Christmas Cheer!

It's been an exhausting year and I haven't posted or even shared we were expecting #4 on here. But I wanted to come on and share it's been too long.

With the holidays we are just so excited to have 4 beautiful girls growing in our family. We are in such awe of how uniquely different each of them are from each other but also how sweet and jovial they also can be.

We took them down to the Eaton Center right after we picked up our oldest 2 and headed downtown Toronto as I needed to to City Hall. Funny how it turned into a teachable moment, my older 3 now know what city hall is and funnily enough think I am important enough to think I had to meet the mayor (I was there on much lesser and mundane things to do.)

But then I figured a nice visit to the Eaton Center would be great I use to love seeing all the decor and the festive cheer in the mall. I spent way too long in the Indigo as my daughters ran around in the children section. They were so distracted I got away with buying books and having them wrapped too.

It's real fun and important to make lasting memories for your kids. It's fun to see their faces light up too. I'm just happy I get to share these moments with them this holiday season and every day as well.

Easter... Favorite holiday?!?!?

Most people relish Christmas. I love Christmas, I love it even more since having kids. But it still doesn't compare to Easter for me.

Christmas to me is one day. All this planning and organizing for one day and its done. People seem to get tired of all the Holiday parties... I never get tired of Easter.

Easter is over a week of family getting together, doing stuff. Its always been that way. My grandma and mom would gather to bake for days on end, going to a full week of church services and culminate with a festivity of feast on Easter Sunday.
I love church at Easter, let's be honest we don't all go religiously every Sunday, but at Easter we all gather by something bigger than faith but faith mixed with humanity. Being Greek Orthodox means we get to see our other fellow Greek Orthodox community join and rejoice.

Easter could be seen as such an ugly holiday if we discuss the events but here we are in joy, candles lit, street lined cheering Hristos Anesti (Christ is Risen)... Yes just like in my Big Fat Greek Wedding. Midnight with our peplum dressed girls, suit adorned little boys all dressed in Sunday best all week.

I am so happy its Holy Week/Easter Week... My girls are old enough to help and I'm in the mood to bake, even pregnant. And my girls seem to be excited for Easter and this makes my heart smile.

We started baking yesterday... Koulourakia. It was awesome.Wishing you all a beautiful Easter.

The happy kid!

At the beginning of the year I posted about Mom shaming... I discussed at large how social media oddly makes you feel like you aren't good enough.

 

As of the last week, I've read 2 separate articles about stop playing with your kid or your kids life shouldn't be magical.

 

Now I'm not going to tell you what to do because I value the other moms I call my friends and what works for me doesn't work for you or maybe them. But shaming a mom for making a party Pinterest worthy is no better than shaming her for not.

 

I am a firm believer of letting your kid outside, in the backyard or on the park play area without you standing beside them. Why because they and you need space. My girls when inside want to hug me and kiss me, have me read books, to tell them something interesting. Do my girls have the best decorated room on the block, probably not, why because whatever free time I have with them they are getting love and affection from me.

 

I don't play dolls with my girls, I don't make forts with them... I will bake with them, I will teach them to cook, fix their hair or have a dance party. But I let them have play time with themselves. I also afford that luxury because I have 2 of the same sex that are a year apart. So there is a constant friend in the house. Also means my house looks like your house does when the playdate is over, but that's my everyday.

 

I don't think we need to be on everyday for our kids, that being vulnerable, and funny, and happy and angry are healthy for our kids to know having similar emotions are acceptable for them to be healthy. I also think whatever we do for our kids, it's what we do for our kids. I work my ass off for my kids, I sacrifice family vacations to work harder for my kids... because when I sit down with myself I think if I can push myself a bit harder this year in a few years I will have more money or more time for my kids. But I know others who sacrifice other matters, sacrifice their jobs to be at home for their kids, to bake for them, to be at the front door when they arrive from school. Are lives aren't any different if anything they are similar, we are balancing in ways we see fit.

