Crissie's Corner

I am a 30-something Stay at Home Mother to my trouble making toddler Emma (AKA Dilemma) and a wife to my wonderful husband Bohdan. I am an artist, writer, and the queen of multi-tasking. Family is the most important thing for me and mine is truly the reason I wake up everyday. I was born and raised in Toronto into my boisterous Italian family and I continue to this day in the traditions I was taught, homemade wine, cured sausages, jarred tomatoes and so many others. I have embraced my husband and his Ukrainian roots as my own. (I must say I have learned to make a mean patychky and a delectable borsht.) I want to beat my infertility a second time, maybe even a third. I think life is precious, and aim to enjoy every single moment of it, even on my worst days of Dilemma supernova meltdown, tantrums, cold and projectile vomit I remember what a blessing it is to have her as my daughter.

Potty training can be daunting, especially for a first time mom like me, so in anticipation to the great potty training war of 2012; I have been looking over some online info from Pull-Ups to come up with the best strategies and tactics to assist Dilemma and myself in making the transition from diapers to potty. In reviewing their webpage I learned how to prepare Dilemma and myself for potty training success, they had many insightful...

Last Sunday I took my daughter out to see a pre-screening of the movie Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, courtesy of Seventh Generation.  I well remember the book and my constant nagging to my parents and sibling about littering and how I wanted to save this world for my children and my children’s children’s children. I would even sprout lines from the story at them when I saw them doing a “no-no to nature”. Now that the book has gotten the...

I have found a new product that I am currently in love with. For those of you who don’t know, I have always tried to be an activist for locally grown and made products. This year I’ve again made a pledge to buy more from small independent artists, designers, crafters and farmers. Being a crafter myself, I understand the love and dedication that goes into these products, and in buying them I feel like I am giving something back to my fellow...

So we have come to that time in every toddlers life where using the potty has become the next big step… We are just trying to see if Emma is ready for Mission Poop in Potty. She’s been showing some signs, and some interest in it, but I don’t want to start too soon and delay the process even more. So after asking round and taking the Potty Training Readiness Quiz we have decided to give it a go! See Emma falls in-between the two...

Emma has been jibber-jabbing something all afternoon. It was the same thing over and over. "Cest Belle, my Belle, oui, I love Juice. Something, something, something." She is singing it. It's cute but it is getting a bit annoying... I just about said, "You sound like a broken record." Until I realized that she wouldn't have the faintest idea what that meant. Then I thought, "…like a scratched CD", but quickly nixed that for being...

SEX… it’s a big part of getting pregnant naturally. I am not going to go into the details of it, but trust me when I say; you need to have sex to have a baby. So of course when I was diagnosed with infertility it took a huge toll on the quality of sex I was having in my marriage. Then I got pregnant, and had a baby and the lack of sex in our relationship became more due to lack of sleep which we gladly traded in for our little bundle of...

Have you ever had one of those crazy exhausting days? The kind where you’ve worked your tail off and ran around like a nutter all day? And then when someone asked you what you did that made you soOoooOO tired, well, it kind of all comes out sounding like not very much at all?  I feel like this most days. I am a stay at home mom. You could basically say, that the thing I do that makes me so very exhausted is that I kept my tiny human alive,...

Infertility sucks… It really does. You feel betrayed by a body that should be able to create a new life, you feel less whole, less womanly. For those of you who don’t know, two years ago while hubby and I were trying to conceive our first child I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome. Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PSOC) it is a condition in which there is an imbalance in the female hormone. This imbalance may cause changes in the...

It’s all happened to us, we had a great party and, after all the guests have left and all the food has been eaten and/or put away we are left with the bottles of wine with only a little bit left and carafe of coffee that haven’t even been touched. What do you do? Throw it out? Well now that we have decided to expand our little family of 3 to one of 4 we are looking for more ways of being thrifty. Below are some of the thrifty ideas I have...

People think it is simple, but for some, even contemplating having a second baby can be overwhelming. You see, hubby and I have been thinking about extending our little nest of three. We both come from large families and always wanted more then one child and seeing that our Dilemma is 18 months and that we had trouble conceiving her without fertility assistance in the first place has heightened our need to get this started. But having a child...

Let me begin by saying I’m one of those people who plans everything. I always make lists, then make list that refer back to those lists and so on… I have a place for everything and everything in its place. I planned, prepped and nested for nine months, but nothing can truly prepare you for the first year of motherhood. It’s hard, I’m not going to lie or sugarcoat it for you. And I must say whoever thought up the saying “Sleeping...

People keep telling me it will get better, that the sleepless nights will cease and Emma will fall into a great routine, and I believed them. Slowly but surely things got better, she began eating solids, her bath time routine down to the minute, napping twice a day, and the most miraculous, sleeping though the night! But lately she has done a 360° for the worst, waking up at all hours, not napping, crying inconsolably for hours on end, and...