I was miraculously alone in my car the other day tuned into CBC, hoping to catch the dreamy voice of long- time crush, Jian Ghomeshi.

Being interviewed was Shane Earle, Mount Cashel Orphanage survivor. Something he said really resonated with me: the way we live each day as an adult is a constant reaction to how we were treated as a child.

That really spoke to me – although the majority of our years are spent as an adult, those childhood years are with us always. We carry those around with us day in and day out. Sadly, the weight of those years can be very heavy for some people.

I want the weight of their childhood years to be very light for my adult children. It got me to thinking – how am I treating my children to contribute to them being at peace as adults? I started a mental list and will share two simple ways that I think are significant. They are both little things that I hope make my kids feel like they are the top dogs in my life. Here are my two bits of advice:

1) Be excited to see them.
Whether the kids are walking in from school or I’m picking them up from Cubs, I always look ridiculously excited to see them. Sometimes I have to fake it – sometimes I wish they were gone for another hour, but they don’t need to know that. I vividly remember my own mom’s face every time we came home from school. She looked as though she was eagerly waiting to be re-united with us. Man, it made me feel good.

2) Don’t be late picking them up.
It is a very rare occasion that I would be even a couple of minutes late to pick up my kids. I feel like being late is sending them a message: I was so preoccupied with my work or other activity that I forgot about you. Being on time tells them that they are my first priority.

Sure, they are small, but as a child those things made me feel really valued. And as Shane Earle said, how we are treated as a child has a tremendous impact on our adult lives. I hope those little things will give them confidence and they will go into adulthood knowing their worth.

So, how do you treat your kiddos? What tips and tricks do you have to help lighten the load for your adult children?

Posted on October 13th, 2009 by juliecole
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I have this friend Steve who was recently on a flight. Across the aisle was a new mama with her babe and a very elderly man, who from here on in shall be called ‘old dude’.

As the airplane was taking off, mama started breastfeeding babe. As any travelling mama knows, it’s good if you can get babe to feed on the way up and the way down to relieve any ear pain due to changing air pressure.

As she is feeding, old dude is shuffling around, mumbling under his breath, clearing his throat and basically looking uncomfortable with the breastfeeding situation that is going down beside him.

It was a short flight so before long decent had started and mama sensibly put babe back on breast. Old dude could not contain himself any longer and said “this is clearly making me uncomfortable and yet you continue to breastfeed that child.”

At that point, old dude should have been happy he was not sitting next to me. I feed anywhere, anytime and in front of anyone. If someone feels uncomfortable, they are welcome to leave. Indeed if that sentence had fallen on my ears I likely would have experienced something very close to rage.

Old dude had the good fortune of sitting beside a very gracious mama who very politely and respectfully explained why it helps baby to feed when there is change in air pressure. Old dude seemed satisfied and quite pleased that he had learned something new that day.

The plane landed and old dude was shuffling around looking for his cane and belongings when he turned and looked at my friend Steve and with a quiet smurk said:

“Huh, and to think for all these years I’ve been chewing gum”.

Posted on September 29th, 2009 by juliecole
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Several years ago, I reluctantly moved to the suburbs. I missed my life as an urban mama cruising all the mama haunts with my three babes loaded up in a triple stroller. Suddenly every outing involved a mini-van. Since the move, my kid crew has doubled in size and like it or not, suburbia is the very best place for us.

This was reinforced last week when we held the Mabel’s Labels Staff and Family Summer Sizzler in my backyard. I gotta say, life is pretty good if you are a kid hanging out in my backyard. We keep things pretty kid focused around here so there is no shortage of activities – we have a heated swimming pool, trampoline, sand pit, swing set, and bikes and riding toys galore. To top it off, our house backs on to a huge park that is easily accessed by a gate in our back fence. Last Thursday, the Mabel team (and kiddos) rocked up and had a taste of my life in the suburbs.

Many years ago upon arriving to Canada, my grandparents co-founded a local Irish Club. Every year there was an annual picnic that was jam-packed with activities like running races and relay games. We enjoyed the picnic so much that it became a highlight of the summer.

In the spirit of the old Irish Club picnics, I put together an agenda of cheesy games and races. On top of doing the usual three-legged race and egg-toss, I added a few new ones to the mix that were nothing short of hilarious!

1) The Mommy Call:
You sit all the kids in their sibling groups at the finish line. The mamas get blind-folded at the start line. The kids then all start screaming “MOM! MOM!” and the first mama to find her kiddos is declared the winner.

2) The Daddy Piggy Back:
This activity requires dad to carry all of his children on his back while racing to the finish line. If a child falls off, dad is not allowed to move until child is back on. Clearly, the daddy-o in our family was at a disadvantage, but that didn’t stop him from giving it a good go. I pulled some rank and only allowed him to carry four of them at once – the thought of them all falling and landing on the baby was really too much for one mama to handle.

