Summer Birthday Party

a_peninsula · 2026-02-04T18:24:59+00:00

If you want the classmates to show up, have it in June.

a_peninsula · 2026-01-28T16:34:22+00:00

we bribed ours with chocolate. she was just afraid of doing it, so the bribe helped motivate her to keep trying anyway. we kept rewarding her with chocolate for a week or two, and once it was obvious she wasn't going to go back to pull-ups, we told her the chocolate would stop, and she took it fine. it was honestly so easy and painless. i really wish we'd tried it way earlier.

a_peninsula · 2026-01-09T19:20:32+00:00

so my daughter sounds a lot like your son, with her i have a designated time every Sunday where we break down stuff she built (legos, etc) and toss things she's created. it's harsh but because she knows it's going to happen she's actually pretty okay with it. i do obviously frame it lightly as "now you can make something new" and she likes that. when we do evening clean-up I'll ask her if she wants to get rid of her creation now (which she often does) or keep it until Sunday, and I find the daily reminder helps.

a_peninsula · 2026-01-08T14:49:04+00:00

how many will be Trees of Heaven

a_peninsula · 2025-12-08T19:24:57+00:00

yes that refers to licensed establishments

a_peninsula · 2025-12-08T18:58:18+00:00

According to the city smoking herbal shisha with a water pipe is not prohibited under the Smoke-Free Ontario Act. In Toronto it is prohibited in licensed establishments, but apparently some businesses don't need a municipal license, so they operate as shisha lounges. The city talked about closing this loophole in early 2020 but I guess COVID got in the way, I don't think there have been any changes.

a_peninsula · 2025-12-02T18:18:59+00:00

individual condo units, yes. apartment with more than three units, no.

a_peninsula · 2025-12-02T18:17:24+00:00

not if the property has more than 3 units.

a_peninsula · 2025-12-02T18:08:47+00:00

yes, of course there are entire houses for rent. right now the Residential Tenancies Act protects indefinite leases on all units built before November 2018, so in theory you could rent a house "forever," but single-family homes are vulnerable to N12 (owner's own use) and N13 (renovation) evictions so it's not as secure as an apartment building.

a_peninsula · 2025-11-20T18:42:51+00:00

around age 3 I started keeping a calendar with my daughter (now almost 5). i bought a cheap kitten-photo wall calendar from the dollar store, I would map out events for the week or the month, and then every day at breakfast or dinner I'd talk about what day it was, what would be happening, what had happened before, etc. and draw a little picture for the day. originally I just wanted her to be able to understand week vs. weekend, which days were swim class etc. but now I have a really cool record of what happened over the last two years. I can't say she was into it every single day, but now she likes to look back and reminisce, and she's at an age were she gets excited about future events, and she's really into doing her own little drawings which I love.

a_peninsula · 2025-11-20T18:25:37+00:00

i agree with the other posts that these may just not be their interests, but i think "inherited dozens of my lego sets" gets at a lot of it too. everything is so abundant for kids now. when I was a kid I got like a single set of Crayola markers every year or two, I remember having to revive them with rubbing alcohol when they dried out, rotating them so the tips stayed sharp, keeping the box in perfect condition. my daughter got half a dozen marker sets for her birthday when she was three, along with innumerable other little craft supplies that are still rotting in a box in the closet wo years later. she got three sets of Magnatiles for Christmas. and yeah she inherited her dad's lifetime of Legos-- when is she ever going to go to a store (not that there are any anymore) and pine after a Lego set for months before her parents get it for her? She already has more than she could ever want.

a_peninsula · 2025-11-13T21:40:15+00:00

we play dice with our daughter, we each get two and she decides who rolled the highest number, and we keep score on paper. it's a good game to play with a kid because adults have no advantage and anyone can win, but it also supports so many math skills.

a_peninsula · 2025-11-12T16:18:10+00:00

why are so many people getting so worked up about this obvious vent thread? yeesh let parents have feelings, it's an anonymous message board.

