Last year, we introduced a new family tradition, as suggested by Andrea over at a peek inside the fishbowl. She provided the templates and ideas for a family advent calendar and it was such a fantastic experience. We did a special family activity every day leading up to Christmas, and it really made December feel special.

As well, it gave the kids something to do every day, so there was less of the “WHEN WILL CHRISTMAS BE HERE????” hysteria. A good thing.

Here’s a picture of our advent calendar from last year — it’s a set of tiny envelopes (made from leftover scraps of wrapping paper) clipped to a thick strip of ribbon and taped to the wall.

We open one envelope per day, and each one has a little slip of paper inside with the day’s activity on it. This year will be a little harder since the Captain is in school all day, leaving us less time in the afternoon to play. I’m still really looking forward to it, though — it’s going to be so much fun!

Here is my activity list for this year.

1. Hang up the stockings.

2. Put up the tree.

3. Make rice krispie squares.

4. Visit the LEGO exhibit at the Science Museum.

5. Wrap presents for your brother and sisters.

6. Family Swim!

7. Build a fort in the front room.

8. Have a bubble bath in the big tub.

9. Make pictures for Ba and Nanny, and mail them. (Ba and Nanny are their grandmothers)

10. Make peppermint bark. (Recipe here.)

11. Watch a Christmas movie with chips and popcorn. (I’m looking for suggestions for a good movie — last year’s The Sound Of Music was way too long!)

12. Visit Santa and take a toy to Toy Mountain.

13. Make gingerbread houses.

14. Make a book about Christmas. Or Star Wars.

15. Make beaded snowflakes.

16. Dance Party!

17. Glue pictures of toys to make a mural.

18. Make a silly crown and have a parade.

19. Get dressed up for dinner – we’re having take out!

20. Family Skate!

21. Make a giant floor painting.

22. Build a train track all around the Christmas tree.

23. Go for a drive in your PJs to look at Christmas lights.

24. Bake cookies for Santa.

25. Pancakes for breakfast!

And here are some alternate activities — last year a few of our planned activities fell through due to illness or lack of snow or missing baking ingredients, so it was good to have a few extra activities in case I needed to make a last minute swap.

Make paper snowflakes and hang them in the window. (This one was a little hard for the kids last year, so it got bumped in favour of the beaded snowflakes craft.)
Go to the library and read books about Christmas.
Make a big city map on the floor. (Always popular with my kids, but we do this often, so it isn’t as special.)
Take a night walk.
Make puppets from paper bags or popsicle sticks and perform a show.
Go to the video store and rent one movie each.
Go sledding. (If there is snow!)
Make a snowman and have some hot chocolate. (If there is snow — or we’ll make a snowman craft from cotton balls and paper.)
Play a board game and do puzzles with Mommy and Daddy.
Make a paper chain and hang it up. (Again, a little hard for the kids last year.)

I hope you’ll join in — we had such a great time last year that I definitely plan on doing this every year from now on.

It’s Remembrance Day here in Canada, and I feel like it’s too important of an event to let pass without comment.

However, I’m not really sure what to say about it.

I’m very lucky in that I don’t have a personal connection to war in any way. Neither of my grandfathers fought in WWII. No one in my immediate family (or extended, that I know of) has served in the armed forces in recent times. My great-grandfather — my mother’s grandfather — served in WWI, and some of my grandfather’s brothers served in WWII, but I know next to nothing about their service. I’ve never heard any war stories first-hand, I don’t have any letters from the war to cherish, I don’t have anyone to can tell me about how it really was.

Still, I remember. I care about this day. I love our life in Canada, and I know we have Canadian soldiers to thank for that.

The more I talk to my kids about the world, the more I realize how amazing it is that we live in a place where our kids can play in the street without having to worry about being shot at. Where we can send them to school for the day and not have to worry about a bomb falling on that building. Where we have clean water to drink and plenty of food at the grocery store. Where we can be friends with our neighbours without reserve, without having to worry about what we say or think or write.

Where we can go out for the afternoon and accidentally leave the front door wide open and have nothing bad happen to our house at all.

Canada is a great place. Thank you to everyone who fought to make it this way.

My favourite Backyardigans episode is “What’s Bugging You?,” in which Uniqua and Tyrone attempt to remove the Wormin infestation from Tasha’s house, in time for Mr. Spiffy (aka Pablo) to approve her entrance into the spiffy club.

My favourite Dora The Explorer episode is when Boots gets his new blue bouncy ball, and sings a silly song: “I love my ball! I love my ball! I love my ball! ball! ball! ball! ball!”

