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.