 

I know some awesome stay at home moms, and they rock beyond rock. They have good relationships with their husbands, they sew costumes for their kids, they balance where they can and they do it because it's what they want and need for their family. I could never be them and I envy what they have inside them to be able to be happy at home... and then they might turn to me and think I am so cool for balancing my lifestyle. But my life isn't cooler than theirs, I can't sew for crap and well I hate house cleaning like it's an illness. What we do doesn't make our kids happier or unhappy... it raises them with differences and appreciations.

 

I had an aunt who worked crazy hours because she owned a restaurant, her daughter never saw her and had whatever toy she wanted, her daughter also was never allowed to eat bread. I found bread overrated and I loved all the toys she had. When she would come to my house she would eat us out of fresh bread and really just wanted to play. I won't judge her life in comparison to mine, they just were different, I might have loved the idea of having her playroom but I don't think I grew up any less happy.

 

Are our children safe, healthy, fed and warm... are these not luxuries? What we do for them other than that are extras. I don't coddle my kids and enjoy bantering with my friends who also don't coddle about the mom at the park who still has to go down the slide with her 5 year old. But I know on the other side of the park is the mom who thinks I should be following my 2 year old up the stairs on the jungle gym... but they can think what they want, they can believe I am nuts, but I am doing the best version of me as a mom. And at the end of the day I know they are doing the best version of them.

 

We are raising kids, human beings, your girlfriend posted immaculate picture of her kids in completely posed wonderfulness... I am not compelled to call up my local photographer to take shots of my kids. My other girl friend throws the most impeccable birthday parties for her kids, I throw a fun family oriented gig, nothing crazy but if I wanted it that way I'd fork over the money to pay for it to be that way with a party planner. Our kids remember certain things, who knows what might make a permanent memory... but we do things for ourselves. To feel good about ourselves, to feel good about our contributions to our families lives... we go above and beyond because it fills a joy within ourselves. Now don't get me wrong don't spoil your kids... don't let them be rotten, don't let them be ungrateful, but figure that out without having to change all the fun things you want to do for them.

 

Remember you are human, let them see you be human, because if you are always the superhero who comes to their rescue and they never have a sucky lunch, they never go without one of the many items they ask from Santa Claus don't be surprised when they can't handle their despair when they don't get the girlfriend or boyfriend they want, when they don't get the job they want... remember your kid is today a kid, let them have fun but sooner than you know they'll be an adult and let them be prepared for what truths and realities come from that.  That is honestly your happiest kid!

Evictions happen!

Sometimes evictions just happen and they change the course of things to come.

Sochi Olympics as a Mom!

The Dufour-Lapointe Sisters

The Olympics have started, did you miss the memo??

How can you, my Facebook and Twitter are flooded with news stories about the Olympics and all the reason why the Russians weren't prepared, why we should boycott them for their political positions and so on. I literally could go on and on about the news stories coming out from the concerning to the truly ridiculous (I don't care if your Hotel room has a picture of Putin on the wall, every Hotel in the USA has a bible in the drawer.)

But as we watched the opening ceremony, with 3 girls in front of the TV, up late at night, in our house politics gets pushed aside and the Olympics become again the Olympics. Raising children in an age of frowning at competition with their peers, the Olympics gives me the platform to remind them it's OK to strive for #1 and push hard to get it.

So since the Opening Ceremony finished we have had our TVs glued to either CBC, SN, TSN or even NBC not to miss a moment of the games.

And then this afternoon it happened, 3 girls, 3 daughters, 3 sisters just like in my house came down the Skiing Moguls and blew our whole family away. What a better way to show my girls that it is OK to compete against your sister, it's OK to win and let your sister win, look at those Dufour-Lapointe girls, they make having daughters, who are also sisters worth every moment of raising a house full of girls.

At the heart of their win, a Gold by the youngest Justine and a Silver by the middle child Chloe gives lessons the Olympics is full of. I have mentioned raising girls is hard, harder when female conflict will start in the household, and yet here are 3 girls competing in the healthiest of manners and teaching my girls you can still compete and be proud and rooting for your sibling all the way home.

And then the CBC did it, they aired their special segment of Raising an Olympian and they featured the mother (new personal hero of mine) of the Dufour-Lapointe girls and you look at her in marvel, she did it, she did what you hope you can accomplish: Raise 3 girls to be fearless enough to fight hard for their dreams all without plucking out the eyes of their competitors who also happen to be your sisters. Don't get me wrong I cried. I did. I mean it.

So much about the Olympics can be said, but at the end of the day it's stories and morals of the stories our kids get from watching the person land perfectly off a ski jump, sail through the finish line in speed skating or scoring that winning goal. The Olympics is about being proud of your fellow man or woman for the work and perseverance, the accomplishing goal or hurdle they just passed to get here. I want my girls to grow up where competition is healthy, not mean, where striving to be first can be done while being a good person. And all it took was day 2 of the Olympics to get that across already.

So can't wait to see what the rest of the Olympics has to bring...

Cheers!~

Hello February

I am not a superstitious person, I struggle with the idea of fate and if destiny is a thing, I truly believe we play a role on how destiny plays out.

I am a fair believer in horoscopes, Chinese and Western versions, as a math devotee I also believe in numerology. Yet no one of these can be appreciated or practiced without the other in my opinion.
So when the New Year came, it blanketed my hopes and aspirations of what the new year could bring. So excited and welcoming. I was happy to see 2013 go. She wasn't a horrible year, she just wasn't the greatest year. And the idea and hope that 2014 could be so much more was refreshing and something to get excited about.

And she arrived. Celebrated with the children as we do every year, family on New Year's day and then my month became the month I hold my breath and hope nothing further could go wrong. You saw we had a leak in our living room, then our furnace stopped because of the leak, a second leak occured and work which gets done at home now takes a severe back seat.

Where was this New Year, this new opportunity for something great. I read facebook statuses of January not only hitting me hard but many of my friends as well were not having great starts and in the idea of what is next to come, my first 3 week into 2014 are making me pine for 2013 to come back.

With Chinese New Year's arrival, the beginning of February, I have renewed belief and faith that better can be on the horizon. And then I remembered last year, the year of the Snake... The snake wouldn't go out without a fight. So I am going to say I am excited to see what the sturdy horse can bring.

So to us all, I wish you a Happy Chinese New Year, a big Hello to February and a renewed faith that 2014 will be great and will provide wonderous moments of excitement, love, happiness and great fortunes. 

Family Friday- Slightly Frozen!

You know what sucks about owning your own business, the little amount of time you get to spend with your family.

I think our eldest girls are really feeling it the most. So much their age group could do but so little amount of time in the day to fit them in. While my Mike and I meander throughout the day on balancing who is doing what we can do, I do relish the time we do get to spend with them that is blocked off as special time.

They saw the previews for Frozen on TV at the end of last year, and had remembered the release date, kept reminding me that it was coming close. I promised perhaps not on it's release date but on some day we would go to see Frozen. Then our birthdays came and went, Christmas, the ice storm, New Year and then the house flood. I couldn't find the right time to squeeze my very own princesses in for a Mom date.

Until yesterday.

As soon as the bus dropped them off we got prepared and headed off. Baby was at my mom's and it was just me and the eldest two. Got to the movie theater, it was freezing, so thankfully an early movie also yields a pretty empty movie theater parking lot. Tickets in hand, we got little kid friendly boxes with popcorn, a drink and mini M&Ms (I couldn't resist and Raisin Glosettes were my weakness) entered the theater and I kid you not, were the only people there. It was pretty awesome. We could sit in any seat, my girls roamed up and down the stairs taking in the fact that we were in a whole theater by ourselves. We watched Frozen, I could totally recognise Kristin Bell's voice as Anna. My youngest cried at the sad scenes, my eldest laughed hard at the funny scenes.

And we watched a pretty awesome Disney movie. and had a pretty awesome day together. I love reliving the moments with them when my second daughter explains every scene that left a visual impact.

Mother shame!

When I still shared without pause.

The age of the Internet has changed the way mother's can feel shameful of themselves.

Hard to compete with the moms on Pinterest, Twitter, Blogs and Facebook. Moms making the perfect breakfast, perfect birthday cakes, their kids look like they fell of the screen of the Gap page on the Internet.

