Growing Versions

"Do not be afraid of the past. If people tell you it is irrevocable, do not believe them. The past, present and future are but one moment in the sight of God. Time and space are merely accidental conditions of thought. The Imagination can transcend them." -Oscar Wilde

This morning my son pronounced that it was mama's super powers that helped him jump down four stairs instead of the usual 3.  It briefly assuaged my guilt, but inside I admitted that I am not using my powers for good today. I'm grouchy, short tempered and inpatient. Why do I see that as a failure, when really, if I follow my own advice to my kids, it is understandable that someone is grumpy and unreasonable sometimes, especially when they are on-call 24 hours a day responding to demands. I always make extra effort to assure others that it is normal to be frustrated and lose your cool at times, it all balances out.  It would be better advice if I truly believed it was good advice for me too.  I have set up my own double standard.  It seems to me that is expected more of us women than men who parent. I want my kids to observe me during periods of stress so they can know that they do not have to gloss over their struggles or hide their feelings.  However, I...

  “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”  Jack Kerouac

Boy: Pizza Man! Pizza Man! Pizza Man!(hollering through an upstair window, seated on a stool) Pizza Man: You have some help up there.  (gesturing upwards). Mom: Yes, yes I do. Boy: We have bleeding hearts. Pizza Man: Oh yeah? Boy:Our cat Mulder looks like a skunk. He went up a tree. Pizza Man: Did you call the fire station? Boy: No, no, of course not, he jumped down by himself. Pizza Man: (smiling politely) Boy: I am going to be 4 and I am going to be able to climb trees very high...

I am moving very slowly.  I cannot seem to move faster. I've taken the cue and I've read the memos...the sun has come out and I've decided to rest. I am still standing, still walking around, but I will capitulate to a bed as soon as the opportunity avails itself.  Until then, I'll close my eyes, face towards the sun and rest standing up. My response time will slow for a while, but that's okay. 

When do we stop insisting on bringing playdoh or a bouncy ball on outings?  When do we relinquish dolls and replace them with iphones? Clutching stuff as we travel around because we can't foresee doing what we are about to do without the clutching.  Later, as my kids get comfortable, they abandon the thing that they have been gripping so tightly but I feel like that phase has not  ever really stopped for me. I'm still clutching stuff. I enjoy the sensation of having free hands. I like the concept but in the end my hands are required for clutching and I'm ultimately uneasy when I'm not. What's that about? My husband goes around not clutching stuff.  For some of us, perhaps the clutching goes internal.  For now, I continue to clutch phones and keys and pens...and clutch the playdoh and balls when my kids get tired of doing it. 1.     to   seize   with   or   as   with   the   hands   or   claws;   sn...

I've been accused of being worst things, but somehow, being labelled a bleeding heart really irks me (almost) the most. There is another word that is worse, and I'll get up the courage to tell you why another day.  "You are a bleeding heart" means you care disproportionally, you have no (or faulty) critical thinking skills, you are gullible.  I care fiercely about what I care about...but scared of the label I tend to care in a cold hearted way (if there is such a thing), reassuring others all the way that I'm no fool---that I care with safely constructed boundaries.  I care all too aware that a staunched bleeding heart is seen as more noble. A healed up, scabbed over heart is seen as somehow more caring, but is that true?  What do you think?

We had a fun fair at my daughter's school yesterday.  For my daughter this is always an exciting entertainment option right in her backyard. For us parents it is a cheap form of entertainment that spells the beginning of summer, a chance to reconnect with other parents after all those dozens of hurried drop offs and pick ups. What's not to love? Balloon animals,a lollipop pull, two big bouncy castles, prizes and treats.  Our school pulls out all the stops and we always come home laden with great flea market finds and cotton candy and treasures.  At the flea market, we picked up a few little things for rock bottom prices including this (above) haunted mansion matchbox toy that my son was captivated by.  Not bad for $2. However, after that, I was kind of wishing we hadn't bought so many tickets because all my son wanted to do was play with this toy.  He plunked himself approximately 1.5 metres away from a BOUNCY CASTLE and drew kids in like moths to a flame...

