We have been stricken down in this house by an odd bug where the older two kids and myself have randomly spiking fevers and headaches, and that’s about it. I guess it’s the flu, but I’ve had the flu before and been sure my death was imminent, and this thing is more of an annoyance than anything else. Every so often you get suddenly chilled and you lie down on the couch for a while with a hot bag and a Christmas movie until you feel like getting up again and making more cookies, that’s all.

The weirdest thing, though, is that the randomly cycling fevers have caused the older two to have very vivid and vibrant night terrors, the like of which we haven’t seen since they were preschoolers. The past two nights both have gotten up multiple times in the night, shrieking in literal horror, requiring a half hour of heart-pounding soothing to calm them down. Last night around 10:30 the Captain suddenly arrived in our bedroom yelling, “YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM THE BOMB,” and then he went on to accuse Sir Monkeypants of buying said bomb “LAST YEAR,” and demanding that “WE HAVE TO BLOW IT UP.” Usually at moments like this Sir Monkeypants and I work as a team to soothe and calm but for some reason I totally got the giggles so while Sir Monkeypants was swearing up and down to the Captain that he was TOTALLY BLOWING IT UP, I lay on the floor laughing. It wasn’t my finest parenting moment. In my defense I did much better a half hour later when confronted with a hysterical Gal Smiley, who was insisting we were “SNOWED IN! SNOWED IN! JUST LIKE MINECRAFT!” Yes, yes, dear. It’s okay.

Later I told Sir Monkeypants I figured it was the fevers causing the nightmares, and then suddenly I remembered the phrase “fever dream,” and LO, the English language made sense for once. It was a Christmas miracle.

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In other news, I have become addicted to Starbucks Peppermint Mochas. Oh, how I used to smugly laugh at those with a Starbucks addiction. Every time I read one of those online articles about how you could save THOUSANDS per year just by giving up your daily coffee habit, I’d chuckle and count the thousands I’d already saved like Ebenezer Scrooge. I was perfectly happy with discount home-brewed swill, thank you very much! Then a friend of mine gave me a Starbucks gift card as a thank-you for some website help and I blew it on Peppermint Mochas and now, it’s DONE. Every time I go out I have to get one and I usually drink it in about 30 seconds and then start thinking about how I’m going to get my hands on another one. Damn you, Starbucks, and your holiday-neutral festive red cups. DAMN YOU.

I’ll be happy when we’re on to Valentine’s season as I find cinnamon heart flavour much easier to resist.

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In other-other news, it has been a brutal month around here for the allergy kids. As an Allergy Mom you get very attached to certain name brands that are your go-to foods. It becomes second nature to just reach for the same products on the same shelves every time you go to the store. This year not one, not two, but THREE of our big staples have suddenly disappeared, and when that kind of thing happens, it is an allergy CRISIS.

First, I found out that Allan’s candy has been bought out by Hershey, and one of the first things Hershey did was shut down their candy cane business, which, by the way, was like 50% of the candy cane business in Canada. Allan’s were the only brand we could have as all other brands contain sunflower, and may contain milk and eggs, and Gal Smiley actually CRIED when I told her she may never have another candy cane, or make peppermint bark, again. In a Wonderful Life style happy ending, it turns out that Allan’s had a production partner – Spangler candy of Ohio – and Spangler still makes glorious, glorious sunflower/egg/milk/nut-free candy canes in the Statues. Then my glorious, glorious friend RheostaticsFan did me the huge, huge favour of ordering some via Amazon Prime for next-day delivery to her American mailbox, then drove down to the States to pick them up, and now for the bargain price of just $8 a box I have glorious, glorious allergen-free candy canes. It is sad, but I will likely be getting my own American P.O. Box purely for candy cane deliveries, but if you’d seen poor Gal Smiley’s face you’d do the same.

THEN, the brand of rice protein powder which goes in the Captain’s daily smoothies suddenly became totally unavailable at our local health food store, and I just about cried myself because WHO KNEW what the hell he was going to eat now. But I found some online (FitShop.ca, SHOUT OUT) and ordered it for next day delivery at $10 per jar cheaper than I was paying locally. So happy ending, assuming the company hasn’t actually gone out of business – in which case, I am ABSOLUTELY GIVING UP and feeding the kid a diet of exclusively bananas from now on.

And NOW, just today, I find out that Blue Diamond peanut-free almonds, another protein-staple for my kid who cannot eat milk or eggs or chicken or legumes, has suddenly vanished from the shelves of the Superstore and Walmart, where I used to just throw some in my cart from time to time in the carefree days of my youth. O Blue Diamond, where art thou? Why hast you forsaken me? Allergy gods, you are clearly against me this week.

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Luckily, I just made two pies (apple and chocolate mocha), and there’s carrots and potatoes and meat pies for Christmas Eve dinner, and everything is going to be okay. Happy holidays, everyone!

Christmas is coming, which is weird, because it’s like 8 degrees outside and the kids went to school today in fall jackets and running shoes. Everyone keeps saying that it doesn’t feel like Christmas, as we’re very used to lots of white stuff on the ground by now, but at the same time, no one is complaining. I’m personally pretending I’m Christmasing in Florida and it’s like this every year. Let’s put lights on the palm trees and grab a mimosa, Doris!

I’m in good shape for the holidays, with cards sent and shopping done (after a last minute run to the mall last week because my middle daughter finally decided what she wants for Christmas – “A bow tie, so I can straighten it before I walk into a room.”). This is the time of December when I usually stop working and just focus on baking, wrapping, and watching Christmas movies. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

This year though, there’s been a lot of crying. A LOT. Not that there’s anything wrong, don’t worry – I’m just getting so terribly, terribly sentimental about EVERYTHING that I’m almost constantly in tears. Being a weeper runs in my family, with my grandfather and uncle being legendary criers at every opportunity, and looks like I’ve inherited the gene. Here’s a very partial list of what I have cried over so far this season:

• The ending of It’s a Wonderful Life
• Every other minute of Love Actually
• Every 10 minutes during The Polar Express
• When Rudolph gets made fun of on Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer
• The toys on the Island of Misfit Toys
• When the new toys on the Toy Story Christmas special understand that being played with is the greatest love of all
• The ending of The Nutcracker that we took the girls to see on the weekend
• Photos of arriving refugees on Facebook
• Someone letting me have a parking spot after circling for 10 minutes

The kids keep asking why are you crying Mommy? It isn’t sad! and then I just sniff into my tissue and say But it’s just so BEAUTIFUL and I may as WELL move to Florida because apparently I am 80 years old.

I’ll be baking this morning with White Christmas on in the background so there will probably be tears when it finally starts snowing at the end. I’ll try not to get them in the shortbread.

Enter The Captain.

Him: Hi mom.

Me: Where is your saxophone?

Him: Oh. Uh oh.

Me: Did you forget it at school?

Him: Yes, but I DID remember it, when I was at my locker after school, but then I realized I’d left my coat in the yard outside at recess, so I had to go get THAT, and then that made me forget my saxophone.

Me: (shakes head until head falls off)

Historically for the advent calendar I’ve tried to do some sort of charity event. In the early days, I sat down with the kids and our annual donation budget and had them pick a charity they’d like to give it to. That didn’t work out so well as they always wanted to give it all to the World Wildlife Foundation because when you donate there, you get a free stuffed animal. WIN-WIN, from the kids’ point of view, but I wanted to do something more local and something that felt more like GIVING and less like SHOPPING.

So eventually I gave them a list of local charities, like the snowsuit fund and the food bank, and let them choose from there, but they were not very enthusiastic, and I really felt like just clicking some buttons on the computer to donate money was such an ethereal thing for them, and not really anything with meaning.

The last couple of years I’ve just done the cash donating myself, and instead taken the kids to the Food Bank’s Fill the Bus event (which is on this Saturday, December 5). We’d make a special trip to the grocery store and get a “most needed” list and do our best to get everything on it, plus a few items the kids especially loved and wanted to give. They actually really enjoyed it, and it felt more real, and I was happy with that.

(Also wanted to mention that there’s an “Unload the Bus” event around dinnertime for volunteers who are willing to help unload, sort, and repack the stuff from the buses, and it’s a bit of a party and fun time for the whole family.)

This year I was out and about and I saw a sign advertising the Kanata Food Cupboard’s “Adopt a Family” program, and I thought, BINGO. This is what I want – for my kids to be thinking about a real family, close to our home, that is a lot like us, that needs a little help. So we signed up to take on a family of 5 – a mom, dad, and three kids, just like us.

And so far, it’s been amazing.

When you sign up to adopt a family, you are obligated to provide all that’s required for a proper Christmas dinner – a frozen turkey, stuffing, vegetables, and sweets for dessert. You’ll also get a wish list from the family of their most needed items for a happy holiday – for us, this was clothes for the mom and dad, and winter boots and toys for the kids. The food bank also recommends adding things like wrapping paper and toiletries.

There’s a lot to do to get ready and so much the kids can do to help, too. First we had a big brainstorming session where we talked about the family and what we would like to give them, both food and gifts. Then came the Big Budget talk – we had a budget for this event that was actually already higher than what we’d normally donate at Christmastime across all charities, but even that was hard to stretch. We would have loved to have given them ALL THE THINGS but we had to rein it in and decide what was really, really important. It’s tough – is it better to buy them something really treaty, like say, very nice coffee, or to spend that money on something they probably need, like shampoo? Is it better to buy them toys or school supplies? Is it better to buy them socks or cookies? These are the things that this family is thinking about EVERY DAY. It was pretty eye opening.

Then came the shopping flurry, and unlike my own Christmas shopping, which involves going to the mall and just getting everything on my list without really looking at prices, this time we were actively trying to stretch our dollars as far as possible. The kids were on flyer duty, looking for deals on anything on our Food List, and the Little Miss was invaluable at the mall on Black Friday scoring half-price deals at the Old Navy and The Gap. I took the kids to the toy store one day, and each of mine got matched up with one of them and, given a budget, picked out what they thought was best. It was great to see them really think about what they’d want, and how much money they had, and how to get the most for their buck (hint: look at the sale items!).

The food list was the biggest deal for me. We wanted to add a lot to it – all the fixings for a big pancake breakfast as well as all the treats we could fit in there – and I was worried about how much it was all going to cost so I took the kids to the grocery store to price it all out in advance. I have to admit, when I do the grocery shopping I just throw stuff we need in the cart and don’t actually pay any attention to the prices at all – I know our average weekly bill and it’s always around there and so, done. So I was shocked to discover that bacon is like, $7 a package, and a pound of butter is almost $6. EEP. Coffee was another killer – add cream and you’re looking at $11 at least, for a small container. But I really wanted these things, so we had to make some hard choices to be able to fit them in. It really made me wonder what would happen in our own house if I had to spend so much time every week thinking about this, and really putting things together on a tight budget.

We’re still pulling our list together but I wanted to blog about this in case there were any other interested families out there. I’m not sure if the other food banks in town have a similar program but I know the Kanata Food Cupboard still has families of all sizes available. You can sign up for just a single person, or a family of 3, or a family of 8 – however big or small you can handle. You can provide everything yourself, or get your office or Parent Council to all chip in and go together. The Food Cupboard says that you should expect to spend about $300 on a family of four, but really we are finding it’s higher than that – budget at least $100 per person in the family you take on. Important tip: keep the things you buy for the family on separate receipts, if possible, and keep them all together as you can ask for a tax receipt for your donation when you bring it in.

I think we’ve definitely found our newest Christmas tradition.

I find that part of getting older is that all my qualities, good and bad, are getting stronger and more pronounced. It gets harder and harder to change; I suppose that’s the source of the saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” I am, apparently, an old dog.

One thing that’s causing me some trouble lately is my need to have everything planned. That was definitely a good thing when I was young and in school and trying to juggle three projects and two term papers at once. It’s still a useful quality when dealing with three kids with multiple activities and 25 people on the Christmas shopping list and you just volunteered to organize the Scouts silent auction. Planning, it’s what’s for dinner.

But trouble arrives when I get too attached to plans, when I’ve decided things well in advance and put it to bed in my mind – “That’s all taken care of, finally I can relax!” – and then things change at the last minute. I’ll often have work deadlines or assignments change, or find out about a birthday party last minute that we have to squeeze into the schedule, or someone will get sick and my plan for the day is out the window. This can cause me to be unreasonably cranky, and trust me when I say, UNREASONABLE. I am not very good at going with the flow.