But being a mom I feel has shamed mothers also into the quiet abyss.

I wrote about how I am an open book and don't understand why other's would see this open cave of fearlessness that just shares and shares as a negative.

But as of late, I have found myself not sharing half as much, almost as if I have personally silenced myself and I am feeling so uncomfortable. I hate being uncomfortable in a decision that I have taken. I decided to keep my realities to myself for a bunch of reasons...

1. I hate that people feel I am being boastful when I am sharing good news, great new or fun news. I am not trying to shove my happy news in your face, it just happens to be my news.

2. I don't like the negative opinions on news that is my news. I can't change what is happening in my life or in the order it is falling into place, why does everyone feel they have the right to enlighten me with their much better understanding of my life.

3. If you aren't going to be happy or kind, I really don't care if you know what is happening around my house.

I guess I have been emotional and have had a lot to think about. I always tell people it's an eye opener starting your own business. While some people are exceptionally happy for you, they are on your team, they are encouraging, some people you didn't even know really genuinely care about you. But some people you think are your friends, you think would be excited start questioning your decisions.

It's not that I am doing something crazy and I know that some people will are just reflecting their self talk towards me, I know they don't mean harm or malice. But starting a business is hard enough that you don't need naysayers messing up further the thoughts you have about how hard such a new endeavour can be.

You feel this way about mothers too... so your kids don't eat pasta, some mothers will practically crucify you for a decision you take on. Your choose to put your kid in a program or not put them in a program and everyone and their mother has an opinion that you did something horribly wrong to ruin your child from now till eternity.

So I find I just don't feel like sharing because, in my 33+ years, I think I am old enough to make logical decisions, with my 3rd daughter I think I am entitled to know how to parent, I do have 2 other children who one are still alive and two, are thriving.

I sat with a mom friend weeks ago and discussed how this year I will stop excusing myself, a part of my people pleasing problems. I excuse myself all the time for the fact that I can't do something because of the kids, excuse my the fact that I had to throw a pony tail as a hair style because doing fancy hair didn't fit in my busy schedule... I am just tired of excusing my life. My life isn't a mistake, I am no longer going to allow myself to feel shame about the way my cards have been dealt. I don't feel about how things are, why should I do so, so that I can seem like I care what you think.

Now, I am not looking for a monumental excuse to get people to say oh so nice things to me, but remember that people are struggling within themselves daily to make a good product, do a good job, raise decent children, if they do a good job tell them (it really is appreciated) and before you lay your judgement on their choices remember they might have struggled with their own eternal voices to try and push harder and be more than they are.

Let us stop shaming of our fellow friends and neighbours, instead share in their joys and encourage them to be great.

When all else fails have a super husband...

Working from home is a hard balance, children running through the office, home duties fall in line 1st.

Starting a start up is hard when you have 3 kids. Giving up a standard paycheck, security and benefits... Now that is a whole other story.

Many will tell you don't talk about the house when in the office and don't talk about work at the dinner table. I have never been good at separating the 2; the biggest sore spot for my business partner and husband.

But my business is intertwined in my real life. I eat, sleep, breath my business. I am a mom who is trying to kick it in the fashion world. Not an easy starting point, yet its easy to have role models like this to help. Today was the most obvious reality to me about how intertwined they both are.

We are working on a big event in NYC coming up. We were hit hard by the storms in Toronto, but today after coming back from a business pick up and grabbing the girls from school. My husband demands I rush inside from the car. As I am walking into the house I witness a waterfall, a disaster kind of waterfall in my living room. From the ceiling to the floor with a river flowing into the office. The dining room carpet sopping wet. It took everything inside me to contain myself as my daughters started freaking out.

Husband ran to find all the water valves in the house. Turned the water off and then continued to remove the wet drywall. Plaster covering my living room floor, water soaked insulation. It couldn't get worse, call the insurance. Wait don't call the insurance...

Now most of you would say why not call the insurance. Because we have a delivery to finish. We have work to do and our office is inside our home. Our workshop is divided from the basement to the shed. I need to be in this house doing work. I can't be sent out of our home til the insurance is settled, because no one else can do our work for us.

