Statistics show that one in four girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before the age of eighteen.

There has been a lot written today about an electronic publication on Amazon’s US website. This book appears to be counselling it’s readers on how to be better pedophiles, how not to get caught. It is available for sale/download on their e-book reader. I say appears to be as I did not buy it, or attempt to view it. Reading the description and the comments purported to be from the author were enough to support my belief. This disgusts me, and many of the people that I have spoken to or seen comment on the issue.

There were, however two distinct responses to the story that also elicited a strong reaction. The first was the argument that attempted to look at the issue from a free speech perspective, and asked whether Amazon could/should censor this book without violating the author’s right to free speech. I do not believe that a decision by Amazon not to sell this book would equate with censorship.  It would state that the corporation found the content not suitable for sale.  Furthermore, I believe that counselling another to commit this crime, while not in itself a crime, crosses the lines of free speech. It is not an offence in Canada, but I think that it should be.

The other reaction that I felt garnered a response was the notion that people should have acted instead of speaking out. I disagree with this completely. That is not to say that I don’t think each and every person who is upset and outraged by this book should only speak out without also explicitly letting Amazon know. They should do both, and many, myself included, have. The part that troubles me is the belief that I should not be speaking out against this book and the decision to sell it by Amazon.

I know that my one voice lodging a complaint to this large corporation would be lost without the support of like-minded individuals. This support cannot be encouraged without some sort of mechanism for sharing concerns. I would not have heard about this book had someone not alerted me to its existance on the site. So I tweeted about it, and am writing about it and I hope that everyone I know does the same.

Statistics show that one in four girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before the age of eighteen.

I have seen the effects that this has on a child, a person, a family, a parent, a marriage, a life. Most of those who suffer at the hands of these predators suffer deep, raw and life long wounds. Some are never able to put back together their shattered lives. I cannot fathom how a company such as Amazon can have such a blatant disregard for the lives of those who are violated. If pulling this book stops one child from being abused, I will write a letter, mark that content as “inappropriate”, and will continue to talk about it until Amazon listens. If I don’t, I can’t bear to think that a child will be violated because of that publication.

I am but ONE voice, who needs to ensure that more voices are heard.

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We have never let the littles watch much TV, hoping that this would help stop them from turning in to couch potatoes, and foster the development of some great imaginative play skills along the way. We knew all along that they would eventually want to watch some, we were just delaying it for as long as we could.  Of late, we have gradually been allowing them to watch little snippets, mostly of sporting events.  It’s no secret that we are huge SENS fans, so you can likely guess how often it is hockey that they watch. While Woo gets to watch hockey for ten or so minutes once or twice a week, this past Saturday was one of Goose’s first few times watching a bit of a game:

This is how they react to the TV being turned on

After we finally got them into their chairs

Yesterday at bedtime, I let Woo know that Willy would be going to the game. He first asked if Daddy was playing for the Senators (hehe), then asked if he could go and watch. I let him know that sadly, the answer to both was no, but that he would be able to stay up and watch a few minutes of the game with me. I didn’t think twice in telling him this, as today was a daycare day and I knew he would come home well rested and full of beans. He always does.

Sadly, when I arrived to pick him up, I was told that he had not napped! This shocked me, and the crank that followed made me doubt that staying up for the start of the game at 7:30 was going to happen. He soldiered on though, and we settled in on the couch for cuddles at puck drop. As we sat there, I gave him a choice. He could stay for ten minutes and then head to bed for stories and cuddles or he could watch and cuddle for twenty minutes, followed by a quick trip to bed.  He negotiated a third option that involved twenty minutes on the couch with a story read there and we settled in.

I should have known that you don’t negotiate with the tired and cranky three year old, and you certainly don’t overstimulate him when it is already well past his bedtime.  I knew that he was keen to watch the game and wanted to give him a treat.  I should have known. Sadly, bedtime took another hour post viewing* and was filled with many tears, cuddles, tucks and re-tucks, and a few complete meltdowns (all him, I swear).  He finally fell to sleep a little after nine, and will likely be well out of sorts tomorrow.

I am fairly certain that I will need to find slightly less stimulating choices for these types of night.  It shouldn’t be hard.

*the sad part?  after he was finally settled and I was able to resume watching the game, the Sens scored their first goal.  It was literally seconds after I paused it to settle him in bed.  I so wanted to wake him!

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Willy went to the LCBO this afternoon to pick up some wine that we had tried recently and really liked.  Goose was sleeping and I needed to get some work done, so I asked him to take Woo with him.  Woo loves to go on “adventures”, so this was a no-brainer for him.  He actually volunteered to get out of his jammies for the trip, which says a lot!

