OVERdue?

As a French teacher, I often get asked by parents and friends with kids if they should enroll their children in French immersion. I find myself wondering the same thing now that my daughter is in kindergarten. In fact, we nearly enrolled her in a private French school last year but I backed out at the last minute. Did I make a mistake? I'm not sure.

You see, I'm not from Toronto. I never thought that in a million years I would ever live here. But then I met my husband and gave up my hometown. We found out we were pregnant just a couple of months after getting married and bought a house just before she was born. So many things had happened so quickly, I don't feel like I ever really adjusted. I've been living here for over 6 years and I'm still struggling to feel like I fit in, like I belong. I know people who have immediate family and friends overseas, and that it must be really difficult for them not to be able to take a short car ride to visit them. But it still makes me sad that I don't live closer to my family and childhood friends. It makes me sad when I think how very little time my kids get to spend with their only cousin or their maternal grandparents. It makes me so sad that I sometimes burst out into a helpless ball of sobs and seemingly endless tears. And yes, I'm sobbing right now.

As part of the Aquafresh Advanced Futures blog tour with Mom Central Canada, I have been asked to share my hopes and aspirations for my children's future. And as much as I'd like to say that I want to give my son and daughter the best education that money can buy, I won't. That would be too easy. Instead, I want the peace of mind in knowing that my children will be raised and educated in a community where they feel like they belong and with which they have a connection. So while I sometimes wonder if denying my first-born a private and "higher" education was in her best interests, I feel more reassured in my decision when I see the bonds that had been forged in her preschool years are growing stronger as she continues into grade school. I can breathe a sigh of relief as I witness my daughter's emerging personality traits and her definition of self becoming clearer. I feel justified knowing that I didn't disrupt her sense of comfort and belonging by breaking the links of relationships and familiar places.

So, to answer the question, I want more for my kids than to lead long, healthy lives. I want them to have more than a bright future. What I want is for my children to grow up with determination, a strong sense of self-worth and the skills to be critical thinkers. I want them to follow their dreams and let nothing hold them back. Whether it's becoming a teacher like their mother, learning how to trade stocks in the market or join the likes of Craig and Marc Kielburger to help less fortunate kids realize dreams of their own, I want them to not feel rushed or pressured but rather to be one hundred per cent certain that the paths they take are the ones they themselves yearn to follow.

What about you? What kind of future do YOU want for your kids?


Share your wish by visiting www.aquafresh.ca/contest for a chance to WIN a $10,000 RESP, courtesy of new Aquafresh Advanced! Wouldn't that come in handy? I know I'm a little late in sharing this with you but the contest doesn't close until November 30, 2010, so you still have plenty of time to enter.

But wait, I get to give away an Aquafresh Advanced prize pack to one of my readers, too. Up for grabs is a Philips Sonicare for Kids Toothbrush ($70 MSRP) and a sample of Aquafresh Advanced toothpaste. All you need to do to be entered in the giveaway is simple share a toothbrushing tip or trick for kids, such as make it a habit by including it in your routine and brushing for at least two minutes.

Contest is open to Canadian residents and closes on November 22 at 9 pm. Participants can enter on multiple blogs throughout this blog tour but are only eligible to win once.


Disclosure - I am participating in the Aquafresh Advanced Futures program by Mom Central on behalf of GSK. I received a sample of Aquafresh Advanced and gift card as a thank you for my participation. The opinions on this blog are my own.

It's about time I review something that wasn't a product sample. So here it is, my March Break review.

Saturday, Sunday, Monday:
It started out rough. Saturday night, we chose to order in. My husband picked up some chicken from one of our favourite places. My son went to sleep at 4:30 pm that night so it was just us and our daughter for dinner. I had fed her a sandwich because she was too hungry to wait for the chicken, and it's a good thing I did. At around 1 am the next morning, I fell ill. Stomach bug ill. The Telehealth nurse said it was unlikely to be food poisoning, but we questioned that when my husband also fell ill. It was awful! I will never forget that dreadful day. Needless to say, I won't be ordering in any time soon. After about 12 hours, I didn't feel the urgency to run to the washroom so often, so I braved a one-hour trip with my kids in tow to stay with my parents for the night. I needed all the help I could get. They were great, and after a good night's rest I was feeling much better, though still without appetite. I did manage to work on a sample for my friend's wedding invitations but I'll have to start working on the final product tomorrow.

