Be silly...be very silly!

One of the best things about being a kid is the lack of embarassment, self-awareness, or whatever you want to call it. Kids think they are the best at everything...dancing, singing, drawing. I can't ever remember a time when I didn't judge myself! I really wanted Benson to carry the self-esteem gene into his teenaged years.



One of his favourite TV shows...Bo on the Go. Bo is this little blue-haired girl that demands that the viewer to power up Bo by running, jumping, spinning your hands, etc. Benson is totally into it, until he sees me watching him, or sitting beside him participating... Then he says, "No mommy!" and gets embarassed. He's only TWO! How can he possibly be self-conscious?! It breaks my heart a little bit, because I never want him to feel embarassed or anything. I'm not sure why participating in this TV show invokes the same reaction as when I catch him pooping in his pants?!


So far, my solution has been to up the silliness factor in the house...running, dancing, and acting goofy. We are pretty silly up in the Robbins crib anyway, but I really, really want to celebrate my B's giant personality and I never want him to feel like he can't be himself.

I was a really good mom before I had kids: reinventing modern motherhood

Wow. I have read a lot of books about parenting in the past 2 years...wait - let me re-phrase that. I have started to read a lot of books about parenting, sometimes skipping ahead to the crucial parts (i.e., how to get your baby to sleep alone) and then being disappointed to learn that I've already screwed up ("Never nurse your baby to sleep." Dammit!); sometimes feeling like a failure just reading the "About the Author" and giving up.

I read this entire book in just two sittings - and I felt like it was finally a book written for me! A real person! (Note - I didn't say "mom"...)

I especially felt like the end wrapped it all up in a single thought - that we get so wrapped up in being/doing/providing the best for our kids that we don't realize that kids learn most from our actions:

"Our children are watching us. They're seeing our stress, our anxiety, how we
beat oursleves up. We're teaching them that good enough is not good enough.
We're showing them that anything less than perfect is not OK."

Although one of the tenets of the book is to resist recruitment to the Mommy Wars and stop all the judgement, I really loved the Dirty Little Secrets woven throughout...and I found the chapter on husbands/partners especially relevant.

Now go read it yourself...you can also check out the website at http://www.iwasareallygoodmom.com/

Nutty McNuts: Enemy Number One

Since eliciting so much concern with my latest Facebook status indicating my denial over the nut allergy, I thought I'd better explain...

I can't specifically recall ever giving him peanut or peanut butter, but I do know that he doesn't like it...so at some point he must have ingested some. Oatmeal with peanut butter used to be a favourite that I likely had to share. So much like the allergy to cats, I think this is a new thing.

His daycare provider gave him a peanut butter cookie and his lips and eyes immediately puffed up. The puffiness had subsided 10 minutes later when I got there but he still had an Angelina-sized upper lip. K was really beside herself with worry and couldn't believe how calm I was. I told her that I simply refuse to have a child with a nut allergy so this has to be some kind of one-off.

Bill took him to the pharmacy (all puffiness subsided by this time) and got him some Benadryl on the pharmacist's recommendation to lessen any symptoms. I suppose the next step will be to have him tested for this allergy. I just do NOT want to have to be that vigilant or worried - ALL THE TIME! Peanut allergies are so scary!!

At dinner, Bill told me that he is extremely allergic to walnuts. Which didn't make much sense to me since a) He has never mentioned this before; and b) Um, I put walnuts in a lot of my baking. (It's a superfood!) (Yes, I bake!!) But he says he swells up and gets hives so it's possible I've got a family with allergies.

So I'm optimistic that it's not a serious allergy; hopeful that I won't have to carry around a hypodermic needle everywhere I go...at least the nut allergy is more commonplace now so there are plenty of peanut-free foods, like Mars bars...(I'm sure there are others...)