Category Archives: Parenting

The best back-to-school goody bag ever

Posted on September 5, 2012 | 2 comments

Part of the excitement about going back to school is finding out who the teacher is going to be. Sure, kids want to see their friends again, but they wonder if they’ll like the person charged with teaching them how to spell and do subtraction. After all, by the time they’re in Grade 2 they can choose their friends, but not the teacher.

As a parent this relationship is fraught with even more tension. I hope my child’s teacher will be kind and fair, and inspire my daughter to meet her potential. On top of all that, I hope she loves her job; that she thrives on being in a nosiy classroom with my kid every day. A tall order, I know. So I was pretty excited when I met Avery’s teacher. Not only is she young and pretty (traits that will take you far with seven-year-olds), she’s nice. And she loves field trips. And art! It’s a good start.

But what really impressed me was the little cellophane baggie she sent home yesterday with each student. Onto the living room floor Avery dumped out nine stars, one penny, two paper clips, a sticker, an eraser, a pencil, one gold ribbon, a rubber band, a pipe cleaner and a Band-Aid:

These items, along with the note, delivered a great welcome message.

This first-day-of-school goody bag didn’t make sense until we read the note:

I loved this note from Mrs. Pomerleau. I think it’s goint to be a great year!

I love that Avery’s teacher took the time to assemble this welcome bag that packed some important messages to impart to little kids, like remember to do your best, and every child has worth. It gave me a huge warm fuzzy.

I also love that Avery could read the entire note and that she immediately zeroed in on her favourite messages. “I like the gold ribbon, the stars, the eraser and the sticker, Mommy.” For a kid who often strives for perfection, I think Avery was relieved to learn that her new teacher thinks it’s okay to make mistakes as part of learning. Hooray!

I’m sure Avery will periodically forget that hurt feelings go hand in hand with school (and that Band-Aids help all kinds of boo-boos), and she might “stick” better with some classmates than with others, but no matter. I could have sat her down and tried explaining all these points to my seven-year-old. Sometimes though, it’s better to show than tell. Mrs. Pomerleau gets that — she illustrated her points beautifully, in a way that was easy for a Grade 2 student to grasp. I think it’s going to be a great year.

2 Comments

Posted in Parenting

Tagged back to school, first day of school, great teachers

No back-to-school shopping for my kids

Posted on August 29, 2012 | 1 comment

If I were like nine out of 10 moms, right now I would be elbowing to the front of the queue at The Children’s Place with a haul of kids’ clothes (fall collection) ready to pull out the plastic and charge over $250 augmenting my Grade 2 daughter’s and kindergarten-aged son’s back-to-school wardrobes.

Instead, I am spending the week before school starts in Fernie, B.C. where my kids are hiking, swimming in a lake, digging in a dirty sandbox and otherwise grinding soil into and wearing holes in what remains of their summer clothing.

Grubby clothes: a side-effect of playing outdoors.

I made the mistake of venturing into a Walmart at 2:45 on a Saturday afternoon earlier this month and was dismayed to see the mayhem that constitutes this shopping phenomenon. I’d forgotten that two years ago I wrote a cocktail column on this very subject that recommended toting along a little liquid courage: the Walmart Wallbanger.

At any rate, I just don’t get the need to rush out with all of Calgary to spend a ton of money buying new items for my children when last year’s backpack and lunch box will do. If the jeans and leggings and T-shirts still fit, we can wait until the fall sales to add more. Other bloggers are lamenting how we’re dressing our kids into bankruptcy and how it isn’t right they have newer and cuter clothes than Mom.

I confess: Last year Avery scored a new backpack and vest, but I swear she needed them!

But beyond the financial wrongness of overspending on graphic tees and cargo pants — and beyond the priority wrongness of neglecting yourself by wearing baggy sweatpants with a scraggly hairdo while your daughter looks so darn cute everyone thinks you’re the dayhome lady instead of her mom — it strikes me that we’re sending our kids the wrong message by purchasing everything new all the time. Whatever happened to hand-me-downs and wearing something out? Half the time my daughter eschews the new tunic and skirt I thought were so cute in favour of her worn-in old T-shirt and hole-y leggings.

Bennett rocked his hand-me-down shirt and re-used his stylish and durable Roots backpack.

Our kids certainly don’t need and don’t necessarily want everything new, so maybe we should just stop it and enjoy the last week of summer vacation instead of fighting the back-to-school crowds.

What do you think? Back-to-school shopping — yay or nay?

1 Comment

Posted in Parenting

Tagged are we spending too much on kids clothes, back to school shopping

Extreme parenting: mosquito-hiking edition

Posted on August 21, 2012 | 1 comment

Now that it’s mid-August, Blake and I naively thought that Calgary’s mosquito population had been quietly killed off by the summer heat. So we took the children for a six-kilometre “hike” in the Weaselhead Flats natural environment area, a wetland delta where the Elbow River empties into Glenmore Reservoir.

Yeah, I know — what were we thinking?! I assure you it was not: “Let’s do a Burmese March through a mosquito-infested wetland when it’s 30C outside!” It was more like: “Hey, this sounds like a nice, shady interpretive trail by the Elbow River. Maybe we’ll see a weasel or a black bear!”

A misleading sign lured us into the swamp with talk of birds and bears.

Oddly, the interpretive sign was lacking a picture of the most prevalent Weaselhead inhabitant:

Dear hikers, this is the only “wildlife” you will see. Suckers!

In real life they look like this:

Now, multiply this by 200. I think that’s how many bites we received as a family of four.

The hike began ominously, when we opted to bushwack our way down a lesser-used path, thus alerting the mosquitoes to our presence. Once the swarm knew we were in the vicinity they followed us to the bridge:

And down to the riverbank:

I assure you as soon as Avery and I completed our “royalty waves” we used those hands to kill mosquitoes.

Then, sensing we were easy prey (no insect repellent) they tormented our family for the next 90 minutes as we sprinted, swatted and swore our way out of the swamp. We were so busy trying to kill them that we probably marched right past a weasel. Really, we just wanted it to end.

Avery: “I’m itchy! Why did we do this hike? I hate it!”

Me: “Just keep walking — it’s harder for them to land on you that way.”

Bennett: “Look! A mosquito’s biting me, Mommy.”

Blake (swatting Bennett’s back): “Got it!”

Avery (crying): “I’m itchy! I want to die!”

Me: “Well, if you lie down on the ground they’ll just land on you all at once. So keep moving!”

Avery: “You don’t have to yell at me! I wish I was in Jell-O!” (Yes, so irritating and menacing were the blood suckers, my daughted wanted to be encased in Jell-O, out of harm’s way.)

Now, reread the above dialogue 20 times to get a sense of the final 20 minutes of our hike. When we finally climbed the hill out of the marsh back to the parking lot, the sky had clouded over and you could actually see the mosquitoes thick in the air. I imagine my back looked something like this hat: