontin and that they wanted to do a CAT scan.

Later, when I asked him why he hadn’t called my work instead of my cell, he said “well, I figured that if you weren’t checking your texts it must be really busy…”

HMM. What is more important? A string of dogs with torn dewclaws, or your HUSBAND BEING IN THE HOSPITAL?

So anyway, I rushed to Owl’s daycare, picked him up and drove to North Vancouver. There a friend of PH’s met me and took Owl to her house so I could sit with PH.

We had about an hour to wait after his CAT scan for the results. A busy doctor bustled up to him and said “PH? You have *gobbledegook word*. Which is nothing. But it hurts a lot!”

Are You A Pedophile?

Tags

amanda todd, child pornography, pedophiles

Hi,

According to my blog stats, the chances are that you’re a pedophile.

Even since I made this post about Amanda Todd, my blog stats have skyrocketed with thousands upon thousands of people searching for photographs of a (DEAD) 12 year old’s breasts.

Allow me to give you a peek at just some of the search terms that came in just today.

I am open to the fact that some of these people people may not know they are pedophiles, in the same way that a lot of people who have committed rape don’t think they’re rapists.

But if you were looking for a photo of Amanda Todd’s 12 year old chest, you were looking for child pornography, and no, I don’t have any of that here.

As appalled as I am by the actual numbers of creeps pouring into my blog hoping for child porn, and specifically child porn that is indirectly a cause of death for that same child, I find consolation in the knowledge that they were both disappointed and probably disgusted by finding my fat 30 year old boobs instead.

Take that.

And while we’re on the subject of search terms… here is a couple of odd ones from further down that same list.

 

Show Your Breasts For Amanda Todd, Or, In Which I Finally Deal With Amanda Todd’s Death

Tags

amanda todd, breasts, bullies, bullying, cyber bullying, depression, misogyny, shame, slut-shaming, suicide

I’ve been hesitating about whether or not to write about Amanda Todd. 

I’ve decided that I really have to, since she lived so near me and since I know what it is to be bullied.

But I can never say that I know what it is like to be Amanda Todd.

Only she could tell us that, and she tried, and now she’s dead. Her pain can never be recalled.

Furthermore, the entire thing seems so bafflingly senseless.

Even more bafflingly senseless are the douchetards of the world who are now using Amanda Todd as a poster-girl for “poor little white girl” type memes and “suicidal people deserve to die” type claims.

Disgusting.

These people use the exact same logic that put Amanda Todd in this position in the first place:

1. If you show your breasts to someone/sleep with a boy who has another girlfriend, you are a slut.

2. If you are a slut, you deserve to die.

The logistical gap between conclusion one and conclusion two is such a Grand Canyon style leap that it leaves ME gaping.

Because that’s what this is really about.

Amanda Todd is an example case against cyber-bullying, but the issues are much bigger than that.

Yes, sure, she was cyber-stalked by some creepy pedophile who kept posting nude pictures of her and mailing those shots to her friends and classmates.

That’s bad.

But Amanda could have survived the cyber bullying quite well if the real-life people in her world weren’t such complete and utter douchebags.

Here’s what I don’t get:

WHY did she lose all her friends when Pedo-creep emailed her breasts to them?

WHY did she get taunted out of three schools just because she was being stalked by a pedophile?

Embracing Vancouver

Tags

Fall, rain, Vancouver, weather

It’s pissing rain today.

It pissed rain yesterday, too.

We can’t complain.

During the “blue season”, which is usually most of the summer, Vancouver gets very little of the rain it is so known for. In fact, we’ve barely had a drop of rain in… months.

Since July, I think. And this year the blue season just kept on going…

Till yesterday, when Fall came roaring in.

Now all the rain that we didn’t get these past three months is arriving at once, in buckets.

Owl is a true child of Vancouver, though. He protests bitterly when the bright summer sunshine gets in his eyes, howling “SUN GO ‘WAY!” and spent the last two days cheerfully observing “dark out! Sun down, down, down. RAIN.”

I hate the rain. 

When I lived in Curacao, which was a desert island, rain had a novelty factor. When it rained, the teachers let us out of class to play in it because we couldn’t focus on classes when there was WATER in the AIR outside. Sometimes it rained so hard that school was cancelled because the storm ditches were flooded and driving was impossible.

In a land where there air conditioning was blasting all year round, a rain-day was the closest thing you got to a snow day, and only happened once a year if that.

