Pulling off birthdays during COVID-19

I think all parents would agree, especially the moms, that planning celebrations during this past year and a…  has been a challenge to say the very least. When this all started, my youngest two were only turning 5 and 6 years old and I had been looking forward to themed parties with 10 to 15 of their friends running around playing games and wearing costumes while we over-served them sweets. COVID-19 restrictions designed to flatten the curve also flattened those types of celebrations. It was time to channel my inner Sharon, Loise, and Bram and try to be as creative as possible in the hopes of keeping the birthday magic for these age groups and the rest of the family.

I would love the tell you that I am a bake-it-yourself kinda mom. My mom was and my mom’s mom was.  All from scratch.  I hope to get there one day, but during COVID I have been swimming in kids and barely keeping my head above water. This led us to finding a local bakery who could make all our frosted dreams come true. Enter Whimsical Cake Studio. Knowing the big parties were off the table meant I was going to put their cake fantasies into reality. Whimsical was amazing. We would ask the kids what they wanted, call in the order and then just drive by and pick it up the day of. Each cake was exactly what the child requested, gorgeous and delicious.

Look how happy this cake made this guy

Now for the most challenging part of our single household birthdays, what do we do for the fun?  I thought about setting up birthday convoys but I watched my kids deal with frustration and, at times sadness, on our drives returning home after we took part in more than one.  So instead, I decided Ryan and I had to cater to the birthday boy or girl’s personal interests. We needed to go deeper than a theme. Our little girl was the first kick at the can in 2020. Living in a house full of dudes often means her movie preferences are rejected by her brothers and rarely any of the other children want to play with makeup or barbies. So, the theme was princess everything and her brothers were more than game. The day started with pancake breakfast where she was waited on, hand and foot. Followed by the boys whisking her upstairs to her room where they had decided her homemade gift from them all would be a princess fashion show. What is that? Well all three of our boys allowed their sister to pick out what princess she felt they looked like, dress them in costume gowns, jewelry, hair (wigs) and makeup.

 (I can’t show you pictures because I made a vow that they would remain in the family vault till “The End of Time”.)

Ryan and I had no idea what all the giggles were about coming from upstairs till we were asked to take our seats for the show to begin. This all-day glitter everything included a movie night, PJ party and a silly string fight. That night, while tucking her into bed, she told me she had the best brothers and it had been the best day ever, cementing the importance of making memories such as these as best we could during these times.

2 weeks and 15 days later, our little guy was turning 5. The formula was in place to celebrate him. We had the cupcakes with hulk green icing ordered, a few small presents wrapped thanks to Amazon, but we struggled to think of a theme. What are 5-year-old boys all about? Ours was always covered in something and ready to run and wrestle so the theme became “Silly, Messy, Fun!” The theme meant outdoor games that included relay races and a game where the kids got to wrap Mom and Dad (Stacey and Ryan) in toilet paper and shoot shaving cream at us in a field by our house where the neighbors came out to enjoy the spectacle.

I didn’t think we could top these birthdays. All the kids had a blast and each night ended with us all snuggled up in the Livingroom watching the birthday kids’ movie pick until carrying the exhausted cuties off to bed. And I was right, because there is no need to top them. The kids loved this and soon, 2020 birthdays became 2021 birthdays and they were telling us what they wanted to do. All my daughter wanted was a girl’s day where she could spend time with mom, buy a pretty dress and get her hair done at her Auntie’s salon.  Then she wanted to have a family dinner with her brothers, her mom and step-dad and her dad and his girlfriend. COVID-19 restricted the dinner, but we pulled off most of her wishes and that night she told me it had been “the best birthday ever”.  Two weeks later the messy 5-year-old was turning six and he just turned to me one day and said “can I do science on my birthday”. Yes, we can!  The day of his birthday, with his Bio-Dad on facetime, there was a volcano built in our bathtub.  We dissected gelatine frogs I found and he made his very own bubble gum. I couldn’t be prouder of what developed and how they grew together and handled what might have been hard for kids. Or maybe that is what I have been trained to think by the trampoline parks and the play places marketing teams. I know this for sure: There must be cake, there has to be silly and every kid deserves to feel special and surrounded by love. Now if you will excuse me, I believe there is still some “lava” to clean off the ceiling.