They were gone for a couple of hours, and returned with tales of all the places they had been and the fun that they had.  Their trip involved a very minor fender-bender at the gas station (car rolled into our car at a very low speed), so their re-cap of the afternoon was quite excited, and didn’t really tell the whole story of anything that they had done.

When we sat down to supper, I asked for more details about their trip, and Willy told me what a help Woo was at the liquor store. It seems they were having a hard time finding one of the wines, so he turned to his Dad and said, “Why don’t we just go to the cash and ask them to help us find it?” Wise beyond his years that lil one!

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I have always loved the Autumn time change. I am sure I didn’t really notice it as a child, but started to appreciate it more in my teens and early twenties.  Once I started going to the bars, though, it definitely started to mean something.  It was another whole HOUR of drinking, after all. It doesn’t matter that we could have continued at drink anyone’s place after the bar closed, this night was somehow better.  And more expensive.  As I got even older, I started to love the bonus hour of sleep more, and had pretty much stopped going to the bar after midnight anyway.  Sleep won.

When we had the little people, I started to have mixed feelings on the time changes in general.  Woo was born the night that we sprang forward, so that time change will always be special regardless of the havoc it always creates with my sleep, or the interesting things that it has done to us trying to overcome it’s effects on the lil ones and their schedules.  We have never successfully adapted, never gone without some really crazy effects like breakfast at four in the morning, napping strikes and all out crib parties at 3:00am.  Why is one hour so hard for us all to cope with?

This year is going to be different, I can feel it. It’s not that we’ve talked about the time change, or that I’ve devised a strategy that will help us deal with it.  Today even started ominously, with Woo waking before six for cuddles.  I groaned and moved into his bed, knowing that it could be the start of another long day for us.  Then it happened.  I was able to get him back to sleep, and fell back to sleep myself.  When I woke and looked at my watch, it was almost eight!  The magical day that I’ve only dreamed of thus far was upon us – the littles slept in!!  Seeing that they were already an hour behind their usual schedule, I figured that we would roll with it, and move the time change ahead a day.

We are a pretty well scheduled family and it works well for all of us most days.  Today we were able to keep their regular day, and they barely noticed.  Goose was a little over-tired for her nap, but only when she could not fall to sleep because she had been goofing off too much with her brother.  At the end of the day, they both knew that they were staying up late and felt that they were getting a treat.  When they fell asleep, they fell asleep at their corrected “normal” times.  I am going to sleep tonight knowing the I gain an hour sleep tonight, and tomorrow is my sleep-in day.

I think this just might work, and we will beat the time change for once.

We’re so doomed.

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I recently undertook a contract to write a course for a local school. I am really excited about this, but also nervous.   It’s something I’ve never done before, and have very few guidelines to follow, other than “get it done by the end of the year – or sooner”.  I like to have a template or ten when taking on a new project, and use them to guide me. Quite often the final product looks nothing like the templates, they just give me the boundaries.

Timelines are a little tight on this one, and my other job has been taking up all of my free time, so I took this week as holidays to write the lessons.  I have been making slow progress, and am struck by how much this reminds me of being a student.  I basically sat on my butt all week doing research, writing, revising, reading, researching some more.  My butt is INCREDIBLY sore from all the sitting.  I time my work so I know when I can take breaks, make a million outlines and lists, and I procrastinate.

I envision that the anxiety will set in next. I did veg and take some vacation-y time this week, and am getting bogged down by some technical issues put me a little more behind than planned.  Next is work around the clock mode, I am pretty sure.

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We’ve had a long and hard three or so months, but I am beginning to think that our family is coming out of the lows and moving forward again.  We’ve all had a hard time adjusting, and shown it in different ways.  The lils have been great, but I know that they are sad and confused by all the travel, upheaval and change.  I’ve been lost as to how to help them at times, but have done what we thought was best.

In the past week or so, something has slowly started to creep back into our lives.  A sound that has been conspicuously absent and sorely missed, their laughter.  Not the little giggles when someone toots, or tells a joke, the belly laughs that leave them breathless, snorting and begging for more. It makes us all feel so good, and shows that we are doing better now.  So we are doing silly things, singing crazy songs and relaxing more and more everyday. It’s so wonderful.

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Goose has been fighting us when it comes to getting her teeth brushed since birth.  We have tried all of the tricks that worked with Woo, singing the brush your teeth song, fruity Thomas toothpaste, electric toothbrush, the begging, pleading and tears (me, not her).  None of it works with any regularity.Willy can generally cajole her into a passable job, but she is particularly stubborn with me, pretty much refusing to allow me to brush. I feel like I am never getting her teeth properly brushed, and have visions of her getting fillings in her baby teeth!!