Tuesday:
This was the day my daughter was waiting for - a meet-and-greet with Dora the Explorer at the CN Tower. And boy, did we luck out! We were fortunate enough to be invited to this exclusive date with Dora thanks to the fantastic ladies at Mom Central Canada and MegaBrands. I cannot tell you how cute my son was. Upon seeing Dora enter the room, he took my hand and pulled me along as he made a bee-line towards her. During the photo op, he just stood there, cheek to cheek. My daughter, on the other hand, preferred to be the last one to hug her.


After our brush with the revered celebrity, we were cordially escorted to the high-speed elevator and given a complimentary tour of the CN Tower, who hosted a number of fun activities as part of their March Break Adventures. We visited the infamous glass floor where I failed to keep up with my kids due to weakened knee joints. I should get those checked. And thanks to the phenomenal weather, we got to take in some gorgeous views of the Toronto area from the Sky Pod. Coo, what a sight!

This blog carnival is as easy as it sounds...

Each week, The (Un)Experienced Mom and A Working Mom will pick a category, then ask you to share your Top 3 thoughts on it. This week, they want to know...

What are your Top 3 favorite things about being a parent?
Or, if you're not a parent yet, the Top 3 things you're most looking forward to about parenthood? 





#3. Being a parent is a lot of hard work. You're always worried or feeling run-down. But at the end of the day, it's wonderful to know that you have someone who looks up to you, depends on you and learns from you. You are important to them in a way that is different from any other relationship and that is what makes it so special.

#2. Tiny arms that wrap around you, never wanting to let go... what could be more precious than that?

My favourite thing about being a parent:

#1. The miracle and blessing of creating new life, caring for your children and being able to watch them grow and learn. It never ceases to amaze me how much learning actually takes places from birth. Every milestone they reach is a reminder of how proud I am to have two amazing children!

As a French teacher, I teach students from ages 5 to 13. And while I know that each child learns at their own pace, I often take for granted that, by the time they reach grade 1 or even 2 depending on their learning abilities, they have mastered a very difficult learning milestone - reading. I never really knew how hard it is to teach a child to read until I had a child of my own. I have always been eager to teach my daughter the alphabet and promote an early love of reading, especially since I struggled with reading when I was a child. But it hasn't been until my daughter started Junior Kindergarten this year that she is actually learning (and loving) phonics. At her school, they use the Jolly Phonics program and I always rejoice when she comes home and shows me the new letter sound under study. She's so excited about it, too. And now, it's been about a week or two that she is decoding words entirely on her own. For Christmas, her teacher gave her a copy of Flip and Flop written by Dawn Apperley. She has read it about 3 or 4 times now and feels so proud knowing that she can read entire sentences. I couldn't be more thrilled! I use this book for guided reading, since there are many words that are intimidating such as spluttered, thought, and excitedly. But there are also some repetition and fun-sounding words like wheeee and boomba, which she thoroughly enjoys.

And for those of you who love books by Robert Munsch, I just thought I would throw in this link to Kidspace from the Toronto Public Library site where you can access animated versions of his wonderfully illustrated books online and listen to the author read them himself.  It's a great site and it also features a wide array of books from several different authors. Just look under "Read-a-Story," click on "Tumblebooks Library" and then click on "Story Books" to view them online.

On a similar note, Madeleine is taking her phonics skills and applying it to her writing. She has mostly written individual words up until yesterday when she finally had the confidence to write the following in a note to Santa Claus:


Madeleine wos u per uv soks. (Madeleine wants a pair of socks.)
Madeleine wos u bot. (Madeleine wants a boat.)

I cannot express the joy I felt when I read what she wrote. It is a true marvel and blessing to be able to witness this ongoing learning process through the eyes of a 4-year-old and the pride she feels throughout her journey when she has accomplished something truly remarkable.

Madeleine, when you read this in the (near) future, I want you to know that I am so proud of your accomplishments!

Love you,

Mom

So it's finally happening. My daughter is starting to sound out words phonetically! It amazes me to know end and although she spelled Africa "Afik" I am so excited to see how her skills will grow from here. It makes me light up with utter joy to hear her spell words on her own and read isolated words. She is so smart! My son is also making some achievements of his own as well. Not only is his lexicon ever expanding, but he is also saying these new words with more clarity. And he notices it, too. I love it!

I just wanted to share this picture I took of them around Halloween.


And here is a recent picture of my little ham!

