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Magical Moments

September 29, 2013 By

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Yesterday’s post was all about the poor hand that life has been dealing me lately. I feel as if the Universe read my post and decided to make some recompense, because today has been absolutely amazing.

It started with a run early this morning – a run that, funnily enough, I was a hair’s breath away from bailing on. I didn’t sleep well last night, and I woke up feeling – to borrow a wonderful phrase from a book I read – rough as a badger’s arse. I certainly didn’t feel up to running for 18km. But I knew that if I didn’t go, I would regret it. I would go through the entire day feeling a sense of incompleteness that would only be satisfied by running.

So I dragged my badger’s arse out of bed, blearily had some coffee and peanut butter toast, and hit the road. As soon as I started running, I felt better – helped no doubt by the perfect autumn weather. I decided to just enjoy the run without caring about my pace, and perhaps because of that, I clocked one of my best-ever times for a run of that distance – 1:59:43 for 18.23km. My legs were killing me, but I felt absolutely fantastic. I’d lost quite a bit of confidence in my running in recent weeks, and this run was just what I needed to restore some of that.

Later on, when I was showered and fed, I lay on my bed with my husband watching TV. Usually this doesn’t last for very long: I tend to be all antsy and wanting to get up and get things done, but today I was content to just relax. My husband and I sat there for ages, drinking cups of coffee and chatting about the contestants on The Voice, which we both enjoy watching. Neither of us was in any rush to go anywhere or do anything. We were content to just be with each other. With all the stress that’s been going on lately, there has been some inevitable discord, but today our frames of mind were in perfect harmony.

Eventually, we got up because the kids wanted us to put up their bouncy castle in the backyard. This involved first finding the bouncy castle, which hadn’t been used since March. After some rooting around in the garage and the garden shed, we located it. Miraculously, we found the motor in the same box, and then we were in business. For the next hour or so, the kids happily bounced around, and I basked in the sound of their laughter.

It’s the best sound in the entire world. How could I not be happy?

Since this morning, there has been a series of magical moments strung together to make a perfect day. It is impossible to dwell on the negative on days like this. Instead, I find it very easy to feel truly grateful for all of the richness in my life.

This is an original post by Kirsten Doyle. Photo credit: Ali Smiles 🙂. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.

Filed Under: family, life, Moments, running Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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I Feed My Kids McDonalds, And 9 Other Confessions

July 9, 2013 By

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During the first two days of my firstborn child’s life, as I lay in hospital with nurses bringing me food and taking the baby to the nursery so I could get some sleep, I had daydreams about how the whole parenting thing would go. I would breastfeed for a full year, and as the baby grew older, I would raise him on a diet of nutritious foods. I would interact with him, play with him, talk to him – he would not need to watch TV. I had visions of lovingly picking him up whenever he cried, never letting him sit for long in a wet diaper, reading to him every day right from the time we brought him home…

I mean, good parenting was just common sense. How hard could it possibly be to be a model mom?

It turns out, very.

What I failed to recognize in those early weeks was that there was no way I could completely give myself over to parenting. There were going to be times when I would have to do other stuff, like laundry, vacuuming and personal hygiene. And let’s face it, isn’t parenting supposed to be at least partly about the fun stuff, like letting your kid smear chocolate cake all over his or her face?

So here are some “confessions” – and I put that word in quotes because it implies wrongdoing that I do not believe I am guilty of.

1. I feed my kids McDonalds. Not every day, obviously, but from time to time I let them eat junk food.

2. I often let my kids watch TV because it’s convenient for me. They’re good at self-regulating their TV time so I really don’t care about that “Don’t let the TV be your babysitter” thing.

3. I yell at my kids. It’s not like I’m constantly screaming, but when they drive me insane I just cannot do the Zen-type of parenting that other moms seem to be capable of.

4. I sometimes reward my kids with material things. I’m not too concerned about whether this is teaching them to value the wrong things.

5. If my kids don’t eat the meals that are put in front of them, I don’t give them an alternative meal. If they go to bed hungry, so be it.

6. I don’t play with my kids every time they ask. If I did, I would never get to sit down for a cup of coffee, write a blog post or take a shower.

7. I don’t always lead by example. I’m completely fine with my kids learning that they have to follow certain rules that do not apply to adults.

8. It’s not a frequent occurrence, but sometimes my husband and I have arguments in front of the kids. It doesn’t bother me: on the contrary, they are learning that every healthy relationship includes conflict and the resolution thereof.

9. I love my kids unconditionally, but there are times when I don’t like them very much. Frankly, they sometimes act like little jerks.

10. I sometimes lock myself in the bathroom to avoid having to share chocolate.

Do these things make me a bad mom? Or do they simply make me human? Do you have any confessions of your own to share?

(Photo credit: Kirsten Doyle)

Filed Under: Children, life, parenting Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Random Ramblings On A Sunday Morning

June 3, 2012 By

Yesterday, I got a new pair of running shoes. In a dramatic departure to the norm, I did not get New Balance – the shoes I have insisted on running in right from the start. Instead, I got Newtons, which are designed to help runners improve their form. These shoes are going to change the way I run. My heel-striking days will be over, and I will become very aware of my calf muscles.

I will have to break the shoes in gradually, and as I sit here on a Sunday morning – the day of my long run – I have to resist the temptation to put the shoes on and take them for a 10K run.

I developed an interest in running long before I actually took it up. That is to say, I always enjoyed watching it, even if I was too lazy to get off my butt and do it. As a teenager, a prominent day in my annual calendar was the annual Comrades Marathon, an 89km run between the South African cities of Durban and Pietermaritzburg.

