Do you generally think that kids are born with personalities or develop them?


I don't really want to get into the nitty-gitty science of the the whole nature versus nurture versus epigenetics cage match but the older my kid gets, the more I feel that her personality is simply emerging rather than being shaped.

I have no doubts that her experiences can/do/will play a role in shaping her perspectives but somehow it just seems that the more articulate she gets, and the more her logic and reasoning skills develop, the more insight I'm getting into what was already there to begin with.

The essence of her. Her personhood. Her personality.

And, as she is better able to express her opinions (many), preferences (specific) and desires (more gummy vitamins please), I feel like I'm getting a clearer idea of the kind of parent I need to be for her.

I know it's probably incredibly foolhardy and extremely naive to say this (especially before having a teenager) but I really feel like I'm learning about how to parent from my kid. And these days I feel like the more I get to know her, the better I'm getting at this whole crazy gig.

It's a nice feeling.

Oh ya, that's right, we actually left the house last night.


Without a small sidekick along for the ride.

The whole night we felt like we weren't sure if we should bolt for the hills or cut-out early to run home and make sure she got enough pre-bed snuggles.

Parenting: Stockholm Syndrome with (hopefully) less guns.

After a long dry-spell of decor-drooling (don't think too hard about that statement, it's mostly about my obsessive love of alliteration) this week the interwebs have provided me with a couple of worthy subjects:

1) Joshua and Jodie Steen's Design Sponge Sneak Peek

2) Emily McCall's kitchen and nursery on stephmodo

So now I'm (once again) experiencing constant bipolar shifts between wanting a house painted entirely in dark colours and wanting to slap white paint on everything.

Which in turn is reminding me of these lines from the Simpsons that my husband is always using:

Lisa: "Watch it, Dad, you're the highly suggestible type."

Homer: "Yes, I am the highly suggestible type."

Courtesy of The Domestic Man, a link to another great foodie site: betacyanin.

Who knew kale stems could be used for anything good?

Let me just start off by saying that I really appreciate the thought.


Family and friends keep buying my kid crap. Lovely, thoughtful, kind, generous, massive volumes of crap.

Ok, I admit, I buy her too much crap too.

Seriously though. It's overwhelming. I've been trying to shovel it out the door nearly as fast as it comes in but it's a neverending battle. And there's so much guilt involved. I feel so bad getting rid of perfectly good stuff just because we don't have room to use or store it.

In the last 3 years I've donated tons of clothes, shoes, stuffed animals, toys and equipment to charity and friends. Passing it on to good homes alievates some of the guilt but I really wish I could find a way to reduce the inflow at the source. But people love to give her stuff. It makes them feel good. And I don't want to be the evil controlling parent refusing gifts.

But I also hate being the parent constantly giving away things that represent all those good, kind, generous thoughts because I simply don't have enough space for it. I don't want people to think that the thoughts behind the gifts aren't appreciated.

I've tried to make polite subtle requests. I've attempted to direct people towards fewer-but-better type items. I've begged for gifts of time in place of soon-forgotten distractions or soon-outgrown outfits or so many, many, many things with her name lovingly embroidered on them. I've strongly-hinted at books and consumable-type gifts.

Nothing has worked.

And now I'm realizing that it's only going to get worse when she begins paying closer attention to what people give her so I can't just toss it as easily.

I'm starting to have nightmares.

"I hope someday I can fly a kite like a girl. And do kung fu like a girl. And draw like a girl. And you know what? I wish I could cry like a girl. You get it all out, and then you look for the next thing, bouncing back with amazing speed. You don’t do like me, hold it inside as long as possible, letting it fester, bringing me down for days. You are not bitter.

So they hate you. But fuck ‘em. Because you are a force of nature, a powerhouse of emotion and talent and stubbornness and potential.

You’re worth a billion of them." ~ Mur Lafferty, "Dear Daughter" (via The Hairpin)


Can I please get a "FUCK YEAH!"?

For some reason the topic of feminized swearing was something I was thinking about as I walked to work today. The ways people (including, I'm ashamed to admit, myself occasionally) will use to sexist and/or homophobic slurs without evening thinking about it. Fag. Sissy. Bitch. Cocksucker. Pussy. Gay.

People who would never even think of using racist terms to refer to anyone.

In addition to any/all derogatory references to body shape or weight (seriously, why should any child need to know the word "fat" outside of what we use for cooking?), I think it's important to teach all kids that these expressions are hugely inappropriate.

And the best way to teach is by example.

Disclaimer: The dude that did this is nuts and deserves to have his ass handed to him by the cops for such dangerous behavior. That said, the video is seriously fun to watch. Especially if you've ever been tempted to get a motorcycle licence.

