Category Archives: Wee Girlie
A Woman’s Razor, a Tool of Oppression?
When I was young, I shaved my legs every day; EVERY day. Spring, Summer, Autumn, AND Winter; every day. The media told me that having smooth, moisturized, soft legs was an important part of being pretty – and as a teenager and young person I bought into it. I believed the myth of beauty society fed me.
As I came into adulthood, I still shaved – though not with the same frequency. I spent a great deal of my time as a young adult sick and in pain… pretty just wasn’t as important when you hurt so bad that you can’t get up and down stairs without dissolving into tears. But I still shaved and moisturized. It was part of being a girl. We couldn’t have people thinking I actually grew hair on my legs.
Then I became a Mom. And yes, even then I shaved my legs. By then it was just one of those chores you do. Going swimming? Better shave. Wearing shorts or a skirt? Better shave. Just part of the self-grooming routine. Something I didn’t think about. Something I did in a rather robotic fashion, another member of the trained masses.
I want my daughter to grow up knowing these things are choices – even if we don’t always feel they are. Not all Women shave. In some parts of the world it would seem odd to do so. My daughter believed this until she was three. Then one day she laughed, astonished, at the ridiculous notion that a Woman could choose not to shave. That was the day I stopped shaving my legs.
Lily-Ann has other Women in her life who are non-shavers, my sister for one. But clearly this was something she needed to see with more frequency. It may seem like a small thing, but I needed her to know that we have a choice. We don’t have to shave. We don’t have to buy into the view of beauty that the media is selling, we can choose something different.
I may be the odd Woman out here in North America, sporting hairy legs all year long – without shame and, quite frankly, with a little pride. And yes, it may seem like a strange thing to take a stand on… but I couldn’t let my daughter grow up thinking she has no choice, that she has to go along with whatever ideals society sets before her.
She has options and choices. We all do.
Sure, I could have kept on shaving – but she shocked me out of it. Sometimes, that’s what we need. Something to shock us out of that robotic state we get lulled into. Something to bring us back into personhood. A sudden splash of cold water, a bucketfull dumped on us while we lay half asleep, lounging in the sun. Something to remind us we’re alive, and we have the right to make these seemingly small, seemingly insignificant, choices for ourselves. And sometimes, those small choices end up being some of the biggest.
Out working in the yard, clearing away the Winter ick. My hairy leg enjoying the Spring sunshine.
Winter still going strong… crazy.
I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately. I’m sure it’s the weather… we’ve been breaking records left and right for the cold and snow, records that go back as far as they’ve been recording temperatures here in Saskatchewan – and that’s 120 years of recorded cold and snow levels.
It’s not unheard of to have a freak snowfall in April… but we’re not talking about an odd, one-off, Spring snow. We’re talking about a Winter that appears to be never-ending. We still have over a foot of snow covering most of the yard (and three feet in some corners).
I have seeds awaiting planting. And I’m dying to be spending time with my hands in the good dark earth. I need to put on a pair of clam diggers, and get out in the sunshine. This weather is just making me feel like curling up into a ball and never emerging from my bed.
Normally I spend my birthday outside, having a picnic or bbq. Heck, on several occasions I’ve spent it on the beach. Never in my now 36 years have I been kept indoors by snow.
In spite of the weather though, I had the best birthday I’ve had in a very long while. Lily-Ann insisted that she and her Daddy go to great efforts to make the day special – and I am so grateful that she did. I love Damon, but he’s never been one to make a fuss or do anything to make someone feel important on their day… which means I’d gotten rather used to having crummy birthdays. LOL If I’d had one of those along with this crummy weather? I’m not sure I would have gotten out of bed. 
My girl really did make me feel so special. She got her Daddy up in the morning and the two of them made me breakfast in bed – something I’ve never had in my adult life. Then we all watched a couple episodes of Friendship is Magic before heading out to build-a-bear… where Lily-Ann and I picked out, and put together, and chose clothing for a Pinkie Pie stuffy. Whom is now sitting beside my bed being super cute. On our way home we all got smoothies, then vegged for a while before Supper.
My parents had bought me a gift card for Persephone Theater, and with it I bought tickets for Damon and I to see Ride the Cyclone – a musical about a group of dead teenagers. It was very well written, and had us laughing all the way through. Some fabulous performances as well. It was a great way to wrap up a wonderful birthday.
So. I’m 36. I wish it actually looked like Spring, but I had a lovely birthday just the same. Yep. That sums it up pretty well.
Picture Perfect Playdate
The girl had a playdate today with her bestie Parker. They played with Zhu Zhu Pets, had monster pancakes for lunch, played with the Light Bright, made things with the Fazoodles, played with My Little Ponies, got dressed up as royals, played Skylanders, and had just started to play Littlest Pet Shop when his Mom came by to pick him up. It was a great afternoon.