This fall I am trying hard to chill out a bit, to take things as they come. I’m trying not to work so far in advance – leaving things until the deadline makes me very nervous, but a little nervous is better than a lot pissy when things change and I take it out on the people who live in my house. I’m trying to build a little extra time into my daily schedule so I can deal with sudden problems without feeling so much pressure. I’m trying to take a deep breath when something new happens and just take a moment to force myself to refocus, to pause before reacting.

It’s going better, but there’s still a long way to go. It’s hard, but becoming more flexible is one new trick I think this old dog really has to learn.

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And that concludes NaBloPoMo! I was going to make a big post about it but really all I want to say is that I really, really enjoyed it. I’ve missed you blogging. See you again soon, but not too soon, because I’m busy making gingerbread houses and playing Christmas hide-and-seek and WHAT WAS I THINKING WITH THIS ADVENT CALENDAR? Happy holidays, everyone :).

A list of things I seem to have plenty of, until I suddenly don’t:

1. wrapping paper
2. icing sugar
3. laundry soap
4. children’s advil
5. cash in my wallet
6. toothpaste
7. printer paper
8. cell phone battery power
9. applesauce
10. patience

December starts next week, and that means the start of our annual Daily Family Activity advent calendar. Once again I was really conflicted – should I bother? would the kids enjoy it? would the extra work be fun and festive, or make me feel like ramming an icicle through my head?

(Jury still out on that last one.)

I saw the Lego and Playmobil advent calendars in the stores this fall and the kids were interested in them, and so I did consider buying my way out of the activities calendar. But to my surprise, when I made the offer of daily toys versus daily activities, the kids, for the most part, chose the traditional activity calendar. Know who was most in favour of the old way of doing things? Captain Jelly Belly, who a) wants to own ALL THE LEGO, and b) just two short years ago was declaring that the activity calendar was LAME and he was going to boycott it, and c) is now, at age almost-13, aged out of most of the stuff on it anyway. AND YET. There is a huge, terrible power when it comes to Sacred Christmas Traditions. If only we could harness it.

So! The calendar is up on the wall and the little slips of paper are inside and it’s ready to go. I pulled out my list of advent activity ideas, and I’ve kept everything on there over the years, and I got a little sentimental about it. It used to involve things like singing a Christmas song for a treat, or going to visit Santa (SNIFF) or everyone taking a big bubble bath in the tub together (SNIFF SNIFF).

Now that they’re older I’m both looking for shorter events, as we often have sports and clubs and stuff on in the evenings, and more grown-up stuff, although some perennial favourites persist. Here’s this year’s list:

1 – Decorate a gingerbread house (still might flake on this one, as it involves me actually BAKING the house, then comically trying to get it to stick together with egg-free icing, WHEE)
2 – Play Singalong Live to win a prize (game stolen from the TV show Best Time Ever, where I play a song and they have to complete the lyric; prizes are funny picture books, which were a big hit as prizes last year)
3 – Read all the Christmas books in the house with Mom (tradition!)
4 – Get out the Thomas trains and build a track (still popular with the Captain)
5 – Games night: Roll For It!
6 – Go see The Good Dinosaur
7 – Make chocolate dipped marshmallows
8 – Jammies dance party
9 – Paper ornament craft (this one here)
10 – Hide and seek with Santa and Rudolph (in which we take turns hiding two stuffies around the house, and the others have to find them – all the fun of hiding AND seeking, at once!)
11 – Games night: Telestrations!
12 – The Nutcracker at Centrepointe
13 – Skiing, if there’s snow, or Museum of Nature if not
14 – Ice cream sundae night
15 – Make peppermint bark
16 – Teddy Bear picnic (in which we eat dinner on the floor on a blanket with stuffies invited)
17 – Games night: Forbidden Island!
18 – Games night: Parade!
19 – Go see Star Wars (I. AM. PUMPED.)
20 – Alight at Night at Upper Canada Village
21 – xTreme trampoline park
22 – Drive out to Taffy Lane to see the lights (may flake on this and just watch White Christmas at home, we’ll see)
23 – Games night: Rummoli!
24 – Fancy candlelight dinner
25 – Tell us one thing you like about the holidays over brunch

I am tired just typing that stuff out. What was I thinking, again? SHEESH.

After an unusually warm fall, it’s finally turned cold here. The wind smells like winter. When you go outside, the air bites at your face and your toes involuntarily curl up, seeking shelter in a crowd.