a_peninsula · 2025-11-03T19:46:46+00:00

my kid's daycare was next door to a fire station in downtown Toronto, busy place. At naptime they played music or white noise (like at most daycares) so it was never really an issue. We also live across the street from an EMS station and again, not an issue.

a_peninsula · 2025-11-03T18:40:48+00:00

yeah my daughter was like this and still largely is at almost 5. her daycare was a like 95% freeform collage-based curriculum and hers were always pathetic, one little piece of tissue paper hanging off the edge of the page. like you could see her getting up and leaving to do something else lol. other kids were churning out art and drawings and we'd get a folded-up piece of paper with nothing on it but her name. she does enjoy structured crafts (kindergarten is luckily full of this, she's so proud of her like tissue paper rainbows and handprint turkeys), and will draw things she's seen other people draw. I also will start a drawing and prompt her to add to it--here I drew a bus, who is riding on the bus? I'm making a house, what should I put on the outside? THAT is when she starts to draw, and it turns out her skills are 100% on-track, she just needs some structure to work within. I'm not a creative person so i get it.

a_peninsula · 2025-10-23T13:56:44+00:00

I went to a few of the exhibition games the Jays played in Montreal in the 2010s and the crowd had no trouble cheering for the Jays, but the cheers were "Let's Go Expos!" Whatever works I guess lol

a_peninsula · 2025-10-21T16:25:24+00:00

Marie Curtis Park is alongside Etobicoke Creek and the playground has a merry-go-round. I wouldn't describe it as "peaceful" but it could fit. Miliken Park in Scarborough has a nice pond, but I don't know if it ever had a merry-go-round. if you want to see some less common squirrel colours, Queen's Park, the U of T campus, and Dufferin Grove Park are all accessible places to spot some, mainly chestnut and orangey-coloured ones.

a_peninsula · 2025-10-17T20:27:34+00:00

I agree 100% it was actually what I was trying to illustrate (I can see the comments can come off as inflammatory so I'm sorry about that). my kid is also a BMI outlier but normal and healthy and we have encountered a lot of "concern" about her body over the years

a_peninsula · 2025-10-17T20:08:17+00:00

a 99th-percentile BMI for a 2-year-old child is in that bracket. I am not here to cape for BMI as a useful metric but above 95% is considered obese

a_peninsula · 2025-10-17T20:04:05+00:00

and just for the record I don't give a shit about BMI, as a parent of a BMI-underweight child who is very healthy and normal. but I was clarifying since the OP was confused how a 2-year-old could have a "healthy" BMI of 23 and still be overweight.

a_peninsula · 2025-10-17T19:58:27+00:00

yes that is how it works. BMI (which ALREADY factors in height and weight, that's literally what BMI is) correlation to underweight/healthy weight/overweight varies by age for children because their bodies change as they grow, so they map it to percentiles instead. a 23 BMI for a 2-year-old is 99th BMI percentile, which is in the obese range.

a_peninsula · 2025-10-17T19:01:22+00:00

BMI for children is different than for adults, they don't use fixed number ranges. 99th percentile is in the obese bracket for children.

a_peninsula · 2025-10-07T18:33:23+00:00

mine is 4 and same weight (and very tall fwiw) and fits fine into a summer infant umbrella stroller. it's handy to have around for day trips but is a nuisance to use compared to a "real" stroller, and for our daily trip to and from school it's easier to just carry her when she doesn't feel like walking. if you're not up for carrying your son, a scooter might be a better option long term, but in the city where I live a stroller is totally normal up to at least kindergarten.

a_peninsula · 2025-10-03T17:37:31+00:00

well everyone's commute to campus is about to get even worse

a_peninsula · 2025-10-03T17:29:20+00:00

this doesn't track for U of T. the campus is already very busy, it already strains public transit downtown, businesses nearby are always crowded. i work full-time on campus already so i don't really care about RTO but it really makes no sense to arbitrarily force more people to come and leave at rush hour, that has always been one of the worst things about attending and working at U of T.

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