Monday, November 30, 2009

Perfect Moment Monday

Check out Weebles Wobblog for other Perfect Moment Mondays


Before starting work this afternoon I made a quick trip to the dollar store. $14.69 later I was all set. I got home, dug through the attic for the rest of my supplies and got to work. My perfect moment was seeing Liam's face and hearing his expression of "MAMA! Thank you SO much, it's so COOL!" when he saw his bed covered in Christmas decorations.


He never looks happy in posed pictures.. this is his SERIOUS face.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Waiting.



There is an awful lot of waiting with adoption:
  • waiting to be picked
  • waiting for a family
  • waiting to be old enough to search
  • waiting to be found
  • waiting to hear from someone
  • waiting for pictures
I'm tired of all the waiting..........


* Print by
Tom Everhart

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Fair Day!

Twice a year Liam's school holds their "Fair" and today was this term's.

What exactly is “Fair” at HIS and why do we do it the way we do?

Fair has been a part of the school since its inception. It has changed somewhat over time but the essentials have remained the same. It performs several functions within our school and helps support some of our fundamental understandings about how people learn best.

Throughout their time at Halifax Independent students are encouraged to engage with the real world as they study and learn. Guest speakers and field trips are an integral aspect of academic life here. On these occasions students see that whatever they are studying in Theme, or Social Studies, Science or French in the Middle School, can be studied or be the basis of employment in the rest of the world. There is little divide between what we do here, and what is done in the world outside school.

People learn in a variety of ways. We each have a style which suits us best, and usually a back-up method which works in a pinch. As students at Halifax Independent study, they are offered a variety of approaches to help them understand and manipulate the subject matter and each approach is manifest during Fair. Students may make models, draw diagrams, write descriptions and stories, conduct experiments, write and present songs and/or plays. Both the process and the product of these activities help to entrench the concepts and skills that they are learning and make their presentations more engaging.

As they work and develop their interests and research skills, students learn to use a variety of methods for gathering information: books, the internet, interviews, documentaries and so on. They work alone and in groups to help develop their understanding of the material they have gathered and finally they learn to present their findings in a variety of formats; speeches, Power Point presentations, songs, plays, written material, graphics and so on. This last step, the Fair, allows them to build their confidence as public speakers as well as to hone their understanding of what makes an engaging presentation.

The Fair encourages a genuine interest in learning and is a motivational force like no other. The process helps foster a sense of pride and accomplishment in each student as well as a strong sense of community as the class gathers together, working at their best, to share their knowledge. They move together toward a common goal, in cooperation with their classmates. The students develop a sense of ownership of the process as well as the outcomes as they work toward Fair. They are involved in the timelines and checklists that are developed to help bring order to the process. This bears fruit in their individual work as they develop and use organizational skills.

Fair allows parents to see firsthand how their child is doing and affords them a very special window into their child’s world. It is an opportunity to watch them interact with their peers and their teacher, to present what they know and to truly give of their best. It is a time to watch them shine!


Liam's class has been studying the human body. Their fair today was set up like a discovery center, with each child hosting an experiment. Liam showed us how the muscles of your esophagus move food into your stomach and then explained how the digestive system filters what it needs into your blood stream and moves everything else out as waste.

And since music is such an important part of this school, they composed a symphony of body sounds (and no, there was no farting!). They used various instruments to show how they imagine each system to sound. Liam played the slide whistle to demonstrate food going through the digestive track.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Open Adoption Roundtable # 10

The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It's designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. You don't need to be part of the Open Adoption Bloggers list to participate, or even be in a traditional open adoption. If you're thinking about openness in adoption, you have a place at the table. Publish your response during the next two weeks--linking back here so we can all find one other--and leave a link to your post in the comments. If you don't blog, you can always leave your thoughts directly in the comments.

Open Adoption Roundtable # 10 is being hosted by Thanksgivingmom.

This is a topic that is very timely for me (Thanksgivingmom) right now, but is something that all of us in open adoption deal with at least once during the year: birthdays.

I know that birthdays can be an extremely emotional time, for everyone connected to adoption, not just those of us in open adoptions. So what is it that we do, as part of our open adoptions, during the “birthday season”?

