Chandra Clarke

Award-winning entrepreneur. Author. Professional Optimist.

Childhood Defined

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It’s tough being a parent in the 21st century. Not because there aren’t any places to go for advice on important issues – just the opposite, in fact. There must be hundreds of childrearing books out there, a couple dozen parenting magazines, and umpteen web sites.

Naturally, they all give conflicting advice; worse, some of them give advice without explaining it. For example, one source says it’s bad to give your child raw carrots under the age of three, with no reason given. You’re left to wonder if A) It’s because they could be a choking hazard, and if so, why only carrots and not, say, raw broccoli? B) Whether mature carrots — those three years or older — would be acceptable or C) Carrots are verboten simply because too many parents of the previous generation were driven mad by their youngster posing with a carrot all day and repeatedly saying “Ehhhhhhh, what’s up doc?”

Anyway, after spending many hours navigating the parenting media (okay so really it was only five minutes; I’m a parent and that’s all I had to spare) I’ve come up with a list of terms that might help you find your way too. Good luck!

DVD: For the modern parent with kids to entertain, a unit of time. Example: “Hi Joan, I’d love to talk but I’ve only got half a DVD left to finish the laundry.”

Debris field: The area around your child that contains half chewed biscuits, dumped bottles, water, toys, socks, juice etc. The size of the debris field grows exponentially every month, until it eventually takes in your entire house and backyard. And possibly the neighbour yards as well.

Bib: Theoretically, something your child wears to protect clothing. Realistically, it’s a spot to print cute phrases like “Daddy’s Number One Fan.” Given that children smear food into their hair, their ears, along the table, and on you, the small area of protection afforded by the bib is laughable, really.

Toys: Expensive items that parents are encouraged to buy in great quantities to educate their children. Children do learn from toys; indeed, when a parent steps on one, they learn all sorts of new words.

Soother: Also known as a dummy or a pacifier, it is designed to be something that babies suck on for comfort. Unfortunately this design also makes for a sleek, aerodynamic profile which allows even the youngest arm to throw it up to 10 feet away. The amount of dirt that clings to it is inversely proportional to the proximity of a sink for washing it.

Sleeper: A type of clothing that very young children are supposed to sleep in. Children don’t actually sleep, however, until they’re old enough to fit into regular pajamas.

Crawl: A form of motion that your baby will try to do hundreds of times without success. Anxious parents who want to encourage their baby’s development should simply look away for five seconds. Baby will suddenly be able to crawl at speeds approaching 50 kph.

Emergency Trip: At least once per year, all children are required to look ill enough to require an emergency trip to the doctor or hospital, at which time they miraculously recover about two minutes before being seen by medical staff. This is nature’s way of stimulating the onset of grey hair. See also: 2 a.m., weekends.

First word: A child’s first word will not be what you’ve tried to get him/her to say for a week. It will be something that you didn’t realize you were saying like: frackingcomputer! or stupididiotneighbour!

Kitchen sink: The one item you will not have to pack to take your young children across the street.

Childproof: A mythical state of being. To date, nothing has been conclusively proven to be childproof. However, many such items that claim to be are very adult proof.

Pthththtb: The rude raspberry noise that is one of the first sounds a baby learns how to make. This says more about the human condition than I ever could.

And a One and a Two…

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Several of my pregnancy advice books assured me that getting back into shape afterward would be fun and easy. Baby, they said, would either be napping or happy to watch your routine. Even better, baby might want to participate, allowing for many lovely mother and child bonding moments.

Unfortunately, none of the guide books ever discussed how to work out with a baby around. So this week, I present Chandra’s Guide to Fitness While Raising Children:

Wake up bright and early in the morning. Have a cup of coffee to wake up and get that metabolism going.

Stand in shower for fifteen minutes wondering why you’re not getting clean and realize it’s because you’ve not turned on the water.

Have another cup of coffee. Have vague recollection of being awakened eight or nine times overnight for feedings.

Prepare workout area by laying out mat, hand weights etc.

Begin workout by accidentally stepping on Lego brick. Continue with four minutes of hopping up and down, yelping in pain.

Retrieve baby from crib, now that he’s awake. Quickly feed him breakfast before he realizes it may have been as much as an hour since he last ate.

Bring baby and playpen into bathroom and spend fifteen minutes in the shower removing the oatmeal from your hair.

Slip into something loose-fitting and comfortable, for example, none of the clothes you could fit into before you got pregnant.