Now these are not living conditions, I don't recommend you do any of what I did; here is the only reason it worked for us... My husband is ridiculously handy.

It took over 8 hours, but he removed the potentially rotting drywall and insulation. Removed the busted copper pipe, used torches, drywall knives, fists (yeah no one said he does it gingerly,) a trip to Home Depot and I have water again. Fully replaced pipes that have been insulated. Perhaps he wouldn't be capable to have done it if he wasn't a master welder/solderer.

But in hindsight there was no option but to have a handy husband, my children get to wake up and wash their faces with warm water. That everything is business as usual (thank God) and we are unfazed by the waterfall that made itself at home.

And I learn a valuable lesson about my intertwining life. Get it done, find a way and make it happen. You can sit there and wallow in the misery of the situation but who does that help. I wanted to cry, I wanted to be an ostrich and stick my head in the ground. Call in the people to get me out of my situation. But instead... It wasn't an option when you want more, when you are aspiring for more. If I had taken the obvious route I might have lost everything I have worked so hard to build and establish.

I also learnt that I aspire to live somewhere where winter can't freeze a whole city over.

The fear of advocating...

Jenny McCarthy's son doesn't have autism... this is headline news. See full article here.

I was just about to post this article on my personal Facebook when I realised that the subject needed a bigger position than what do you think.

Now let's start from where I stand on Jenny McCarthy, I don't care if she's here or she's there. I don't have a child with autism. I do have 3 children who have or have not gotten all their needed vaccines for the ages they are, but to this I will get at it further on.

Let's discuss the reality here... Jenny McCarthy had a son. Vaccinated him with the MMR vaccine and recalls his symptoms of what she was told is Autism shortly after being vaccinated. He lost speech and function, doctors misdiagnosed him with Autism but his ailments were real and they can fast and quickly after being vaccinated. This is not fiction, this is not a supposed comment or imagined reality.

She advocated and fought about his condition tooth and nail in the media, on social media about what it was like, her experience with autism. She fought a fight she thought she was fighting with other parents of autism. She rallied behind her convictions to fight for all kids who could have gotten the same reactions to vaccines.

Now years later with her son showing huge amounts of progress, she's informed it wasn't really autism but another neurological condition. Well why isn't this condition important enough to be concerned about any longer? Just because it doesn't have the heavy weights of the Autism community behind it. Is it not an auto-immune disorder just like the latter, is it not scary for a mother to lose her child's speech or the fact that he won't hug you or look you in the eyes?

When did becoming misdiagnosed by a doctor your fault?

Now on my position, I was born in the 80s and was given vaccines in elementary school in the school nurses office. Now the concoction is a formula you give your children before the age of 2. My eldest have been vaccinated with the MMR vaccine but both older than the informed age of the vaccine. I don't let the Dr make me feel guilty for changing the schedule. Why? Because he will tell me my child is 25% of weight only, that he might be concerned the baby is losing weight and then seconds later and say to me well you know this vaccine is for 6 months. Well sorry you just informed me my child isn't where you want her to be but you think her body is ready for a vaccine for a child that might be 3-6 pounds heavier then my baby.

My eldest hit her marks every time, 95+% for height and 90-95% for weight. She still didn't get the vaccine at one year old, we waited as stories came out about the vaccine. They day she got her MMR vaccine it was the only needle she received. I made sure of that too. Why because I had seen a horrific story about a little girl who came back from traveling with her parents through Europe and her parents were doctors and on their return to the US chose to give their daughter 8 vaccines she had missed all at once. Well, the little girl has autism and a severe spectrum of the disease. Did they make a poor choice, yes severely. At no point should that kind of vaccination schedule be administered into a child at once. They are barely 20 pounds sometimes.

So while everyone is getting on the bandwagon of Jenny McCarthy should have kept her comments to herself all these years if they understand the mama bear reaction to having your child sick. Maybe she can no longer say she is coming to the table as a mom of a child with autism but a mother coming to the table of her child having an auto-immune disorder.

We shouldn't hate on mothers for advocating for all diseases. We don't want our children suffering today or tomorrow.