Our experiences on this are so diverse, that I don’t want to limit your responses to one specific question. BUT, since some of us (like me!) sometimes like the specific questions, here are a few that have been rattling around in my brain as my daughter’s third birthday approaches:

• What do you/your family do to integrate open adoption and birthday celebrations?
• What do you wish you would see in future birthday celebrations re: involvement with your child’s adoptive parents/birth parents?
• Do you have an open adoption agreement that requires contact on/around birthdays?
• How does that agreement affect you? Do you wish it were different? Do you wish that you did have an agreement that requires such contact?
• If you do not have contact around birthdays, do you do something private to honor birthdays?
• If you’re an adoptee, how were birthdays celebrated in your family with regards to open adoption?
• How do you wish they would have been celebrated?
• And anything else you can think of!




I'm going to approach this topic from a different angle then most people. That of an adoptee who grew up in a closed adoption. While that may not fit with the norm of the roundtable, I hope that I can shed some light on why closed adoptions are hard and why I want to help promote open adoptions whenever I can.



When you are adopted, birthdays can really suck!

Sure there are parties and presents and cakes. But eventually we all get to the realization: This day that everyone is celebrating is the day that my whole life changed. Somewhere out there is my mother. Is she thinking of me? Does she miss me? Is she sad? Is she even alive? What would my life have been like if I wasn't adopted? That just leads to confusion. You look around at all these people at your party, people that you love and you try to reconcile the fact that if you hadn't been adopted then you wouldn't know these people. Your Mom wouldn't have made you that special cake. She wouldn't be your Mom. I'm almost 40 and I still have trouble wrapping my head around that. Imagine what it's like for a little kid.

My first memory of a birthday (not sure if I actually remember it, or have just seen the picture and heard the story so many times) is from the year I turned 3. The candles are lit, my Mom is bringing me the cake and everyone is signing. I burst into tears and fled. Was it adoption related? Who knows. Maybe I was just overwhelmed. Maybe I had missed a nap. But ever since then I can't stand to have anyone sing Happy Birthday to me. It always makes me cry. Now I can fake the plastered smile and the thank you's, but inside I hate it.

Every year around my birthday I get melancholy. I think about Iris and wonder about the what ifs. I have never spent a birthday with her and I never will. I treasure the first birthday card she ever sent me, 1 year after I found her. It's a "Happy Birthday Daughter" card. Just thinking of that makes me tear up again. Being acknowledged as her daughter was the best gift I could ever get.

Liam just turned 7 this past summer. For him birthdays so far have been presents and cakes and celebrations. Yet for the past 2 years he has not wanted to have a party with his friends. In his words, he wants to spend the day alone with his family (meaning Hilary and I). The allure of glow in the dark bowling alleys or swimming pools with all his best buddies bringing him a mountain of gifts has no hold on him. I've never met another 7 year old who not only doesn't want a party, but out and out refuses to have one. Maybe it's just him. Or maybe the fact that 3 months after his 7th birthday he refused to talk about his birth because it was the day he was separated from "K" means that he too has come to the realization:

Birthdays can suck.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The decision

I now officially work from home, full time! Hilary and I were leaning towards 3 days at home and 2 at the office, but work decided that if I was going to do it, I should make it permanent and take all my toys with me. So I packed up my huge 2 foot screen on Friday and came home.

Right now I have this corner of our bedroom. Luckily our bedroom is huge and the desk was already here. We might try to convert one of the downstairs bedrooms into an office, but for now I am quite happy.

The one thing that I was missing was a proper desk chair. The wooden chair from the dining room table wasn't going to cut it for long. I looked at our local big box store on Sunday, but they didn't have what I wanted so I picked up an exercise ball for $17.00. And I love it! I haven't fallen on my head yet and it's only rolled away from me once. Liam of course loves it and I'm pretty sure he's going to break his neck goofing around on it, so it is off limits to him.

I still need to work out some details with work. I have a wireless connection set up to our home Internet account and I don't have a work phone. I may get both of these installed since I do work for an Internet and phone provider!

With the bad weather coming I'm glad to have this all in place. I got to have a sit down breakfast with Liam this morning (he's usually just waking up as I leave for work) and I also got to walk him to school. My time is flexible, so if I need to do something during the day I can. So far the pros are out weighing the cons. Hopefully they still do in six months!

