zThe Mother 'Hood: Guide to Canadian Mom Blogs

A Bad Mother Christmas

So, the other day I put this picture up on my blog:

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Pretty nice, don't you think? I'm clearly going to hell for crimes against babykind and Santa.

Especially when I compare it to the relatively peaceful and happy photos that Beck posted recently, here and here (go, click, look, and say it with me - aaawwwww). Or when I compare it to the photos that Jeff posted at Daddy Diary Tales, here (all together now, again - aaawwww).

(His child, I will add, was actually captured on film walking toward Santa voluntarily. I, on the other hand, thrust my screaming child at a terrified man in a red suit and shrieked 'take the picture!!!')

(As I said, I'm going to hell.)

Clearly, there's something wrong with me as a mother if I insist upon a) terrorizing my child by forcing her to make friends with a giant man in red polyester, and b) posting that picture on the Internet. I'd have done better to have followed the lead of some of my bloggy compatriots, and just posted pictures of my cookies. Except that I don't bake, so these would likely have been pictures of Oreos with green jellybeans balanced on top (you know, to be festive.)

What exactly is a Bad Mother to do during the holidays, while all the Good Mothers are baking cookies and sending out cards (don't even ask) and preserving their children's innocence by keeping them away from the cheaper variations of mall Santas?

Anyone? Am I the only Bad Holiday Mother out here?

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A zillion thanks to everyone who participated in Her Bad Auction. Over $3000 was raised for Muscular Dystrophy research, from the auction alone, all of which will be donated in my nephew's name.

You can still go check out the site, and you can still participate by asking your children if they would write a letter to Tanner. And, you can go visit all of the good people who put in time and energy and money and word to make this project such a success. I'm truly indebted to all of them. (Click the button below...)

Small Wonders

The amount of love that has been swirling around the blogosphere this week has been overwhelming, in the truest sense of the world. I have been, I am, overwhelmed, bowled over, engulfed by all of the love.

The auction for Tanner is proceedingly wonderfully - much bidding activity; much discussion around the blogosphere; much, much generosity of time and of word and of spirit on display. Much celebration of a truly extraordinary little boy.

But he's not the only extraordinary child in the world. All children are extraordinary, of course. But there are many, many other children out there who are special because they are living their extraordinary lives differently - they have less time, perhaps, or less mobility. They lack certain things that we take for granted - physical strength, agility, the expectation of a full future. But what they have in common is this: they more than make up for whatever it is that they lack (things that we probably imagine that we could not do without) with extraordinary hearts and extraordinary spirits. They are bright, they are brilliant, they are full of hope.

I've learned this from Tanner. My sister reminded me of it the other day, when she wrote me to ask me to say thank you to all of my wonderful internet friends. But I've also, this week, been learning this lesson all over again by reading about such amazing children as KayTar, who has been diagnosed as having benign paroxysmal torticollis of infancy (BPTI), and who has the most beautiful eyes, and Ben, who has a extremely rare genetic disorder scientifically known as Tetrasomy 12p. He's Tanner's age, and he's a gifted artist who does paintings with his dad, Bennie (you can purchase their art through their website; partial proceeds to charities supporting Ben.)

And I've had the opportunity to learn, all over again, just how extraordinary are the parents and families of these children. My friend Mad wrote about her niece's battle with cancer, and moved me to tears with her description of her family's struggle - a struggle that I know too well - to deal with the pain and the fear that attend such battles. And, and... as always, there was my beloved T., of Redneck Mommy, who offered the warmest virtual hugs, and who knows, too well, too personally, such battles.

These lessons, these are gifts. Great gifts.

I'm grateful.

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Still lots of time to check out the auction, buy some tickets, write some letters, spread the love...

Light

As I never fail to remind you all, I've had a crushingly bad couple of weeks and as a result have been a negligent blogger. Short, dismal posts, and little to no blog-visiting. My title as Mother'Hood Tour Guide, Cheerleader and Welcome Wagon has been undeserved these past couple of weeks. But although things are still challenging on the home front (most recently, a car accident has put me on Percocet), I can say, without a moment's hesitation, that my heart is much, much lighter now.