My favourite Toopy & Binoo episode is when Binoo makes seven little Binoo snowmen, and they come to life, and then Toopy serenades them all with a love song: “Binoo, oh my Binoo, we shall love to play hand in hand; Binoo, my dear Binoo, you’re my very very best friend.”

My favourite episode of Peep And The Big Wide World is the one where Peep and Chirp are looking for a quiet place to sing, but are thwarted by Quack yelling into a giant pipe, “I’m a GIANT DUCK! I’m a SUPER LARGE EXTRA GIANT DUCK!” Quack is funny.

My favourite episode of Wonder Pets is the one where the bunny tags along as the fourth Wonder Pet, messing up the usual three-pet dynamic. That’s why we didn’t have a fourth kid, RIGHT THERE.

My favourite Hi-5 episode — as if I could pick just one! — is the Season One American Version episode, “Adventure to the Universe.” It features the skit “Keeper of the Lost Stars” which is my favourite Hi-5 song ever. My runner up is the Season One American Version “Animals on the Farm,” in which the Hi-5 gang pretend to be a singing fence. Funniest skit ever!

My favourite Max and Ruby episode is the one where Ruby is trying to sell her girl guide cookies door to door, but Max keeps interfering, either by eating the cookies or spilling the boxes or causing some sort of delay that allows other girl guides to get the scoop. But really, any episode that features a supposedly seven-year-old Ruby taking two-year-old Max on the bus, alone, to do shopping, alone, is totally awesome for the horror show factor.

My favourite episode of Arthur is the one where D.W. gets her first library book, but is so afraid of damaging it, she keeps it wrapped up in a blanket under her bed the entire time. I’m quite partial to D.W. She’s a peach.

My favourite Martha Speaks episode is the one where they start leaving out certain letters from the alphabet soup that allows Martha to talk, as a cost-cutting measure, and then Martha starts to only be able to say words that use the remaining letters. I love language manipulation like that.

My favourite Curious George episode is the one where George tries to guide the trains from the central switching station, while the man with the yellow hat is distracted with helping the train switcher-guy and his brother divide a peanut butter sandwich in two. Oh that George! He’s so funny!

It’s been a while, but my favourite episode of Thomas The Tank Engine is the one where Edward (a sweet but old train) challenges Spencer (a slick new silver train) to a speed contest, and in classic tortoise-and-hare style, wins the race. It’s a very predictable episode but Edward was always my favourite train, so I was happy to see him featured.

I obviously need to GET OUT MORE.

One small consolation for missing out on Halloween this year is that we did get to celebrate Diwali. Diwali is the new year on the Indian calendar and in India, it’s a very big deal. In terms of the food and the decorating and the gifts and the general merry-making, it’s akin to Christmas over here. The date is set by the moon cycles, but it usually falls around the end of October or very early in November.

In India, people decorate the threshold of their houses with powdered chalk, making intricate and colourful designs called kolem:

Photo from mckaysavage flickr stream.

They also decorate their houses with lights (Diwali means “festival of light”). Traditionally small oil lamps (diyas) or candles are used, but lately electric lights are also pretty common:

Gifts are exchanged (new clothes are traditional, but these days anything goes), fancy food is eaten, family is visited, and there are always, always, fireworks:

When Sir Monkeypants and I were first married, we used to have a small Diwali celebration at our house. We’d light a couple dozen candles and we’d make a special dinner. After the kids were born, though, I found it harder to work into our routine. Having a lot of candles throughout the house did not seem like a good idea, and since it’s not a holiday here, planning and hosting a special dinner on a weeknight was too much. For the past few years we’ve exchanged phone calls with Sir Monkeypants’ sister and that’s about it.

This year, though, Diwali happened to fall on the weekend that we were visiting Sir Monkeypants’ family in Mississauga. His sister and her family came over and it was a nice, quiet evening. In the afternoon we visited the mandir, a gorgeous temple that was bustling with people as everyone prepared for the big Diwali party that night. Back at home, we lit candles and had a nice dinner and then the kids played with sparklers outside.

It was so nice to finally make it into a real family event. Both Sir Monkeypants and I loved the whole day and we’d really like to turn the Diwali trip into an annual family tradition. Happy New Year, everyone!

We have ancient, giant, flagrantly incandescent Christmas lights, both indoor and outdoor. For the past few years we’ve felt like we should replace them with LED lights, but it seemed so wasteful to spend a couple hundred dollars on new lights, while junking the old ones that worked perfectly well.

But today, we’re going to make it happen!

There are two incandescent light exchange programs of note going on today — Sunday, November 8th — in the Ottawa area.