Monday, November 23, 2009

Perfect Moment Monday - Perfect Gentleman



My Perfect Moment happened on Saturday. Hilary had to work so Liam and I had the whole day together. After a great morning where he played by himself so that I could drink coffee and catch up on blogs, we decided to go out for lunch. We agreed on our local pizza place where we could share an order of cheesy garlic fingers (with bacon on my half of course). This pizza place has a small play room where kids can hang out while they wait for their food. Surprisingly for a Saturday at the mall, there was only 1 other kid in the play room. A little girl who couldn't have been more then 2. She wasn't talking yet, but babbled up a storm! She took an immediate shinning to Liam, that started with wanting to touch his hair and kept going with her following his every move. While he wasn't thrilled with the choice of play room companions, he was so very sweet with her. If she tried to take his toy, he would tell her no and pass her something different. Every time he came to the table to have a drink she would follow him and then tug at his arm to go back with her. He talked to her, made sure she had toys and put on a comedy act that her giggling hysterically. Her mom and grandma were so impressed at how well Liam played with her and how gentle and attentive he was, that they stopped by my table to comment.

So my perfect moment was seeing that all this parenting stuff really does pay off and I got to glimpse the gentleman that my son is growing into.


Check out more perfect moments here.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Wordless Wednesday - The Purge

All on it's way to the Diabetes Society!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Helping Liam overcome his fear

Liam has never liked to have his hair cut. It's been an ordeal of crying, screaming, begging, pleading and sometime even bribing. We've tried cutting it ourselves, getting a friend who is a hair stylest to come over to our house and we've gone to salons. Usually he ends up with a decent hair cut, with just a few sticky-uppy parts that we try to overlook.

But this past Saturday he would only let the stylest go so far. She could cut the front and the back but NOTHING around the ears. Yeah, he looked swell when we left there. So during his bath on Sunday I cried and screamed and begged and pleaded (or wait, maybe that was him? it was pretty loud, it might have been both of us) and I got the sides cut. It's not pretty, it's not even, but it's cut.

His fear is that his ear will get cut. It never has, though how I'm not sure. You just get primed with the scisors and are about to cut and he yanks his head away or swats at the scissors with his hand. I'm actually surprised he's never lost an eye while getting his hair cut.

A few months ago we bought a pair of clippers thinking that we could use them at home and cut his hair that way. Clippers are safe! You can't get cut, they don't hurt - they should be perfect for him. Till you turn them on and they make noise. Freaked him out!

However after Sunday's fiasco with the scisors, I started talking up the clippers again. They are so safe you can touch them with your hand and they won't cut you!! You can put them on your arm and they won't cut you!! And the biggest one for the 7 year old boy crowd... they won't even cut your penis!!! Come on now.. I was really stretching to get him to try these! After explaining that they could not, would not, ever ever be able to cut the head off an action figure, and that if I could cut the action figure's head off with them then I would buy him the biggest toy I could find, he finally agreed to try them. So I told him that when I got home from work on Monday we would test them out on his arm and hand and he could see how safe they were.

Now Hilary and Liam get home 2 hours before I do. I had not really told Hilary about my full plan of action to conquer the clipper fear, but Liam did. He was so excited to try them out when he got home from school that he couldn't wait for me, so he asked Hilary if he could try them out. Of course she said SURE! after all, she wants him to conquer this fear and make our lives simpler. So what does my wonderful, amazing, smart honey do? Gives the 7 year old boy a pair of clippers and then leaves him alone with them!

Don't despair dear readers! Luckily he had forgotten that I said that they wouldn't even cut his penis, because he did not try that!! He did however test them out on his hair. The one thing that clippers DO cut.

This is what I was able to pick up from his bedroom floor. The rest has been swept away as it was rather widespread. He only tried 2 little areas and he is not bald (luckily!!). For the most part it's not even noticable (thus no picture of him).

And the good news? Other then his penis is still attached? He's no longer scared of the clippers!

Monday, November 16, 2009

I can't believe I'm writing this for a girl!

Ohhh the laments of a seven year old boy!

There is a little girl in Liam's class that has a crush on him. They've been in the same class for the past 2 years. Klara likes to leave him little notes, usually covered in cutesy red hearts.

Now Liam has always had both girls and boys as friends. He's happy playing with dolls and Littlest Pet Shop toys and he's happy using those same toys to mount an infantry attack against his Star Wars characters. What can I say, some boy things seem to be ingrained.