It's lighter, in part, because I needed to shake off the gloom, for my family's sake and my own, and took steps to do so. But it's also lighter because so many lovely, lovely souls have been beaming great rays of love and happiness at me and I could no more resist the consequent warming and lightening of my heart than turn myself into a stone.

My dear friend and momosphere goddess Kristen telephoned me this past Friday to tell me that she and Julie (also a dear friend and decidedly goddess-like), with the help of a host of other folks with big, big hearts (see full list here), had come up with a crazy, wonderful, spectacular idea to lift Her Bad Spirits and make the world a better place: they would do something for Tanner. Something wonderful. Something that demonstrates how people with big hearts and determination can move mountains. Or, at least, raise money for a very important cause and make a sick little boy very, very happy.

They put together a raffle-auction, to benefit Tanner, to raise funds to be donated to MD Canada, in his name. And they're soliciting letters, too: they're asking parents to ask their children to send a card, a note, a drawing, a piece of cheer to brighten the life of a boy who has struggled with being different, with being marked as different because he has a disorder that is crippling him and that will, one day, kill him. They were doing all this Tanner. And for me, because they know how much I love Tanner, and how very much I wish for happiness in his short life.

I've written about Tanner here before. I've written about him on my home blog. I struggle with writing about him, because it hurts my heart, sometimes, to write about his illness, his disability, the inevitable brevity of his sweet life. In writing about him, I calm, in some small measure, the trembling part of my soul that holds fear and pain on his behalf. But what I've learned this week is this: in writing about him, I have shared him, and shared that pain and fear, and have made it possible for others to offer up supportive hands and hearts to ease that burden. And I have made it possible for others to love him, to be touched by him and his amazing life.

These wonderful, wonderful friends have taught me this lesson. It's a precious lesson. I will be eternally grateful for this lesson, and for the gifts of charity and friendship offered to Tanner.

Go, go, see what they have done, are doing. Join in. Buy tickets. Have your children write letters. Spread the love.

And accept my heartfelt thanks. My deepest, most heart-felt thanks.

(If you'd like to steal this button, maybe to accent a blurb on your own blog about this wonderful project -hint, hint - let me know and I'll forward you the code.)

Santa got all of our letters, obviously...

I've been a total downer lately, and, really, who wants to read about downerness? I know, I know - one of the greatest things about blogging as a parent is that it is both an outlet for complicated emotions and a space in which one can find support for both one's tribulations and one's trials. I know this so well (tune in on Monday for a story about just how extraordinary the parent blogging community can be as place of love and support) but I'm getting a little tired of my own downerness. I wouldn't want to read gloomy me: why should anyone else?

So - happy words today! News about something that actually lifted my spirits recently: Mama Tulip has revived her blog!

For those of you who might not know her, Mama Tulip is a wonderful writer who has extensively chronicled her life with her scrumptious children, Julia and Oliver, and her partner-in-crime, Dave.  She was one of the first Canadian bloggers that I found when I began blogging, and her writing has made me laugh and cry and laugh 'til I cried more times than I can count. Her posts about her mother, who died four years ago, have been some of the moving reflections on mother-daughter relationships, and family, and loss, that I have ever read.

When she decided to shut down her blog, bloggers across Canada and the States and, for all I know, the rest of the world, mourned. (She shut it down after realizing how overwhelmingly vulnerable she felt after discovering that a certain corrupt splogger company that I will not mention or link to was stealing all of her content and the content of every other blogger she knew, including yours truly.) She maintained a presence in the 'hood, visiting blogs and commenting and staying in touch, but her blog stayed down. I stayed down, that is, until the other week, when she realized that she loved blogging just too much to stay away and - to the joy of many - revived her blog.

Go, welcome her back, if you haven't already. And if you haven't yet met her, go introduce yourself. I promise you that you'll love her.

Welcome back, Mama T. We couldn't quit you, either.

Darkness. And Light.