First of all, if you bring in two strings of old-style lights, you can trade them for a brand new string of LED lights (multi coloured, 35 lights) FOR FREE. It’s happening at St. Laurent Mall from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., with a maximum of three new strings per person. Get there early before they run out.

And secondly, Home Depot is having an exchange program today only, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. You bring in one string of lights, and you get a coupon for 50% off any new LED lights, up to five strings worth. This might not sound as good as FREE but we’re actually going with this one, because Sir Monkeypants prefers white lights to multi coloured. We can trade in just two strings of lights, though, and get enough coupon power to replace all our indoor and outdoor lights for just $50. Plus, we’ll have enough strings left over to go grab a few freebies at St. Laurent if we feel up to it.

If you miss out on the November 8th special, Home Depot will still give you $3 off a new string of lights for every old string you bring in.

Whee, new lights! And saving the earth! That’s a home run.

Yesterday was garbage day on our street, and blue box recycling (cans and glass and plastics, for those of you who live in dreamlands like Toronto where you just throw it all in one big bin).

As I walked to the kids’ school to pick up Gal Smiley, I saw non-recyclables in every single blue box. Every single one! I get so riled up at that sort of thing.

So, it seems like it’s time for a re-rant. Rant Revisited, if you will. Because if there are too many non-recyclables in the blue boxes, then the whole truck can get tossed, meaning my efforts at recycling are wasted. And if there are too many non-recyclables in the Ottawa collection as a whole, we will lose our buyer, and the city will no longer be able to afford to pick up the recycling, as happened a few years ago when they stopped taking margarine and yogurt tubs.

(As it is, the uproar over the tub thing means they now collect them, but have to basically give them away for free as it is a very low-demand recyclable, and so the city takes a loss on that kind of recycling already.)

So, to recap, the following things are NOT RECYCLABLE in Ottawa in blue bins:

• plastic bags
• take-out containers
• clear plastic food bins or boxes, such as you might get a pre-made salad in or cookies from the bakery area
• plastic caps for pop bottles or juice bottles (only the bottles themselves are recyclable)
• plastic packaging from toys or electronics
• hard plastics (even when marked with a 5) like plastic children’s plates or cups
• styrofoam containers, such as from take-out or trays from the bottom of chicken breasts or ground beef

I see stuff like this in blue bins all the time — our neighbours two doors down right now have their blue bin out full to the brim with nothing but take-out containers. In fact, the only plastics that you can put in your blue bin are: pop bottles, shampoo bottles, vinegar jugs and the like that are labelled with a 1 or 2 on the bottom (no caps!); and wide-mouthed margarine or yogurt tubs and their lids IF marked with a 5 on the bottom.

THAT IS IT.

As for metals and glass, most people are doing a good job although I did see some wire hangers in there (NO). Also, the metal lids from glass jars (like say, for jam or spaghetti sauce) are recyclable, but you have to put them in the bin separately (i.e. remove the lid), so they can go to their proper places (otherwise, the lid will probably get junked). You can also put cardboard containers with a metal end in your blue box, like say from frozen juice or from Pillsbury Crescent Rolls (mmmmmm…me love me some totally-fake-yet-delicious crescent rolls!).

Now I must lie down and attempt to get over myself.

Edited to add: I’m being featured a second time on Five Star Friday!! Thanks so much to whoever submitted my link, it means a ton to me, and YOU ROCK MY WORLD.

We’re down to 16 people on Dance! Show!, and finally, FINALLY, the voting will begin. I really did not like this “judges pick the losers” thing. Since they got to pick the top 20 to begin with, it seems like they were able to target the ones they had pre-decided were weak. It was like lions thinning a herd of zebras. Natural, I guess, but I still don’t feel entirely comfortable seeing it in Hi-Def.

Also, they sent Phillip home! STUPIDS.

Anyway! Time to talk about who’s left, who’s clicking, and who’s not.

Making It Work

Oh my heavens, isn’t Karen so sexy? But not in a skanky way? I really like her. She and Kevin seem to be finding good chemistry, and they both seem like strong, popular dancers, so I predict they will go far.

I also like Legacy and Kathryn (despite his use of some crazy B-Boy name, like, whatever helps you keep your street cred, dude). I actually enjoyed their Stacey Tookey number this week. I’ll say that again: I LIKED A STACEY TOOKEY NUMBER. Mark your calendars, folks!

This saddens me to no end, but I also must put Nathan and Mollee at the top of the heap. I really dislike them both — they’re so giggly and childish. And yet…Mollee’s legs are awesome. Nathan needs to work on his snap, but his spins — oh my. And they do seem to have a little magic between them. Sigh. I declare it is okay to vote for them, I will just look away.