When my daughter was about 2 years old, a friend passed along a book called  The Toddler's Busy Book . It was written by a mom of several young children and she itemizes dozens of no cost activities that make use of everyday household objects and focuses on feeding kids' imaginations without t.v (and potentially, daycare). They are all great ideas but for me I was often daunted by the toddler book.  At the time, I was cramming all my mothering between daycare pickup and bedtime and weekends.  I often ended up feeling like the book was a record of every interactive creative learning moment I was missing. Randomly, I'd take the book's suggestions of getting my young daughter to scrub a potato(5 minutes if I was lucky) with a vegetable brush or putting random items into a box for rainy days (10 minutes tops), but my big intentions with the busy book kind of faded.  I still loved the IDEA of the book, it's just that its actual purpose was...

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. -Khalil Gibra n

1.Find a flashlight that has batteries and is still working. 2.Empty a candy container (any candy is okay, but we chose skittles) 3. Turn flashlight on. 4.Put flashlight into the candy container. 5.Voila! A candy container lantern to light your way.

Right from the very first day in 1980, when I observed my primary teacher tuck her hair behind her ear (she brushed her hair in front of us every morning), I knew that teaching would be wonderful.  From then on, I mimicked every gesture of every teacher I had every year after that.  I wanted glasses because my grade 5 teacher had them, I got a chalk holder for Christmas so I could click it the way my grade 6 teacher did, until I was about 12 I used to play school in the basement almost every day after school.  I liked to teach invisible students.  They let me have free rein and they did not interfere with my agenda by being stuffed bears or by talking back.  My real live teaching career ended up morphing into other aspects of education but to this day a chalk board and an empty room make me tremble a little.  I liked sorting out my students, praising the excellent ones, pairing up others for assignments and berating the hopeless ones.  The real thin...

We finally got motivated and vacuumed on the weekend and to celebrate I let the kids loose on the walls with chalk.  Chalk is brilliant isn't it? Both washable and infinite.

My daughter spent the day at her dad's office the other day.  She had a very good time getting acquainted with his work environment and she had many tasks to do while she was there.  One special task was sorting the crayons.  One crayon caught her eye and she's been mentioning it ever since.  There is a crayon named "gold". It is really very special and it adds something important to everything we have coloured since.  I say "we" because she implored me several times over the weekend to colour with her.  Discovering "gold" helped renew her interest in crayons and all the things they can do.  And all the names they can be called.  "Sky blue" and "olive green" are "also names for crayons".  She was not so interested in the google search for "crayon crafts" but rather interested in what the crayons can do as themselves. "Mama, stop checking the internet for ideas!"

I feel threadbare. I have been writing my way through the winter, partially to keep myself going through dark, hectic days.  I write at nights when I cannot sleep. I take pictures during days that sometimes are full of boredom or drudgery, but also, of course, wonder.  Time at this moment seems to drag on but also is so fleeting that I do not want it to pass unnoticed, unappreciated. Waking up to the secret world and ushering in the dark night has been making me wonder aloud...should I continue to shine light on those invisible threads or should I leave those musings as private things. Exploring my own inner world and wondering about the inner worlds of my children is surprising and interesting to me and creatively absorving but it also, sometimes, makes me feel vulnerable.  Such delicate threads those mutable memories and impressions that have for so long stayed, confined and bottled, only to be opened and spread out to be picked up, interpreted and thought about by...

My friend helped me discover this awesome remix of Mr. Rogers' song, "Garden of your Mind".  It's original message, so simple and yet powerful, comes through brimming with extra oomph and crackle by way of this delightful mash up. I also just came across this thoughtful piece,  For Mr. Rogers on his birthday ,written by Pensive Person on opensalon.com which speaks to the impact Mr. Rogers had on a generation (or more) of preschoolers and our need for a similar leader and leadership style in these new, uncertain times. Both pieces reminded me about this leader that was often ridiculed and, unfortunately, not aspired to enough. Mr. Rogers was gentle, graceful and curious, all attributes we don't even always look for in a leader, and then we wonder why our leaders disappoint us so. What qualities are we looking for anyway? * Mister Rogers remixed by Symphony of Science's John Boswell for PBS Digital Studios, as...

