Vancouver winter Olympics ended today and I already feel something is missing. We were so used to watch the games and follow the scores even my children were in the Olympic mood.

What I’m happy about is the effect of Olympic games on my 5 year old son. He was always in to wearing Batman or Spider man costumes and being obsessed with them. For the past two days though, he has been wearing one of his old thermal underwear, looking almost the same as the athlete’s uniforms, running around the house and saying he is wearing his Olympics clothes. He even said that he’s interested to participate in the Olympics when he is older.

I love the positive effect the Olympics had on my son. My job here is to keep him interested in sports, and remind him of Olympics and the athletes. Having Olympics in out city was very exciting and somehow even involved my 3 years old daughter. My only concern for the Olympics was the ads of McDonald and Coca cola.  I know these two where good sponsors and the Olympics needed funding. But do our athlete really feed on big Mc and Coca cola? I thought this would send a mixed message to our children specially teenagers. At the end of the games I can see that the positive effect of Olympics are stronger than the mixed messaged of these advertisements. It is 40 minutes past midnight and people are still celebrating in the streets of down town.

Until later,

It is easy to get caught up in day to day life and forget to attend to small but important stuff. I spend all my time with my children. We are playing, reading or doing some kind of craft. (By the way, I have great ideas for toddler valentine cards, I just have to gather all the pictures and post it. Soon I hope!!) If I’m doing house chores or work they are either playing together or help me and I’m watching and guiding them in their play.

The thing is that I don’t get to spend time with each of them separately. In the mornings when one goes to preschool and I’m with the other, I’m left with very limited time to get ready for lunch, set up everything for when they are together and I’m more in need, that I don’t get to spend maybe as much time as needed with the one at home. Unfortunately, my husband gets home late from work, there is no time there to spare, and weekends are family time.

Yesterday, dad left home early and I had to tag along my son to drop off my daughter at preschool. As I knew this would be our schedule for the day, I asked him the night before what he wants to do on our special time. Of course, he wanted to go and get a toy and then go to the coffee shop with me and have hot chocolate. (We did the coffee shop thing the first day my daughter went to preschool.) Read the rest of this entry »

_What did you do in school?

_Nothing? Just played!

_Who did you played with?

_My friends!

_What are their names?

_They didn’t tell  me yet!

This is my conversation with my son for the past year and a half. I can’t really get anything out of him to know what exactly goes on in his preschool.

_How was school?

_Good

_Did you find any friends?

_Not yet!

_What did you do?

_Made a bracelet with big beads

_My teacher told me not to touch the alphabet section She said it’s not for my age but know all the alphabet and I want to work with them

This is my daughter starting the same preschool today, and she was in gradual entry, spend only 1 hour in the class. Read the rest of this entry »

For the past three months, I was quite busy, from the online course I had for Fall to the kids and their programs and classes and best of all, my mom was in town since September.

The busiest was the past three weeks that my father was in town and my aunt and her family joined us from LA for 10days. It was a nice and enjoyable family gathering, especially for my children who don’t have a that many family around.

It is amazing how kids sense the family bonding, how they get friendly and comfortable so quickly around family. Even my son had his guards down after couple of hours of seeing my aunt and her family for the first time. I can say this was a first for him. My husband and I were quick to notice the difference in our kids in how they are more happy and playful and how they love the crowd and family around them.

Now that I’m writing everyone is back to their home, and here life is back to normal. Although I’m not sure what normal is, is it the way I live my life here alone with the kids, programs, play dates and our friends or the way I spend my past three months adding my family to the mix. What I really like is to have at least my parents around full time so that I can live a normal life around them. Now, when they are in town, I change our routine and our life to be with them because: 1- Our normal routine doesn’t include them  2- We want to spend as much time as possible together to make up for the times we are not together.

This year was a blast for my family as we got to decorate out Christmas tree with all the grandparents from both side. I decided to put the tree earlier than usual so that my family could also join us. I was so enjoying having all of them together to decorate the tree for the first time that I didn’t mind what they were doing with the tree. To us this is the perfect tree because we had fun with our family decorating it. When the tree was all done, my four-year-old son turned off all the lights in the house except the Christmas tree lights, told everyone to sit and look at the tree.

Then he said, “This is a happy time we have our family here and the tree”

This is going to be a great Christmas especially now that my sister in law said they are coming for Christmas, we will have family around to enjoy on Christmas eve too

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas with his or her loved ones.

Merry Christmas

Yesterday after a long time, we had a play date with one of preschool friends of my son. My daughter loves to go to their house. They also have a daughter, a year older than mine, and my daughter gets to play with lots of girly toys.

Today we spent most of the time in the back yard and then a little bit of time in the house. When we get to the house, my daughter found a tiara and princess wand and some jewellery. She quickly put them on and was a little princess. It was great; they had so much fun, until it was time to go. Although I gave them several notices that we are about to leave my daughter wasn’t happy about it. My son had no problem saying goodbye!! (I thought he would be the problem as it was his play date) but my daughter was a little more upset than usual. She threw a big tantrum!!!!!!!!!!!

A kind that I hadn’t seen from her before. To be able to leave I had to open her fingers and take the toys she was holding. While she was screaming, kicking and trying to grab the toys back. Leaving the house was the easy part, making her sit in the car seat and buckling her, was another story!!

After several civilized attempts, and trying to sweet talk her to sit, I had to practically get in the car in front of her, use my knee to block the car seat so she couldn’t get out, and with two hands and my full strength try to buckle her. Guess what while she was screaming, kicking, scratching, pulling my hair.

I could see that she really wanted to go back in there, finish her play; but we had to leave it was time, and they had other plans for the rest of the day. I felt very bad to do this to her but hey, I can’t make everything right all the time.

She cried the whole drive and begged me to go back and not to go home. I offered to take them to the park but no luck. Then she cried another 20 minutes at home at the step of the staircase. When I say cry, I mean screaming, yelling, and crying all at once. I tried to give her comfort, told her that I knew she wanted to play, even tried to bribe her with anything (something I normally don’t do). I had to do something to stop this for the sake of everyone’s (even our neighbour’s) sanity. Nothing worked, until after almost half an hour she calmed herself down and decided to take the toy I offered her to play with. This was about ten minutes after I started doing my own thing and just ignoring the fact that she is in a tantrum, I guess she figured out that was the limit and if she didn’t win by now probably she won’t!?

The thing is the whole time I had to prevent myself from laughing. I can’t help it when they lose it like this, I can’t stop laughing. I know this makes them more frustrated but laughter is my way of dealing with stress. It is good in a way that I don’t get charged like them but won’t help them. How do you deal with tantrum? I would love to know your strategies.

Until later,