7 year old girls are all about being giggly, gawking at boys and playing pretend wedding. 7 year old boys all run in horror! The idea of a girl liking them, or wanting to be their girlfriend is just too much. And don't even bother trying to explain that one day they are going to want this attention!

After a day full of unwanted adulation from Klara, Liam had had enough. He grumped about it the whole way home. When he stopped and declared "I HATE Klara" I knew that I had to say something. HATE is not an acceptable word in our house, at least not when used towards people. You can hate war, you can hate injustices but you cannot hate someone. So we stopped on a cold sidewalk, in the near dark to talk about this. He agreed that HATE may be too strong, but he really, really, really did not like Klara!

His school uses a great method of discipline to help kids work through problems between them. Anyone involved in some sort of tiff with another student has to go to the resource room and write the offended student a letter of apology. So while Klara did not hear Liam say he hated her, I figured it would help the seriousness sink in if he had to write her a letter.

Needless to say, he was horrified! In his mind writing anything to Klara may as well have been his declaration of undying love*. He huffed and puffed and sobbed his way through the letter, finally declaring "I can't believe I'm writing this for a girl!

* I did not give Klara the letter. I figured it was just better for everyone!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

It's a......

Golden Snitch!


Why? Why not!


We've been watching a lot of Cake Boss and TLC's Ultimate Cake Off. So we decided to make our own cool cake this weekend. Since all 3 of us love Harry Potter and Hilary was able to find a round cake pan we figured why not. We've done lots of fun cakes before; the Shamburger and even a Cat Litter cake, as well as wedding cakes.

Since this one turned out pretty good we are going to make a second one this week so that Liam can take it to the last meeting of his Harry Potter after-school club on Thursday.

What's going on here?

It's no one's birthday. We haven't been hired to do this. We have no social events on our calendar. So why on earth is this stuff on my counter?

You'll have to come back later to find out!


Here's what we've done so far....



the gumpaste part is done and the baking about to begin



the cake is cooling...

Family dynamics

My immediate family when I was growing up was pretty small. My father's family is quite large (there are 10 kids, 9 of whom have kids and most of the kids have kids.. and so one) but we didn't see them very often. In fact, he has 5 sisters that I've never met and would be hard pressed to name. My mom has 3 brothers - one 2 years younger then her and the two others that came along 20 and 22 years later. We spent every holiday with my maternal grandparents and their 2 youngest sons (who are only 8 and 10 years older then I am)

My grandfather died in 1992. Apparently my grandfather was either the glue that held the family together or everyone was scared of him and didn't want to speak their minds. I think it's probably a little bit of both.

Everyone kept up appearances for a little while after he died, but slowly the family started to drift apart. I moved to the East Coast in 1998 so distance became a factor. The first to pull away was my oldest uncle. He and my mom had never been close. Then the next brother in line decided to be a great big ole drama queen (yes there are 3 of us who are gay) and have a hissy fit over nothing one day. It's been more then 5 years since he has spoken to either my mother or me. The youngest brother just keeps trucking along, not very close to anyone, but still on speaking terms with them.

The issue now is my Grandmother. Everyone is still close to her, as long as we ensure that plans to see her don't overlap with someone else's. My mother and father have started spending Christmas alone, and my Grandmother spends her holidays with the 3 boys, their kids and her local great-grandchildren.

My Grandma will be 87 next week. She still lives by her self in the family's home. She spends every summer (and has for the past 42 years) at a trailer park "camping". She's never driven in her life. And now my mom thinks that she may be starting to show signs of dementia.

Being so far away, I have only seen my Grandmother for 1 day a year for the past 7 years. We do however talk on the phone every week, but I don't know if a 20 minute phone call is enough time to get a read on someone's mental state. It's nothing as obvious as she doesn't recognize my mother, but little things like forgetting dates or repeating stories. Now if that were all that was required for a dementia diagnosis I would have been labeled with it years ago!

As the grandchild, even though I'm almost 40, I feel that I don't have enough "standing" in the family to step in and do something. My mom seems too emotionally close to the situation. She seems angry at my grandmother when little things happen as opposed to seeing it as a possible disease. Which surprised me at first. My mom has volunteered at a nursing home for the past 20 years. She has worked with people in all stages of dementia and Alzheimer's. But I guess when it's your own family your react a lot differently.