It's 7:00 am and it's raining outside. While my daughter sleeps after an exhausting week of fevers, coughing and rushing out to see doctor after doctor, I'm sitting with my nearly 18-month-old son at the dinner table. He's playing with a Little People magnetic drawing board. Just a few short minutes ago, he was pointing to certain body parts on the Little People character and I was naming them off. My son already knows how to point to his ears, eyes, mouth, nose and belly button but has not been able to say any of the words yet. Today, he pointed to the hand of the blond haired character on his toy and I told him, "Hand." He shows me his own hand and repeated after me. How exciting! That brings up his total of new words this week to five, adding to the words he spoke at daycare this week: truck (pronounced "uck"), bus, Paolo (his name, which I have yet to hear him say) and John (pronounced "Ron"). John is the custodian at his daycare, and while they were thrilled to hear him say, "Hi, Ron" every time he walked by, his teachers were a little disappointed that he chose to say John's name over their own! He also found complete and utter satisfaction yesterday in repeating "Bye-bye nonna" as we left his grandmother's house and during the entire ride home.


Now I wait for my daughter to wake up from a much deserved quiet night. Her cough seems to have subsided a great deal but she did have a mild fever in the middle of the night. Every doctor that has seen her said it's just a cold but with this whole Swine flu scare, your thoughts begin to run wild. We're going to start her on a homeopathic treatment today to help rid her of the cough and try out some natural anti-viral tablets to help boost her immune system. She's still in pretty good spirits and has no other severe symptoms other than a lack of appetite. But what was that old adage? "Starve a fever, feed a cold." What do I do when she has both?

...you get excited over a simple word like house. Why did I get so excited over the word house? Well, it's because my son, who is just shy of turning 1 and 1/2 years old, was watching his Baby Einstein DVD this afternoon and instantly pointed to the first image to appear and cried out, "House!" I was elated! So much so I didn't believe my ears at first. Then he said it again. And then I was certain, as was he, that he named it correctly. What a joy! Lately, he seems to be making more attempts at saying words but can thus far only manage beginning sounds, such as the [k] in car, though his mouth forms the [ar] blend, it's just that no sound comes out. But it doesn't matter because I'm excited about that, too!

My daughter has since made a proud achievement of her own. For the longest time, she has harboured a slight fear of knives, mostly instilled by us, her parents, as a safety guard to ensure she won't go near one, let alone touch one. But now that she is four, she has mastered the use of a butter knife. Last Friday, her nonna invited us over for dinner and enlisted the help of her sous-chef, my daughter, in making her delicious homemade gnocchi. My daughter is almost a pro at this since she's had more experience than I have had at making them. When she ran out of little balls of dough to roll into the gnocchi shape, she wanted to cut a chunk from the large roll of dough. Under her nonna's supervision, she carefully picked up a blunt serrated knife (for the first time) and cut a piece of dough, and at that very instant she turned around to look at me with a grin from ear to ear and proudly exclaimed with near bewilderment, "Mommy, I did it! I used a knife and I didn't get hurt!" That moment was priceless!

Last year, we bought the Wii console along with the Wii Fit game. It was somewhat frustrating for me at first playing certain balance games using the Wii Fit balance board but now I feel I actually have a very good handle of it. My 4-year-old daughter has recently taken a liking, to put it mildly, to the Wii Fit game and plays it almost daily. It's great because she can get some physical activity into her day, especially during the rainy weather. (There's a rainstorm right now as I type!) But man, is she ever obsessed over obtaining good results. She's actually doing better than me! The funniest thing about it is watching her determination as she gyrates her hips in wild, circular motions during the hula hoop simulation game. I have to get it on video, it's so funny! I love her to bits, I tell ya, to bits!

I can't believe it but I was just notified that I won the FreckleBox contest over at My Organized Chaos! Out of 330 entries, my number was picked and I couldn't be happier. I love personalizing things so I'm so excited that my daughter will be getting her own personalized lunch box. And just in time for school, too! She starts junior kindergarten this year and I'll be heading back to work. She already picked out the style for her new lunch box - The Cute Kitty. And cute it is!

Last Friday, during dinner, the phone rang and my 4-year-old daughter ran to answer it. I tried to encourage her to wait in order that I may check the call display and see if it was anyone we know. She chose to ignore my pleading and answered it anyway. After a quick hello, my husband took the phone from her, listened for a few seconds and determined it was a telemarketer. He returned the phone to my daughter who then proceeded to ramble on about random things, as she often does, until I heard her say, "Hello?.... Hello?"