Elly: Browse The Strips

Friday January 3, 2020

Lynn's Comments: I was treading some sensitive ground here when I wrote this. Midwifery was still a developing career, and home birth was still being discouraged. Expectant parents were, for the first time, taking control of how and where their babies were going to be born.

Monday January 6, 2020

Lynn's Comments: At the time I was formulating this story, there was some debate regarding midwifery and the decision to have your baby at home. My own obstetrician, Dr. Murray Enkin, advocated for home birth and I wanted to champion his ideals.

Tuesday January 7, 2020

Lynn's Comments: Dr. Enkin was the author of several obstetrics text books and his opinion was: "Childbirth isn't a disease and shouldn't necessarily happen in a hospital." This was something I believed, too.

Friday January 10, 2020

Lynn's Comments: I engineered this "birth" to happen on April Fool’s Day because it was a fantasy situation—I wasn't really pregnant. But at this stage of the story, I hadn't decided on a name or a gender. (You have a lot of control over people when you make them up!)

Wednesday January 22, 2020

Lynn's Comments: Whenever one of the kids was feeling left out or otherwise marginalized, we declared a special day just for them. We’d go to a favourite restaurant, maybe supply a small gift. We just made a special day out of an ordinary one. Worked like a charm.

Sunday February 2, 2020

Lynn's Comments: My husband had an amazing model railway set up in our home. When it became too much for the basement, he built another outside—one you could ride on! The idea for this came when we went to visit Ollie Johnston, one of the "9 old men" of Disney fame. Ollie’s ride-on railway was the inspiration for Walt Disney’s train obsession leading to his creation of the Disneyland theme park. It was also the catalyst for our outdoor railway–something our friends' and neighbours' kids will remember for the rest of their lives.

Monday February 3, 2020

Lynn's Comments: I think this subject must come up in most households. If it's not your child who wants a motorcycle... it's your husband! I now have a couple of women friends who ride, and I have to say...I can see why it's such a romantic way to travel.