Cancer Survivor, writing about Health and Fitness as you age

Gender and Stereotypes I appear to be quite fascinated by gender differences and stereotypes. Why? Well, it is a topic I find myself repeating. The first time I blogged about gender was way back in 2009 when I was trying to figure out how come boys become boys. Then I pointed out the differences between my husband's reading shelf and mine in 2012 and most recently when I talked about the boys' and girls' soccer team names in 2013. More Gender Stereotypes Well, I recently visited my son's class to help with a writing assignment - the assignment was to write a "how-to" report: procedural writing. It is always enjoyable to see how they think, and the things that are top-of-mind for them. Here are some of the topics the kids chose - HTML Tables Topic Gender How to braid your hair Girl How to do the highschool cheer Girl How to do the crow (a yoga) pose Girl How to lace your ice-skates Girl How to tie your laces Girl, but f...

Soo..., after having our after-school sitter for our boys for a bit, her schedule changed and we had to find someone else. We decided to go with a manny (male nanny), because for one thing we had a manny apply! While he was not able to stay with us long unfortunately, it was a very interesting experiment! The dynamic between the boys and our manny was different than between them and our female sitters. For one thing, the play time was much more rough and tumble. More fighting and wrestling, jumping and punching. When they were not fighting with him, he was less likely to intervene if they were roughhousing with each other. The female sitters would have stepped in much earlier. You may see this dynamic in your own household when Dad is in charge vs Mom or if parents have two different parenting styles. They also interacted with him differently - they saw him more like a buddy rather than someone they had to listen to and respect, so that made his job a wee bit challenging. He had...

Rainbows Superstars Pixies Hello Kitties Shooting Stars Unicorns Lady Dragon Dolphins Orange Crushers Lady Bugs Red Hot Chili Peppers Water Lilies Super Spys Fireballs Storm Troopers Ninjas Wildcats Sidewinders Firebirds Speedy Sharks Secret Agents Speeders These are the names of the soccer teams in the boys U-6 and girls U-6 league that my son played in over spring. The colour scheme is meant to confuse, but from the names I bet you guessed that the first list is the girls teams and the second, the boys.

I wanted to make a short post to my boys, all of them, about them. To my biggest boy, my husband. I think I owe you a month of Sundays of video games, and I promise you, when I am better you can collect on those IOUs any time you want. I love you: for your patience for your understanding for your flexibility despite the latest curve ball for your positive outlook for your support in so many ways for not asking more of me than I am able and asking so little for perspective for stepping up like a man - the man I wanted to marry and still do and for the way you are. To my little boys, who have shown me so much love. The smallest, my cherub, is the one who will hug my leg and kiss me and remind me why I have to stay strong. My big son will try me but in ways I am only beginning to understand, he shows me his love and his fears. He is a wonderful big brother to the little one (albeit rough at times), but when I need him to be the man of the house - he rises to the challenge...

Considering how much how I love reading I am a little stunned (little?), that I haven't really made more of one of my favourite topics - books. The pictures below just show a few of what my 9-year old is reading now and has been reading over the last two years. I don't know if you can tell, but we love the series!  Bailey School Kids, Magic Tree House, Boxcar Children, Magic School Bus, How to Train your Dragon, Lightning Thief, Mysterious Benedict Society, Inkheart, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, anything Star Wars - plus assorted stories I've been trying to get him to read.  We've mutually agreed that since some of the later Harry Potter books are a bit dark, he doesn't need to get into those just yet. We are so blessed that Lucas loves to read, we hope we can continue to feed his love of reading, for ideas and for entertainment. At the same time, who knows what he is learning or remembering what he reads! And while the books we get for Lucas are...

I had the idea for this post and when I told my husband it involved photos, he was a little surprised since I don't post pictures of my little ones here.  So this is my boys through the years with a twist - a violent one. If you are the parents of young boys, this is what you can look forward to.  If you are the parents of girls, you might find this post interesting in the way one learns about different species, interesting. First we start up with the everyday weapon around the home - the lowly inner tube of a roll of gift paper. Adequate for thrusting and blocking, but not hard enough to cause damage. Can be interchanged with paper towel rolls for close combat.  You can see where this post is going. Above, air-filled lightsabers, easy for Liam to wield and below, much-abused foam swords.  We certainly got our $5 worth out of these. They had to be retired after the foam started giving way and the hard plastic inner tube became a hazard, especially for thr...

I came across some short articles on the differences between boys and girls and raising them, that I thought might be interesting. In the books I had read about raising boys, they mention some of the points raised in the links below - different expectations for boys/girls, different language is used with both, the difference in physical and emotional maturity. Although these online articles are not very detailed, it certainly gives you a flavour for some of the current thinking on this. For me, it is enlightening to learn more about how what I do, what I say and how their experiences affect how they behave and interact with the world around them. From TVs to Toys:What shapes boys into boys and girls into girls Differences in raising boys and girls As a further example to the different messages that boys get to girls and how in turn it affects their behaviour (circular reinforcement), check out this lemonade experiment. Difference between boys and girls When Lucas was born,...

I was putting Lucas to bed last night and I noticed that Shark-Bait, the stuffed shark he sleeps with, wasn't in his bed. "Where's Shark-Bait?" He gave me a sheepish look and walked over to the desk in his room, opened the bottom drawer and pulled out Shark-Bait, then a few seconds later whipped out a stuffed dolphin from the same place. "Shark-Bait and Dolphin were on a date and they needed some privacy." He was completely serious. "A date??!" I can only imagine how ridiculous I must have looked and sounded, I was just totally stunned, not only that he knew the word, but he actually thought something about it. "What are they doing on a date?" "Well, you know, eating chocolate-covered strawberries and talking.." "Oohhh." How sweet, I'm thinking. The things he gets into his head. "So when did you decide that Shark-Bait and Dolphin should go on a date?" "About a week ago." What??! You've ...