Since last week we've been continuing the pleasantifying of mornings, and with one little hiccup yesterday, I think it's working.

To review, this is how it goes: we get up and have breakfast together, then I go and shower and leave the children the following list:

1. two trips to the kitchen
2. pack snack
3. get dressed
4. brush teeth
5. brush hair

To which Delphine inevitably adds a sixth item: Play. I think they're finally understanding that Play can only come after (and if) every other thing is done.

Cathy suggested creating a colourful chart listing the morning routine, but Delphine is text-oriented and a list nerd like me, so the staid to-do list format works for her. I write a new list every day, and she solemnly X'es off the things she's finished. It works for both girls, even though Cordelia doesn't read yet, because Delphine's essentially in charge of Cordelia in the morning, and Cordelia doesn't mind. (Your mileage may vary.)

Yesterday I didn't include "brush hair" on the list, and when I announced "we have to leave in five minutes" Delphine rashly concluded they had time to play because they were "almost done". Cordelia came downstairs with every intention of playing and justly rebelled when I said I had to brush her hair first. She dug her heels in and I lost my temper and hollered at them. I'm not sure why I took it so badly—could be that I didn't get enough sleep, or I was worried that I would miss a 9:00 appointment. Fortunately Delphine stepped up and was the grown-up. She brushed Cordelia's hair and her own, and helped us all get out of the house in good time.

Today our morning went smooth as butter: I didn't leave anything off the list, and the children didn't muck about. We arrived at school in plenty of time, with no shouting. It probably didn't hurt that the kids were in bed early last night.

I should add that one of the keys to this working is that I studiously don't care what their snacks look like (apart from that they have to contain fruit). Today Cordelia took a little container with some pretzel sticks and a dried apricot—no snack bag, no drink. It's certainly not how I would do it, but I expect it will be good enough for her, plus she has the satisfaction of having created and packed her own snack.

Another thing I cultivate a lack of interest in is what the children wear. Today Cordelia wore a black dance leotard with teal leggings, which might just be a little too gorgeous for kindergarten. Delphine has been dressing herself sensibly (but with a certain flair) since forever, and fortunately she's happy to choose Cordelia's clothes too, on the days Cordelia's not interested.

So, for now, mornings are a success story. As the girls grow and the dynamic between them changes, I guess our mornings will change too, and of course the success of mornings will depend on how well-rested we all are, but for now I'm happy that we have laid the groundwork for a functional start to the day.

I'm not sure this is the post I want to post, but it's on my mind.

Today I did a positive parenting experiment. Normally Blake and I nag and cajole the girls through their morning, until we're all angry at each other and we end up rushing to school in a sweaty rush. Lousy way to start the day, so I decided to Schäfer it up: I would tell the girls what was expected of them and what I would do, and then I would step back and let them take responsibility for their morning routine.

They were forty minutes late for school.

Here's how it went down. We ate breakfast together, and then I went upstairs to take a shower and dress, with the following message: "You guys need to take your two trips [to the kitchen with stuff from the table], pack your lunches and snacks and get dressed. If you have time can you give Thomas his food and water?" At that point they had enough time to complete everything if they got on with it.

While I was in the shower they fought. While I was getting dressed they fought and then played. After I was dressed I came downstairs—the table was not cleared and they were both still in their pajamas. I carried on without agitation or urgency. I finished clearing the table while they played, them I folded laundry. At 8:30 I let them know the first bell was ringing at school—they were still in their pajamas, but at that point Delphine started to rush. She asked for, and received, help packing her lunch, while Cordelia stayed in her pajamas. Delphine tried to get Cordelia to hurry up, and she agreed to pack Cordelia's snack while she got dressed. Finally we left the house at 9:05, and signed in at school at around 9:20.

I was calm on the outside but on the inside I was freaking out while they played as if they hadn't a thing to do all day. It was a miracle of parental self-restraint. I didn't even nag on the way to school, I let being late speak for itself. (When you say "I told you so" or "let this be a lesson to you" it's called piggybacking and it turns a natural consequence into a punishment, which just gets you caught up in a power struggle and demotivates the child.) Being on time for school is not my problem, it's theirs. My job is to provide them with the tools and information to get to school on time.

Tonight we're going to have a family meeting to talk about mornings. My suggestion will be to make a morning routine poster, and I will let them know that a) I will only remind them of their morning responsibilities once, b) I will not play with them in the morning, and c) I will let them know what time it is every ten minutes. Hopefully they will come up with some ideas of how to stay focussed in the morning.

I hope tomorrow goes better. I know I'm supposed to be detached and aloof, but the school expects the parents to "get" their children to school on time, so I do feel responsible and guilty when they are late. Also, I have a few morning meetings and appointments coming up which I don't want to be late for. I'll have to review my parenting books and see what I'm supposed when my kids are making me late. In the meantime I will repeat the following phrase: "It will get worse before it gets better. It will get worse before it gets better."

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What I Did Wrong: I sprung this new behaviour on them without warning. As I said, normally we nag and hustle and bother them all morning and I think that's where they get their clues as to how late they are and what they should be doing. Today I remained calm and I think the girls interpreted that to mean that we were on time, even though I told them in words that we weren't. Actions really do speak louder.

Also, we were running a teeny bit behind right from the start. Not behind enough to make us late, but behind enough that we needed to be brisk. So I would say I'm responsible for about five minutes of that forty. I would rather our mornings were leisurely but focussed, which will mean I need to be more disciplined about getting up and fixing breakfast on time.