Being the grandchild also removes me somewhat from the situation. I love my grandmother dearly, but I can see things a lot clearer. I'm thinking about things like power of attorney, living wills, finding out what my grandmother wants while she can still be in control. But I don't know what to do. I can try and talk to my mother, but she's just going to get shirty about the whole thing and won't want to take charge and is too wishy-washy to be in charge of much. I could call my youngest uncle, the only one that I still speak to on occasion.... but what do I say? Or.... do I just call my grandmother?

Now I'm not going to call her and say "Hey Grandma, Mom things your getting a bit dottie, have you picked out any nursing homes or do you have a DNR order?" Cause really? That's just wrong. I would try to get some conversation starters in there to give me a segue to the conversation. Maybe telling her that Hilary and I just went to a lawyer and got our living wills done, by the way grandma, do you have one?

Or I could just put on my big girl panties and just ask her who in the family has power of attorney for her.

Have you had to deal with this type of thing? Any insight you can share would be greatly appreciated! Being an only child I already know that all of this is going to fall to me as my parents get older. Hilary's family is much more civilized about these things. They all know who has power of attorney for whom, what everyone's wishes are and where the wills are kept.

Phew... that was a lot. Thanks for letting me get it all out. Sometimes putting it on paper (or pixels on a screen) can really help point out the problems, even if it doesn't offer a magical solution.

Friday, November 13, 2009

To work from home or not.....

that is the question.

My boss offered yesterday that if I wanted to start working from home full time that I could. I would get an office space set up and installed, complete with a work phone. Right now when I work from home, I just use my laptop with a wireless connection and sit at the dining room table. Not exactly ergonomically healthy.

So the pros and cons list is running through my head. Here is what I have so far:


Pros Cons
No commute No daily exercise from walking
Can walk Liam to school every day
Don't have to talk to people at the office No one to talk to
Can wear track pants
Don't have to make a lunch ahead of time Easy access to food
Can putter around the house will reports run Need to stay motivated and actually do "work"
System is slower from home
Increased cost for heating the house during the day
Can listen to loud music while I work

So folks... Weigh in and give me your thoughts! I have a poll up on the side that you can vote on.

Buster's new fetish







Thursday, November 12, 2009

Modern Day Math - Part 2

So apparently I was too cocky in my last math post. I was feeling good about math, I could help Liam along with his homework. I was ready to grow and learn with him.

Then his new math package came home. Once a month his math teacher (yes in Grade 1 he has different teachers for different subjects - Math, Art, Gym, French - what I wouldn't have given to have been able to get away from my evil Grade 1 teacher for even just 1 subject a week!)

anyhoo....

Once a month his math teacher sends home a package of math sheets and activities to work on for homework. You can pick and choose which ones you work on depending on what the kids are interested in. The part that is throwing me for a loop is this line of the instructions.

This package is focused on 2-digit Addition and Subtraction without exchanges and place value.
WTF does that mean?

In my defense I learned math in French. I started Kindergarten at a French school and continued with it until Grade 10. When I switched to an English high school I was so lost with language issues that Math was just too much to try and figure out on top of it all. And of course kids today use some new-fangled math system that includes words like exchanges and place values. Even if I translate those words into French I'm still lost.

The good thing is that the teacher seems to realize that not everyone is going to understand what they are talking about. The package goes on to say:

When we are working with manipulatives and dealing with numbers that have exchanges, we have to trade up our ones to get an additional ten. Clear as mud? Try using pencils as the tens and erasers as the ones and walk yourself through the explanation again. Or you could always ask your child to help you figure it out.
Great.... my kid is supposed to know what this means, but I can't figure it out.

Wish me luck!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

(nearly) Wordless Wednesday

Every year Liam's school makes notecards out of the children's art work and sells them as a fundraiser. Here is Liam's for this year:

Liam's "Octopuses"
A collage of the class' cards:
You can check out everyone else's art cards here.
And here is Liam's card from last year.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Open Adoption Roundtable #9

The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It's designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. You don't need to be part of the Open Adoption Bloggers list to participate, or even be in a traditional open adoption. If you're thinking about openness in adoption, you have a place at the table.

Publish your response during the next two weeks--linking back here so we can all find one other--and leave a link to your post in the comments. If you don't blog, you can always leave your thoughts directly in the comments.

This round we're going to consider one critique of fully open adoptions. Have you ever heard--or perhaps even made--statements like these?

