There are few life events that are as exciting and meaningful as the arrival of a brand new baby—whether it’s your own darling smoosh or one belonging to someone you love. As happy as we are about these new little additions, picking a perfect gift for each baby shower can be a daunting task—mostly because you want to commemorate the occasion with a really great baby shower gift.
Recently, we have been feeling so much pressure to register, to organize play dates, to structure. What about spontaneity? Learning through play? We have been soliciting ideas for fun, learning-enhancing activities that can be done with little or no cost. Pretend play offers young children a chance to practice skills within their own frame work and rules, letting them set the boundaries. You can always make suggestions if they need it but follow them, not the other way around.
After searching for the perfect nanny, how are you going to pay her? In determining the nanny’s status as an employee or as an independent contractor, the Canada Revenue Agency does the following tests:
1. Control: Are you specifying the work to be done? Are you specifying the working hours and are you reviewing the work that was done?
There are a couple of things that have always scared me a bit. Maybe it was lack of knowledge. Maybe it was fear of the unknown. Possibly just being copasetic. I remember browsing the course catalogue for university and not knowing exactly what engineering was. Seriously. Similarly, when friends got braces in high school I would just smile and nod. My teeth were straight enough – the top ones anyway. Everyone else was part of some club who got dismissed early for their ‘ortho’ appointments and I just sat and watched them leave, as if they were venturing to mars. I should have done some research. Little did I know that braces aren’t just cosmetic. Crooked teeth and overbites can affect speech, jaw stress and cause unnecessary wear on other teeth as time passes.
During pregnancy, increased pressure on the abdominal wall can cause a condition called diastasis recti. I wish it had a less scary name. Diastasis recti looks like a gorge running vertically down the middle of the belly area. It stretches from the bottom of the breastbone to the belly button, and increases with muscle straining. The middle muscle, the ‘linea alba’, is where our 6-pack usually lies. Chuckle. When the muscles on either side of this line pull apart, women may develop 2 finger’s width of separation (2.7cm or greater) of the abdominus recti muscle (down the centre line of the belly). The area between these two muscles may stick out like a vertical pouch. It’s important to realize that this area is not torn – just temporarily separated.
We always tend to do back to school at the last minute, and not because I’m lazy. It’s more that I can’t possibly bear to let go of summer.
Setting the scene… It’s a night like any other you’ve had for the past couple of months – your newborn gem has awoken at the typical hour of 5am after you had just gotten back to sleep following her prior wake-up and feed at 3am. Except that this time, you feel ready to cry, and wish fervently that she would somehow feed herself and go back to sleep all on her own.
As a woman and a mother there are a few things that top my priority list. One is health for the whole family – being active, having regular checkups and doing a mental health scan every so often. The other big priority I have is to be a well-rounded, confident woman. My kids need to see that. I want to be a role model and inspiration.
It’s the first day of summer vacation and we are still on lockdown. What do the kids want to do? Game. It’s the BANE of my existence. We’ve been in self isolation for three months (but who’s counting). While we were fortunate that their school kept them in Zoom classes from 8:30-3:30 daily, it’s a whole new world now. I have this Mom-guilt thing, where gaming is never a problem if they have school or activities all day and want to ‘chill’ in the evening. But balancing it all can be an issue. The blessing is that they have been connecting with friends through gaming, but I feel as if I’m losing my own connection with them. Because I can’t beat them, I will try and join them – with Apple Arcade.
Summer is just beginning (though it totally feels exactly like the last three months, minus the home-schooling). While parents likely had a pre-pandemic line-up of activities ready to go to keep kids busy, not only are camps cancelled, but pricey day-camps and caregivers can squeeze an already tight budget. International and Canada-US travel is likely a no-go. Some provinces are still locked down, some require quarantine for 14 days when you get there, and others simply don’t want your ‘foreign’ license plate traipsing around their roads. Here’s the Canadian Government site on COVID, so you know where your province stands. And here are a few ideas for sticking closer to home, getting out in nature and saving some precious cash.