I Would Rather Teach My Kids to Curse!

Zeeby does not appear happy

I would rather teach my kids to curse. In fact, I would rather teach my kids how to properly offend another person using colourful profanity then have them subjected to “Diet Culture.” Pretty bold statement I know and I mean every F*@#ing word. Now to be clear, I value kindness above all things and it is the value that I preach in my house daily. If you were to ask my 6-year-old, what makes a princess beautiful, she would answer without hesitation “How she treats other people”. So, let me provide context to why I feel so strongly.

Years ago, sitting in a female studies course in college, I remember hearing about girls as young as 8 putting themselves on diets. Restricting their intake of food because they desired to look a particular way. I could not believe it, how naive of me. Kids are sponges. Isn’t that how we sum up how quickly kids learn from the environment around them and the adults and media we expose them to? Around this same time, I started to note how often my friends were talking about what they were eating or how they wished to look. One was always doing some kind of ridiculous juice cleanse to drop weight and rid their body of toxins, or my favorite “intestinal sludge”. I remember thinking “ok, so you are purposely inducing diarrhea and starving yourself for a few days, along with headaches and mood swings so that your jeans fit better? Sounds like fun.” I overheard my mom’s friends and my coworkers talking about “the Zone” or “Atkins” along with “Weightwatcher’s” and “Jenny Craig”. To be clear, I am not going to rip these programs apart, I am strictly going to talk about why I think diet culture is dangerous. Dangerous to everyone and terrifyingly dangerous to kids, in my opinion. I think “Diet Culture” promotes a form of mental illness or at the very least it leads to unhealthy obsessions and judgments of our bodies and the bodies of others. Why would any parent want their kid spending one single moment doing either of these things? They would not.

If you take a second and think of about your personal exposure to these types of messages you might realize January is the worst time of year for this. Media outlets assault us all month long with images, and messages designed to prey on our insecurities and fears about our physical self, and the physical presentations of others.  They wrap these messages up in cloaks about living our best “healthy” life. But is that really what is being promoted?

What does the word Diet mean to the average person? Well from my years in the Health and Fitness field, to most it refers to calorie restriction for the purpose of losing weight. It doesn’t matter what “Diet” you want to list, the outcome recorded and advertised is weight loss, not health. We see adds everyday encouraging us to start working on our summer body, to slim down for that special event or to attract that special someone. It messes with almost every adult I know. It is commonplace to observe loved one’s yo-yo and put their body through periods of extreme stress. It has messed with me at times. Eat this, Not that. Replace one meal a day with a shake that tastes like sidewalk chalk in order to tame the muffin top, yummy. While we are sitting listing to our spouses all we ate that day or what the scale said that morning, we are not noticing the kids are listening, and learning, and emulating. We seem to have forgotten that in preschool, while learning about the animal kingdom, we were taught the true definition of the word “DIET” meaning what form of nutrition a species consumes. Remember T-Rex was a Carnivore, Horses eat hay, orcas like salmon, and lions eat antelopes. We don’t teach our kids that Simba’s girlfriend was working on her summer body or that Black Beauty only ate so many carbs because he was maintaining the figure of his youth. And yet, this is what the word “DIET” refers to on the shelves of book stores, on our Instagram accounts, and at our kitchen tables.

