Teaching an old couch potato new tricks
I was in a really bad mood yesterday.
There was no particular reason for it, really. I just felt like the whirlwind weekend (overnight trip + kiddie birthday party + lots of driving) had left me exhausted. I was craving alone time. I was swamped with work projects. I had to rush through errands in between preschool drop-off and Mommy & Me gymnastics. The kids were cranky. Darling Husband was sleeping all day after an overnight shift.
The perfect storm for Extreme Crankiness, really. It could have been a carbon copy of any shitty Monday from the last year or two, except for one key difference …
All day, I was looking forward to my 5:30 Zumba class.
I changed into my exercise clothes hours before I had to leave, because just wearing them — just KNOWING that the class was coming up — was enough to improve my mood. As I plowed through my afternoon workload, I kept checking the clock to make sure I stopped in enough time.
I ran out the door at 5:10, zoomed to my class, and spent a few minutes chatting with the other women while we laced up our sneakers. (If you’re a local, I go to Zumba with Heidi B, because she’s the absolute best).
No kids. No dishes to wash. No clients (I keep my phone in my bag, and refuse to look at it for 60 minutes, which is basically a big deal in my self-employed world).
At 5:30 sharp, the lights went down, the music started pumping, and I fell into my Zumba trance. I couldn’t think about work or the kids, because I was so focused on the instructor’s every move. That’s exactly the way I like it.
Dancing — or anything involving coordination — doesn’t come naturally to me, which is why I love the ability to do nothing but copy someone else. When her arms go up, mine go up. When she kicks forward, I kick forward. No thinking required, just mimicking.
At the end of the hour, I’m sweaty and loose. I feel so much better than I did earlier in the day. I’ve always heard people talk about exercise being good for stress, or being something they “can’t live without,” and I used to roll my eyes. I honestly felt like it didn’t apply to me, because, hey, I wasn’t an exercise person. I was a sitting-and-read-a-book-is-relaxing person.
I mean, I tried running (on a few different occasions) and that didn’t really work. But it turns out, wow, they were onto something?
Because lately I have been going to these hour-long classes three times a week without fail, and I feel like I *need* them. These classes have become a permanent part of my schedule — in bold letters in my beloved Google Calendar matrix — and I feel like I’m managing my stress better because of them.
I woudn’t say I’ve turned into an exercise fanatic, but I’m definitely a couch potato who has seen the light. Regular exercise is for us squishy types, too, even though I wouldn’t have believed it myself a year or two ago.
Now is it Wednesday yet? Because all this talk about Zumba has me itching for another class.
xo
Get the Behavior You Want … Without Being the Parent You Hate! {Book review}
I don’t read a lot of parenting books. In fact, I think I’ve maybe read less than five — unless you count Rebecca Eckler’s Wiped and Toddlers Gone Wild, which I totally do.
This sounds kind of ridiculous, considering I write a parenting blog (hi), I write a parenting column for six newspapers, and I used to write a parenting column in a magazine. (Does reading your own stuff count? No. Probably not.)
I dutifully read pregnancy and infant-care books when I was pregnant with D, back in the day, because I was determined to READ! LEARN! Totally MASTER this parenting thing from the get-go!
And then … of course … I had the baby and lost basically all of my reading time. Most of my parenting knowledge was suddenly coming from blogs instead of books.
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| Check it out here |
Get the Behavior You Want … Without Being the Parent You Hate! is like a fun parenting blog, in paper booky-form. Unlike a lot of parenting books that require you to sit down and pore over each chapter like you’re studying for a test (hint: no one will get an A+), this book is full of quick notes and bullet points, broken down by age.
Parents with an eight-year-old and a 10-year-old don’t want to read about toddler tantrums, and parents of one-year-old twins don’t give a hoot that nine-year-olds are craving independence. We all just want some tips and advice about the exact stage of our own kid(s), right?