"We have medical histories and can share the information we have about their birth parents with our children now. If they feel a need to initiate contact with their birth families when they are adults, we will fully support them."
"The decision to have a relationship with her bio family should be hers when she is ready. Creating a relationship between them before she wants it might cause issues in the future."
"Children deserve to have just one family during childhood and not to deal with anything adoption-related until they are more mature. A fully open adoption robs a child of a normal childhood."
These statements are from people participating in closed and semi-open adoptions. I paraphrased them slightly, but left the meanings intact.

The writers share a certain point-of-view: that direct contact during early childhood between birth families and children placed for adoption may not be the best idea. Adopted persons should be free to initiate relationships with their first families--or not--on their own timetable. The parents (first and adoptive) in an adoption shouldn't make such an important and personal decision for them.

What is your response? Do you agree or disagree? Why?


I'm going to look at this question from my adoptee point of view, as if it were my (adoptive) parents who were making these statements. Maybe it will give other potential adoptive parents, or current adoptive parents some insight into how these thoughts may affect their children.

Mine was a closed adoption, so this is mostly theoretical. But I would have been PISSED if I had found out as an adult that my parents had either known my first family, knew how to contact them or kept them from me in any way.

The closest actual thing that did occur was that my mom applied for and received a packet of non-identifying information about my first family. She got this info when I was 13 when I asked her to get it as I was underage and could not apply myself. The information arrived within 6 months. Want to know when my mother gave it to me? 17 years later when I was 30! Her reason for not giving it to me sooner? I stopped asking for it. At 13, 6 months is a long time to wait for something. I asked a few times during the first weeks, but then stopped asking. Not because I no longer wanted it, but because I TRUSTED MY MOM to tell me when it arrived. Yeah... that didn't work out so swell.

Kids are a lot more resilient then adults want to believe. They are not confused by having more family members, or multiple families. Kids of divorce and remarriage navigate this road all the time without adults trying to shield them from it.

Trying to create relationships 30 years after the fact causes a lot more complications then if everyone grows and learns those relationships from the get go. Trust me. I only met my first mother when I was 30 and it is way more complicated then I could of ever imagined. If I had had the chance to know her when I was little? I doubt it would have been this complicated, since it would have become the "normal" for all of us. Now it is anything but normal.

To me these statements are a load of hooey that adults hide behind because of their own fears. They have nothing to do with what is best for the child, but only what is best for the adults.

What Am I? Round 17 Reveal

Even without getting the last 2 clues (Teacher and Ville-Neuve) momof3 was able to guess it (eve if she did use the English name). The item of course is TIRE (pronounced like tears that you cry, not the things you put on cars). It literally translates from French to English as "pull".

Tire is a wonderful molasses and butter based taffy that French Canadians make every year to celebrate Ste-Catherine's day on November 25th, 1658. Ste-Catherine is the patron saint of unmarried women. The taffy came into play when a teacher in Ville-Neuve (now called Montreal) started making the taffy to attract Aborignal children to her school that she started on November 25th. She continued to make it every year and thus a new tradition was born. The 2 parts of Ste Catherine's day became entwined when unmarried women would make the taffy to give to the eligible bachelors in an attempt to woo them. Ste Catherine was canonized in 1982 and become the first Canadian woman saint.

I grew up in a French Canadian family and attended French schools. Every year we would make tire in the classroom. It was so much fun! Desks were pushed back, sleeves rolled up and hands buttered. The key to making good tire is to pull it! 2 people work a warm chunk of taffy between them, pulling it, folding it over and pulling it again. Until it is smooth and light in colour and then you cut it into small pieces and wrap them in wax paper.

Imagine my surprise when Hilary came home with an authentic bag of French Canadian Tire! Halloween Candy kisses are cheap knock-offs and don't have anywhere near the same flavour. These ones are scrumptious! And now the second bag will be leaving the homeland for parts far away. Enjoy Momof3, and let me know if you like them.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Modern Day Math

I have 2 memories of math in school:

1) I was in Grade 3 or 4 and I had to stand in front of the whole class and say my 12 times tables that I was supposed to have memorized, which I hadn't and was completely humiliated.

2) My grade 13 math final exam. I walked in, wrote my name and walked out.