What I Did Right: I think otherwise I applied the principles of positive parenting correctly. I remained kind yet firm, I didn't get into any power struggles, I told them what I would do rather than what they should do.

For the last six years I've been reading parenting books. I've read dozens of them, some good, some useless, but a handful stand out as books I've reached for time and again when I had a question or a problem, or just needed some reassuring company. These are the books I would buy (if I were rich) for every expecting mother I know.

Start At The Very Beginning

Well, not the very beginning—there are lots of books about pregnancy and childbirth out there, but childbirth is such an unpredictable and personal thing that you'd have to read a library's worth of books just to learn the handful of things which will apply to your situation. Your best bet is to find a good midwife and stay off the Internet.

Once the baby comes you'll want to feed it, and the best nursing advice I found (in book form—again, a trustworthy advisor is your best bet but unless you were clever enough to marry a lactation consultant you'll need a source of midnight advice) is Breastfeeding Made Simple: Seven Natural Laws for Nursing Mothers by Nancy Mohrbacher and Kathleen Kendall-Tackett. The title is an exaggeration, of course—no book can make breastfeeding simple— but their advice is soothing, practical, and research-based.

After a while your baby will be ready for, as we call it, people food, and the best introduction to the subject is Better Baby Food: Your Essential Guide to Nutrition, Feeding and Cooking for All Babies and Toddlers by Daina Kalnins and Joanne Saab. Published by Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, this book introduces you to the nuts (actually no nuts) and bolts of feeding babies and small children, from nutrition advice to guidelines on when to introduce different foods. There are recipes for everything from purees to delicious entrees the whole family will enjoy. We love their hot and sour soup, and the chocolate chip oatmeal cookies are divine. There is a good mixture of healthy meals and homemade treats, plain food and sophisticated flavours. All the recipes are clearly written and easy to follow, with common ingredients.

My only caveat with Better Baby Food is that it was published before the latest advice moved weaning age up to six months, so their baby food recipes are suggested for four months and up.

Sleep, Gentle Sleep

The best sleep advice around is to be found in Dr. Marc Weissbluth's Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Weissbluth is pragmatic, respectful of your child's need to sleep (and yours) and insistent on the importance of a good night's sleep. I wish the book were better edited, as it is sometimes hard to slog through his academic pontificating to get to the actual advice, but once you've found it it's gold. People keep borrowing my copy.

Dear God What Next?

Children change all the time; no sooner do you think you've figured your little one out then they become someone slightly different. I have often thought to myself, sometimes dispairingly, "Is this just a phase, or is this what she's really like?" The Your N-Year-Old series by Louise Bates Ames and Frances Lillian Ilg can help answer that question. Each book comes with a subtitle which is a teaser for what you can expect in that year of your child's life; your three-year-old is "Friend or Enemy", your four-year-old is, alarmingly, "Wild and Wonderful, but then you're rewarded with a "Sunny and Serene" five-year-old.

These books have given me perspective on what my children are going through developmentally and what I can expect from them, both good and bad. Now, when Cordelia throws a giant fit because I cut her toast the wrong way, I can just wait it out with a shrug—"She's four"—rather than dispairing that I've borne a drama queen and she'll always be like this. These books make it possible to untangle the influences of developmental stage from my children's real personalities.

Discipline

No less than four books (plus two) on this topic. They all cover about the same territory but in slightly different ways, so I suppose you could pick your favourite and just read that, but I find it's helpful to reinforce this stuff periodically, and this way you don't have to do it by rereading the same book over and over.

Kids Are Worth It by Barbara Coloroso, Positive Discipline by Dr. Jane Nelsen, Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn, and Breaking The Good Mom Myth by Alyson Schäfer are all books about positive parenting, or unconditional parenting, or democratic parenting, or Adlerian parenting, which are variations on a philosophy of parenting which regards children as full and equal members of the family with equal rights to respect and dignity. It's the style of parenting I have chosen because it seems most right and effective to me, and the books listed are all excellent guides to parenting in that style.

How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish is a light but effective guide to talking to your kids (rather than at them). This book is thick with specific ideas and techniques to help you communicate with your kids. The same authors wrote Siblings Without Rivalry, which teaches how to manage siblings, with plenty of examples, cartoons and summaries.

Reading

In between feeding, disciplining and putting your children to sleep you might want to spend some time with them, and a great way to do that is in the company of books. Babies Need Books: Sharing the Joy of Books with Children from Birth to Six by Dorothy Butler is an impassioned appeal to parents to read early and often. Butler tells us not only why and how we should read, but what, with long lists of great books for every stage from birth to six.

Perspective

In the thick of all this advice you'll want some perspective. Having a second child is a great way to get perspective, as well as a good dose of humility (if you thought your child's awesomeness was to your credit) or absolution (if you thought your child's horribleness was your fault). If you're not ready for another child, though, these books will put your parenting—and all the advice you're getting—into its proper context.

The amply sub-titled The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love and Healing by Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz is a collection of case studies of children who have gone though horrible trauma—abuse, cults, neglect—and what they can teach us about childhood development and resiliency. This book will help you because no matter what you're doing "wrong" you can't do as much harm to your child as has been done to these children, and because despite such miserable childhoods many of these kids go on to be normal, functioning adults.

Perfect Parents: Baby-care Advice Past and Present by Christina Hardyment is an overview of the crazy, yet earnest, advice given to parents (usually mothers) over the last hundred and fifty years. Parents have been admonished on topics from hugging (bad) to breastfeeding (bad) to warm baths (bad), and some of the advice will leave you open-mouthed. Following the advice is almost always presented as vital to the fabric of society, and yet somehow, civilization has soldiered on despite the failings of mothers everywhere.

