Little Miss Sunshine turned 7 years old last week, and I admit it was a bit of a jolt. Two years ago, I’d see pregnant or new mothers at the mall and laugh, a deep rolling evil laugh, then dance up the stairs kid-free to shop at Lady Clothing Stores while they struggled to make it to the Baby Gap on the single creaky old elevator. HA! HA! HA!

But just in the past few months I find myself gawking at the adorable six-month-olds cooing in the shopping cart seats at the Superstore, and getting misty eyed, and OH MY HEAVENS, I’m turning into a Grandmother Wannabe. How did this happen? I’m looking for a cure, especially since my youngest is just SEVEN, it’s not like she’s thirty and I’m nagging her about her hair and her job and why she hasn’t produced any grandchildren for me yet, GEEZ.

So! To help me focus on the now, here’s a refresher of what a kids’ birthday party looks like.

She wanted it to be butterfly themed.

Here’s the centrepiece I made. I made the terrible mistake of surfing around on Pinterest for “butterfly birthday party ideas.” Fifty dollars’ worth of supplies later, I’m up to my elbows in ribbon and glue and swearing I’ll never go on Pinterest again. But it did turn out pretty well in the end.

We also had many, many, butterfly cookies. Memo to self: do not leave making of cookies (and all other food) to morning of the party. You WILL find yourself still in your jammies, frantically applying sprinkles, 15 minutes before guests arrive.

Of course there were also butterfly cupcakes. Memo to self: see above.

We did four different butterfly crafts. In retrospect this was a little ambitious. Thank heavens Fame Throwa and Mr. Chatty came over to basically run the craft station. I didn’t take any photos because I was too busy trying to remember how to fold the damn origami butterflies, but if you’re planning a party of your own, you should definitely consider these colouring pages (we coloured the large size butterflies, taped them to a stick with a handful of ribbons, and made butterfly magic wands); these origami butterflies (the girls LOVED them), and these butterfly necklace craft kits (super easy, with lovely results, a nice addition to their loot bag – not an affiliate link, by the way, you can get these at Chapters or Amazon or local seller Tagalong Toys, among others).

Then we went outside and had a huge water fight with water pistols and water balloons (Sir Monkeypants took the brunt of it, and the Captain and Gal Smiley were also surprising good sports), and frolicked on our slip and slide, and played in our tiny ankle-deep wading pool, and ate treats.

Oh, and then there was a pinata! Butterfly, of course.

Then everyone went home and we cleaned up and tried not to finish off ALL THE COOKIES (total fail) and flopped into bed early so we could get up at 5:30 a.m. the next morning to go see a building implode. What, don’t you do that every morning after a party?

QUITE a weekend.

As part of my job as a mom, and part of my job as a parenting writer, I’m always looking for stuff to do around the city – special events, cool places to visit, new shops and services. I try not to play favourites but I can’t help but notice when there’s something so cool, so unique, and so fun that it’s worth talking about.

So with apologies to my out of city readers, I’ll just take a moment to rave about the Puppets Up! festival running August 8 to 10 in Almonte, because it’s awesome, and you should go.

And now there’s totally no excuse NOT to go, because I have passes to give away. PASSES. FOR FREE. BOO YEAH.

Disclosure: Puppets Up! is providing the passes for the winner of this contest, but I wrote about them for free, with no compensation to my family. That’s because it’s awesome! And you should go! Trust me. 🙂

So what’s so great about Puppets Up? First of all, PUPPETS. When my kids were little, puppets were a touch-and-go thing – sometimes fun, sometimes scary. But at the festival it’s very, very kid-friendly. Most of the puppeteers are quite willing to show their faces – some are even an integral part of the shows – and everyone is very open and friendly about showing how the puppets work. Everything I’ve seen has been very fun and funny, nothing intense or scary – definitely aimed at families.

There’s a parade every day at 1:45 down Mill Street, Almonte’s main strip – very cool and interactive, and it’s totally free. Most of the adorable shops and cafes in town have at least something puppet-related in the window, so if you’re looking to check it out but don’t want to commit to buying tickets, you can still get a flavour of the event just by heading out for the parade and having a wander.

But! If you do invest in passes ($20 adults, $10 kids), you can pop in and out of tents to see any number of performers and shows. Check their website for details of who will be performing (full schedule coming soon, but stuff is going on all the time there, so you can really just head out when it works for you and then catch whatever you can catch). And the shows are charming! And cute! And funny! And entertaining!

ALL GOOD.

So! Want to win passes? All you have to do is leave a comment on this post telling me your favourite summertime activity in Ottawa. The giveaway is for four passes – you can use them for two adults, two kids, or one adult, three kids, or four adults, or whatever works for you. You can pick them up at the Puppets Up VIP box office when you arrive in Almonte.

Contest ends Thursday, July 24, at midnight EST. I’ll draw a winner at random on Friday, July 25. Good luck – and if you don’t win, you can always pick up passes yourself through their website.

When Sir Monkeypants and I were young marrieds, I used to really hate the weekly arrival of The Flyers. It’s a thick packet of flyers from various stores featuring their weekly specials, and I used to never, ever look at it for even a second. For a while I even had a recycling bin on our front porch so that the flyer delivery guy could just drop the packet directly in there and eliminate the middleman, but then he started bringing it with an elastic wrapped around it, so I was forced to pick it up, remove the elastic, and then drop it in the bin myself, which I complained about LOUDLY and AT LENGTH to my poor husband.

(Aside: Do you spell it “flier” or “flyer”? I always have gone with “flyer” but Google seems to think I am in the minority. Is this a Canadian thing?)

