Taking a trip to Chinatown

by Brie

One morning during March break the kids and I made a visit to Chinatown. Walking down Somerset towards Bronson I told the kids to watch out for the huge arch announcing the beginning of Chinatown. Neither had any idea what I was talking about as I tried to explain the arch but they sure knew it when they saw it!

The arch was our first stop and we spent some time taking a closer look. I was blown away by how vibrant the colours are. My four and a half year old girl was happy to pose in from of the lion statue. My two and a half year old boy wanted nothing to do with the lion and stood as far away from it as possible.

arch

We took a walk down the street looking in the store windows on our way to the Kowloon Market. Inside the boy sat in the front of the shopping cart and the three of us started to wander the store. It was great to be in a new shopping environment, one where the kids don't know every aisle by heart and try to rush through as fast as possible. The kids were happy to wander each aisle looking at the items on the shelves. I heard a lot of "What's this mama?".

We stocked up on tofu and some yummy noodles. The kids wanted to get a treat so we also left with a big bag of fortune cookies. As soon as we paid and made it outside the kids wanted to eat their cookies. They couldn't have cared less about the fortunes, but I thought they were funny.

fortune cookies

Unfortunately we had to leave before the restaurants opened in order to make it home for the boy's nap. But I am already planning our next trip to Chinatown. This time I'll make sure we go in the late afternoon so that we can end our visit with  dinner!

Have you visited Chinatown with your kids? Where do they love to go?

Brie is the mom of a 4 year old daughter “the girl” and 2 old son “the boy”. You can read her blog at Capital Mom.

Parents in the Capital: Meet Ezmy!

Ottawa has some wonderful bloggers and we are lucky that many of them are Kids in the Capital contributors and readers! We want to share some of our favorite Ottawa parent bloggers on a more regular basis so we are introducing a series of posts called Parents in the Capital. Say hello to Ezmy!

Tell us about yourself and your family  My husband A. and I are both Political Science geeks. He’s from Nova Scotia and I’m from Vancouver Island. We met in NS and bonded over beer and a mutual loathing for all things Ann Coulter. We moved to Ottawa five years ago - A. for work (he’s a Foreign Service officer) and me for school (I’m mid-MA). Three years after the move we got engaged in Italy. Our son Ewan was born just over a year after that, in June 2010. We had a kick ass wedding six months ago and now our little family of three (+ one plump house cat, Zoe) enjoys patio lunches, reading, walking adventures, and watching The Office.

What is your favourite activity to do with your kid(s) in Ottawa? Oh walking adventures, certainly. But once the weather gets better, we are looking forward to fun times in the park. And I wouldn’t be surprised if a little geo-caching got thrown in there as well.

What is your favourite at home activity to do with your kid(s)? Well, Ewan likes to practice his rolling and crawling poses on our bed so one of my favourite things to do is to fold laundry while he rolls around, giggling like a maniac. We also dance to a lot of Queen - he currently enjoys waving at the stereo.

What was the biggest surprise that parenthood has brought into your life? I’m amazed by how little sleep I can survive, and indeed thrive on. And how much fun it is to do simple things like eat dinner. Watching the little man explore new foods is just a blast.

What parenting tips/advice do you wish you'd known when you first became a parent? It’s a simple one - the Gro sac. I have one now but I could have saved myself a month of worry if I’d had one earlier. This thing rocks my socks, particularly since Budsie is a) a tummy sleeper and b) apparently hell bent on eating an entire blanket.      Tell us about your blog and how you discovered blogging. My blog, Ezmy, simply follows the last five years of my life. I started blogging on the advice of a friend. At the time, I was in a miserable relationship, up to my eyeballs in academia, and I desperately needed a creative outlet. Interestingly, the blog also ended up documenting my relationship with A. from the first day we met, about four months after the blog’s creation. My highs and lows have been recorded here - one major break-up, tales of singledom, the big move to O-town, A.’s year away for work, terrible apartments, thankless jobs, academic successes and failures, ridiculous cooking experiments, the horrors of wedding planning, adventures in morning sickness and bed rest, the birth of our son, and more recently, my efforts to improve myself from the inside out using daily resolutions. Blogging has become a part of my day like eating and sleeping. It’s the way I keep in touch with others and with myself.

What do you love best about being a parent in Ottawa? Access to some wonderful museums and galleries, the ability to take my kid to Question Period, and the newly discovered, and greatly appreciated, online support system for fellow parents.

Thanks Ezmy!

Tips for cooking with you children

by Krista I have written a little bit about how I love to cook with my children, and one of the most common comments that I get is "I could never do that, it would not be safe". I don't feel this to be true in my case, even though my children can be pretty rambunctious, and aren't always the best listeners in the world. We are very careful to ensure that all of us are safe and enjoying the process, and it makes them more likely to listen and want to do it again. So I thought I would share a few of the tips and tricks that I use to make sure that the experience is safe, fun, and successful.