When we returned to Canada I lost my interest in rain in a hurry. It’s cold. It’s wet. It makes my clothes cling. It lands on my face. And the grey weather gives me depression. Whereas sun gives me energy, makes me feel more normal, and turns my hair a pretty blond.

PH, who grew up on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, is more philosophical about rain, and Owl seems to be growing up the same way. So, in honor of the fact that Owl is a Vancouverite and that this will be his life for the next six months, I took him out to play in the rain.

He had a blast, splashing in puddles and getting absolutely soaking wet. 

At least one of us will enjoy Vancouver weather this winter.

This picture courtesy of last April, because I couldn’t take a photo today or the camera would be DRENCHED

Fat For Thought, Or, In Which I Get Sarcastic About People Who Defend Fat-Shaming

Tags

bullying, children, concern troll, cyber bullying, diet, examples, exercise, fat, fat shaming, fitness, health, jennifer livingston, lifestyle, morality, news anchor, obesity, role models

Everyone’s talking about that overweight anchorwoman, Jennifer Livingston, who defended herself against a concern troll who emailed her.

Surely you don’t consider yourself a suitable example for this community’s young people, girls in particular. Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain. I leave you this note hoping that you’ll reconsider your responsibility as a local public personality to present and promote a healthy lifestyle.

Livingston called him out on-air and pointed out that fat people KNOW they are fat and don’t need it pointed out by random strangers, and asked him if he really thought that his rudeness set any better of an example.

So now the world is full of people applauding this woman for standing up for herself, while others go “but he’s right, you know.”

I had to listen to it on the radio this morning. The male DJ was totally behind Livingston, while the female DJ kept saying “yeah, but he had a point. I mean, would it be okay to have a fat children’s show host?”

It was all very Helen Lovejoy.

Won’t someone PLEASE think of the children?

Sure, Jennifer Livingston wasn’t smoking on tv, or guzzling potato chips while delivering local news, but she did commit the fairly sizeable (pun intended) crime of BEING FAT PUBLICLY.

Fat people, just by going on tv, looking fat, are telling our kids that it’s okay to look different from the anorexic models in the fashion magazines.

And we don’t want THAT, do we?

And, the woman DJ argued, what is wrong with a little concern trolling now and then? As she and many commenters on the Youtube clip point out:

a) The concern troll emailed her in a private email, so it’s not like he was mean to her in public, which is the important thing.

b) The email was written politely and didn’t use the word “fat”.

c) The emailer was just trying to help.

After all, aren’t we all morally obligated to offer help to someone who walks around being fat all the time?

a) Maybe they don’t know they’re fat, and need someone to tell them. It is entirely possible that they haven’t glanced in a mirror, looked down, or checked the size of their clothes in years.

b) If you don’t actually use the terms “fat”, “pig-like” or “tub o’ lard”, and as long as it is phrased politely, it is completely socially appropriate to go up to a stranger and suggest they reconsider their physical flaws.

c) Won’t someone PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?

There’s just a couple teeny little points, though, that I would like to add as fat-for-thought to the people who make these delightfully smug little arguments.

Thanksgiving In Vancouver

I took these photos today. That’s right.

Today I’m grateful for three days off in a row, the fact that it gave PH and me enough recharge time that our house is actually cleaner today, post turkey feast, than on your average evening.

I’m grateful for Owl being reasonably patient with us while we hung around the house all day cooking, and a husband who did at least half of said cooking.

And Vancouver hasn’t had any real rain in MONTHS.

I hope you had a good Thanksgiving too. Now let’s have some more pumpkin pie.

I’m thankful.

Close Enough

Tags

Canucks, hockey, nhl, parenting, toddlers, vancouver giants, whl

PH is seriously pissed off about the whole NHL lockout thing.

I don’t blame him. It’s really hard to have any sympathy for rich guys who squabble over money while depriving the little people of their entertainment.

In retaliation, and also because it came with free entrance to Playland as an enticement, PH got tickets to Giants game. The Giants are WHL, which is not the Women’s Hockey League (which would make sense) but the Western Hockey League –  a step down from NHL, and unaffected by the current strike.

Fine with me. Cheaper than Canucks tickets, and Owl doesn’t know the difference.

Canucks. Giants. Close enough.

He loved it, of course, because he’s a raging extrovert, and he loves hockey.

He cheered and gasped in awe.

“Oooh!”

“WOW!”

and then, as he pointed enthusiastically at the players, his little voice rang loud among the hockey fans.

“OOOH! SOCCER!!”

Close enough