How Not To Be The Perfect Mother by Libby Purves is a memoir written by Purves while she was, as she puts it, at the "coalface of practical early motherhood". Funny and pragmatic, Purves offers advice and reassurance without judgement. "A good hungry dog mooching around the high chair helps."

My children are six and four, and I expect I have at least ten years of parenting books ahead of me, so I suppose this list will change, but I've been through two babyhoods and two toddlerhoods and am now firmly in the realm of parenting children. Books have been a terrific help and comfort to me through this journey, and I hope this list can help other parents find their path.

Back in November I talked about those women who do a million and one things—have a career, have a nice house, do charity work, volunteer at school—and how I'm going to be more like them. So far it's going pretty well—I helped with a fundraiser at school, I'm chair of a somewhat underachieving Eco-committee (part of the problem being that whenever we think of something eco to do it turns out the school is already doing it), and so far my children haven't starved to death or sickened due to the filthy state of the house. One thing did falter: I missed a few notes in the Christmas concert because I wasn't at the dress rehearsal. Lesson learned.

But I digress. The reason I bring this up is that I realized that this ambition, to Do Lots of Things, is a subset of a bigger ambition which I have just put into words: Be More Awesome.

As I have discussed before, I see myself as a veritable well of unfulfilled potential. Sure, I have a rather lame math degree and two lovely children, but other people my age are running for city councillor and writing books and,well, being awesome. I want at least a little piece of that.

Let me digress again for a moment. The school is getting a second kindergarten playground, and the eco-committee wants it to be a natural playground, one of those jobbies with logs and rocks to play on instead of metal and plastic playstructures. Great idea, very eco. We (mostly I) came up with this idea ages ago, but I wasn't sure where to start, who to talk to, how to broach the subject. So I didn't do anything.

And then last week I busted up my back (You know why? Because in my last post I was all "I haven't hurt my back for over a year!" Stupid.) and I was stuck on the couch all week. Rather than be completely useless I did some research on natural playgrounds and then I emailed the principal. I was all, "The eco-committee is exploring the idea of a natural playground for the new kindergarten playground", and I went on to briefly describe a natural playground, and explain why we (I) thought it would be a good idea. I cc'd the vice-principal, our trustee, and the rest of the committee, and hit send.

Three minutes later the trustee replied saying he would be happy to attend a meeting about this proposal. Proposal! It was just an idea, a whim! But by writing it down and sending it to some people, it became a proposal. Thirty minutes later the principal responded with a five-paragraph email, cc'd to about a billion more people, saying that they had considered a natural playground, we should meet soon and what was my thinking? We're meeting on Tuesday.

That's it. That's all it took: an idea, some Googling and a judiciously cc'd email, and now we have a proposal and a meeting. Obviously I'm going to have to prepare for the meeting, and there will be other jobs coming down the pipeline, but all it took to get the ball rolling was one email message.

What I have learned from this is that the path to awesomeness is paved with tiny baby steps. This a truth neither profound nor abstruse, but it has been a long time coming to me. I don't like to act on things unless I know how they're going to turn out. And not just the first step, I like to know what's going to happen four or five steps down the line. I like to think things through and anticipate problems, and prepare for them. This is a wonderful trait if you're going camping, or taking two small people downtown, or going on vacation, but it has its limits. When I'm contemplating something complicated or new, or that involves other people, I can can always think of nine or ten ways stuff could go horribly wrong. Thus, paralysis. Inaction. Failure to be awesome.

A while ago I read a book called Feel the Fear... And Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers and as you can see from my discussion of it, a) this blog post is well overdue and b) I am a broken record. The good news is that I've taken the lessons I learned from the book on board—the ideas that were new to me back in 2008 are a comfortable part of my daily coping repertoire now. So, odd as it seems, these realizations, that I am scared to act if I don't know I will succeed, and that it only takes a small step to start getting things done, actually represent progress in my quest to be more awesome.

I got a great email newsletter from David Allen (of Getting Things Done fame) about taking stock of the year's accomplishments and completions. He included a list of categories to focus on, which I am going to use to consider how 2009 was for me and what I'm going to change in 2010.

Physical

After a c-section in 2003, another in 2005 and gallbladder removal in 2007, 2009 was refreshingly free of major or minor surgery. I don't think I had a single episode of major back pain, either, so maybe I have finally figured out how to deal with that (mainly stretching, and strategic use of ab muscles). I did some running after school started in September, but a bout of H1N1 in November sapped my motivation and I haven't run since.

I recently went to the doctor for my irregularly scheduled annual checkup and everything checked up fine, but I have gained twenty pounds I wasn't entirely expecting. (I don't weigh myself at home so the pounds have lots of time to creep on between doctor visits.) I will be addressing that situation in the new year, along with everyone else in North America. I've been very self-indulgent with my eating habits lately—I need to be more sensible about that, and I'm going to switch from running to walking in the hopes that I can slip it into my daily routine easier. I also think that doing yoga regularly would cure most of my mechanical problems.

Emotional

I have to admit this has been a difficult year for me, emotionally. I have been pretty unhappy about a couple of things—doing all the housework myself, for example—and have felt almost entirely alone with that unhappiness. Blake and I are rubbish at confrontation so I tend to never try and resolve problems with him. And they fester. As if that's not bad enough, I don't have an extra-marital emotional support system to listen and offer support and suggestions. I used to have my brother, then I had Sascha and my BF-as-it-turns-out-not-F Janet. My brother and Sascha got lives and Janet dumped me, and then Delphine was born, and I guess I haven't had any real emo needs since then, until this year. This year has been very emo but I've mainly dealt with it on my own, mostly in the basement while folding laundry. That sucks. Kat is a good ear, but I can't drop everything and cry on the phone to her whenever I'm unhappy. The laundry needs folding and she has a job.

Obviously in 2010 I have to do that a little better. What do I do? Make a new friend? One without a job or any children? Get a therapist? Start a private journal? Go to a marriage counsellor? I will have to figure something out.

Mental

Mentally I think I have held my ground this year. As I mentioned in my book blog, this year hasn't been terrifically intellectually rigorous, but I read a few thinky books and I've been keeping up with my Walruses and New Scientists. I'm happy and excited with my decision to pursue writing as a career. I love to read and think and write, and if I can possibly make some kind of money at it that would be awesome.

Next year, obviously, I have to kick the writing into a higher gear. It's very hard to get anything done in the two hours that Cordelia is at school, so I have to figure out how to focus my efforts in that time (less twitting and housework, more actual writing). I have both girls on a list for daycare starting in September, but of course paying for daycare demands that I earn an income. This is more terrifying to me than perhaps it should be.

Spiritual

I think I'm in the same place spiritually that I was a year ago. I don't think about it much. I don't believe in the supernatural but I derive a feeling of wonder from the immensity of the universe, from the magical unlikeliness of our existence, from my children. I try to be good. In 2010, more of the same.

Financial

We paid off our line of credit! Of course, Blake was on contract and he didn't pay taxes all year, so come April we may be in debt again, but for now we are debt-free. Hopefully a year from now we will be debt-free for sure.

Family

My family is awesome. The girls are going through an utterly charming patch, and I'm happy with our parenting. I haven't yelled in ages! Next year, I hope that will continue. Five and seven are both supposed to be pretty charming ages, so that looks good.

Further afield, I would like to be closer to my brother. He just moved in with a girl who I know next to nothing about, and I have no idea what's going on with him generally. I should also call my mother more often. So should you, probably.

Community Service

Before this year I wouldn't have had a lot to say in this category, but this year I did a ton of work for my kids' school, and did it ever open my eyes to the amount of free labour the school boards of Canada get from parents. I worked in the library, volunteered in the classroom, helped run a craft room for a fundraiser, went on a field trip, was class parent for Delphine's class, and signed up to head the Eco-committee.

This year I hope to actually do something as head of the Eco-committee, and I'm going to try and pursuade our School Council to donate some money to a school without so many deep-pocketed parents. I suppose I'll be roped into running the craft room again next Christmas, too.

Fun / creativity / recreation

You know, I've been thinking about fun lately, specifically in the context of play. The children play most of the time and work hardly at all—Delphine works a little bit at school, and she has a couple of jobs at home, but most of her time is free time. Cordelia is four—she plays at school and she plays at home, and her only job is feeding the cat.

But when do I play? On the one hand I'm in the very lucky position of rarely having to do something which I'm not intrinsically motivated to do. I look after the children because I love them, I take care of the house because I want my house to be taken care of. I read and write because I love to do so, I have fun volunteering for the school. There is almost nothing I do that's pure drudgery. And a lot of what I do is pure fun: most of my reading, choir, my friendships, and watching TV are all things I do for myself.

In 2010 I would like to read more, and keep singing and seeing my friends. I'm even happy with the amount of TV I watch, or rather with the quality of TV I watch. I should try and use my time more mindfully, so I don't fritter it away. I have too much fun stuff to do to spend time doing things which are merely diverting.

That's that. It's 12:21 am on January 1. I hope everyone has a wonderful year in 2010!

(By the way, you can subscribe to David Allen's Productive Living newsletter here. I've only received one, so I don't know how good they generally are, but since I used the latest one to inspire this post I figure I should at least point you to the source. I do use the Getting Things Done system and find it very effective and comprehensive.)

This post is for those of you who enjoy that particular kind of humour derived from small children saying entirely inappropriate things in all innocence. Lucky for us we have a four-year-old, so we have plenty of that.

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The other day Blake and the girls and I took the bus to the Ontario Science Centre. It was a chilly morning so while we waited for the bus we huddled together, the girls in between Blake and I, like penguins. Since I don't know what sound penguins make, I said, "Buck, buck, buck, bgawk!"

With that Cordelia squeezed out of our little cluster and declared loudly, "I got laid!"

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The other morning Blake was brushing his teeth, and because we have small children, he wasn't alone. He has a tongue pierce, and part of its care and feeding is that you have to brush the stainless steel balls of the jewellery every day. So, that's what he was doing when Cordelia asked the obvious question, "Are you brushing your balls?"

"Yes. Yes I am."

"You should tell Mummy!"

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This one is less inappropriate. The other day my friend Kat and I watched that "David after dentist" YouTube video for the first time—the one with the kid recovering from anaesthesia and saying silly things. Kat works with little kids and I live with them, and we didn't find the video particularly funny because kids say peculiar things all the time.

Case in point: Today, after a full day, then dinner, with her jammies on and her teeth about to be brushed, Cordelia asked, "Mama, is it morning or bedtime? I don't know when it is. I forgot!"

So yeah, "Is this real?" doesn't seem all that funny.

Another year, another giant stack of books. Here's how it all boiled down in ought-nine.

