• tobogganing
    adoption and tweens - family - Health - Parenting - parenting

    Why I am Speaking Martian Again: FASD Looks Like This and I am Still Proud to be a Health and Special Needs Blogger

    February 26, 2015 - By 

    It’s been an interesting week here, in which several signs have made me realize again what I am supposed to be writing about. It’s funny how sometimes you, as a blogger, get tunnel vision watching stats and striving for growth and page views and SEO. These are the tools of the trade and we all get really great at understanding them. We watch our posts for engagement and comments and we tick them off and file them away with headings like: improved or needs improvement, or blogging goals for the year. We worry on a day when the stats dive and…

  • parenting teens
    adoption and tweens - family - parenting - Parenting

    The Art of Hope and Parenting Teens

    February 17, 2015 - By 

    At some point this past year I realized my children aren’t really children anymore, not in the strictest sense of the word. One is a teenager and the other a tween and that means that in the context of child development they are in fact closer to being adults than they are to being toddlers or preschoolers or children. My heart simultaneously leaps, shouts, cries, expands and contracts as I write that. As they bloom so do I, and yet it also tugs heavily when I think that they will soon be adults. Oh my god how I hope we…

  • Ontario Valentine
    family - Health - homes - Parenting - parenting

    My Ontario Valentine Or Ten Reasons We Stay #ohip4ivf #onpoli

    February 13, 2015 - By 

    Ontario is the province I choose to raise my family in, to build a business, to make my home. There was a time before we adopted our beautiful kids, when we were set to move to British Columbia. We priced it all out and were ready to go as a young married couple. But instead we stayed. There have been many occasions when I’ve contemplated moving to the United States and finding a way through that red tape so that I might work there. But still we stay. This Valentine’s Day, I wanted to take some time to reflect on…

  • Alternative family tree for adoptive families
    family - parenting - Parenting - Printables

    Adoption and Family Tree Free Printable Activity for Kids

    February 5, 2015 - By 

    The Adoption Family Tree Printable is unique and intended to help kids visualize and process their place in the family and maybe even their understanding of adoption as a social phenomenon. Our kids often give new meaning to the proverb it takes a village to raise a child. Adoption and adoptive families are different. In more ways than most people can imagine. Once I wrote about some of the challenges of being an adoptive family here on CBC web site. Adoption is Not Like It Is In The Movies.   Our kids often come with more challenges throughout life. They…

  • family - Parenting - parenting

    Traditional Family Tree Printable for Family Day

    February 4, 2015 - By 

    The ancestry topic is hot no matter what age you are. At some point in your child’s education they will start to learn about ancestry and heritage. This Traditional Family Tree Printable for kids can help them sort some of their heritage out.   Family Tree PS-1 When you have little people it can be a lot of fun to help them discover their world. Part of that discovery process also involves figuring out who belongs where. Which uncle is married to which aunt? Who is that, as far as it relates to Daddy? My one daughter, even at 10,…

  • Disney on Ice
    family - parenting

    Disney on Ice: I am 6 Again #DisneyOnIceInsider

    January 30, 2015 - By 

    Parenting is a whirlwind amusement park ride some years. January commences with it’s blank slate of beautiful opportunities and it’s promise of zen like days stretching as far as the eye can see, and then February arrives faster and colder, and March and April skate by, and we all know the summer disappears in the blink of an eye. Suddenly you find yourself looking around you, surveying life and family on New Year’s Eve facing another year, and you wonder how did the kid’s feet grow by three entire sizes in the last few months? Life races past. Children are…

  • Technology

    Ring Ring Pick Up the Phone – Cell Phones and Teens – The Sequel

    January 23, 2015 - By 

    Remember this post? Remember when I posted this week about the $400 strange data charge on our Rogers bill? Remember how thrilled I was when I realized it was my darling daughter’s phone which doesn’t even have data that rang up a huge data bill? Yes, I was livid and I confiscated the phone and the iPad. And I was peeved at Rogers, because I told them when I hooked said phone up that it was for calling. We had talk and text only. And yet a $400 data bill arrived. How does that happen? I queried how this happened…

  • high blood pressure
    Health - Technology

    Operation Banish High Blood Pressure Week One Checkup #health #fitness

    December 12, 2014 - By 

    This is a check in along the way to tackling my high blood pressure issue that developed just this past year. High blood pressure is not something to be taken lightly and out can be deadly. I am committed to fixing the problem as I need to stick around longterm and be healthy for myself and my family. Follow along as I try to change this growing health concern. At the start of 2014, I was busy, getting ready for a major move to our new house, managing multiple accounts and a growing business and parenting some wonderful, but challenging…

  • Health - infertility - Uncategorized

    Part 2: Egg Freezing – Anna’s Cancer Diagnosis and Fertility Preservation

    December 3, 2014 - By 

    Meet Anna and Marlon Kashani. In January of 2014 Anna, 29 years old, engaged to Marlon, was diagnosed with breast cancer. The Vancouver couple were devastated of course. But they were even more shocked to hear that treatment had to start immediately. Anna’s family history of breast cancer meant specialists wanted to begin aggressive treatment right away. The situation was urgent. There was no talk of fertility preservation, or what might happen, until Anna brought it up. “The cancer clinic told us we would never have kids,” Anna said recently in Vancouver. “We weren’t satisfied with that answer. We did some…

  • special needs adoption
    adoption and tweens - Parenting

    We Stay: Five Things I Never Told You About Special Needs Adoption

    November 26, 2014 - By 

    I am not unlike you. I love my kids more than anything on the planet. They are my heart. They are my life. They are my first glorious sight in the morning. (One of them bursts into my room every day at crack of dawn, but that’s another story) and one of the last things I see at night. There is nothing that can bring out the mama bear in me like someone wronging my child. My family is not perfect, but it is mine. Everything I do is to build a future for them. Most of you know by now that…