Vancouver(ish) Tribe: Sugared Mountains & Bare Branches

[flowmom]

"Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.
- Pietro Aretino

Welcome Lower Mainland Mamas!
(and Mamas to Be)

All local mamas are welcome here! Visitors are welcome to pop in too. We are brought together by our passion for conscious/thoughtful/attachment/respectful/wholistic/natural parenting, not always agreeing on the path but agreeing to respectfully discuss, share, and learn together. Feel free to join in the conversation and introduce yourself!

This is our thread for chatting online, discussing issues relevant to the Lower Mainland, and arranging meetings in real life. If you have issues and questions that are not specific to the Vancouver area, please start a new thread in the appropriate MDC forum (e.g. breastfeeding, discipline, health, etc.). You can also post a link to your topic in this thread if you are requesting input from your tribe members. This allows us to
1. adhere to MDC guidelines;
2. keep questions and responses organized; and
3. reduce thread traffic and allow readers more control over which discussions they engage in.

Meet-ups are sporadic and include gatherings at parks, Science World, and people's homes. Anyone is welcome to suggest a gathering time/place. Meet-ups are either announced in the meet-up thread in the Canada Forum or here.

Remember that to get email notification of new posts in this thread, you can post to this thread to subscribe or you can use 'thread tools' and click 'subscribe'.

Please note that our Vancouver(ish) Tribe has other threads in the Canada Forum, including:

* Vancouver(ish) Meet-up thread
* Knitting Group Thread: look in the Canada forum
* Vancouver(ish) Doctors for Children
* Vancouver(ish) Dental Resources for Children
* FAQ: Greater Vancouver Area Liveability and Affordability

[artparent]

two weeks til vancouver, mamas my shortest trip ever. we woke to frost on the terraced roofs and cars. my little one isn't well today, the girls are alternating i've finally settled into a routine around here, and now i need to pack up the whole house to have the floors done while we're away, so much for settling oh well!

tiffani, we made several dolls using this pattern, it is really easy. lucy might really enjoy helping you.

*

[dawncayden]

[Ellp]

Gotta sub now or I'll forget...

It was frosty up on the mtn here last night! Warming up nicely now though...

[Ellp]

What did I say? I forgot...

[Len]

Subscribing! Happy winter everyone! The first day of December is double special for us, for it is Mateo's birthday hard to believe he is 3!

Robug, what about a Buddha board as gift? (wasn't it you who suggested it before?)

We are travelling to Spain for Christmas this year and we have so many people to spend the holidays with this year that I've been gathering/making small inexpensive gifts for a while now.

[robugmum]

Oooooh, good idea! Thanks Len!
My kids love our Buddha Board!

We are leaving for Fiji on Thursday - I am trying to be excited but right now, I am mostly just stressed

[MaybeGracie]

I got a Buddha Board for SIL for Christmas - such a neat idea!

Less than two weeks until the baby is due! I think I'm pretty much ready - clothes washed, homebirth supplies ready, meals in the freezer, and MIL arriving on the 13th (hoping the baby stays put until then!).

[tiffani]

I was going to suggest a buddha board too, it would make a great family gift!

so stressed, so unmotivated... does anyone else find that the more things are piled on your plate the less you can bring yourself to do? *sigh* I can't wait for our babymoon... or, our baby and toddlermoon, as it were...

[flowmom]

Originally Posted by tiffani

so stressed, so unmotivated... does anyone else find that the more things are piled on your plate the less you can bring yourself to do? *sigh*

maybe sit down, have a cup of tea, then set a timer and spend 15 minutes on your highest priority task -- insert question mark here because my silly keyboard isn`t working --

[Autumn Mama]

Ksenia, have you tried shutting your computer down and then restarting it? This happens to me from time to time (can't figure out why...little hands using it maybe??), and it works. It's durned annoying. I recognized the apostrophe. The last power outage fixed it for me when it was happening a couple of weeks ago.

I love the Buddha Boards!! I remember seeing them posted here last year and I'd never seen them before. All waiting rooms should have one Where is the best/cheapest place to get/order one? Are there any sold locally??

tiffani, there must be sooo much going on in your brain and heart, no wonder you feel a bit zapped. I often get into the overwhelm feeling too, (temperament) and sharing the process with receptive and supportive friends is usually helpful, as is time to do my own thing outdoors. Gardening works wonders!! Plant some flower seeds in pots that will be growing and blooming when the littles come home?? I can just hear the story..."I planted these seeds of joy and hope and love when I was preparing to bring you both home...." Well, obviously this is my imagining, but you get my idea! Hoping you find some peace and inspiration and flow.

[tiffani]

thanks ksenia and erin... I think it comes down to the fact that right now, there are so many HUGE things that are totally out of my control, and that, in and of itself is somewhat crippling to me. I find myself tied to the computer, waiting for news, looking for information, seeing what's going on with everyone else in the Ugandan adoption world (which is very topsy turvy right now - canadians can't bring kids home from there at all, and I'm terrified that the US will be swayed by the same guy who is lying to the canadian officials... luckily it seems that they've figured out the source of the problem and it will be resolved soon, but it's still scary)... not to mention just worrying that we won't be approved... it's just all really scary stuff, and I have this scream of stress lodged just under my throat. taking deep breaths helps, but it always comes back. we're really stressed financially right now (mark won't be getting two paychecks over christmas break, we owe tax money to the NZ gov, plus Uganda travel expenses coming up, and my parents will be here, and visitors are always expensive, with traveling, etc) and I know it will all be fine, but I'm just waiting for catastrophe to strike, yk? makes it hard to do the dishes.

and I know this conversation died with the last thread, but I was thinking about why certain types of dolls bothered me, and I think it's just that anything that resembles dolls from the slave era just has a lot of racist baggage tied to it, yk? it's silly, because I'm sure some of those dolls brought a lot of joy to the children of the slave era, but somehow buying those dolls as a white person feels icky. so it's easier to just stick to dolls that don't resemble those dolls at all, yk? some people collect "mammy dolls" and "golliwog dolls" and it just really creeps me out, especially since the latter is frequently used as a racist term... anyway, yeah, so that's my deal.