Oh! And I can’t forget… they made some plans for their future too. You see, they plan to get married, and they have now decided that they should have 100 swimming pools and 100 horses. Important things for any couple to have.
Run down and tired – a parenting rant.
I’ve always looked forward to my evening blog post. It’s a time to reflect on the day, gather my thoughts, share what’s on my mind – whether it’s something of huge importance or just a little blurb about my life. Lately though, by the time the girl is asleep in bed beside me, I find I’m too run down and tired to be much in the mood for blogging.
Lily-Ann is a “high need” kid (a term coined by Dr. Sears). She’s never been easy. She’s challenging, but oh so worth it. She’s super bright, creative, head-strong, determined, yet compassionate and full of empathy. Her emotions are always heightened and many would find them exaggerated – a fact that was nailed home in her report card, which came home right before Easter break. And all this would be just fine, if she wasn’t such a chip off the old block.
My emotions tend to get so tied up within whatever she’s feeling that I’m just exhausted by the time I’ve laid down with her to read our nightly chapters. What she feels has always translated directly into what I myself feel. When she’s happy, I’m happy, when she’s upset, I’m upset. I honestly can’t see beyond her pain when she’s hurting – and that includes when she’s in the middle of a temper tantrum… which has been happening on a more and more regular basis in the evenings.
I’m exhausted, and can’t think of anything to write beyond that.
People talk about “the terrible twos”… Lily-Ann was a BREEZE at two, and good-natured trouble at three. At four she was everything I could ever have hoped for – and then some. We’re now at five and a half, and wow! While I still wouldn’t call her terrible, there are times when she brings out the terrible in all of us.
I’ve got all sorts of parenting skills. It comes from a lifetime of parenting those around me. I have multiple siblings who are young enough to be my own children. I’ve been babysitting since I was ten (which seems crazy in retrospect). My family ran a daycare when I was a child and a teen. Parenting just kinda comes naturally. But even I am left with nothing left after an hour of break-downs over everything including something as trivial as a piece of scrap that missed the wastebasket by 1/2 cm.
Now, I know this will pass. Every child goes through phases where things are just more than they can handle. However, while we’re in the middle of this particular tempest? Blogging isn’t exactly my priority.
And hey! Advice, ideas, suggestions, and pats on the back are ALL appreciated just now. I know, as parents, this is something we’ve all faced (or are going to face) at some point. 
Breaking the Silence – and 80′s Day
Well, we’re here! The sixteenth annual Breaking the Silence conference at the University of Saskatchewan is tomorrow! There is still time to register – though not much. So if you haven’t done so, get’r done! There really is no time left. Get your registration done tonight! All the details are here: http://www.usask.ca/education/breaking-the-silence/index.php
And because you asked for it, I’ll be doing my session on understanding sex, gender, and orientation TWICE. That means you’ve got an extra opportunity to get in on this discussion if you missed it last year. And even if you did get in last year, because I conduct it as a discussion, it will never be the same as where we go is truly directed by YOU.
Okay… now for a few fun pictures.
It was 80′s day at Kid kid’s school today. Normally I’m all for spirit days and getting dressed up. But an 80′s day? Two thirds of everything that the cool kids are wearing these days are totally 80′s inspired – which means every day is 80′s day. Seriously, every item the girl wore was out of her usual wardrobe.
LOL
That said… the 80′s were about excess… so we loaded on the bangles, we loaded on the belts, we loaded on the hair spray… and we added slouch socks – because that’s one style that didn’t make it back. And because it’s Thursday, that meant that I had to get dressed up too, after all I couldn’t spend the afternoon at school and NOT take part in 80′s day. LOL So I found the perfect jacket (and stuffed socks under my bra straps to mimic shoulder pads), pulled on some black leggings, a gold lamé skirt, and again with the slouch socks. Then we did our hair and make-up… everything in excess! It was great. 
DIY – Word Blocks
A little while back I came across the idea of using megablocks to help with phonics skills and fluency. I thought it was a great idea. I’ll try to find the website where I first saw it, and will share it when I do. For now though, here’s our take on it:
Seeing how the girl has outgrown her megablocks and generally is using lego for building, I loved the idea of repurposing her old blocks. So today I pulled out my label maker and her box of blocks and set to work. This should give new life to all her old sets, that haven’t seen the light in several months.
I decided to put both a capitalized and lowercase version of the same word on each block. This way, when we start worrying more about proper capitalization her blocks will still be useful for her. Eventually I’ll be adding a whole lot more words – including many she has requested herself – as well as doubling up some blocks with words like is, was, it, and… as many of them can be used twice in the same super silly, extra long, sentence.
