Toddler Trials

Kat is mama to two wild boys, wife to one wild husband and owner of one lazy dog. When she’s not freelance writing, she writes her own blog This Is The Place. She lives near the lake in the west end and wears strange clothes. She’s also trying to see how abstract she can get her bio.

When you need 20 minutes to prep dinner, and the kids are distracted and bored, what do you do? This is something I struggled with for quite some time until I recently got the Fisher-Price® Laugh & Learn™ Smart Stages™ Chair. I wasn’t sure if it would be a hit, but I figured it would be worth a try. Right out of the box, Lauchie instantly wanted to play with it, trying to sit in it while I assembled it (it took five minutes). Once...

My kids are both toddlers on opposite ends of the hellish years between two and four. Lauchie is still sweet, not quite verbal and just getting his head wrapped around the world. Henry is wild, excitable, doesn’t like listening and is, well…three. No one really tells you about three. They warn you about THE TERRIBLE TWOS but here’s the thing, people who say that: The Terrible Twos are the TWO YEARS between two and four. Not the age of...

Even though we didn’t know what we were having back in 2010, one thing was for sure: when our January 2011 baby arrived, he’d be named Henry if he were a he and Charlotte if he were a girl. As January became February, and our baby took his time, we held steadfast on that. Our bouncing baby was born in early 2011 and we went with our favourite name: Henry. As we slowly met other families in our neighbourhood with babies around the same...

Henry can identify exactly one letter of the alphabet: O. HE’s been able to do it since he was very little. We don’t know how he figured it out, where he learned it or what, but he always points out O and says it out loud. I find it adorable. Some kids around his age are able to write their names and read a few words. I think those kids are super clever. But, for some strange reason, I’m so not bothered to try and teach Henry to read or...

This morning, as I was getting ready for work, Henry asked if I wPandora Rings trimmed ould straighten his hair. I straighten my hair a few times a week because it’s bleached out and doesn’t really ever curl any more. How could I say no to my adorable three and a half ear old asking for his hair to be like mamas? I could not. So, I straightened his hair and it was freaking long. Like down past his shoulder blades long. I never really think...

Oh, my sweet dear Henry. What a lovely little lad. All alone, with mama and daddy doting over him day in and day out. His favourite babysitter, “Guy” (aka Kris) taking him to the park. Two loving doggies. As my belly swelled and we prepared for baby number two, I read a lot about gentle introduction of a sibling into a family. My sweet sensitive mop-top, whatever will I do? I didn’t want to make him too excited as many child and parent...

My husband works a lot. Entirely overnight shifts, five nights a week, so he’s not home a lot. When he is home, our rhythm gets thrown off, the kids get rangy and stuff can get weird. There are a lot of reasons for this, but my biggest thought is that because Matt’s often working, he’s not as good at picking battles as I am. Take, for instance, manners at the dinner table. There has been more than one occasion where, at the end of a...

We are very lucky to have a car. It might be a bit of a rust bucket, but it purrs like a kitten and has at least a year or two left before we have to start sinking money into it. I love our car. The only thing I don’t love is how small our car is. We tend to mostly use our car for long car trips to visit family, since we don’t have any nearby. When Lauchie grew out of his bucket seat (Henry’s old Graco Snugride 32, in case you were...

I’m a yeller. I yell. I grew up in a boisterous Greek home where high volume meant excitement. It also meant trouble or sadness. Because of this, I go from zero to yelling really fast. It’s not my best feature. I have a three and a half year old boy the size of a six year old who’s boisterous. He likes sports, video games and movies. He yells. Because of this, we yell a lot at each other. Mostly out of excitement, but sometimes out of...

I’ve tried it all in the last three and a half years. Cry it out. Gentle sleep. Co sleeping (safely, still in this place). When I say, “We’ve tried it all, trust me.” Trust me. What is it about my kids that make them such terrible sleepers? I wonder if it’s something I did early on, something in the womb or what. Then I realize that I’m stressing for pretty much no reason because they are babies. I think that in North America,...