This morning it's snowing like the dickens where my parents live, an unusual happening. My seventy-year-old father is digging them out, and while helping him, my mother builds a snowman. Seeing what she's doing, my father comes over to help. They soon after send a photo of said snowman, four snowballs high, complete with eyes, mouth, carrot nose, and hat.
I love that they still have fun. It's all the more surprising given my dad's been a total grump the last ... er, well, the last year or six. A snowman! Will wonders never cease. It made my heart warm, to see that.
Also I then got treated to a short talk about how awesome! and easy! it is to take photos on a camera-equipped iPod Touch. And you can just send them! Right away! It took less than a minute!
I laugh. How do you think I get so many photos of my kids at the park? I ask.
Parents.
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There's no snow where I am, but the house is cold. I am unused to this. I'm doing laundry to warm it up. It uses electricity, sure, just as turning up the heat does, but at least I get more done with laundry heat.
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I gave my daughter a straw cup this morning, in yet another effort to try and help her decide to eat or drink. It had juice in it. Straight juice! Nothing can be yummier! She took it and held it and played with it and loved it. And then I leaned down and showed her how to put her mouth on it, and her entire face lit up and she held it up for me to drink again and again and again. She giggled and giggled and giggled. Nothing is funnier than feeding mummy!!
I appreciate the nurturing, I really do. I just wish she would let me do the same for her.
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The other day, after sending the party invites with the charity request, a little boy came running up to my son and asked if he could bring a present. Can I please bring you a present? He begged. "Please?!" My son said no. "It wouldn't be fair," he said. "Everyone is just supposed to bring two dollars." I could not have been more proud, even more so given the offered present was a light sabre.
But lest ye think I am denying this other child the joy of picking out a present, I will let his mother know that the donation thing was, as noted, a suggestion, and that her child, should he wish, can certainly buy a present. It's just a suggestion. And I think it's nice that the other little guy wants to buy my little one something.
And don't worry, at last news my in-laws were out buying out the stores so I doubt the child will be too badly deprived. Maybe he'll even get a light sabre. Or not. It seems he's less fixated on the gifts than on the party, which is kinda what I was going for anyway.
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I read a short article today and the associated comments on what Canada needs for daycare. The choices the article and the short poll gave were a national daycare system or the current "child allowance" of $100 per child per month. As a working parent, it would be my strong, strong preference for a national, regulated excellent daycare system, and not just because the $100 I get for each child a month doesn't cover even a quarter of my daycare bill.
In the comments there were the usual strident cries of the stay at home mothers "I didn't have children to give them to someone else to raise!" and "everyone can do this if your priorities are right!" both of which make me want to scream. I could write (and have written, I think) whole posts about how dumb those statements are, and how insulting they are and all I can think is that the people writing them are desperately unhappy at home and have to last out self-righteously to make themselves feel better. (And there, that's my guilty working mother lashing out!)
But in the end all I need to do for myself is to remember just how happy, well-functioning, and well-adjusted kids and parents are in Denmark, where I lived for a while, which has a daycare and school care system similar to Sweden, which was top-ranked for family-friendly government. Each of those countries have excellent state-sponsored daycare. Each has women making a contribution to the work force, and each are productive societies, generally happy populations living in countries with low crime rates. And no one should think for a single second that those things are coincidences.
Having someone else raise your child? *snort* Let me tell you: the kids and the adults they become in those societies do just fine, thankyouverymuch. Staying at home isn't the charm for happiness and success some people want you to believe.
And now I'm off to collect my son from his almost state sponsored daycare, which is modelled on and run according to the precepts of the Scandinavian model. I know. I asked. I knew there was a reason I liked it so much.
And given that I know my son will see me and beg for "10 more minutes, please, mommy! I want to play!", my son clearly does too.
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