So, in my house this word is less accepted than if my 5-year-old dropped an F bomb in the car on the way to school. Why? Well, I think we have royally messed ourselves up over the years. We forgot that food is nourishment. It is medicine, life, love and tradition. It connects us to our family and to our heritage. We celebrate with food and at times, it helps us grieve.  Food is not the issue, the messages we put out in the world about food are. Messages like: Carbs are bad. Sugar is poison. Avoid gluten, soy, wheat, red meat, fat and the list go on. These messages are dangerous, and a lot of the time the people repeating them have no background in nutritional science, and it is a science. Carbs are not BAD, or GOOD, we need them in one form or another for sustenance, and energy on a cellular level. Bread has carbs, chocolate bars have carbs and broccoli have carbs and none of these things have ever done me wrong. Bread makes me think of family meals, or lunches my mom made. How can this be bad? If I eat it in excess will it support my body the way I need? No, but is it bad? NO! We have created a culture that has most adults discussing their ideal macro splits (otherwise known as the quantity of carbs, fats and proteins they are allowing themselves) but if you asked them to list the foods that support their ideal micronutrient requirements or how much water they personally need to consume to maintain hydration and electrolyte balance they would look at you and shrug in confusion.  But these are the most important aspects about the food we eat and how it relates to the science of proper nutrition. There is not one way to eat or best way to eat. There are nutrient dense foods, and there are foods that support our bodies’ most basic functions but have little nutritional value. There are foods that support our emotional, and spiritual connections more than they do our bodies. We need all of these foods to support a well rounded and healthy life.

Every parent wants a well-rounded, healthy life for their kids. As a whole, we need to see that what we think we know is wrong because on average, people don’t know enough about the foods they eat. Kids are rapidly growing, constantly moving, little balls of what seems like endless energy and we cannot impose our calorie restricting, body scrutinizing ways upon them. If I am a 40 something year old woman, who spends 7 to 8 hours a day sitting at my computer or walking around my workplace, I need to recognize that what my body needs in order to maintain a healthy weight and ward off illness and disease will be vastly different from a prepubescent boy, who plays sports everyday, and is growing out of his clothes every 3 to 6 months. Food is not one size fits all! I often don’t eat the same thing as the kids or at least I don’t eat exactly the same meal. I am no longer growing, I’m grown. When asked about my plate I talk about how I want to be strong, and how the food I have supports me. Or I talk about what the food means to me or what memories I have around the meal. I don’t talk about my body as if it is sectioned off or a bunch of parts. There is no “Mommy is trying to shed a few lb’s”.

CBC’s Big Block Sing Song Eat says it best:

“Eat, eat, eat, I know I’ve got to eat

I’ve got to crunch, chew that’s what I like to do

To make my brain grow big, my body grow strong

I’ve got the eat, eat, eat, to feel good all day long.”

Pretty simple stuff. And it is all kids need to understand. The second message is, horses eat hay, Cows eat grass, and mom and dad make every meal with love. We can control what we put in our bodies and as parents we control what we provide to our kids’ bodies and minds. That includes nonverbal messages, filtering industry driven dangerous sales pitches designed to feed on our insecurities, and rich nutrient dense fruits and veggies, healthy fats, delicious baked goods made with love and Dad’s nachos.

Dad’s Nachos recipe and technique

Dad here.  I’m a strong advocate for everyone developing a solid staple of easy, delicious and familiar meals that can rival any fast-food joint if you end up strapped for time.  You don’t have to break the bank or model to the family that one should defer to the drive through instead of taking the time to put stuff on the table that feeds their bodies and contributes to a tradition of eating home cooked meals together as often as possible. Now just know that this is something that took me a long time to figure out, and I’ve definitely benefitted from the partnership and support that Stacey and I have created together in our later years. I’m very grateful that I managed to get the hang of this while the kids are all still young enough to benefit from it.

I also beleive that Home cooked can be achieved using store bought ingredients.  I’m not so naïve to think that everyone should be making things from scratch as that is just too tall an order for many people.   I know it is for me right now.  But the act of bringing groceries home and taking the time to put things together, all while hopefully getting to laugh and debrief the day or get to the business of running the machinery of home is something that I look forward to.

I have a pretty conventional selection of meals in my rotation with everything from steaks, garlic mushrooms and buttery mashed potatoes to an incredible spaghetti sauce. But I’ve also started to branch out and show some growth which resulted in me making a surprisingly good basil tomato bisque and my very first brisket. But one of my earliest meals that I could manage for me and the kids when I was single and just trying to put it all together was a big meaty, cheesy batch of nachos. They became such a hit and so enjoyed, that they quickly became “Dad’s nachos” thanks to the way the kids talked about them with excitment when helping out with meal planning.

For me, the secret to great nachos is all in the layers.  A single layer of nacho chips gets too heavily saturated with the cheese and the grease and the goodness and the chips end up being incapable of supporting a sufficient salsa/guac/sour cream scoop.  A big clump of chips with cheese and ingredients sprinkled on the top makes for a bland and tasteless pile that ends up getting picked over once all the good stuff is gone. So, for me, layers is where it’s at.

Here’s the way we do it:

(Feeds a family of 6)

·  2 big bags of your favourite nachos.  We tend to like Tostitos whole wheat bite sized rounds

·  1 Bag of shredded cheese.  I use about 500 grams/1 lbs of Tex Mex shredded cheese. A block of Marble Cheddar does the trick when I have the time to shred it myself.

·  1 lb of lean ground beef.  I find extra lean to be too dry, so I cook down the lean ground enough so that it’s not swimming in its own grease, but not bone dry.

· One package of Old el Paso taco seasoning mix.

· One large red pepper, diced.

· Bundle of Green onions, Diced.

· A bucket of your favourite salsa. 

· A healthy dose of love layered throughout the entire process.

· Whatever else you weirdos like to put on your nachos.  Stacey likes jalapenos, so  they’re available on the side at our house because I’m a gigantic softie when it comes to heat and I just can’t hang with obviously harder, tougher people.

I prefer to make mine in the oven, because it ends up toasting the chips slightly and heating more evenly.  But you can totally do this in the microwave for smaller plates.

1. Brown the meat using the directions on the taco seasoning mix.  Something that you also need to consider is how the different consistency of meat changes the taste of the final product.  Because I don’t season the meat ahead of time, I tend to like to break the ground beef up as tiny as possible to ensure the flavouring is spread in every bite.  Large chunks of unseasoned beef end up tasting bland and throw the whole nacho experience off.

2. Dice the peppers and chives and whatever other veggies you are going to use while the meat is browning.

3. Once the beef is seasoned, it’s time to layer. I tend to like a very loose double layer of chips for the base.  Then a light sprinkling of shredded cheese to act as the glue for the good stuff.  Then add beef sprinkled across the entire surface.  Then add veggies. And now a solid layer of cheese to lock in the good stuff onto the chips.

4. Here’s where I add a second layer, but generally only a single chip strata at this point.  Another dust of cheese, then meat, then veg, then cheese.  And so on up to the sky if you like.

5. Allowing kids to participate in the process at several steps along the way almost always leads to them stealing a bit of cheese or veggies and gives an opportunity to teach them things and interact with them along the way with love and humour, two essential ingredients to a home cooked meal.

This is such a crowd pleaser at our house, along with a very frequent hankering for taco nights, that I like to cook a bunch of extra beef so that I can freeze multiple servings for easy defrost when crunched for time. Feel free to comment on your nacho preferences or give the method a try and let us know your thoughts.

Navigating 2020

Excuse the expression Australia, but I think we can all agree 2020 was a dumpster fire, and before we get too deep into 2021, I want to take a little look back. Some of the evidence includes Hong Kong protests, the bush fires in Australia that killed approximately 500 million animals. The UK formally withdrawing from the European Union, The World Health Organization informing us all of Covid-19. Just wait it gets better. The DOW plummeting, and Italy being the first to enforce its entire country to quarantine. The world was just starting to learn we were dealing with a pandemic. Oil prices dropped to a record low, a flash flood took lives in Beledweyne, Jowhar, and Somalia. Palestine announces the termination of all agreements with Israel and the United States. Black Lives Matter protests broke out across the US and the world. Russia declared a state of emergency over a 20,000-ton oil leak. There was the 7.5 scale earthquake in Mexico. The worldwide death toll due to COVID-19 exceeded 700,000. We postponed the Summer Olympics.  Multiple planes and at least one helicopter crashed taking the lives of many. The US impeached President Donald Trump twice (not mad at this fact). Covid-19 numbers reached 47 million confirmed cases worldwide as of November 3rd. I am going to pause there and not list anymore news headlines from the past year because just writing it all down is bringing up feelings of anxiety.

I started 2020 hopeful and excited. You see, on New Years Eve 2019 my man surprised me on our porch with a bouquet of flowers, a stunning ring and a question. I of course said “YES” and we spent the rest of the night celebrating and planning with our kids. I went to bed thinking 2020 was going to be the best year. I was headed into a year of promise and not a year of death and illness. WRONG.  But, like the rest of the world, my little house has been doing everything we could to survive.

Family life during a worldwide pandemic is beyond challenging for everyone’s home, and I know that parents everywhere are doing all they can to protect their babies, their jobs and their sanity during these times. I have to take a second and count my blessings here. My kids have maintained their health other than a small bone break due to a scooter and a bee. And my fiancé and our employment were never in jeopardy, however feeling like I was going crazy became familiar. It was all too real when The World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic, Canada started calling citizens home and talks about boarder closures and lockdown began.

With talks of lockdown, I had the pressing desire to prepare for anything. I don’t mean running out like half the population and filling my garage with toilet paper and hand sanitizer, but instead reaching out to the coparents and devising a plan to keep our children safe without restricting their access to one parent or the other, or pulling them away from their new siblings. But coparents don’t always see eye to eye.  So, while one set of parents was agreeing to limit exposure and risk, another set of parents was booking a medium length road trip to the mountains. I wish I could say we all parked our conflicts and focused on the kids by putting our brains together. But stress tends to bring out the best and the worst in people. This sets the stage for you on how blended families might have experienced things during this time. Not long after, I found myself dealing with school closures and home schooling four kids every other week.  Trying to reduce their exposure to conflict as best I could, shuttling all four between households to minimize risk and worrying about my first responder spouse.

I imagine most household’s daily life resembled chasing kids around with a thermometer and bars of soap. My mommy utility belt contained Clorox wipes, hand sanitizer and my cell phone so as not to miss a public service announcement or text from another parent. I found myself on a daily basis trying to balance and filter the information for the kids so they didn’t feel the stress that I was feeling. This was the most challenging aspect of my life. And “Mommy Fatigue” is a real thing. Kids at times have super human hearing. They seem to be able to hide in plain sight like little flies on the wall. Ultimately, they all have X-Men abilities, their greatest super power is they can feel your emotions and absorb your energy even when you think you are pulling off an academy award-worthy performance.

Daily I would quietly give myself a pep talk before leaving my room.  “Ok Stacey, Head up, Chest out, smile. You got this, throw some water on your face, get yourself a gallon of coffee and go to work.” What did work look like for this Mom/Stepmom during lockdown with the world holding its breath? Well, it consisted of the following:

Make breakfast and then clean the kitchen.

Receive lesson plans for preschool, kindergarten, grade 4 and grade 6 every week, often including a list of supplies that could be obtained from your local craft store or Home Depot (I wish I was kidding).

Do a load of laundry.

Shower? Nope, come out of the laundry room and find the living room has been tossed due to morning snuggles with the dogs.

Clean the Livingroom.

Make lunch, no one wants to eat the same things so I make four different meals.

Clean the kitchen.

Now can I shower? Nope, walk upstairs to discover the bathroom counter has tooth paste all over it, there are wet towels from last nights baths on the floor, and someone has taken a phantom poop and not flushed.

Hunt down the Phantom Pooper as they most likely have not washed their hands.

Clean the bathroom and realize I needed to get the dogs walked or they might chew on furniture…or kids.

Give up on the shower.

Run down ask the oldest to stay up stairs while I walk dogs/coffee (small blessing). Return to find two out of four kids are fighting and one is crying in their room.

Manage the conflict, and provide love and support to both and possibly discipline if needed.

Start dinner. Dad/Stepdad would be home soon. Get the crazy idea I wanted to workout when he arrives.

Set the table and start serving dinner and chase the youngest to come to the table.

Realize I had no energy to workout that I might be sleep walking as it is.

Partner is home, eat.

Clean kitchen in silence, the kids are excited to see Dad and needed his time.

Start bedtime for the two youngest, manage the tantrum because they wanted to stay up.

Read stories.

Start bedtime for the 9-year-old and watch him pull Dad into cuddles and conversation to run the clock.

Pour myself some wine.

Finally, bedtime for the 11-year-old who I find curled up with the dogs being cute and I don’t want to interrupt it but it is 9pm and I just wanted some adult conversation.

9:30 I find myself too tired for adult conversation but listen to the coparent update and share any communication I might have had with mine.

Finally shower and then bed cause it started all over again the very next day.

If you live in Alberta, then you may have had a similar reoccurring chain of events as of march 2020. I felt like I was Bill Murray in “Ground Hogs Day”. By July I stopped taking in any headline news. I found it all just too depressing and infuriating, which taxed my energy.  Instead, I focussed on my job as CEO of the household.  Managing the kids’ schooling, the family budget and procuring the resources, add the fact that I was the person doing the dishes most often, and all the spinning plates were mine to keep up in the air. With so much on the line, it became very clear to me that this was a time to really model our blended family values. The most important being family.

Family is a complicated concept to some people. To some it means those that live in the home with them. Or are of blood relation. But to us, it includes all the people who love and support us and our kids and those whom we and our kids love and support in return. To be clear, I personally do not feel the same love or support for all the same people, but family is not something I get to define alone. So, mission #1 for our blended family was to help the kids take note of all the people they love and who love them. Help them learn to show love and be loved because they were going to be very affected by the absence of the extra luxuries and distractions such as sports, dance, playdates and vacations. We decided to sit down at the table for all family meals. We planned special events with the kids and for the kids. Made sure they reached out and were aware that grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends missed them too and were thinking of them. We snuggled in for massive family movie nights, played games, baked, did puzzles, worked on the house, and went on long dog walks. All activities focused on spending the time on and with each other. The lesson being when things are hard, when the world is scary and uncertain, find family. Come home. Love and support are found there and your love and support are needed there. We were all challenged by how life changed and I watched our kids come together even more, truly cementing bonds as siblings. The idea was not to allow ourselves to look at these times through a lens of negativity. “There is good here” as my now husband likes to say. We are some of the fortunate few. Our pantry is full, our home is warm, we have clothing on our backs, toys to play with, and most of all, each other.

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Now this tired overworked domestic CEO is not saying I never complained. I am fully aware I complained. This past year was hard work. Ryan and I personally were tested and triggered more than we expected. That is saying a lot, because there was one year here where we had no plumbing, the nearest bathroom was located at the gas station down the road, and Ryan and I both said our final good byes to some of the most influential people in our lives. In working through it all, I often reached out to my trusted and true.  Sometimes to swap stories and commiserate, sometimes to have a friendly glass of cold water splashed in my face to wake me up. That is what real friends are for after all. This past year could have broken us, but it opened our eyes us the weaknesses we need to pay attention to, but also revealed the people we could truly rely on and trust.

This is the conclusion from under my rock here. 2020 was historically horrific globally and forced me to slow down. To take note of what I have and how grateful I should be for it. Many wonderful things happened that otherwise would not have for our little family. I personally got to spend more time with my kids. To learn how they learn best, and I got to watch them practice some creative problem solving and discover joy in the simple things. Social distancing brought up my fears of abandonment and feelings of isolation and my partner stayed very close, verbally and physically demonstrating a commitment and love I never felt before. A love I know I deserve but have trouble at times accepting. Our family had to come to terms with what it means to support a first responder. We felt the sacrifice watching Dad/Stepdad venture out as a frontline worker. We felt the pull to help others as well as the desire to lock all the doors, because of this we realized how proud we are of him. Of all the men and women like him that face dangers of all kinds so others don’t have to. We felt proud of ourselves for holding it down in his absence and when we all couldn’t be together. I challenge everyone to take a moment and look at all the hard, the heavy, the tragic, and traumatic this year has forced them to face and note the strength, the resilience, tenacity, and the love they have around them. Find the simple things that feed your soul. Love your people with determination and commitment. And be there for your friends.