Yeah... I am not a big fan of math. So the idea of being a parent who was supposed to help teach another human being about math, oversee homework and foster his love of the subject - well let's just say the idea gave me spasms!

This is Liam's 4th year at school, since his 2 years of pre-school were pretty much like school anyway. He's had "math" class every year and homework for the last 2. And guess what? So far so good! I don't have anxiety attacks, I know the answers (or can figure them out with a calculator when he isn't looking!) and his homework is fun!

Being an independent school, they value hands on learning and recognize that kids all learn differently. Some are hands on and need manipulatives, like Cusienaire Rods, and some are visual learners that like to draw as the learn, and some learn best while the bounce on a trampoline (like Liam!)

Homework right now can be any of the following: Playing Monopoly, Go Fish or War. Helping out in the kitchen by measuring, checking prices at the grocery store or rolling change. Sure, they send home math sheets too, but if it doesn't interest your kid, then don't worry about them, do what works for you and your family. GREAT! I'm all for it.

Now if I could have gone to a school like this maybe I wouldn't have to hide my hands under the table in order to figure out a tip at a restaurant.

What Am I? Round 17 Clue #5

We're going to try a different approach to What Am I? as this item is not photogenic. So I'm stealing borrowing the format from Lori's Childhood Trivia. Each day I will post a new clue to the item. To get you started I'll tell you that it's something that has significance from my childhood and I was prompted to do this What Am I? with it when Hilary brought it home last week.

No Winners yet! Here's the list of what we know it isn't:
  • a Saint Bernard dog
  • a religious candle
  • a statue of St Anthony
  • St Elmo's Fire
  • Mary
  • Fireworks
  • Eve Saint-Marie
  • An action figure of a 25 year old woman from the TV show the Saint
  • a turkey

So without further ado, here is your next clue
  • Saint
  • November
  • Unmarried
  • 25
  • Butter

Thursday, November 5, 2009

What Am I? Round 17 Clue #4

We're going to try a different approach to What Am I? as this item is not photogenic. So I'm stealing borrowing the format from Lori's Childhood Trivia. Each day I will post a new clue to the item. To get you started I'll tell you that it's something that has significance from my childhood and I was prompted to do this What Am I? with it when Hilary brought it home last week.

No Winners yet! Here's the list of what we know it isn't:
  • a Saint Bernard dog
  • a religious candle
  • a statue of St Anthony
  • St Elmo's Fire
  • Mary

So without further ado, here is your next clue
  • Saint
  • November
  • Unmarried
  • 25
Don't forget you can win this item if you are the first to guess what it is!

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Wordless Wednesday



What Am I? Round 17 Clue #3

We're going to try a different approach to What Am I? as this item is not photogenic. So I'm stealing borrowing the format from Lori's Childhood Trivia. Each day I will post a new clue to the item. To get you started I'll tell you that it's something that has significance from my childhood and I was prompted to do this What Am I? with it when Hilary brought it home last week.

No Winners yet! Here's the list of what we know it isn't:
  • a Saint Bernard dog
  • a religious candle
  • a statue of St Anthony
  • St Elmo's Fire

So without further ado, here is your next clue
  • Saint
  • November
  • Unmarried
The first person to guess it wins it!! Keep the guesses coming!

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

What Am I? Round 17 Clue #2

We're going to try a different approach to What Am I? as this item is not photogenic. So I'm stealing borrowing the format from Lori's Childhood Trivia. Each day I will post a new clue to the item. To get you started I'll tell you that it's something that has significance from my childhood and I was prompted to do this What Am I? with it when Hilary brought it home last week.

No Winners yet! Here's the list of what we know it isn't:
  • a Saint Bernard dog
  • a religious candle

So without further ado, here is your second clue:
  • Saint
  • November
Don't forget, the first person to correctly guess the item wins it!

Monday, November 2, 2009

What Am I? Round 17

We're going to try a different approach to What Am I? as this item is not photogenic. So I'm stealing borrowing the format from Lori's Childhood Trivia. Each day I will post a new clue to the item. To get you started I'll tell you that it's something that has significance from my childhood and I was prompted to do this What Am I? with it when Hilary brought it home last week.

So without further ado, here is your first clue
  • Saint
Don't forget, the first person to correctly guess the item wins it!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

What Am I? Give away!


Check in tomorrow for my What Am I? Give away! It's pretty easy, be the first to guess what the item is and you win the item!