Now that I have young children and am, basically, a hermit, I rely heavily on the flyer packet to do all my major shopping. I now LOVE the arrival of the packet, I actually call to complain if it arrives late (or, heaven forbid, not at all). I lovingly go through most of them looking for deals or things we need or, I have to admit, just generally browsing in the same sort of way that my younger self used to go the mall, just for something to do, just to have a look around.

(Younger self to my current self: “You are a sad, old lady.” Current self: “You don’t know the half of it.”)

Anyway, this past week’s packet included a flyer from Toys R Us, which used to be the holy grail of flyers. They’d have great baby stuff on sale, and once my kids grew a bit, they’d have all the great toys there in glorious technicolor. Toys that might become birthday party gifts, or part of the birthday party emergency dammit-I-forgot backup bin. Toys that might become loot bag items, or gifts for my nieces and nephews. Toys that might become dreams in the sparkle of my kids’ eyes, to be filed away on wish lists for Christmas. Things that were fun and multi-coloured and plastic.

And this week, after pouncing on the Toys R Us flyer, I noticed something…we don’t actually need to shop there very often anymore. My two oldest are now at the age when they are not really wanting so many toys. The Captain still loves LEGO, but he doesn’t really play with it, he just collects it, making us highly unmotivated to buy him more. Gal Smiley loves sports equipment and board games but is long past the age of playing with dolls or action figures or dinky cars. If either is invited to a birthday party, we give books or a food gift card or maybe art supplies; things like water tables and sandboxes have been here, and have long since moved on to new homes.

Even Little Miss Sunshine, who will be seven years old next week, has entered the craft kit/Rainbow Loom phase of life, and although she still loves her Barbies and Strawberry Shortcake dolls and Pretty Ponies, it’s clear we don’t need to significantly grow our collections.

We’re also done with the Baby Gap, the Gymboree, and the “toddler” sections at places like The Children’s Place. Heck, I actually looked at grown-man socks for the Captain the other day, because “boy” socks seem to max out at size 4, which he is pushing, but then the man socks jumped to “one size – 9 to 11” which seemed huge (note to self: fill sock gap, make millions). So we didn’t quite make the leap, but we’re on the verge.

All this is to say that it’s funny the things that make you notice how much time is passing, and has passed already. How our whole family has moved out of a phase that used to be all-consuming, and now is becoming something more scattered, something more grown-up without quite being something mature. The time has come to just drop the toy flyer straight into the bin, and I’m both ready for that and not ready for that.

Blink, and you’ll miss it.

And we’re off! Summer vacation has begun, and that’s good, and bad, but mostly good. For example, yesterday we went to Upper Canada Village, a place I swear I will take the kids every year, but we never get around to it, and so this year I knocked it off early. And despite a drizzly day and my fears of three kids imploding given a whole hour’s worth of driving with no video games (OMG CERTAIN DEATH), we made it.

And know what? We had The. Best. Time. The kids loved it! They actually wanted to learn about history. They actually begged to stay longer. They were hypnotized by the mills. They loved the animals. They enjoyed the shows. They had a million questions about the War of 1812.

And then! They were all so exhausted at the end of the day there was total silence on the drive home.

AWESOME. Especially considering I am wondering a) how to get one of those glass dividers limousines have for the van, or alternately, b) how to get all three kids to move the way back row of the van so I don’t have to hear the bickering, GAH.

So speaking of the down side of summer, I am already quite frustrated at how much I have been expected to act as Program Director for this summer. In the past I think I have been spoiled, because if we weren’t doing a day trip, I was able to just strategically leave out a bin of LEGO or Playmobil, and the kids came across it and were all, “Hey, what’s this?” as if they had never seen it before, and I didn’t hear from them for three hours. But now they are all boooooored, so booooored, want to DO SOMETHING, Mom? Mom? Mom?

(Or rather: want to suggest a hundred things, all of which I will say “no” to? DO YOU?)

For example, today I took them to the park, and since we were already out and about in the van I thought I’d stop by the Far Park because it has swings, whereas the Close Park does not have swings. I had this fantasy that I’d sit in a nice shady spot with my coffee and enjoy the weather while basking in the glow of happy, active children.

And then one kid was all, “Mooooom, come play tag with me,” and if you know me at all, you will know that although I can be a bit of a Busy Beaver when it comes to Planning Stuff, I am not at all interested in activities that involve sweating. So I was artfully dodging that one when another come came up all, “Moooom, there’s nothing to doooo, will you play frisbee with me?” and I was all, “What is wrong with your sibling RIGHT HERE who is looking for something to do with someone else?”

And while they were both, “Mom, are you done your coffee yet? Now? Now? How about now?, the third one, who loves swinging, was all, “Moooom, there are no monkey bars here, no mooooooonkey baaaaars, and also, I need to pee RIGHT NOW,” and so I gave up and we came home.

I’m thinking perhaps the first week of summer vacation is always this way, just trying to find our way to a rhythm, trying to negotiate the video game rules, learning anew that their brothers and sisters can actually be entertaining from time to time. Remind me next year to come back and read this post when I’m on my sixth cup of tea trying to soothe my throat from repeated declarations of, “NO, you have played ENOUGH Clash of Clans for one day!”

Really, summer IS awesome, and will BE awesome, I am just in a mildly ranty post-park mood.

So! In more personal awesome news, two things: first, Dance! Show! has returned, and is now at the top 20 stage, which means plenty of posts on that topic coming your way soon.

Second, I am going to be on Our Ottawa on behalf of SavvyMom.ca again this weekend talking about stuff to do with your kids around town in the summer. This time, Lucy Van Oldenbarneveld was away, so I got to hang with Adrian Harewood instead:

SO COOL. It’s on the local CBC TV channel at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning, repeating Sunday at 11 a.m. and Monday at 11 a.m.

Awesome!