On Comrades Day, my dad and I would be up drinking coffee by five in the morning. We would turn on the TV to watch the pre-race goings on, wondering what the start-line energy must be like for such a huge event. Then we would watch the start, and spend the morning trying to predict how long it would take Bruce Fordyce to win. That he would win was never in question. He won the Comrades a record nine times. Eight of the wins were in consecutive years.

While Dad and I were glued to the TV, Mom would be making a huge batch of cookies in the kitchen, relishing the opportunity to bake without us hanging around asking why there weren’t any cookies yet.

After the top ten  men and women crossed the finish line, Dad and I would drift away from the TV and do something else, but we would always return at about five in the evening, to watch the final half-hour of the race. By that time, hundreds of runners would still be out on the course, trying desperately to make it to the finish line before the twelve-hour cutoff. When the finishing siren went off, we would always feel the agony of the runners who had made it into the stadium, but just couldn’t get to the finish line. So near and yet so far. For some of them, a split second was all that stood between them and a medal.

I miss those days, when the Comrades was as much a day for me and my dad as it was a day for the runners to give themselves the ultimate test. Now, my Comrades experience is limited to what I can see on the Internet, which is not the same as curling up in front of the TV. My dad, who died seven years ago, is not around for me to chat to about the runners or whether the number of participants has perhaps become too large. There is no aroma of freshly baked cookies coming from the kitchen.

One thing hasn’t changed, though. As I am scouring the Internet for Comrades-related news, my dad is with me.

Just as he always is when I go running myself.

(Photo credit: Kirsten Doyle)

Filed Under: Comrades Marathon, dad, Memories, running, Running Shoes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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The Weird World Of Children’s TV

February 21, 2011 By

Today is a statutory holiday in Ontario. A few years ago people started whining about the dearth of holidays between Christmas and Easter. We need something to break up the long, crappy winters, they said. The Ontario government agreed, and so Family Day was born, to be observed on the third Monday of every February.

I never really thought the lack of holidays was much of a big deal, but I’m certainly not going to complain about an extra day off. What it means, though, is that I get a day of riveting TV viewing that includes the likes of Thomas the Train and Roary the Racing Car.

Don’t judge. By the time Monday rolls around, I’ve spent an entire weekend being run ragged by two kids who make the Energizer Bunny look like a lazy slob. On holiday Mondays I feel entitled to be more lax in my restrictions of the kids’ TV viewing.

Anyway, as I sit here listening to an inane song that repeats the phrase I’m the map about seventeen million times, I feel compelled to make the following observation: In order to make a successful children’s TV show, you have to be high on crack.

I mean, seriously. It’s the only explanation I can think of for some of the stuff I see on Treehouse Channel and TVO Kids. Take the episode of Dora that was on yesterday, for instance. It featured these Super Babies who had supersonic hearing and X-ray vision, and they floated down a river on a raft helping Dora and Boots find the clues. The Super Babies were Super Creepy. They wouldn’t look out of place in a scary horror movie.

Here are some children’s TV shows that make me scratch my head and go, “Huh???”

  • Barney the Dinosaur. Otherwise known as “most annoying children’s character ever created”. I don’t allow Barney in any shape or form in my house, simply because if I did, my head would explode. It’s a matter of self-preservation. It’s the the combination of the goody-two-shoes kids, the shade of purple, and that annoying voice that makes my ears bleed.
  • Blues Clues. Rumour has it that Steve, the original host of Blues Clues, developed a serious drug problem and had a nervous breakdown. Who can blame the poor bastard? He spent his time in a two-dimensional psychedelic world hanging out with furniture and salt shakers that could talk to him, and a manic blue dog that couldn’t so much as say Woof.
  • Harry And His Bucket Full Of Dinosaurs. OK, let me get this straight. A normal-sized six-year-old boy can somehow fit his entire body into a normal-sized bucket. The bucket turns into a place called “Dino World” and the toy dinosaurs come to life and grow to full dinosaur size. When Harry is in his bucket talking to his dinosaurs, I wonder if his mother knows where he is.
  • Max And Ruby. Otherwise known as “second most annoying children’s characters ever created”. Max is a little rabbit, maybe four years old. His primary caregiver is his sister Ruby, who is maybe eight. She is solely responsible for feeding him, bathing him, putting him to bed, and so on. The parents are nowhere in the picture, although there’s a grandma who shows up from time to time. My theory, based on the fact that Max has very poor verbal skills and yet has very unique thought processes that end up solving whatever problem the pair are presented with, is that Max has autism. Mom and Dad couldn’t handle the responsibilities of special needs parenting and ran away to Mexico. Ruby was forced into guardianship of her little brother, and Grandma periodically checks on them to make sure they have clean clothes and nutritious food.
  • Backyardigans.  I don’t have a problem with the adventures these kids go on. The show is set up in such a way that you can tell they are engaging in really creative imaginative play, right in their back yards. It’s kind of nice, actually. A group of kids who live on the same street, playing together and being best friends. It’s just that – well, have you seen what they look like? What exactly are they supposed to be ?
  • Toopy and Binoo. Gigantic mouse who never stops talking and is clearly addicted to happy meds. Miniature stuffed cat (you can even see the seam where it’s been patched up) who cannot talk but can walk and nod its head, and has the biggest village idiot grin you ever saw. Enough said.

And we expect our kids to grow up normal.

Filed Under: Children, entertainment Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,