There’s still no snow on the ground – a light dusting on Tuesday is melted away now, despite the temperature hovering around zero. I wish it would snow, actually, a big dumping so I’d have a clear cut excuse to get out the big Frankenboots and my sleeping-bag-coat and the giant ski mitts, and be done with it. As it is, with green on the ground I feel obligated to stick with my shorter padded jacket and my cute little ankle boots and sleek grey gloves, all of which makes me feel like I’m in a video shoot for some pop princess’ Christmas song, but leave me shivering.

It’s supposed to get up to nine degrees today, and 12 tomorrow, which is crazy for this time of year, and I really do appreciate it, this last chance to feel warmth and wear the cute boots. But I know the real cold is coming, the kind that seeps into my bones and leaves me huddled under a blanket with a hot water bottle every night, which I suppose is its own kind of pleasure.

I always think something is wrong with me at this time of year, as the cold isn’t really all that cold, and yet I feel it so acutely. Am I dying of some dreaded disease? Have I completely lost the ability to handle a Canadian winter, and must become a snowbird, leaving my children to fend for themselves until I return from Florida, gloriously tanned, in April? Will I actually, literally freeze to death in January when days of -20 are common, when I can’t even handle going outside on these measly -1 degree days?

Then I meet someone in the grocery store, or the mall, and we make chit chat, saying how it’s cold out there, and ugh, winter is coming, and how these grey November days of cold rain and icy skies somehow get right to your heart and make you feel like you’ll never be warm again.

And just the act of sharing the misery with someone else is a bit of a comfort, and there’s always a peppermint mocha at Starbucks if you really, desperately need something to warm you up, and memories of sunny February days on the ski hill come back, and it seems maybe survivable. It’s always the transition that’s the really hard part, not the living with it. I’ve been here before, and come out the other side, and that’s what I’ll cling to for now.

A week or so ago, Little Miss Sunshine was having a sick day at home and so we turned to Netflix to look for animated entertainment. We were flipping through the new family movies section when she saw the poster for The Rescuers, which came out when I was six years old, and asked if she could watch it. If you haven’t seen it, it’s the story of two mice who are part of the Rescue Aid Society – Miss Bianca and Bernard – who find a help-needed message in a bottle from a girl called Penny and who set out to find her and save her.

The Rescuers is actually my own personal horror story, the movie that caused me so much trauma as a child that I can still shudder just to think of it. I’ve heard people say that they never slept soundly again after watching The Wizard of Oz or Star Wars as a kid, but for me, The Rescuers is the source of all my deepest, oldest nightmares.

There’s the villian – a red haired, evil woman named Madame Medusa who seriously freaked me out, with her cackle and her wild rolling eyes and her long nails that I was sure would rake across my skin in my sleep.

There’s her two pet alligators which snap viciously at poor Penny, and can even be ridden like water skis to chase after poor little girls.

There’s the “comedic relief” of the wacky albatross Orville, who almost drops Miss Bianca and Bernard from his back like, 10 times, DO NOT DROP THE MICE YOU STUPID BIRD.

But worst of all, SO terrible, is the fact that Penny has a teddy bear. I was very, very attached to my teddy bear as a child, and I STRONGLY identified with Penny. And do you know what happens to said bear in this story? He’s taken from Penny; used as ransom to force her to crawl down a dark hole and dig for jewels; and eventually he has his head ripped off when the bad guys find out Penny has hidden the big jewel inside the bear.

HOLY TRAUMA BATMAN.

I can still see almost every scene of this movie in my mind’s eye, feel the cold pit of terror growing in my stomach, remember squirming in my seat at the movies and covering my eyes, hoping it would all be over soon. Of course, the bear is fixed in the end and orphan Penny finds a loving family, but it is TOO LITTLE TOO LATE, DISNEY.

And then, you know what? My poor parents, having just seen a movie featuring a little girl with a bear, assumed I must LOVE this movie, the little girl was just like you! And so they went on to buy me a few Rescuers-related items, including The Rescuers Board Game, so I could relive the horror over and over again. GOOD TIMES.

So needless to say, Little Miss Sunshine and I did not watch The Rescuers.

What was your first childhood movie-related trauma?