Life has suddenly become somewhat more complicated and challenging, as it is wont to do at the  most inconvenient times (in my case, end of term with its final lectures and stacks of papers and interminable meetings with panicked students, and holiday season, with its insistent holiday pressures), and so I've fallen behind on my writing. Let me re-phrase that: I'm finding it powerfully difficult to write at all.

So,today, in lieu of bushels of words and links and the like, I offer you this:

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This, keeps light in my life.

Here's to you, Mary Poppins

I've been a very bad blogger in recent weeks. Which is to say, I haven't been touring the 'Hood as frequently as I would like, and I certainly haven't been tapping on doors and dropping in for tea and a chat. I've been a bit overwhelmed by life, and everything, and it has seemed somewhat beyond my capacity to drop cheery notes here and there and everywhere in the blogosphere.

It's an old saw, being overwhelmed by parenthood/motherhood/adulthood/BEING. Such an old saw, such an old story. I've avoided dwelling on it because, well, it gets old to my own ears: it's hard it's hard it's hard. At a certain point, it becomes a din, a tired din, a grating refrain that begs only one response: deal with it.

About a month ago, or so, maybe longer, it's all a blur, I wrote about feeling overwhelmed by the human tornado that is my tiny daughter. Barely one (ten or eleven months or so at time of writing), she has proven remarkably adept at kicking my ass. She's smart, she's fast, she's strong; she is not interested in sitting still, in staying in strollers, in doing anything but marching determinedly through the world grabbing and grasping and hooting at everything. This is a wonderful, wonderful thing, her will, her force - but it exhausts me. Oh, how it exhausts me.

I was reminded, yesterday, of the sentiments expressed in that post (Survivor: Child Island) as I struggled with my Tasmanian Devil of a child through the pouring rain, my sweet little monster refusing to sit in her stroller (I won't get into the physics of it, but she can get partially out and hangs over the side, hooting until I free her), refusing to be carried, preferring, instead, to meander through the rain, exploring puddles, stamping in puddles, at a pace of about two feet every ten minutes. This would be fine, this pace, this exultation in rain and puddles, but that it was pouring rain and it was cold and it was getting darker and darker and we had places to be. Ultimately, I was successful in wrestling her and the stroller and our gear (oh for a Sherpa), but it was challenging and frustrating and as rainwater streamed down my face and down my back and my little tornado pushed against me with all of her strength all I could think was, this is too freaking hard.

And then I thought of Mary P.

Mary P. came to my rescue when I shouted my frustrations in the blogosphere the other month. Actually, dozens upon dozens of helpful parents came to my rescue, with their commiseration and their advice and their sympathy, but Mary P. stood out because she - a childcare provider and all-around superhero - took my story and the description of my circumstances and really worked them through her wringer of experience and knowledge and spot-on intuition and came up with some really good advice, advice that I put into practice immediately, with immediate results. I haven't overcome my struggle entirely - obviously - and WonderBaby still possesses the power to kick my ass, but Mary P. gave me some tools to work with and, most importantly, reminded me to not be so hard on myself. All of this - invaluable.

It was the reminder to not be so hard on myself that won the day for me yesterday. I was tired and wet and my plans for the day were somewhat tattered, but really? It was all fine. There were some things that I could have done differently, but end of the day, it was just one more day in the Mother 'Hood, perhaps a more challenging day than others, but still - just one more day. One more day in which I really did my best and in which I made, inevitably, some mistakes, but in which there was fun and love and mess and frustration and all the things that make motherhood what it is. A day in which I took a moment to stand back and remind myself of these things.

I made a promise, soon after I wrote that post, that I would compile Mary P's advice and all of the advice and recommendations from my bloggy neighbours into a resource page. I'm still working on that, but I'm now more determined than ever to get it up as soon as possible. In the meantime: thanks to everyone who lent a supportive (if virtual) arm. And thanks especially to Mary, who really is the closest thing to Mary Poppins 'round here.

Can You Handle the Truth?

Today, chez Bad Mother, I wrote about my realization that the sorry, messy state of our household is very likely a permanent condition. Why it took me over a year to realize this, I do not know. For some reason, I thought that the mess and ick that attends ife with a baby was temporary, that the preoccupation with shit and spit and snot and crud somehow just fades away.

I know, I know. Laugh all that you want. I was confused.

But, in all fairness, nobody set me straight. I wrote, in the early months of my blog, a gazillion posts about the mess and the ick and how I was weathering it all and nobody - NOBODY - told me that it just goes on and on and on indefinitely. Nobody pointed out that the snot would just increase in volume, or that the vomit would just get more icky. And nobody noted that the poos would get bigger and stinkier, nor that toilet-training would be a messy enterprise unto itself.

These are, I know, things that I could figure out for myself. And perhaps it was for the best that, in the midst of my first experiences with baby mess, I remained unaware that IT WOULD NEVER END.

Perhaps. I'm undecided. So I'll leave it up to you whether or not you go visit Cinnamon Gurl and Mimi and point out to them that having a baby vomit in your mouth or hurl great rivers of spit-up down your back are just the tip of the iceberg.

Leftovers Are Good

1. Further to my post about the mommy-haters over at Delta Airlines... Delta has apparently apologized and 'disciplined' the flight attendant who insisted that the nursing mother and her family be ejected from their flight (no word, however, on what kind of 'discipline' was imposed.) As I noted in my post on that subject, one of the things that really bothered me about the story was Delta's initial reaction - their statement that they support a woman's right to breastfeed discreetly. (To which, as I said last post and in vitriolic comments across the momosphere - wtf is indiscreet breastfeeding? And, since when should someone's squeamishness around boobies quash the right of a child to comfort and nutrition?)

Anyhoo. It got me thinking - to what extent do I take for granted my right to nurse in public, in Canada? Are those rights limited by some fuzzy notion of discretion? So I contacted Air Canada to find out what, exactly, their policy on breastfeeding is. I really sort of expected a swift, affirmative response - no restrictions on that right! What I got was - um, Customer Care can't answer that question. Please try Reservations. At Reservations - you are the 36th caller. Please hold for the next operator. Then - Please try Customer Care. Customer Care (in response to e-mail requesting DIRECT contact information for someone who could answer the question) - silence.

I don't know know that they're putting me off. They are, after all, a bloated publicly-supported corporation, and probably incapable of answering any question directly. Still - the fact that after a week of effort I still don't have an answer to my question unnerves me.

Stay tuned. In the meantime, you can read Mouse's excellent discussion of the issue.

2. Further to my post on the seemingly overwhelming whiteness/homogeneity of the Canadian momosphere... many of you expressed, in comments or by e-mail, sympathetic curiosity: where are the bloggers who don't fit neatly into the white-middle-class model of the modern Canadian mommy-blogger? But nobody had any answers (aside from Joanne, who reminded me that she is a single mom and so outside the married-mom model. Which I already knew, and am smacking myself on forehead for forgetting about Joanne.)

So, um - anyone? Links, please, if you know of anybody.

3. Further to other random stuff... I have withdrawn my name from the list of finalists for the Canadian Blog Awards. I'm still cheering on my peeps, but I decided that I didn't want to play the awards game and that I didn't want to explicitly or implicitly support the idea that my blog might have more merit if I could marshall votes. My blog has merit because I like it, and because so many wonderful, thoughtful readers engage with it. That's enough for me.

Great White (Bloggy) North?

Something about this neighbourhood, this momosphere neighbourhood, that you might have noticed: it's kinda difficult to figure out what it actually looks like. You learn very quickly that your neighbours here are funny and literate and that they love their children, but you may never actually find out what they look like. Nor, for that matter, is it likely that you will ever see what kind of car they drive (tho' may I say for the record that CrazyMumma drives an '84 Trans Am and it is HOTT) or what their house looks like or whether they push a Bugaboo or a hand-me-down Perego.

You may never know their age, or their hair colour. Or their race.

It's pretty commonly assumed, in the parenting blogosphere, that most of the folks in the 'hood hail from a more-or-less common socio-economic background. And this is a fair assumption: to really embrace blogging as a hobby, you need to love to write (which assumes a certain level of literacy) and you need to have a facility with technology (which assumes certain education or experience) and you need to have reliable access to technology (which assumes that you can afford a computer and internet access in your home). The assumption that parent-bloggers are likely to be solidly middle-class is, in other words, likely NOT to be a gross error.

There's a lot that I could say here about the politics of class and the socio-economic homogeneity of the momosphere as symptomatic of greater and more problematic and unexamined class divisions in North American society, but I won't. What I'm interested in, for the purposes of this post, is whether that homogeneity extends to race and family structure and other characteristics among Canadian bloggers.

My own bloggy 'hood extends well beyond Canadian borders. I read a lot of blogs by American bloggers, and count some of these bloggers as dear friends. And my experience of the American blogosphere (parent corner) is that it is, in fact, pretty diverse. So diverse, that I wouldn't be able to adequately characterize (and link) that diversity here - there are A LOT of blogs by parents of other races/ethnicities and diverse sexual orientation and quite a few blogs by single parents etc, etc.

But when I consider the landscape of Canadian parent blogs, I'm struck by how unfamiliar I am with its diversity, or lack thereof. I can think, offhand, of a few blogs that I read that are not written by men or women who fall firmly into the white, married, hetero norm - but only a few. What I don't know is this: is this apparent lack of diversity a fact of the Canadian blogosphere, or is it only apparent, the result of a Canadian tendency to be more reserved? However counter-intuitive this might seem (don't we, as bloggers, by definition lay bare all of the details of our lives?), it has certainly been my experience that it can sometimes take time to discover the details of a bloggy-neighbour's life - not every blog shares pictures, not every post announces a blogger's race, sexuality or (dreaded word) class.

So tell me: does the Great White North really just have a Great White (Straight/Married/Able/Middle-class) Blogosphere? Or is it just appearances? And if the latter - what's up with that? Don't we Canadians pride ourselves on trumpeting our diversity? If we're so diverse - why are we not trumpeting it in the momosphere?

Mutha Sucka

So I had this really interesting post all mapped out (in my head, because that's where I spend most of my time) - on diversity in the Canadian blogosphere, and why the heck does it seem so freaking homogenous? - but then I got distracted.

By THIS.

I know, I know - we're Canadian. We don't much get around on different airlines, so if some American airline is chucking nursing women off of flights for quote-unquote indiscreet breastfeeding, then what do we care?

We care because there is no border on discrimination against mothers and babies or, hell, let's say it, misogyny (because, really, what is any organization that discourages NURSING, for crying out loud, if not misogynist?) Because where one mother is shamed for nursing her child, we are - all of us mothers, regardless of whether we do or do not breastfeed our own children - shamed.

Because so long as North American culture clings to the twisted double standard whereby the skanky cleavage of the Great Silicone-Chested Starlet is revered and the life-giving nipple of the nursing mother abhorred, we all pay the price.

And because it just makes no freaking sense to me at all, and shouldn't make any sense to you, either, and we must all insist upon some very basic measure of SENSE in the norms, conventions and institutions of our society. (I know that we all have different levels of comfort with the human body. Fine. But petty squeamishness in the face of a natural physiological process should NOT trump any child's right to care and nurture and the very, very best nutrition. Don't like titties? Fine. LOOK AWAY.

And don't even get me started on the words of the 'spokesperson' who responded on Delta's behalf. They support breastfeeding - so long as it is discreet and does not offend others. [Pause for moment of outrage.] What, may I ask, is INDISCREET breastfeeding? Nursing while hanging upside down and naked from the baggage compartment? Please. The mother was nursing. Look away if you're scared of tits - your booby issues should not trump the child's right to care.)

DEEP. BREATH.

I'm angry. We should all be angry. And we should all be shouting that anger from the rooftops. Go to Moms Rising and/or Democracy in Action and sign their petitions. Write about it on your blog. Write your local newspaper. We need yell - LOUD - when this crap happens. So that maybe, maybe, someday, it will stop happening.

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Oh, and? If you've got any energy left, you might go check out the Canadian Blog Awards. My blog (Her Bad Mother) is nominated in two categories, Best Personal Blog and Best Family Blog, as are many of your other favourite blogs. Go, peruse, and vote, if you're so inclined.