My kids love getting things in the mail. They adore it. Every time there is a package in the mailbox, they ask if it is for them. (Considering that their Dad is a chronic online shopper of cheap goods from China, the packages are usually disappointingly not for them.) One afternoon they came home from…
Family Life
Miracle Balm: A Reese and Luke Review
I make kids with sensitive, dry skin. I guess I couldn’t help it. My hands are always dry and scaly by the end of the day. I keep lotion by my bedside table to apply every night and I go through bottles of the stuff at work. My hands crave the humidity of summer and wither…
Throwback Thursday Netflix Style
I kind of went through two separate phases of childhood television viewing. During the first seven years of my life, my family did not have cable. Before I was old enough to go to school, I watched Sesame Street, Fred Penner, Under the Umbrella Tree, and Mr. Dressup in the mornings on the CBC channel…
The Motherhood Ministry
I cleaned up puke on Mother’s Day. I cleaned up puke the whole following week. There’s something about a Mother’s Day that begins in tears because you had to wake up early with the kids and because no one said “Happy Mother’s Day” until you asked, even though you know that everyone was just tired and…
Distraction
Distraction. Before becoming a parent I thought I understood the term. After all, life is full of distractions for every single one of us. But kids bring a particularly insistent type of distraction. When I was a kid, having to buckle my pants after a trip to the bathroom was a distraction. As a…
Dear Gavin: A Love Letter to a Two Year Old
Gavin turned two a week ago on April 29th. Dear Gavin, There’s a song that goes something like this: “Nobody knows it, but you’ve got a secret smile, and you use it only for me.” That lyric runs through my head on repeat when we’re together. You’re a really great kid, Gavin, and you share a…
How to Brush Hair from a Parent who Doesn’t Brush Hair
Meet Ella. She is tiny, blonde, and she calls my kids “guys”. She adores her Nana (in contrast to her same-aged cousin Gavin who worships his Papa). She’s my niece. She has ridiculously curly hair. I don’t know about other boy-moms but I never brush my kids’ hair. OK, that’s not entirely true. I do…
Mother-Son Relationship on Ice
Cameron hasn’t been a Mama’s boy since Gavin was born. It probably started before that, if I’m being honest. He started favouriting his Dad when I went back to work after his maternity leave. But he’d still cycle back, keeping me as a viable option for favourite parent position. When I left work early before…
How Netflix Saved Earth Day
This week. It all started with Easter weekend. It was a busy one. Saturday morning we went to a friend’s house for a brunch potluck with four other families. By Saturday evening, my parents and youngest sister had arrived. We had them and a guest over for Sunday lunch and then added my other sister,…
The Best Medicine
After church on Sunday, I held two little hands and walked down the front steps into the sunshine. Directly behind us was a couple from our church. We chatted as we walked towards our respective cars. “How is your family, Laura? Is anyone still sick?” I almost said “We’re great!” but then I remembered the…
Boy Clothes
“I bet you’d like to have a girl.” I hear that a lot. Boy-moms hear that a lot. (I assume girl-moms hear the opposite, as if being a parent to only one gender is somehow not completely fulfilling, which is ludicrous, of course.) Strangely, at the centre of the comments that I usually hear, there…