So maybe life in the suburbs is not so bad. Just imagine trying to pull off some of this fun elsewhere – dads stumbling through the city streets, loaded down with kids and tripping over the latte-sipping city folk in sidewalk cafes. Yep, I think for now this is right where we belong.

Posted on September 8th, 2009 by juliecole
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Like any kiddos, mine are big fans of critters and creatures. They are particularly fond of chipmunks, and at the cottage they spend a lot of time feeding and basically domesticating these little creatures.

Turns out they have made fast friends with the little critters at home as well. That was all fine until I noticed the filthy little rodents started tunneling everywhere and patio stones were sinking all over the garden. Daddy-o basically went nuts and started threatening rat traps and shot guns – he experienced “Chipmunk Rage” and it was not pretty. It became his obsession – every conversation became about chipmunks and I even caught him one night on Google using words like “chipmunks” and “death” in the same search.

He went to war with the chipmunks, and it became a battle he was losing. Badly. We were overrun with the little garden wreckers.

The kids were delighted when we picked up some chipmunk traps and began planning a chipmunk relocation. The rock quarry two kilometers up the road seemed the perfect destination for our furry friends.

I was explaining our little plan to another mama one morning at summer camp drop-off. She explained that some animals don’t relocate well but couldn’t comment on how chipmunks fair. When passing along this information to daddy-o, it became clear that he was not concerned about the stress levels or survival statistics of the relocated chipmunks. Fair enough – I think the chipmunk rage daddy-o experienced took a good few years off him.

We set our traps and began to catch them one after the other. When I went to do the first re-location, I noticed dear chippy had a bright orange spot on his back. Apparently daddy-o and the kiddos thought it appropriate to implement a poor man’s tracking system. If chipmunks with orange paint were in our backyard a few days later, it meant that we need to relocate further afield. It seemed I was the only one concerned about how the little critters were going to camouflage with the bright orange spots on them.

Needless to say, 11 trips to the rock quarry later, no orange chipmunks have returned to our property. While driving past the rock quarry last week, I noticed a little orange splat of something on the side of the road. Now my only concern is that the animal services folks might catch wind of our chipmunk relocation. If they rock up to the house asking questions, I think I’ll spray daddy-o with some orange paint and tell them to relocate him.

Posted on August 17th, 2009 by juliecole
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I was in Chicago last weekend, attending the BlogHer conference for the first time. In the world of mama blogging, this is the biggie. I was in the company of 1,500 amazing women bloggers — attending great seminars and fabulous parties. It was great fun to see online relationships transform into real life friendships. Really, it was like one big reunion of people who have never actually met before.

In the build up to BlogHer, all the talk was about fashion. This fashion chatter started early on and only got worse. In the final week before BlogHer, the topics flying around Facebook and Twitter focused on what we were wearing, or whether there was time for a French manicure or to lose that last pre-conference10 lbs. It felt like I was getting ready for a really long first date, but one with 1,500 women What was I getting myself into?

I got to thinking about all this fashion fuss. As it turns out, all the fashion hype was in good fun and no one seemed to take themselves too seriously. I did, however, consider a few theories as to why physical appearance was getting so much attention from a bunch of people who spend most of their time getting excited about words and the latest iphone applications.

1) Bloggers spend a lot of their time hiding behind computer screens. The conference provided an opportunity to come out of hiding and show our faces in the light of day. Breaking free from behind-the-screen justifiably warrants some highlights and a mani/pedi.

2) Many bloggers there were mamas. Any opportunity to shed the mama uniform should not be missed. All of our overworked yoga pants deserved a three-day holiday. What a great excuse to go shopping.

3) Our gorgeous profile pictures. No one puts a crappy picture of herself on her profile. That profile picture can be a tough standard to live up to, inspiring all of us to go for that last minute eyebrow wax and other grooming procedures before our in-real-life debuts.

I had the added complication of having to glam up my 12-week-old son. His baby uniform consists entirely of sleepers at this point, so I was hard pressed to turn him into a fashion statement. My solution was to put him in sleepers that had only gone through one or two of his five siblings and if they didn’t have stains on them, I considered it a decent enough effort.

A highlight for me was meeting some other “Mamas of Many”. Mom of quadruplet boys, Jen Murray, was there. I was chatting with Christine Young and Tara Kuczykowski. and discovered that between the three of us we have 17 children.

I returned on Sunday, excited and head spinning from the non-stop conference action. Although overwhelmed and exhausted I’m already counting the days to BlogHer in NYC next year — which leaves me about 12 months to figure out what I’m going to wear.

**Looking glam at one of the parties with my Mabel’s business partner, Mumby.

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Posted on August 4th, 2009 by juliecole
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