• Total books read: 66
• Adult Novels: 16, of which six mysteries, and six for the book club.
• Young Adult Novels: 4, two of which by Kit Pearson
• Non-Fiction: 42, of which:
  • 9 books about writing;
  • 6 books about parenting;
  • 16 how-to and self-help (or psychology) books;
  • leaving 11 others.
• Memoir: 5, three by Bill Bryson
• CanCon: 12
  

I felt like I wasn't reading much this year, and I was right. Further, it wasn't my most profoundly intellectual of reading years. I only read four adult non-mystery novels of my own accord (the rest were for the book club). I read a bunch of non-fiction books, but plenty of them were "how to decorate" or "how to garden"-type books.

Interesting that I read three more books about writing than I did about parenting. I guess I'm getting pretty confident about the latter, but still petrified to take the plunge into the former.

Here are some standout books, in no particular order:

• Pictures of Perfection by Reginald Hill is a beautifully written mystery.
• A Handful of Time and A Perfect, Gentle Knight by Kit Pearson both made me cry, as did
• Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis
• Free-Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy and Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn pushed me to raise my parenting game
• Dead Men Do Tell Tales by William R. Maples and Michael Browning was surprisingly profound and yet also provided me with lots of gross anecdotes for cocktail parties.
• I called Everyday Survival by Laurence Gonzales as one the best of the year back in January when I read it, and I was right. It's astonishing in its depth and breadth, and the way Gonzales brings it all together is breathtaking. In fact, I can hardly believe it was so good—I'm going to have to read it again and see.
• And a special mention to Getting Started As A Freelance Writer by Robert Bly for planting the seed of the idea that I might be able to earn a living at this thing I do for fun.

Next year I'm going to try and clear out at least half of the two feet of my to-be-read shelf before the end of May. I'm going to try and read more novels, and I'm going to strive, as always, to be a more attentive and thoughtful reader.

A while ago I read The Ten Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer, for book club, but I forgot to write it down and therefore didn't blog about it at the time. It's about a handful of New York mothers who variously work, don't work, volunteer, don't volunteer, bake, don't bake, have great marriages or disappointing ones. It's about the choices women make about work and life, and about how you sometimes find you've made life-changing choices without really knowing it at the time.

Unfortunately nothing happens in the first 92 pages of this book. There are chapters and chapters and chapters of character development and backstory until you wish you could step into the book with a handgun just to make something happen. Finally something happens, there's a couple of chapters of action, and the book ends. It's all a bit boring and I probably wouldn't have finished it, if it weren't for the book club. Ironically I didn't end up going to the book club meeting, but I bet it was a good one. We always have more fun talking about books we didn't like, and despite the slowness of the story, this book provided plenty of discussion fodder for a group of urban mothers.

Heat Wave is a book "by" Richard Castle, the fictional protagonist of the TV series Castle. He's a well-connected mystery writer, played by Nathan Fillion, who shadows a sexy New York cop (Stana Katic) for research. The book is about a magazine writer who shadows a sexy New York cop for research. It was very disconcerting to read a book written by a fictional character, about a second-order fictional character who was clearly based on the first-order fictional character (who in turn is played by an actor who I follow on Twitter, providing yet another layer of reality/unreality confoundment). But besides that it was a clever and funny mystery very much in keeping with the TV show.

Another torturous read courtesy of the book club (it's been a bad year): Autobiography of Santa Claus by Jeff Guinn is a history of Santa Claus written as an autobiography, from the character's origins as a child named Nicolas who would be a bishop and later a saint, all the way to the portly elf we know today. Along the way Guinn explains how Santa manages to make all the toys and get all the way around the world so fast. He might explain some other stuff, but I stopped reading around the time Santa Claus convinced Queen Isabella to sponsor Christopher Columbus's search for a better route to India. The book is full of such Forrest Gumpian connections. The funny thing is, all the people that old St Nick befriends, including King Arthur, and Attila the Hun, share the same early-21st century belief system as Santa (and, I imagine, most of the readers of this book).

I love Christmas and I love Santa Claus—well, I don't mind him—but this book is simple-minded glurge. I would enjoy a real history of Santa Claus: how his story has changed throughout history, and what the changes mean in the context of their time. This is not that book.

Greetings, visitors, and welcome to our funny little blog. Blog-o! is written by me (Amy)—I'm a stay-at-home mother who loves to read, write, bake, and blog about all of those things and anything else—and my husband Blake, who is a full-time work-from-home coder who likes to bike and eat my baking.

This blog is hard to put into a category—some days it's a mommy blog, some days it's a book blog, some days it's a coding blog, some days it's just an annoying self-absorbed emo blog. It's not what you'd call a focussed writing project. But it's us, and some people think we're pretty amusing. We'd love it if you stay awhile, poke around, maybe drop us a note. Enjoy!

(Note to regular readers: I wrote a guest post for Allie at No Time For Flash Cards and she was kind enough to link back to Blog-o!, so I thought I'd better say "Hi" to those nice people.)

Earlier today, I was asked by Andreas Nilsson to give him a hand with a folder pane header bug he was trying to fix. In the middle of digging around in the code, I thought “I should really write this down, so that I can understand it later.”, and so here it is.

The main place we’ll need to change is in this object.

We start in the load method, which calls registerMode, to add the mode with its localized name. There is also a default list of modes, which will come into play later.

When the user chooses to cycle the mode, it calls the setter for mode, passing it the modename, which comes from the _modeNames list (which contains both the defaults and any newly-registered modes). Then, in the setter, if the mode is a default mode, it will fail the if-test, and get the localized name from the “bundle_messenger” string bundle. If it’s a newly-registered mode, they will have passed in a localized name which we will have stored in this._modeDisplayNames, and so we will use that.