Bring baby and playpen into living room and get into position for your workout. Start with a sit-up.

Pause to burp baby. Change clothes so you don’t get spit-up all over your workout mat.

Return to workout area. Attempt a warm-up stretch.

Stop to retrieve all the toys that have been fired out of the playpen. Spend fifteen minutes figuring out how to get Bear Bear out of the lampshade without damaging it.

Go back to the workout area. Try a push-up.

Wake up with a start when Bear Bear bounces off your head. Crawl to the coffee pot for another hit.

Feed junior his mid-morning snack. Burp him and pat him off to sleep.

Tiptoe back to your workout area. Catch sight of the kitchen. Curse as you realize you have company coming in the evening. Spend fifteen minutes tidying up.

Go back to the mat. Pause to answer the phone. Spend five minutes explaining to the caller that no, you don’t have an account with Zippity Wireless, and yes, you’re sure your name isn’t Gary Kowarski.

Go and get baby, who woke up when the phone rang. Say something very rude about Zippity Wireless and then explain to baby that really, you shouldn’t use words like that.

Remove baby’s wet diaper. Realize you forgot to throw the washed diapers in the dryer last night. Get them started and lay baby out on a large towel on the linoleum and hand him a few toys.

Answer the door to accept a package. Try not to say rude words to deliveryman who provides impromptu lecture on proper childcare after spotting baby on the towel.

Successfully complete five sit-ups. Lay there for several minutes, exhausted, wondering if childbirth wasn’t easier. Decide it most definitely was not.

Slither over to coffee pot. Discover it’s empty. Resort to chewing the grounds.

Mop up around the baby. Retrieve dry diapers, put one on him, and feed him lunch.

Answer the door. Have chat with annoying skinny neighbour who keeps asking when she’ll see you out for a brisk morning power walk.

Close door and mutter about your neighbour. Explain to baby he shouldn’t use any of those words you just said either.

Bring baby over to workout mat. Lay down, raise baby above head for a few arm lifts. Enjoy the giggles and repeat a few times.

Stop to clean up the spit up.

Attempt to do a few sit-ups while holding baby for that extra challenge.

When your back muscle stops twanging, drag self to phone and put in call to husband to arrange car ride to chiropractor.

Shove workout equipment into closet. Consider taking it out again when junior is in school.

 

Too Tired To Sleep

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Too Tired

It is often said that the Inuit have something like 500 different words for snow. I have no idea if this is true or not; personally I have only one word for snow and it’s: pththththb!

As a business owner, homeowner, and parent, however, I can tell you that there are probably at least 1000 types of “tired.” Here’s just a few:

Toy Box Fatigue: Every night you pick up the 204 toys scattered around the house and put them in the toy box. Every morning, approximately five minutes after breakfast, it looks like you never touched the place.

Just the FAQs Ma’am: Answering the same customer question 300 times a day can produce a special kind of resignation and tiredness. It’s especially soul-draining when the answer to that question is printed in at least six different places in company literature.

Dish Wear: My all time record for keeping the kitchen clean is 5 minutes, 38 seconds. My family has this annoying habit of wanting to eat three meals a day, plus snacks and drinks.

Once More Unto the Voicemail: Trying to get in touch with contacts in other companies can be an exhausting, all-day exercise, as you: Press ‘1’ for accounts, ‘3’ for account representatives on the east coast, ‘2’ for account representatives on the east coast with names beginning with G…

Laundry Lethargy: My mother always maintained that dirty laundry bred in dark places. My hamper is always full, so I think she was on to something.

Repetitive Junk Mail Injury: If you think you get a lot of junk mail now, try running a business. In a single day, you’ll get 25 computer technology offers, 58 cheap long distance flyers, 17 office supplies catalogues, and 398 trade magazines.

Grassoline: In a typical summer, you have to mow your lawn once a week. If you have 1000 things that need doing this summer, you’ll have a hot, wet one, which means you’ll have to mow your lawn twice a day just so the mailman can find your front door. This means you won’t rid yourself of that peculiar odour blend of grass and gasoline until Christmas.

52 Pickup: There is a special kind of backache that develops after a day of bending over to pick up the items your child has pitched out of the stroller, or shopping cart. These include: the soother, a shoe, socks, sunglasses, hat, juice bottle, your shopping list, your purse, the glass jar of pickles, and the open bag of onions.