Lugging/Gliding In the way/In use Trudging/Speeding These scooters are finally being used, their purpose restored.  They no longer obstruct but rather ease our way in the morning. They are no longer being lugged and grunted over, their days have arrived.

Beauty, sweet Love, is like the morning dew,   Whose short refresh upon the tender green  Cheers for a time, but till the sun doth show,  And straight 'tis gone as it had never been.  -Samuel Daniel I have been having a rough week in some ways.  All mundane self-imposed challenges, and with a little perspective, unnecessary and superficial ones.  I cried a couple of times when I witnessed my kids wrestle in different ways with some troubles in their lives. I wondered what is going on behind the scenes, even though most of what they experience is still relatively transparent, I wonder also about how hard it will be when I can't peek behind the curtains as much as I can now. I dropped a lot of little balls, I woke up feeling anxious, and I am not really sure why.  I had so many strands clutched in my hand that I could feel sliding out of my grasp.  What exactly am I worried about? Looking grumpy, being called out, losing gr...

My seven year old has always been "a fan of" rules.  She wants to know what they are so that she can rigorously adhere to them and be more fully, consciously aware of when and how they are broken. My son does not like rules much.  His response to learning a new rule is usually "but I don't want to do that." In other words, I want to should have more moral suasion than you mustn't or you should. However, both kids have been talking a lot lately about documenting some rules for our house and for the backyard.  I do not know what brought it up, but they have been quite insistent about it. Indoor rules: No poking anyone while you are trying to talk to someone. Don't put chalk on the wall. Don't play hockey in the house. Don't spray water in the house. Don't poke anyone in the eye with your keys. Outdoor rules: No bossing. Don't put the cat on the tent when someone is inside it. No putting anything in everybodys...

Art is...well... you make it and then you let it dry and then you play with it.

Someone once told me, before I had kids, that if you ever have any doubts about whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, you'll figure it out pretty quickly once you have a kid who is the opposite.  If you are introverted like me and my husband, and probably my daughter, that means you get energy from within and from spending time alone with yourself (to re-fuel).  If you are extroverted, like my son, that means you tend to need other people to feel energized and re-fueled. It's a spectrum I'm sure, but in a nutshell that's what the terms  mean to me. For me, most of the time, parties daunt me.  If they don't daunt me, they tend to drain me. It is not that I don't like parties but I get what I want out of them faster than extroverts. I treasure my friendships but thrive when I nurture them one on one.  I used to really fight against this instinct in me.  I forced myself to be more social than was really comfortable.  Now, especially si...

This morning when I woke up, I discovered a new piece of furniture in our living room. In the wee hours, my daughter had designed and constructed a bunk bed prototype. Our kids love the idea of sleeping in bunk beds for many reasons. For my daughter, she likes the idea of having all the autonomy way up on the top bunk. For my son, he likes the idea of having someone so close he can talk to while he falls asleep. Plus, it has the added bonus of being a little playhouse in the daytime hours.  I like the design of this particular bunk bed.  I especially like the privacy shield draped over the bottom bunk.  It looks both thrillingly cosy and also cheerfully exotic.

I heard from an old neighbour that back in the day , she used to put up new wallpaper every spring.  She said that in many cases, people wouldn't strip the old wallpaper, they would just continue to layer it on year after year. We took down some wallpaper in my parents' place recently and underneath was a mermaid motif.  Years before I could remember, that room would have had  a totally different character.  The light would have been absorbed in  a much different way.   I think I have completely underestimated wallpaper and its leverage. Maybe I should not so blithely skip that step in my spring cleaning.