Hatchery at the butterfly conservatory

Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease.

(insert your preferred metaphor here re: new year, hatching, etc. etc.)

Happy 2008. If 2007 was good to you, may 2008 be even better. And if 2007 sucked for you, well, may 2008 be substantially more pleasant.

Edit to add Neil Gaiman’s New Year’s wish, which I quite like despite its saccharineness (saccharinity? — whatever):

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t to forget make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

I’m sure anyone reading this has heard my rant about Toys R Gender Apartheid. The place drives me nuts and I end up cursing myself every time I spend money there. But here’s a nice piece out of the UK’s “the f-word” that manages to say the same things but without all the swear words I inevitably insert in my rant:

It is probable that some people see past stereotypes. However, what has been established in research is that people tend to live up or down to the expectations that are communicated to them. A number of studies have revealed that there is pressure on individuals to behave in stereotyped ways and these behaviour patterns are generally equated with social acceptance. We can all remember what it is like at school, never in our lives do we feel more pressure for social acceptance. Female children are fed expectations from the toy industry daily and we cannot pretend they have no effect.

However I don’t necessarily think a particular conspiracy in the toy industry exists to repress girls, but rather that companies think only of profits. Therefore products are created that the human brain will recognise most easily and buy most readily. The toy makers and advertisers ‘amplify’ the perceived differences between the genders in order to quickly communicate with its desired audience. In an experiment where children viewed ten toy adverts once the children could identify the target audience every single time. The target audience of boys or girls are very obvious to children and make the products easy to understand and therefore easy to sell, but the unpleasant side-effect of this is there is an implication of whether the product is suitable for them or not depending on their gender.

A good seasonal reminder to give your business to small, thoughtful toy retailers, assuming you have access to some.

Thanks to Abbey Cat Adoptions (go ahead, click the link and look at all the adorable kitties that need homes… I dare you….), we’ve been adopted by two new kitties.

This is Jake. He’s 2 and he’s originally from Hamilton:

And this is his pal (they were in the same foster home) Elwood, who is 5 and from Collingwood:

They’re settling in very well. Jake has decided that M’s bed is his territory, which pleases everyone except Elwood, who was firmly batted away from the prime next-to-warm-small-child zone tonight. Jake’s also discovered that if he sits on the stairs he blends in very well, thus maximizing his chances of killing us and providing himself with fresh meat. In the meantime he likes to sit by the kitchen table and wait for M to “drop” things in his vicinity.

Elwood is louder and more overtly sociable and likes to play with the ribbons on all the helium balloons left over from M’s party last weekend. He likes to experimentally claw at things at night, making boring sleeping humans transform into lively awake humans, but we’ll work on that.

Yay, cats! And hey, now we have a kid that’s old enough to scoop out litterboxes!

WordPress is being particularly recalcitrant.

Testing editing.

Testing adding a totally random link.

…ok, looks like it was a db issue after all. Yay backups.

M’s Grade 1 school picture

Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease.

Dimple, missing tooth and big grin.

I swear, we do brush her hair once in a while.

M at the school Christmas concert

Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease.

The kid loves to sing and is a total extrovert, so you’d think we’d have experienced a successful concert before now. But no. Even this past spring there were wails and tears when her cute bunny ears broke shortly before the concert, and I spent some minutes crouched in the Kindergarten classroom making soothing shushing noises and trying (with eventual success) to convince M to rejoin the singing.

So I was a bit nervous about the Primary School’s Christmas concert yesterday even though (again) M had been practicing hard and was (again) very enthusiastic about it. Cacophony I can handle. But would I have to rescue my wailing sproggle again? In front of several hundred other students and a horde of parents and other hangers-on? Ack.

The school gym was very full — even though I got there ten minutes early, I was stuck way at the back. I left my red hat on, though, and caught M’s eye as she was getting ready to sing with the French choir (she joined both French and English choirs), and there was much smiling and waving. And, thank goodness, there was singing and a total lack of wailing. Excellent.

She’s the one just left of the large black speaker.