My Name Is Not Sally!! Paying your bills and making standard store purchases should be simple, right? After all, we’ve been doing this sort of thing for hundreds of years now. But no, at least once a month, someone, somewhere does something stupid to your account. The cheque you wrote for $400 is processed as being for $4000. Or your last payment date is reset to August 10, 1927, and suddenly they think you owe $45,998 in interest. Or their computer insists that the occupant at your address is one Sally Smithers, not you, even if you built your house and have been the only occupant it’s ever had. And all of it requires several days of calling, emailing, shouting, and a lot of fighting to get it fixed.

Whine Hangover: Sometimes, there is just no pleasing a child, and they spend the entire day crying, whining and fussing. By bedtime, your ears will be ringing, and nothing short of large glass of merlot will make the headache go away.

Shovelitis: Right about the time the smell of grassoline dissipates, it’s time to start shovelling snow. On the days when you absolutely have to be somewhere in a hurry, there will be a sudden flurry that dumps six inches on your driveway. If you were organized enough to shovel it out first thing in the morning, the flurry will dump twelve inches.

And that explains why I have just one word for snow.

Married (And Travelling) With Children

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Erma Bombeck once said that when you look like your passport photo, it’s time to come home. It’s good advice, but if I’d followed it, I think I’d have done a u-turn about an hour into our first major trip.

You see, we made the trek from our home in Canada to the south coast of England. And I did it with a toddler in tow.

Don’t get me wrong: my son behaved wonderfully. It’s just that he’s was a one-year-old.

It started out with a train ride to the airport. First, we had to reassure him that the huge metal thing that just came thundering into the station was not as scary as it seemed. Then came the baggage and baby ballet – a complicated dance which involved A) whisking our child out of the stroller B) folding the stroller C) swearing and hopping up and down because the stroller had mashed a hand D) grabbing the 10 kg bag of our clothes and toiletries, the 20 kg bag of laptops, my purse, the stroller, and the 450 kg bag which contained my son’s toys, diapers, food, clothes and books and then E) heaving them all onto the train while holding our toddler and F) whimpering our way to our seats, having destroyed most of our back muscles.

Next came the train ride, which was to take about three hours. This went something like:

ME: Okay, let’s get out the shape sorter.
HIM: Ga! [Sort, sort, sort, FLING!]
ME: Okay, how about the stacking ring?
HIM: Ya! [Stack, stack, stack, FLING!]
ME: Right. Okay, how about I read you this book?
HIM: Again!
HIM: Again!
HIM: Again!
HIM: Again!
HIM: [FLING!]
ME: Okay, right then what about this?
HIM: [FLING!]
ME: And this?
HIM: [FLING!]
ME: Dear, how much further?
HUBBY: Oh, I’d say we’ve got about another two hours and fifty minutes.

This is not to say my husband didn’t do his fair share. He took our son for frequent walks up and down the carriage, a task from which he has yet to recover. This is because our son currently walks on his own with help, and that means my husband had to bend at awkward angle to hold wee little hands, trying to maintain his balance as the train swayed over track that hasn’t been repaired in twenty years. I’m still amazed they didn’t end up in the laps of the passengers in row four.

From the train we had to get to the subway. Unfortunately, we arrived in Toronto in late afternoon; thousands of cubicle workers were making their daily dash to the commuter trains. To say it was difficult to get three people, four bags and a stroller through these crowds would be an understatement. I now sympathize with those salmon that have to swim upstream.

From the subway (heave, push, shove) to the bus (struggle, grunt, wheeze) and at last, the airport. Here, having arrived the prescribed two hours before boarding, it took … five minutes to get through security. Please note there are exactly zero things for a one-year-old to do in an airport lounge. We resorted to walking him around the lounge to try to wear him out (“please sleep on the plane, please sleep on the plane…”). Thirty circuits later, we were exhausted; he was just getting warmed up.

And finally, the flight. Apart from the bad food, poor air quality, tiny seats and zero leg room, things were great. The best part was when the pilots misjudged the timing of turbulence. Just as we were in desperate need of a diaper change, they told everyone to buckle up. So we waited… and waited… and nothing happened. Off came the lights, and we dashed to the restroom. And *that’s* when the turbulence hit. For those of you eating lunch just now, I won’t describe what happened.

Only one thing spoiled our joy when we finally arrived at our destination: The thought that we’d have to it all again to get home. So I have just one thing to say to the scientific community:

Will you *please* hurry up and invent those transporter beams?