"What these surveys tend to reveal is that most Americans would like to live in places that don’t really exist. As Barbara McCann, director of the National Complete Streets Coalition, says, “people want a big house on a big lot, where there are stores they can walk to.” The truth is there are relatively few places in America that today would pass what architect Hal Box has dubbed the “Popsicle Rule”—“a child must be able to walk safely from home to buy a Popsicle within five minutes.” (And given the current concerns about childhood obesity, make that an organic-fruit-no-corn-syrup-added-Popsicle)." ~ Tom Vanderbilt, "Walking in America"


A great 4 part article on walking. Seriously. It's facinating.

Calgary was the first place I lived after I left my childhood home.


In all my memories it is a dry, flat, brown, endless city. A place where it appeared that someone had sucked the colour from the landscape, bottled it and sold it to the Americans.

The rivers were a trickling, slimy joke: Bow and Elbow. I would run gasping alongside them, my lungs fighting the unaccustomed altitude, my eyes desperate to catch a glimpse colour. A bit of green. A sign that something was thriving in this place.

Nearly every penny I earned working at underpaid, shitty jobs that I was no good at was spent on essentials. It always felt like there was never enough. I laid awake at night fighting rising waves of panic. The feeling that I might drown in my money worries.

I lasted 8 months before I was fired and got into law school in the same week.

I used the last bit of room left on my credit card to fix my truck, fill the tank and aim myself towards the coast. I hadn't been back since.

I didn't hate it as much this time.

Last year my little brothers ran the Canadian Death Race in a relay team of 5.


This year one of them is doing it alone.

Because, god love him, he's nuts and clearly needs a girlfriend/life.

I guess I should just be happy that he's not trying to run the Barkley like these people (via The Hairpin).

Of course, a (not small but clearly deranged) part of me wants to do both races myself.

Did someone create a roving force of elderly, retired mall cops and not tell me?


Is this some sort of make-work project to keep the aged contributing to the economy? Do they get paid for each person they catch and ream-out? I imagine it would work almost like the old pay-by-the-pelt system for fur trappers.

I ask because in the last two days I've been soundly bitched-out by a couple of indignant seniors on two different occasions for what I would consider to be extremely minor, possibly laughable, civil infractions.

The first time was at noon on Tuesday when I was walking on the extreme left-hand side of a very quiet paved riverside pathway (half on the grass beside the path actually). Normally I'd walk on the right like a good little citizen, but from that side I couldn't really check out all the interesting stuff going on in and around the river. Observing that I had seen only 3 people on the path in 45 minutes, I figured that I could get away with it. I was soon disabused of this notion by an extremely slow-moving bicyclist who came up behind me (on the right side) and aggressively demanded to know why I was unlawfully obstructing traffic (not hers obviously since she wasn't riding on that side). She continued to yell at me as she methodically biked by and past me. Leaving me feeling insulted, defensive and, because I'm me, mildly guilty about all the nonexistent people I was inconveniencing by walking on the left.

Then, yesterday evening, I'm walking to the park with the kid and our sweet old be-sweatered skinny dog when I notice that an elderly couple who just stepped off a bus have stopped on the sidewalk to watch us. Naively assuming that they're taking the time to absorb the cute that is both my kid and our dog, I glance briefly in their direction. At which point, the man starts to tear me a new one about taking a dog into a park. The park (that we hadn't actually entered yet) in which we routinely dispose of other people's dog crap whilst diligently scooping our own. The park in which we regularly get to clean up broken glass and empty booze bottles. The park in which I've been (so far) happily surprised that I've never had to deal with used condoms on the play structure, crack vials or used needles. The park we're in near-daily and in which I've never seen him.

He too continued to yell at me as he walked away.

In both circumstances I was quite proud that I managed to avoid replying with my typical knee-jerk response to being yelled at by random strangers. A response which involves directing them to do logistically-difficult, sexually-explicit activities to themselves.

I might be a reckless law-breaker but at least I'm trying to be a more mature, classier one. For the sake of the children.

There's something about the underside of bridges that I just love.


In fact, I think that my favourite part of the riverside pathways in Ottawa are the spots that take you under the bridges. I think it's interesting to see how bridges are supported structurally. It also offers a different perspective from the one that you get when you drive, bike or walk over them. A glimpse of something that gets taken for granted. Well, unless you live in Montreal.

The above picture is of a rare one without graffiti. Sometimes the graffiti is my favourite part.

See a previous exhibit here.

Blatantly flaunting the order of the rules, we've spent the last 2 weeks prioritizing Number 5 in playgrounds all over the country.


We've hit playgrounds in Calgary (4), Canmore (1), Hamilton (1) and found a new small-but-fun one in Ottawa (beside the Chinese Embassy).

And though I hate to admit it, I have to say that Alberta is currently beating Ontario on the cool-playground-features front. Nice to see that they're spending some of that dirty oil money on good things.