I go to the Mabel’s Labels HQ about two and half days a week and work from home the rest of the time. I like going to the office for the obvious reasons – it’s quiet, no one interrupts me to say they want a snack, and I get to dress up a bit (OK, admittedly “dressing up” is only about a half step up from my mama uniform).

There’s something else about the office that I like that’s tricky to describe – a certain dynamic that makes ours not your average office.

One thing is that our staff is just plain fun – a real mix of humour, passion, intelligence and quirkiness. All this while also being completely professional and skillful. It’s a tall order, but we seem to have pulled it off. I’ve always had a hard time exactly pinpointing what it was about our office dynamic that made going to work so enjoyable. I never knew how to define it until Elia came along.

Elia recently completed a co-op placement with our Production Department. She was diligent and made countless contributions during her time at Mabel’s Labels. Elia also has autism. One of the skills we appreciated most was Elia’s ability to spin a regular occurrence into something memorable.

There was one situation that we all got a kick out of – whenever Elia was placed alongside a certain male student to work; she got a little twinkle in her eye and spring in her step. She would giggle and joke with him as they worked together. Then one day she said about this student what I have not been able to summarize about our work environment. She said “Oh Alex, you’re contagious!”

Contagious! That was the word that best describes our staff team – we hire people who are contagious. To celebrate Elia’s completion of her term with us, we had an office ice-cream party. Even though Elia is back at school and done here at Mabel’s Labels, her contagious personality will not be forgotten anytime soon.

Elia with one of the Mabel babies

When you have kids, making plans is hard work. Even if you only have two kids, it seems that as soon as you are walking out the door, someone comes down with fever. Plans are never made with complete confidence.

When you have a bunch of kids, there are way too many variables involved. At any given time someone either has a cold, pink eye, fever, rash, the vomits, head lice, a broken leg, or all of the above. On the rare occasion that every single child is in perfect health, plans are often interrupted by hockey play-offs, music recitals, and dance lessons.

If the stars are all aligned, we actually have a chance of getting to our destination.

I recently made cottage weekend plans with three other families. There was one major complication – each of the three families has four kids. Do the math and you will find that the four families involved had a kid total of 18. To plan for a crew like that, there are a lot of stars that need to be aligned.

The cottage weekend planning Olympics officially kicked off about two months ago and involved four mamas exchanging countless Facebook messages. After pouring over our personal calendars and the children’s schedules, we accomplished the near impossible – we nailed a weekend that we were all available.

Planning is one thing, executing is another entirely. We were fully prepared for and expecting the last minute bail-out due to some infectious disease that no one wanted shared around. What we didn’t account for was the other risk involved – the plans of the daddy-o. In the end, one of the involved families was not able to come because the daddy-o had plans that were not on mama’s radar when she went ahead and made plans with us.

This is easily done. In our family, there have been countless times that daddy-o and I have left each other out of the loop on some pretty significant happenings or events. We have combated that by adopting an e-mail and outlook appointment policy – plans are not considered officially made unless they come across our laptop screens. If this sounds ridiculous, then enjoy the calm and peaceful household you live in. If this sounds sensible and effective, then welcome to my club.

I suppose we’d have greater odds of getting together socially with families who have fewer children. However, there’s something nice about spending time with mamas of many because they understand the dynamics of a big family - and heck, what do they say about misery loving company?

I’m never quite sure what to do about Father’s Day. Is it a time when daddy-o is supposed to spend the whole day bonding with his kid crew, or is it a day he should get a break from them?

After pondering the question for about five seconds, I decided to go with the bonding. Fact is, he spends a lot of time at work so doesn’t exactly need a ‘break’ from the kids. As such, I lined up a few dad and kid activities for the morning.

Breakfast in bed was not on the agenda, so the first activity was to send him off to his favourite greasy spoon with the three biggies followed by a trip to the golf store where he cashed in a gift certificate that was two-years-old. The rest of the day mostly involved daddy-o swimming in the backyard pool with the gang. Father’s Day is now wrapped up for another year.

Around here I feel that Mother’s Day should be treated a little differently to Father’s Day because of the difference in our parenting roles. The one fundamental difference is that I’m around the kiddos a helluva a lot and he is not. I need more bonding time with the kids about as much as I need a hole in the head. I like to celebrate Mother’s Day by having a few moments to myself - nothing drastic, maybe a sleep in until 8:00am and an hour in the afternoon. I don’t think that is too much to ask. Call it a double standard, but I don’t need to be surrounded by my peeps on my day, but daddy-o does on his day.

Years ago, on my second mother’s day, life was hectic as I was juggling Law School and two babies. I’ll never forget waking up on the morning on that Mother’s Day and daddy-o saying “I’m just going out for a couple of hours to do some Mother’s Day shopping”. Gulp. Do ya think maybe that should have been done during the week? My idea of Mother’s Day didn’t involve him going on a shopping excursion.

The rage that consumed me at the time makes it difficult to recollect or re-tell the story. All I know is that he gently threw me his wallet and car keys, grabbed the children and gently backed out of the room muttering phrases like “don’t rush back…..go for a coffee too….visit friends….buy whatever you like.” Again, the red I was seeing blurred my vision so this is just a vague recollection.

So here’s to every daddy-o out there. I hope the mamas spent the day doing exactly what I did - showing their great appreciation of you by providing you with opportunity to spend time with your lovely children!

A few nights ago, we had a little incident that I can’t stop thinking about. Quite frankly, I’m still feeling a bit sick about it.
I put the kids to bed. My three little ladies sleep “Little House on the Prairie” style all in one room. With two single beds, a toddler bed and the dressers taking up residency in the hallway, it works well. On this particular night, Little Lady #1 was at the ballet with Nan and Little Lady #2 fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
Like most good mom entrepreneurs, after kids are in bed I make the most of the next few quiet hours. I was working away on my computer and at about 8:00pm I heard Little Lady #3 (who is three-years-old) making some little whimpering sounds. Like most noises originating from a kid’s bedroom, I ignored it for a while. I finally sent daddy-o up to check out the situation and shut her down. A moment later he called me out of my office to have a look at her.
She had taken a belt from one of their little bath robes and tied it tightly around her neck!
The image is haunting me. With Little Lady #1 not there to save her or file an immediate incident report with the grown-ups, this could have gone so wrong. In addition, I keep thinking about how EASILY I could have gone on ignoring the little whimpering sounds. That particular kiddo has been up to a bit of monkey business at bed time and I’m generally pretty tough on that nonsense. I think about what could have happened and spending my life haunted by those ignored whimpers playing and re-playing in my head.
I’m not a super paranoid kind of parent - my kids are allowed to play outside and I let them run around the hockey arena while I watch one of their siblings play. This incident was just a glaring reminder that they are never truly safe - even when you put them to bed.

So, I had planned to blog this week about my experiences last weekend in Houston at the Mom 2.0 Summit, but telling you to remove bath robes from your kid’s bedroom somehow trumped it. Chills…..

And I know she looks cute and innocent in the picture, but clearly she is not to be trusted!

Welcome to Canadian Momz! Your resource for everything Canadian and super fabulous!

If you are a Canadian Mom and would like to help us find great Canadian products and businesses, please contact us!

Stayed tuned for what’s happening at CM!