Middle of the Road

I really like Ellenore and I think she and Ryan have potential. Right now they are missing something for me, but they have put together two very interesting performances and both are excellent dancers so there is hope.

Ditto for Ashleigh and Jakob — there seems to be some fire missing from them as a pairing, but they are both attractive and likable and I think with some work they could become something great.

Bottom of the Heap

As usual with this show, the bottom is chock full of good dancers who just seem to be mismatched with their partner. I think Channing is cool, but she really needs to work on her partnering skills — she has trust issues. We’ll see if she can sort them out with Victor, who is good but who has ego issues.

Of course my heart lies with Peter now, as the final tapper left, and he has real charisma even if he is lacking a little in training. Pauline is kind of a snooze in terms of personality, though, so I’m not sure what kind of heat these two can generate.

Russell seems to be very popular with the crowd, and for good reason — I adore his solos. Even his two-second intro bit is always interesting and full of fire. Still, at things like the waltz it’s obvious that he just doesn’t have the power and technique to handle all the different dances. As for Noelle, I have ongoing bitterness about the fact that she was allowed to stay in the competition even though she couldn’t dance the first week. LAME. So these two would be both my guy and girl pick to go home — however, I suspect that the popularity of Russell will propel them to safety.

Happy viewing, dance fans, and happy voting!

Do you play with your kids?

Sir Monkeypants likes to play with them. He likes chase games, running games, throwing-things-at-each-other games. He likes to dangle the kids upside down and to pretend he’s a shark stalking them in the water and to hunt them with squirt guns.

I find I don’t have the energy for that kind of stuff very often. So much of my everyday work is physical — schlep the laundry, haul the groceries, pick up this kid, stir that pot, give a bath, break up a fight, change a diaper. When I have playtime with the kids, I prefer board games, reading books snuggled under a blanket, colouring pictures, painting.

So between the two of us, I’d say our kids get a good balance of action.

Except.

Neither Sir Monkeypants nor I can play pretend games for any length of time at all. Games like this: “You be this doggie and I will be this bear. My bear says hello to your doggie. Now, what should they do?”

Ugh.

We got away without playing much of this kind of thing with the Captain. He’s very good at engrossing himself in his own little world. He can get out his Star Wars figures, and an hour later you’ll wander by and hear him muttering on the floor about “Now entering the death star” and “Roger roger” and “Ready for take off” and all is well.

But Gal Smiley likes to have a friend along for the ride. A playmate. And worse, what she really wants is someone to guide the action. Someone to provide all the imagination, someone to direct the story.

I don’t know why, exactly, but I find this kind of constant creativity to be extremely taxing. I just can’t muster up the enthusiasm to decide whether Barbie should go to a party or to the mall, to invent the rules of a new form of soccer game for Doggie and Bear, to dream up a lesson plan for the Polly Pockets as they attend art school. It hurts my brain, and I find myself looking for an excuse to get out almost as soon as we’ve begun.

Maybe it’s that I’m not a very creative person, or maybe I’m just not that interested in telling tales. Maybe I got my fill of this kind of thing as a kid (Lord knows, I played Barbies with FameThrowa for enough hours to qualify for a Ph.D.). All I know now is, when Gal Smiley approaches with a couple of stuffed animals in hand and looks at me with those giant brown eyes, asking me shyly to “Please play with me,” then I groan inside a little bit.

Want to do a puzzle instead? Maybe get out the PlayDoh? Make a bracelet from beads?

No?

Okay. Five minutes of Doggie and Bear, and then I HAVE to…go.

Once I was watching some sort of entertainment “news” show, and Winona Ryder was on doing an interview about Alien: Resurrection. During the interview, she said that she really enjoyed working with all the other characters, “especially the baby.”

Now, the “baby” in question is (spoiler alert!) a human-alien hybrid child that is supposedly the ultimate in horror — all the superpowers of the aliens combined with the superior intelligence of humans.

Unfortunately, the “baby” turned out to be laughably bad. Hilariously bad. And not in a good way.

And thus, I realized that stars actually dare to lie in their press interviews. My innocence has never recovered. Stephen King is writing a novella about it, in fact.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Alien Baby these days because I think I’ve figured out why the makers of the movie thought it would be so scary, when in actuality, it was just silly.

They were obviously men, and the scariest thing they could think of was the body of a 40-year-old woman who has had three children:

See it? The droopy breasts? The rounded pot belly with leftover stretch marks? The pasty complexion? The hunched back from babywearing?

Trust me, I see it — every morning in the bathroom mirror. Scaaaaaary!