Establish rules and set expectations from the start. I take the time to remind my monkeys before we start each cooking endeavour, and never bend or waiver from them, and they know it. There are some simple rules that apply all the time, like never touch the cutting board if mommy has a knife in her hand, never touch any part of the stove without permission, and always listen to mommy in the kitchen. I might add a few new ones in specific to the recipe, but these are the constants. I have established consequences, and make these known as well. They know that the rules are for their safety, and that not following means they have to stop participating for some or all of the recipe. They don't want that, so they are really, really good.

Start slowly. We didn't just one day decide to jump in and fry bacon together! Both of my children actually started out by sitting in a chair at the counter and watching me cook. I then got them to gather ingredients and utensils, then simple tasks like dumping measuring cups in the bowls or washing veggies. It took a while before we moved to actually cooking together at the stove.

Start simple and with familiar foods. Most of the early recipes that we made had fewer than four ingredients, or were really easy to throw together. This helped us make sure that there was something edible in the end, and that they were interested to the end. I also tended to have them help me if I was making something they loved. Pizza was great for this, a family favourite that could be pretty simple.

Pre-prep the harder stuff, if you need to. For me this most often meant chopping ingredients that needed to be sliced and diced, but could also mean doing some of the cooking in advance. It also means that I pre-plan what they are going to do in any recipe, ensuring that there are enough steps that they can do.

Allow for extra extra time. It generally takes me at least half again as long to cook with the lils. So if a recipe says it will take twenty minutes to prep, I aim to have it prepped in thirty or more minutes.

Expect a mess. The kitchen is pretty messy when they are helping out, so I plan for it and don't stress out. I try to keep the messy work contained to the same area and near the sink if possible. We also have tea towels at arms reach at all times. We clean up together when we are finished, or if we are really lucky, we get Daddy to do it for us!

Cooking with your little ones is a bit more work, but it is well worth it for me. Not only are they starting to learn the basic tools that will serve them well their whole lives, they are starting to know and appreciate what goes into the food that we eat. There is nothing that beats the pride I feel when they come running in to the kitchen at the end of the day, drag their chairs over to the counter and excitedly ask "what are we cooking for dinner?!"

Krista is married to Willy and mom to a 4 year old son, Woo, and 2 year old daughter Goose. You can find her at Life in the Hutch or on Twitter @kgraydonald

Turning books into art

by Lara Lately I've felt like my creativity for crafts and indoor activities with the kids has been a bit....  lacking.  But with March break and a whole week of Kiernan around all afternoon, being inclined to mostly watch tv and play video games were I to allow him to, I needed to be creative.

My mother brought us home some huge rolls of paper that were from some work printer that was no longer.  The huge paper isn't a necessity to this activity, but I think it helped.

I got out the paint and instead of the usual "I don't know WHAT to paint, I don't know HOW to paint!" I suggested we take inspiration from some of the zillions of books we have, and I got down on the floor and took part in the activity.

Sometimes I did the main painting and Kiernan helped me paint them in, and sometimes he did it all on his own.  In the end, we got some super fun paintings that are decorating our playroom wall, and it was a fun and easy way to spend an afternoon indoors!

Lara is mom to 4 year old Kiernan and 1 year old twins Quinn and Juliette. You can read her blog at Gliding Through Motherhood.

Having fun at Value Village

by Brie One weekday morning I headed to the Value Village on Clyde with both kids. I thought it would be a fun outing on a cold day. And it was!

I don't particularly like going shopping with the kids. They want to touch everything. They want to buy everything. Most shopping trips leave me exhausted from saying "no". Shopping at Value Village was a much nicer experience because, given the prices, I am more likely to say "yes, we can buy that".

I told the kids they could each spend $5 on our Value Village shopping trip. The amount didn't mean much to my two and half year old but the idea that he got to leave the store with something did. My four year old, though, was checking with me to find out how much all the items she wanted to buy cost. And she wanted to buy a lot.

It was neat watching the different shopping styles of the kids. The girl picked up and put down at least half a dozen items: shoes, toys, jewelry, dresses. She was interested in everything. Every time she picked up something new I reminded her that she only had $5 to spend. Finally she narrowed it down to a fancy white dress that will eventually be added to our dress up clothes. She wore it straight for two days after she bought it, so it was money well spent.

The boy wasn't really interested in anything until he found the badminton rackets. He got excited about using them to play tennis at the park in the summer. The three rackets cost under $5 and he has already been trying to enlist us in playing tennis in the hallway.

I had a great time at Value Village too. I did have to watch the kids around the more delicate and breakable items but I didn't feel the need to hover around them like I would in a more expensive store.

Our last stop in the store was the book section. The kids spent a good 20 minutes reading books while I rifled through the shelves looking for anything of interest to add to our collection. At $1 a book for kids' books it was hard to resist. Needless to say we walked out with a pile.

Do you go second-hand shopping with your kids? And who loves it best: you or the kids?

Brie is the mom of a 4 year old daughter “the girl” and 2 old son “the boy”. You can read her blog at Capital Mom.