The point of the bug is to switch the label-and-two-buttons to a dropdown menu, so at this point I think we should start with an empty menulist in the XUL, and in the load method add menuitems corresponding to the values in the _modeNames array. Then, in the registerMode and unregisterMode methods, we should add and remove new menuitems, which I’m hoping will just automatically show up in the dropdown. Finally, we need to change the setter for mode to not calculate the new name, but just select the appropriate menuitem set the mode attribute on the _treeElement, and call _rebuild(). At that point, I think we’re done, but only time will tell.

Okay, so this was really posted on Dec 22^nd, but I wanted to back-date it so as not to bump Amy’s “Welcome” post off the top a mere day after she posted it.

While I was at the Toronto iPhone Tech Talks, I attended the OpenGL ES sessions by Allan Schaffer. Seeing the “Shock” demo was really inspiring, and caused me to want to try my hand at some simple OpenGL Shader demos.

The base XCode OpenGL ES Application template sets you up pretty nicely for some simple experimentation, the only things that gave me any trouble were:

1. remembering to set the identifier to ca.latte.whatever so that I could build, and

2. remembering that the OpenGL ES 2.0 path only ran on the device, so of course none of the changes I was making were showing up on the simulator¹, and finally

3. Figuring out that depth was position.w, and not position.z. (Did I mention that I’m a bit of a newbie at this?)

Anyways, after it was all up and running, I made the x and w co-ordinates vary on a different period than the y co-ordinate, and now the square moves around in 3 dimensions in a pleasing (to me) way.

Since this is intended for me to play around with shaders, I’m not going to bother updating the OpenGL ES 1.0 code path, but if you’ve got an iPhone 3GS, or a 3rd generation iTouch, feel free to grab the code at BitBucket, and play around. I'll be adding branches and tags and keeping it updated as I play with new stuff.

A while ago I read the latest Kathy Reichs: 206 Bones. You know, if it were up to me, I wouldn't bother with Kathy Reichs. I really only read them because my mother reads them and it's nice to talk about them with her. Anyway, I guess I must like them well enough because I do read them. In this one our feisty heroine finds herself trapped in a tomb, struggling to remember how she got there and find out how to get out before it's too late! The mystery was mysterious and satisfyingly resolved, but my very favourite part of the book was right at the end, when Reichs let her character, Tempe Brennan, stop talking in sentence fragments for a heartfelt paragraph about the field of forensic anthropology. It was clear that it was Kathy Reichs talking, not Tempe Brennan, and equally clear to me that I would rather read a book about Reichs than about Brennan.

A Handful of Time by Kit Pearson. Twelve year old Patricia is sent from her home in Toronto to stay with her aunt and cousins— strangers to her—at their lakefront cottage in Alberta, while her parents sort out the terms of their divorce. Unable to get along with her cousins, she explores on her own and finds a pocket watch which takes her back in time to when her own mother spent her twelfth summer at the lake. Patricia divides her summer between her mother's childhood and her own, and discovers how to connect with her cousins and with her present-day mother. A Handful of Time is a beautifully written book with believeable, rich characters and a satisfying ending. Also, it made me cry. A keeper for the girls' bookshelf.

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinov is a stats book. I love stats—I really should have done stats at school, if any math—but it's hard. The human brain is not wired to understand risk and probability. The good news is Leonard Mlodinov makes it much easier to understand. This book goes over a lot of the basic principals of probability: sample space, the law of large numbers, bell curves, standard deviation, chi-squared. All that is the build up for what this book is about, which is how much more stuff is random than we think. Humans love to tell stories about the world, and when something apparently significant happens we would rather construct a narrative about why, than recognize that whatever it was was probably statistically inevitable, or at least not caused by whatever we're attributing it to.

This was one of the books I bought myself for my birthday, and I'm really happy to own it because it provides such good explanations for so many stats concepts, and despite being fascinated by statistics, I need to constantly refresh my understanding of it. Having this book on my shelf will make that a much less painful experience.

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Speaking of bookshelves, my to-be-read shelf is two feet long and I committed to reading most of it before attacking my to-be-read list at the library, which is 50 books long (the maximum you're allowed to place on hold) or my to-be-read list on my computer, which is fifteen books long. (It would be longer, but I deleted it by accident a couple of weeks ago.)

As I say, I committed to reading most of the books on my physical bookshelf, but then I realized I'm not all that interested in reading a lot of them. Most of them are books that other people have given me to read, and I'm not excited about them at all, not in the way I'm excited about the books on my lists. I've got a dozen or more not-exciting books between me and the exciting books I want to read: that's not right. I've decided I'm going to sit down with all those books and reevaluate them. The ones I'm not interested in I will pass on, with no guilt. Life is too short to read books I'm not excited about.

How do other people manage their to-read lists?

I'd like you to meet Max. Max is my new Macbook. New to me—he's actually refurbished. He's the first computer I've had to myself since I was in high school. Max has a 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and 2 GB of RAM. He's running Snow Leopard, and he's fast. Max doesn't make me wait for anything.

I called him Max because all our computers have people names, and because he's all white, like Max in Where The Wild Things Are.

Max is my work computer. I couldn't get anything done with the old laptop I was using because it was basically too slow to load any web pages, so I asked Blake to lend me $1000 of "our" money. I said I would pay it back. This agreement makes me uncomfortable and slightly unhappy, but I suppose that's a conversation to have with Blake. And at least I got Max out of it.

Last year Blake and I got sucked into the CBC's version of How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria, mainly on account of Barrowman Barrowman Barrowman, but also because I love singing contests. After it was over, I decided it would be cool to watch the movie of The Sound of Music with the girls. As it turned out, it was both too long and too scary. Delphine was scared by the stern Captain, and also by the Nazis. Nevertheless, I decided to take Delphine with me to see the Toronto stage production. She's never seen a musical (or a play, for that matter) and it seemed like the right time. Plus I wanted to go.

Unsurprisingly, Dephine didn't want to go, but Blake and I convinced her that the show would be less intense on stage, and that either way it would be a fun day out with me. (Cordelia stayed home with Blake.)

So this Wednesday I picked Delphine up at school at lunchtime, and we took the subway downtown together to see the matinee. We stopped for barbeque pork buns and egg tarts at Urban Bakery and then went to the theatre where we found our seats (and a deluxe booster for Delphine), surrounded by middle schoolers on field trips. (They behaved beautifully, apart from some untoward hooting during the first kiss.)

The show was wonderfully staged, with gorgeous sets and evocative lighting. The singing was great, the big numbers were satisfyingly big—my favourite was "Do Re Mi": both educational and breathtakingly energetic. It wasn't too scary for Delphine—the Captain was stern for much less time, and even the Nazis seemed less threatening. Little Nazis far away on a stage are less intimidating than big closeup Nazis in your living room.

One genuinely creepy moment for me was when they dressed the entire Princess of Wales theatre with Nazi flags for the Austrian Music Festival scene. They hung swastikas above all the boxes, and a giant Reichsadler flag billowed down from the ceiling. It was chilling, unexpected and very effective. (I wonder if they did the same thing in the English production.)

My only complaint about the show was the weird marble-mouthed mid-Atlantic accent in which Elicia Mackenzie delivered Maria's dialogue. I couldn't place it at the time but in retrospect it reminded me of an incomprehensible hybrid of Agent Smith from The Matrix and Mythbusters' Jamie Hyneman. Between the weird accent and the snappy delivery, I missed a couple of lines of dialogue. The dude playing The Captain delivered his lines in much the same way, so I guess it was a directorial decision.

All in all, a successful outing. Delphine asked to go to another show with me. I said we would go again next year.

Today the girls and I went for our H1N1 shots. The shots have been available for a few weeks now, so the big lineups have waned and we only had to wait for a few minutes to register. The girls were both pretty chipper about getting their shots, but I was a little nervous. Most of the people I've talked to about it said it hurt like crazy and kept hurting for days. The nurse said I should go first because the girls would cry, but I was all, "My kids won't cry! You don't know my kids!"

Delphine kept assuring me it wouldn't hurt, and indeed, despite my fears, the injection hardly hurt at all. It's a little achy now (four hours later) but nothing like I expected. (I wonder if that's because I had what I suspect was H1N1 last week?)

Then it was Delphine's turn. The nurse had me hold her legs between my legs and pin down her arm, which seemed excessive. The needle went in and Delphine started to cry. "That hurt!" She kept crying for a little while, just enough time to worry Cordelia, then she pulled herself together and it was Cordelia's turn.

Cordelia came up on my knee without hesitation, took off her shirt and made a show of leaving it stuck on her head like hair, but when the time came for me to hold her still she freaked out. I really did have to clamp her down and she still managed a little wiggle while the needle was in her. Then she had a good howl, no doubt freaking out all the other kids in the room. She got a band-aid ("Band-aid!", she sobbed) and then settled down.

Since the shot, Delphine has been fine and Cordelia has been a little whiny. She had mostly forgotten about the shot until she changed into her pajamas and seeing the bandaid reminded her, so she affected a Quasimodo lurch and moaned, "When I put clothes over my flu shot it hurts!" Awww. Then I let her brush her own teeth and she forgot about it again.

Tomorrow Blake's going to get the shot, and we will have a 100% household herd immunity rate. Hooray! And then just two months until seasonal flu shots.

I typed this recipe in for a friend, so I'm going to post it here to get more value from my typing. This recipe is from the Reader's Digest Quick, Thrifty Cooking book which is an awesome all-round cookbook for yummy everyday food. I made this cake lots of times before I even realized it's vegan—it's certainly not labelled as such in the book, but it's definitely quick and thrifty:

Vegan Chocolate Cake

1 1/2 cups unsifted all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vanlla extract
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup water

Preheat the over to 375 degrees F. Grease and flour an
8" x 8" x 2" baking pan. In a mixing bowl, combine
the flour, granulated sugar, cocoa, baking
soda, and salt. Make a well in the centre of the
mixture, and add the vanilla, vinegar, and oil,
then gradually stir in the water. Continue stirring
until thoroughly blended, but do not overmix.

Pour the batter into the baking pan and bake,
uncovered, for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a
toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake
comes out clean. Do not overbake; the secret of
this cake is moistness. Cool in the pan on a wire
rack for 10 minutes, then remove the cake from
the pan to the rack to cool completely.

Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph. D.. Martin Seligman is one of the pioneers of Positive Psychology, the study of the psychology of normal life and happiness, as opposed to psychological pathologies. This book is about optimism, which Seligman claims hinges on how you explain the bad things which happen to you. When something nasty happens to you and you believe the cause was personal—it was your fault, pervasive—it will affect your whole life, and persistent—it will never go away, then you are cooking up a big batch of pessimism, which in big enough doses leads to depression.

This book is touted as a self-help book, but as such it went far too much into the history and theory of learned helplessness, and cognitive behavioural therapy. I enjoyed the backgrounder, but if you just want the advice part you could skip to Part Two or even Part Three.

If you're prone to mild depression, or if you just want to be happier, this is a useful introduction to the new(ish) theory of changing your mood by changing how you think about your life.

The Flu Pandemic and You: A Canadian Guide by Vincent Lam, M.D. and Colin Lee, M.D. (2006) is a guide to the pandemic. It was written with the avian flu pandemic (H5N1) in mind, but since 2006 H1N1 has come to the fore. Fortunately the issues are all but identical. (Thrillingly enough, H5N1 is still out there and could strike at any moment!) The book includes, among other things, the history of flu epidemics and pandemics, an explanation of the WHO pandemic stages, how to prepare for a pandemic, how to limit the spread of flu, and how to care for others with the flu.

The most interesting thing was the degree of preparedness the authors recommend. A while ago I read that Cody Lundin book, When All Hell Breaks Loose, and he advocated some pretty extreme levels of preparedness, including planning alternative places to poo if the water system goes down, and figuring out how to keep your house warm if the power (or natural gas) system fails. Lam and Lee don't go that far, but they do recommend keeping plenty of food, water, and medical supplies on hand, and even a camp stove to cook on.

The Flu Pandemic and You is written clearly and informs without alarming. The chapters on preparedness and caring for sick people make it worth buying to have on the shelf for reference.

Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis is a novel for children, about Elijah, the first free black child born in his Buxton, Ontario hometown. Elijah is a fragile boy, sensitive and scared of snakes. This story takes him through an adventure which tests his courage and gives him painful insight into his parents lives before they escaped slavery.

The characters in Elijah are complicated and believable, and the story is rich in plot and historical detail. I enjoyed every page of Elijah and can't wait until the girls are old enough to read it too.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson is Bryson's memoir of his childhood in 1950's and 60's Des Moines. Bryson is always gold, and this book is no different. By the time I finished this book, I almost wished I had grown up in 1950's Des Moines. The freedom that the children of the 1950s had, and the lack of external stimulation, are things I wish my children could have (even just for a few months so they appreciate all the bells and whistles of 2009 life more).

I bought a bird feeder a while ago, and I'm trying to find a book which will tell me what I should put in it to attract various specific birds, how to ward off squirrels and deter sparrows and pigeons, and maybe (bonus) provide a reference guide to the birds I'm likely to see in Toronto.

Backyard Birdfeeding by Mathew Tekulsky is not that book. It is about (perhaps unsurprisingly) backyard birdfeeding, but it's a personal account of the author's experience with his birds in his backyard, and his backyard is in California. It was still pretty interesting and gave me some ideas for how and what to feed, but didn't have the specific information I want.

Birds at Your Feeder: A Guide to Feeding Habits, Behavior, Distribution and Abundance by Erica H. Dunn and Diane L. Tessaglia-Hymes isn't that book either, but it's cool. It's an analysis of the data collected through Project FeederWatch, a survey of bird feeder birds across North America begun in 1987. It's organized by species, which each bird getting a clear drawing, description, and a map showing geographical distribution and abundance. Even more helpful is a list of what each bird likes to eat best.

Prize for weirdest bird feeder story goes to the woman who dragged two horse carcasses home from the vet and counted the vultures who came to clean up.

This book is much closer to what I want, and is probably worth buying, but I still want some kind of beginner's guide to feeding Toronto birds (and not Toronto squirrels). The search continues.

Writers Digest Guide to Query Letters by Wendy Burt-Thomas is a guide to writing all kinds of query letters: queries for magazines, books, agents, columns. There are lots of examples, both good and bad, and several lists of "don'ts" to ensure that your query at least doesn't suck. Which seems good enough to get onto a few editors' short lists.

Starting Your Career as a Freelance Writer by Moira Anderson Allen is a catch-all guide to working as a magazine writer. It includes information on finding markets, developing ideas, writing queries, formatting manuscripts, and more.

There's also a compelling chapter on business writing, guest-written by Peter Bowerman. He makes it sound easy to earn money by writing, and I'll definitely check out his book, The Well-Fed Writer: Financial Self-Sufficiency As A Freelance Writer in Six Months or Less. (Seems like we're veering into snake oil territory again.)

No-one is actually going to get me any of this stuff, because we don't do presents for grown-ups, but that hasn't stopped me from accumulating a list of material desires.

Cool skullcandy earphones. I have these lame over-the-head earbud-ish earphones which always fall out of my ears, and I'm pretty sure most of the sound goes somewhere other than into my head. I'm torn between big fat earphones so everyone can tell I'm listening to music (and not to them fighting, say), or little wee earbuds that I can stash in my purse. Only if they come with a little wind-ey holder for the wire, though. I get so tired of unwinding headphone wires.

Freddie Demistache. I love moustaches, I love Freddie. I love jewellery. I think this is brilliant.

Starbucks Takeout Mug, Tall Size. Blake has his giant Venti mug which he brings every time we go to Starbucks, and I feel left out.

Oui by Lancome perfume. I haven't worn perfume since Delphine was born and I miss it.

A waffle iron.

What Not To Wear on DVD. I know, it seems like an odd show to buy, but ever since we cancelled cable I haven't been able to watch it—it's not downloadable anywhere. (The problem with downloading shows is that the less geeky they are, the less likely anyone has uploaded them.) Anyway, I miss Stacy and Clinton and all their advice and ideas.

To Santa: I Would Like

• a doll
• a marble run
• a marble [in case they don't ship them with the marble run, I guess]
• a fairy dress
• a book of poems
• a Word Girl chapter book
• a deck of cards
• an iPod (earphones) [she doesn't like to leave things to chance]
• a watch
• a mug I can paint

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I asked her about the iPod (because sad to say, we don't listen to much music) - she said she wanted to play games.