Then one night recently I heard Willy singing to her, and watched as she opened her mouth and let him brush her teeth.  All of them.  At the same time! I was astounded, and asked that he share his secret. It turns out it’s his special version of Old MacDonald, sung to the same tune.  We’ve been working on the lyrics, and the current version goes like this:

Old MacBrush-Brush had a mouth, brush, brush, brush, brush, brush…
And in that mouth she has a molar, che-che-che-che-che
With a brush-brush here and a brush-brush there, here a brush, there a brush, everywhere a brush-brush.

We repeat for as many teeth as are needed.  She loves it, and brushing is a dream!

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I was making our annual hallowe’en chili today when I realized that I was short on a couple of ingredients.  We are fortunate enough to have a couple of grocery stores nearby, so I ran over to the closest one, expecting a quick trip.  The store was packed, so I grabbed my items and picked a short line.  There were a few people in front of me, giving me the chance to catch up on twitter while I waited.

We moved along quickly and soon enough I was second from the front.  The woman in front of me only had bananas, so I started to pay attention at this point.  This was approximately the same time that the conveyor belt decided not to stop and create a grocery pile-up at the front of the line.  The cashier realized that the foot pedal was stuck, so she reached down and freed it while the banana-lady and I tried to save the groceries.

We laughed it off and the cashier started to ring in the order when a voice behind me said, “It’s your fault you know.  You young people are always fiddling with your phones, thumbs always going.  It drives me nuts!”*  The cashier and I both tried to explain that it was a malfunction, but she was having nothing of it.  She kept going on and on about how her groceries were crushed, and that I was responsible, as I had not been paying attention.  The crux of her argument was that I was “so busy with my phone” that I failed to put the separator bar between our orders, and this caused the conveyor to keep advancing.**

I’ll admit that I was playing on the phone, but I did not cause this in any way.  She was kinda crazy, but I tried one more time to explain that there was a mechanical issue, but she was adamant, so I dropped it.  After I had paid and was moving away, the cashier hit the pedal again, and once more it stuck.  Her pre-cooked chicken took a direct hit this time, lid popping off while making that distinctive crackling noise. I walked away smirking in the knowledge that I had nothing to do with it this time.  This time, she blamed the snow that fell last night.  Maybe kinda crazy doesn’t quite cover it.

*note that she referred to me as young?!  I call that a win*

**the seperator bar would not have prevented this crushing grocery pile-up, but her argument did get me thinking about who was responsible for placing the bar in this case.  While I generally don’t use the bars, preferring to mess with the people who go wackadoodle if the bar is not in place, I actually did use it this time.  I put the bar between the groceries in front of mine and mine.  Am I also responsible for putting the bar in behind my groceries?**

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Although I have had my iPhone for about six months, I didn’t actually purchase an app until this month. I have played with plenty of apps, and found some that I truly love, but haven’t felt the need to buy anything. Most of the lite or free versions were filling my needs, so I was happy to save the money and use those. After a while it became a “thing”, trying to figure out which app would be the first that I bought, so I watched for the perfect one.

In that time, Woo started to get curious about the phone, asking to type letters out or play with some of the musical instrument apps that I installed for him. The phone became a fun little diversion for him, buying me a few minutes to start dinner or fold the wash. Goose then started noticing it and demanded her time to play too. It worked really well for a while, they played, took turns handing the phone and forth and then moved on to something else that was shiny.

Woo then got sick and I had to up the ante and occupy him QUIETLY so that I could get some work done. Enter Elmo’s Monster Maker. It’s a little game, costing $4.00, that lets you create monsters that will play and dance with Elmo. Woo likes Elmo, so it seemed like a good bet. My first app was purchased. It was a hit, and I got my work done that day. He REALLY liked it, but was pretty good about understanding that it was a treat to play. Then one day Goose saw it. She LOVES Elmo. Since I let her play it too, she asks for it all the time. She is not so understanding about sharing anymore, and she will not give up the phone without a fight. She hides it, cries, begs, and pleads for just a little bit more time with Elmo. Tonight, she patted me down trying to find the phone. A monster, and I created it myself!

The second thing that I created bought this week was Angry Birds. I had seen some tweeps talking about it and got curious, so I tried the lite version of the game. It was simple and cute, but very addictive. After burning through the lite version, I am happily playing the paid version at any chance I get. It’s very hard to put down – last night I was only able to when I exhausted my battery on my phone. It’s a monster, and I am hooked. There is a hallowe’en version too, that I haven’t installed – yet!

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