We also decided to use many of her blocks with stickers on them. You know how some sets (like Kai Lan and Diego) have themed stickers that get applied to some blocks? Well, we’ve labeled those too – with Kid kid’s choice of words. It can be nice for early readers to have visual hints when still working towards reading fluency.
So, here are our blocks. I ran out of tape in my label maker, so had to stop a little earlier than I’d have liked. But we still had enough finished to have a bit of fun. Lily-Ann loved my “Dad was stinky” sentence, and I loved that her very first one was “Lily-Ann is cute”.
Downtown Disney
I have to admit… after listening to folk rave about Downtown Disney, I found the shopping district to be a HUGE letdown. Most of what you find there are your typical stores that you can find at any mall in any city. I’m shopping at Downtown Disney because I want to find DISNEY stuff. So while yeah, you’ll find things at Downtown Disney that you won’t find at any of the Disney parks it’s because it’s not Disney related.
Lily-Ann loved the princess store. She bought herself a purse and gloves set (courtesy of Karla Amaya, our travel agent, who gave the girl some Disney Dollars to spend), and I bought her a tiara. We also found a thank you gift for my sister and her girlfriend who watched over our furry and feathered family members while we were gone – a very cool mad hatter tea pot and tea set. Seriously, if we could have afforded two of them, I’d have got one for myself. LOL
The other cool shop was the Lego store. It really was neat to see that many sets all in one place – and I loved the create your own figures center as well as the bulk lego pieces. That was pretty awesome. And I adored the amazing lego dragon they had built out front. It was seriously incredible!
Other than that, there were little bits and pieces here and there… but overall? It was a pretty underwhelming experience. We were glad when we decided to head back to our resort. It was a MUCH cooler place to spend the remainder of our last day. 
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- Lego Sea Serpent.
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- Maleficent!
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- Prince Philip and Maleficent – created, amazingly, from lego.
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- Lily-Ann and her lego car – I thought she made a pretty darn nice one. :)
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- Lily-Ann’s lego car came in second place, that’s it in the middle – pretty good considering she was the youngest one to make one. :)
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- Hulk Mad! Hulk Stepped on Lego! Hulk Smash!
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- Mommy’s little princess – always!
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- Showing off her new princess gloves, purse, and tiara.
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- One of the window displays – Princess dresses made from princess dolls.
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- Seriously, we’re the only people who spend a week and a half in Disney World who still get excited to see squirrels. The whole time, whenever we’d see one whomever saw it first would yell “SQUIRREL” and we’d all get excited and look. LOL
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- Run little dood, run!
Disney’s Hollywood Studios
The last of the four Walt Disney World parks is Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and I realize it’s cliched to say it, but while it’s the last it’s not the least. Hollywood Studios is AMAZING! I’ve already shared the photos from the girl’s Jedi Training School experience, which was totally incredible and jealousy inducing, but that was just one small part of our day.
There are just a TON of character meets at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and the lines were minimal compared to many of the other parks. There’s a bunch to do, yet this park doesn’t feel quite as overwhelming as the others (of course, by this point we had our system pretty much perfected – which really helps). And it’s not totally kid-centric either, which was great. This park definitely had the broadest appeal, with everything from Star Wars to the Muppets to Phineas and Ferb to Pixar’s greatest hits to classic Disney as well. We loved everything about this one. It was fabulous!
Disney’s Magic Kingdom
This truly is THE park. When people who have never been to Walt Disney World talk about Disney World, THIS is the park they are usually talking about. It really is quintessential Disney.
When you are planning your WDW vacation plant to spend at least two days at the Magic Kingdom. There is so much here that really shouldn’t be missed, and even with two days devoted to this park there are things you’ll have to skip. I promise to go into the rides and shows in more detail on another post – listing the must dos and the must avoids. But for now? After such a long day? I’m going to jump right into the photos. After all, that’s really what you want to see, isn’t it?
Disney’s Animal Kingdom
When we sat down to plan our trip, we decided to spend six days visiting Disney parks. Two days for Magic Kingdom, one for Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios, and one spare day to go back wherever we felt needed an extra day of exploring and fun. Well… that extra day ended up with us back at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. We absolutely LOVED this park.
For those who have never been, Disney’s Animal Kingdom is like a zoo and an amusement park all rolled into one. And as far as it’s zoo aspect goes, it’s one like no other. While there are lots of areas where the animals have their own private enclosures, there are also a plethora of spaces where the animals are free to wander around with a multitude of species all sharing beautifully sculpted landscapes. It really is quite impressive. And while I promise to share lots of animal photos at a later date, here are a few of us just taking advantage of some cool photo-ops at the park:
