Dear Readers,

I’ve been busy spending my precious blogging time catching up on public service announcements and giveaways, so I today I thought I’d just shoot the breeze for a while, and reconnect with you!

For starters, we’ve been very successful with Maggie’s potty training, and just to reiterate: I highly recommend bribes. We went with the simple Smarties idea, and it worked like a charm. Although I think she was old enough to have her own instrinsic motivation, and the candy wasn’t actually that necessary. We waited until she showed us she was ready (as in, she went and used the potty without any prompting, and came to tell us after the fact) which was at 28 months. I know some people want their kids trained ASAP (especially for the hassle of going out), but it’s much easier to leisurely find a place to change your little one than it is to find a bathroom RIGHT NOW!

We use pull-ups at naptime (which are usually dry afterwards) and diapers at night (which are dry if she gets to the bathroom as soon as she wakes up, but not so much if we’re trying to sleep in and are ignoring the girls on the weekends). Come on, no one else does that? When you hear “Can I wake up?” it’s much more effective to feign sleep than it is to say “No!” Try it.

Frannie just performed in her very first Christmas concert, and entertained us all with her Junior Kindergarten rendition of Jingle Bells, and a cute dance to the song “All I Want For Christmas is My Two Front Teeth”…which is actually very appropriate for her. Think it’s early for a four year old to be missing her teeth? Well, hers were gone at 19 months. Yeah, that story is coming up in my 2011 post on “Bad Mommy Moments.”

In terms of my bookshelf these days, I recently finished The Birth House by Ami McKay, which was the amazing story of a twentieth century midwife in rural Nova Scotia. I’d definitely recommend it. I also read The Memory Keeper’s Daughter for my book club, which was beautifully written but painful to get through. I honestly felt depressed during and after the reading…and eventually dreaded picking it up. I forced myself to finish it because I did want to know how it ended, but nothing good can come of a 1960’s doctor delivering his wife’s twins, and instructing the nurse to take the girl (with Down Syndrome) to an institution, while he tells his wife that she was stillborn. Really, that’s the story. Only the nurse couldn’t do it, so she flees town and raises the daughter as her own. I’m currently enjoying the MUCH lighter Mini Shopaholic, by the fantastically entertaining Sophie Kinsella.
I also have a backlogged stack of beloved magazines, which I haven’t been able to touch what with the report cards/interviews/Christmas concert-shopping-wrapping-baking-planning rush. This is a busy season for teachers, especially the crazies who like to purchase and wrap little trinkets for each student in the class, and take field trips three days before school ends.
My latest blog news is that I surpassed the 400 Google Friend Connect followers mark…and of course I’m proud of that, but I take it with a grain of salt. In an ideal world would mean that there are 400 people hanging off my every word, but in the real world it translates as many bloggers who sign up to follow just in the hopes of a followback, or who want a bonus entry into a contest and never return. Many of my most loyal readers aren’t even part of the GFC scene anyway. (I usually follow back, by the way, unless the follower is a middle-aged evangelist or teenaged aspiring rocker, in which case I think it’s safe to assume that the person is not a genuine This Mom Loves reader. This applies to Twitter followers as well. It’s lovely that a male realtor from Texas enjoys my tweets, but I’m pretty sure I’m not missing anything if I skip the followback.) I am thrilled with how my blog has evolved since the first post almost ten months ago, and the opportunities I have been presented with. Finding the time to keep it up is the hard part…

So, what’s next for This Mom Loves? You can look forward to another great Momterview with a  fantastic television personality (think ‘design’), a fun party theme, the aforementioned “Bad Mommy Moments”, and of course more great reviews and giveaways.

Until next time, I want to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas (or a Happy whatever holiday you and your loved ones are celebrating), and offer you my favourite Christmas carol phrase:

Tidings of Comfort and Joy,

Kate

4 comments on “So, How Have You Been?”

  1. Hi Kate! Nice to read you again – I've been so busy these days, too!

    Congrats on the potty training and I am in full agreement of the "when they're ready" approach!

    Oh, and I've made a note about that book -The Birth House. It's almost time for me to make the next pick for our book club and that one looks great.

    Hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday season!

    Cheers!
    Cynthia

  2. Oh I love the birth house! I couldn't put it down! But the memory keeper just dragged and dragged and dragged. I still don't think I finished it.
    PS. We are failing at the potty training. He was all for it then decided that he wasn't ready. Sigh. These diapers are sucking out our bank account 😉

  3. Wow, can't believe you felt depressed after reading the "Memory Keeper's Daughter" I actually really enjoyed it and was inspired by the nurse who was such a wonderful advocate for the little girl with Downs in a time when physical and mental illness was so socially taboo! I guess we must have very differnt tastes in books because you didn't really enjoy the last book I suggested either. I guess this is what makes us all unique and different and why there are so many different genre of books! I did enjoy the birth house greatly! I was pregnant when I read it so it had lots of relevance.

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