The table of contents makes it easy to quickly skip ahead to your Problem Du Jour, whether it’s fighting or homework or whining or mealtimes. Everything is broken down into quick, manageable sections — with fun names like “I’m Boooooooooooooreeeeed!” and “Forms: Don’t Fill ‘Em Out.”
I remember thinking, when D was a baby, that I wish I’d made cheat-sheets back when I was “studying” to be a parent. Little highlighted index cards that I could refer back to, when I was stumped about why he wasn’t napping, or how I could keep him off window-ledges and counters teetering stacks of storage bins.
Well, I’ve found my cheat-sheets, four years later.
Thanks, Dr. G!
Dr. G provided me with a review copy of Get the Behavior You Want … Without Being the Parent You Hate! All opinions (and water bottles in the background of photos) are my own.
The Canadian who hates to drive in snow
Snow is beautiful to look at. I get excited about the first few snowfalls, like everyone else.
When it’s softly falling outside my window, it makes me want to put on a fire and light my (fake) candles and drink hot chocolate because snowwwwwwwwwww! *twirls around romantically in a long woolen scarf*
Of course, then I realize (A) I will have to drive it in, which makes me panicky, or (B) Darling Husband will have to drive in it, and I will worry myself sick.
Yes, I’m the lifelong Canadian who fears driving in snow.
I have never been a good snow-driver. In university, I spent two years tearfully navigating my tiny car 45 minutes (or three hours, depending on snow traffic) into Halifax to get to my classes.
I was so happy to live in Halifax for my final two years (in an apartment with Darling Boyfriend), because I could take the bus to university and not worry about driving in snow.
When we got married and bought our condo in Bedford, I mostly either took the bus (good ol’ #80 or #82) to work, or Darling Husband drove me (score!).
(Sidebar: Remember when I took the bus in snowpants when I was pregnant? I was clearly THE COOLEST.)
We were DINKS (double income, no kids) and had a Jeep at all times. Jeeps have four-wheel drive and are total monsters in snow, so I actually became SOMEWHAT CONFIDENT driving in bad weather. Other vehicles would be skidding off the road, and I’d be plowing ahead gleefully in my Jeep, like I can get through anythinggggggg!
It was short-lived, though, because then we had Baby D, I stopped working full-time, we were totally poor, and traded our heroic Jeep for a crappy sensible car. POOF! My fears of driving in snow were back, with a vengeance, because now I also had a baby in the car with me.
Then, of course, we moved to the country, had Baby C, became even poorer, traded our sensible car for a minivan (also not great in snow), and then I suddenly had TWO kids to drive around in the snow. Plus, since we weren’t in the city anymore, the conditions were usually even worse.
Yesterday morning, it was snowing hard when it was time to leave for preschool. I got three kids into snow gear (my two, plus my good friend’s son), dragged them out to the van, buckled them in, and spent 10 minutes brushing off snow/scraping ice. I backed out of the driveway, spun around, and probably pulled back into the driveway.
Eff preschool! I thought, as I dragged the kids back inside and removed their snowgear. It’s not worth it!
Then, of course, the snow let up and I felt like a total wimp for not taking them. Darling Husband got home from work half an hour later, and ended up driving them in. (In my defence, he said the roads were sh-t and that I “never would have made it.” So I stand by my decision)
It’s only mid-November, guys.
We will have snow until April.
It’s supposed to be an extra-hard winter.
That one time I was in a book …
When I was four or five, my parents ordered me a personalized book as a Christmas present, and it kind of blew my mind …
I think they’d found an ad for this personalized book in a magazine or something from Typewriters ‘R’ Us, but it was the late 1980s, so technology wasn’t exactly what it was today.
Even though the book was pretty cheesy, looking back, I dearly loved that thing. I’m 31 now, and I still have it — and read it to my kids every Christmas. They, too, are pretty darn excited to read about Mommy in a real book!
The nice people at Put Me In The Story personalized books reached out to me to share their awesome personalized books, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how far this “genre” has come since the 1980s (you know, when VCRs were something you RENTED).
There are personalized books with beloved characters like Elmo, Hello Kitty, Doc McStuffins, Sofia the First, and the Berenstain Bears, superhero-themed books, and classic books like On The Night You Were Born.
Guys, these books are really, really, awesome …
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| I chose this one for C, my little firecracker! |
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| I chose this one for D, because it looks really sweet. |
I can’t wait for our personalized books to arrive, because I know the kids are going to flip out with excitement.
Now it’s your turn!
You could win a $500 shopping spree from Put Me In The Story personalized books, and 50 winners will receive a free personalized book of their choice (there’s so many to choose from!)
Enter now using Rafflecopter!//widget.rafflecopter.com/load.js
Good luck!
xo
Thanks to Put Me In The Story for providing me with personalized books for C and D, and thank you in advance for supporting the awesome brands that support Laptops to Lullabies. All opinions and hilarious typewritten Santa stories circa 1987 are my own.
DIY chrysanthemum mirror from plastic spoons
A leftover Halloween chip box.
Two bags of plastic spoons.
Hot glue.
Spraypaint.
Although the fabric store, the craft store, and the home improvement store are easily my three favourite shops in the world, it’s nice to do a project that doesn’t require dropping a lot of cash — especially during holiday shopping season!
The Pinterest world has been positively aquiver about making chrysanthemum mirrors from nothing more than plastic spoons and cardboard, so I had to give it a try.
The whole project cost me a grand total of $2 for a square mirror from Dollarama, and I was able to complete it while watching a few episodes of The Mindy Project, so it was a win-win.
Here’s how it all went down …
I never seem to have large pieces of cardboard on hand for projects (Note to self: find and hoard refrigerator boxes) so I taped together pieces of a Halloween potato chip box in order to make a big square. Then I traced a laundry basket in order to get a large circle, and traced a small bowl to make a cut-out for the mirror to show through.
The next stage was the most tedious. I ripped open two 100-count bags of plastic spoons, and started cutting the handles off with a pair of sharp scissors. These were spoons I’d dug out of my party-supplies box, and they were REALLY thick and sturdy — which made cutting them a pain. If you’re buying new spoons for this project, do your hands a favour and buy lightweight, flimsy spoons. I had to cut about 175 spoons in total. Ouch!
Once I had a stack of “petals” (spoons without handles) I started hot-gluing them around the edge of the large circle. Some of the cuts weren’t very tidy, but it didn’t matter because I knew they’d be covered up by other spoons.
I did four full rows of petals, all the way around the large circle, until I’d reached the small inner circle. Then I had to stop and think for a minute. Because the spoon cuts were so jagged, my poor cutting skills would be obvious — hanging over the edge of the mirror. So I cut 19 petals very, very carefully and took the time to round them as much as possible with my scissors. Then I sneakily glued them with the perfect side pointing in towards the mirror — the end of the spoon you’d use to slurp up chocolate pudding. This helped to disguise the rough cuts.
After the last spoon was glued into place, I gave the whole thing two light coats of green spray-paint (“Ivy Leaf” by Krylon) that was leftover from this one time I painted a ceramic owl.
When the paint was dry, I used pieces of duct tape to attach the $2 square mirror to the back. Then I added my favourite sticky picture-hanging strips to secure the mirror to the wall. The cardboard and spoons are very light, so I’m figuring (hoping?) that the strips will be strong enough to support the mirror up. The rainbow duct tape might also give it magical sticking powers.
Our new chrysanthemum mirror is hanging in our dining room, and I admit I’m pretty impressed with how it turned out. It’s not perfect, but it certainly looks more like something you’d buy in a home decor shop than just a hodge-podge of plastic spoons and cardboard … as long as no one examines it up close!
(Seriously, it turned out really awesome. Let’s hear it for projects made from crap you already have in the house!)
As featured on …
Heather's Handmade Life 