[vancouverlori]

Sending you good calm wishes, Tiffani! Well, if you can't control the rest of the world, you can at least control your dishes. Maybe... our dishwasher is brokedy-broke and so I'm having trouble with that one myself...

On the good news front, I finally picked a new fridge at the clearance centre to replace ours that was going kaput. It comes Friday. There were really cool tall skinny ones that I really wanted but they were 2" too tall and really, they were too small for our needs (only 11.4 cu. ft.) So we got the Whirlpool with the dented sides. Would have gone used, but DH didn't want to risk a lemon.

Originally Posted by Autumn Mama

I love the Buddha Boards!! I remember seeing them posted here last year and I'd never seen them before. All waiting rooms should have one Where is the best/cheapest place to get/order one? Are there any sold locally??

I definitely saw them at the Art Gallery shop. They also had smaller less expensive knock-offs. So they're around... Granville Island, maybe?

I'm still trying to figure out what to get my aunt's gentleman-friend (boyfriend just doesn't seem right). We're doing a simplified gift exchange among the adults again this year, and I got him as my recipient. He's an architect and rather well-off, so I'm not sure what I could get him... possibly a Buddha board, but...? If he wanted one, he probably has one!!!

[kdtmom2be]

Originally Posted by Autumn Mama

Ksenia, have you tried shutting your computer down and then restarting it? This happens to me from time to time (can't figure out why...little hands using it maybe??), and it works. It's durned annoying. I recognized the apostrophe. The last power outage fixed it for me when it was happening a couple of weeks ago.

I can't remember if restarting fixes it on my computer or not, but if you're on an HP laptop, there is an icon on the task bar that looks like a keyboard. If it's there, click on it and switch yourself back to US, you are in Canadian French. The other way that works on my laptop is to push shift and CTRL at the same time, but that may be product specific. However, that's usually how it gets into that mode (fairly frequently) because my left shift key is so small!

No time to weigh in on anything else here! Except to agree with dawn and say

[Vancouver Mommy]

Does anybody know of a good preschool in Bby Heights? I am having such a difficult time finding something for my 4.5 yo dd. I'm not even 100% sold on the idea of preschool, but if full day K (ugh) becomes a reality I want her to have some experience being away from home on her own. The only ones I can find are either church run, montessori or too far away to walk. Gilmore School is quite close, but the preschool has been relocated to Kitchener School during the renos and that's about 15 blocks away. Eileen Daily has some sort of preschool program, but it doesn't really look like much more than 2 hours of child care.

[dawncayden]

Does anyone want a ice cream maker? It's probably from the 70's. Green plastic tub with metal motor on top.

PM me.

[Piglet68]

tiffani's last post on the old thread made me realize that we've found the perfect senior name for Ksenia: Good with the Google!

Wow, tiffani, lots on your plate right now. Sending you peaceful vibes...

We're heading to the Island this weekend for a mini-vacation. Gonna check out the Comox Valley as neither of us have ever been there. Unfortunately Pealette won't be there this weekend but she recommended a good restaurant and hotel. I hope the weather is nice, I'm really looking forward to "getting away from it all"!

[flowmom]

Gosh tiffani. That's a lot of worries. I seem to be worrying a lot lately too, mostly about the financial mess we've gotten ourselves into. Wolfgang leaves his worries in the "worry tree" that his art therapist has. Seeming like a good idea right now.

Originally Posted by tiffani

I was thinking about why certain types of dolls bothered me, and I think it's just that anything that resembles dolls from the slave era just has a lot of racist baggage tied to it, yk? it's silly, because I'm sure some of those dolls brought a lot of joy to the children of the slave era, but somehow buying those dolls as a white person feels icky. so it's easier to just stick to dolls that don't resemble those dolls at all, yk? some people collect "mammy dolls" and "golliwog dolls" and it just really creeps me out, especially since the latter is frequently used as a racist term... anyway, yeah, so that's my deal.

Yikes, sorry if any of the dolls that I linked to fall in that category! To be honest, I really don't know what dolls from the slave era would look like . Is it because you're American that you would have such insight? Or am I just clueless?

[Autumn Mama]

Okay, so I found these instructions about removing the French Canadian keyboard map from the control panel...and it worked! Scroll down to the post by MarmaladeFreak and read her instructions...

Now I can do this.....ÉÉÉ (hitting shift/control at the same time makes it start...and then I click on shift/control/ again and it leaves!!! What fun, huh??? Clearly I have too much time on my hands today, lol!

Happy venturing, Mariah!! We love the Island too!

[MaybeGracie]

Originally Posted by Autumn Mama

I love the Buddha Boards!! I remember seeing them posted here last year and I'd never seen them before. All waiting rooms should have one Where is the best/cheapest place to get/order one? Are there any sold locally??

I picked one up at this cute little artsy gift store in Horseshoe Bay Village.