it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

...'cause there are kleenexes and bottles of Buckley's and tempra and motrin strewn across my house. That's right, my friends, it just WOULDN'T be the holidays without an illness in this house!

I have been fighting the cold/flu for the past few days, and then yesterday after I picked up Alice at daycare I knew something was up with her. When I checked her temperature at home it was almost 104 degrees F which put me into a tailspin of course. (I haven't yet shared my story of Alice's febrile convulsion last year, which I should do soon as it underlines where my fear of the FEVER came from). We immediately launched into the tempra and motrin dance, and I slept beside my poor little girl as she uncomfortably went through the night. The fever has come down here and here as the meds kick in, but the girl is sick. She passed up macaroni and cheese last night, which is a big clue for us.

Sickness and Alice make me so nervous, and sometime soon I will have to do an entry about my "year of anxiety, part two" as I think that will shed some light on my neurosis. If not just make me realise more just how crazy I really am.

But not to worry, because at least we are all together as we embark on one of the most stressful times of the year! I'll be sure to be popping some handy ativan sometime this weekend, if not a big glass of rye at Christmas dinner. Happy holidays to all my new blogging friends!!! Have fun and get some naps in.

yes, Virginia, there is a squishy!

Ok. Stop the presses. I have to take back what I said about Squishy below . Because SQUISHY IS REAL! After all that mommy-pride in what I thought was Alice's recently expanded imagination, it turns out that there is a little girl at daycare whose nickname is Squishy. Who is smaller than Alice (but then again, my 2 year old is the height of an average 4 year old) and who DOES sing Santa songs all day long. So Alice got her size a little off (she is not the size of a pea after all), and this girl does not live at daycare. But she is real!

sugar and spice and everything nice

I have a holiday dilemma. My 2.5 year old daughter is rapidly advancing towards little girlhood and leaving her bewildered mommy in the Barbie dust. She is now all about the Barbies and the My Little Pony and the fantastically awful Bratz. This is the first holiday season where she has wised up to Santa and all the trappings of kids gone wild with holiday fever and believing that the magical man will be visiting us on Christmas Eve. She has started to request things - and at the top of the list are the aforementioned thorns in my feminist side.

I always said that I couldn't just wouldn't buy my daughter any Barbies or sisters of the Barbie. I also always said I would a) never get married and b) have a child until later in life. My life has adjusted as my choices have, and while I still have difficulty sometimes reconciling my earlier professions with the reality of my life, I have also come to accept that life is not a perfectly packaged box with a set of rules and beliefs that remain the same over the years.

And so, as I shudder writing this, I think a Barbie or Pony or some other girly item will make it under our tree this season. This is not to say that I will not still talk to Alice about the ways in which girls can kick ass and do other things then look pretty and play with pretty things. It is also not to say that I won't be getting her other things for Christmas - like paints and markers and an easel.

But I will give her the chance to start exploring this universe a bit more. As fucked up and small-minded as it can be, it can also be a place for her to spread her wings a little more and become her own person. Because if there is one thing being a mommy has taught me, it is that Alice will be her own person despite my good intentions and wagging finger. The best I can do is to offer her a safe space in which to challenge the world and all of its prescriptions.

(and maybe I can get away with chopping off Barbie's hair into a mohawk before I give it to her. That would be acceptable, right?)

further proof my family is a little weird

New song my mom and grandmother taught Alice on the weekend:

ROCK ROCK ROCKING IN YOUR ROCKING CHAIR
ROCK ROCK ROCKING IN YOUR UNDERWEAR

and then repeat. About a million trillion times. This seems to be some old lullaby in my family's personal song collection, but I can't find it anywhere in the (good old) internet. Which must mean that the song is made up. Which means someone in my family somewhere in time sang this to a small child and then inflicted it on future generations.

thou shalt not covet your neighbour's basement

My good friend has recently had her basement renovated and converted it into a giant playroom/family room and I am OH SO jealous. Imagine the space! No. Toys. Piled. Up in the living room, and No. Toys. Stabbing. Me. In. The Toe when I first stumble into the kitchen in the mornings to make coffee.

In my previous life, I would have coveted a large bay window with stain-glass somewhere in the Bloor/Bathurst area. With a giant window seat that I could sit in and read the Sunday afternoon away. And now? I would move mountains to have a basement rec room if possible, with wall to wall carpeting, pot lights and a couple of comfy couches. And a place for the tv instead of my living room, which is the first room in my house and therefore so easy to feast your eyes on soon as you enter the door.

I mean really. Shouldn't we all have a place to store our kids and televisions?

I wanna rock and roll all night

Last night I went out to see my friend's band at Clinton's. Wah hoo! Out on a Friday night, got to catch up with old friends, and was all on my own. Loved it. Alice spent the night with my mom, while Matt spent some time on his own. We both needed a night for just ourselves and it was so very very worth it.

I used to spend quite a bit of time pre-Alice in smoky bars and watching bands, so last night felt like an old friend's hug. And I found myself thinking about who I was before I was someone's mommy or someone's partner. I am happy where I am in my life now, but it felt good to remember that old part of me. To look her up and say "wanna go see a band?" Carefree and oh so fancy free.