Growing Versions

"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh Both of my kids never pass up a trip to the "outside basement" (cellar) .   Our home has many inhabitants over the years and they always come up from the outside basement having made exciting discoveries. They emerge with old picture frames and abandoned frisbees and Christmas ornaments. The outside basement has no limits and it is a similar promise of exciting discoveries that keeps me hanging on to disorderly closets and brimming bins full of treasures just waiting to be uncovered.

 I was commanded to make party streams  yesterday for our new chameleons (recently chosen birthday). So I pumped out some from left over Christmas tissue paper. No tape, so we used up old Christmas stickers. He took over from there.

This is the season that we make bunk bed caves and forts and snow houses every day.  We suspend blankets over our heads and let the light of a tiny flashlight make the whole thing glow.  There is one at the foot of the stairs, another one behind the couch, one between two mattresses.  We feel this urge to create new structures to cocoon us until we can knock them all down in spring with our wings.

dendriform (adj.) tree shaped; resembling a tree in form and branching structure

How to draw an owl  is a post by the author, entrepreneur , and  marketing extraordinaire Seth Godin that got me thinking about how often I wonder about how to  draw roses. They are so beautiful. Everyone goes crazy for them. People obsess over them and they get poems and songs written about their delicate beauty. A whole holiday is practically devoted to them.  They are so omniscient that they are actually not my favourite flower.  There are just too many cartoonish versions of them to like that much.  However, every once in a while, I get the pleasure of coming across one in a natural setting and they wow me once again. I have tried drawing roses many many times over the years.  I'm not an artist, but still, I usually am able to draw a roughly drawn facsimile of most things, just not roses.  What do they really look like? I get too focused on drawing each petal, and can't seem to draw the petals all together. What does a rose consist of? ...

One time I asked my son why he didn`t play with two children at once at daycare and he explained that he only had two hands.  This comment instantly made me understand that, just like in adulthood, playing with other kids takes attention.  It`s by no means a mindless activity. A friend directed me to the blog  One Continuous Mistake , with the tag line, Zen and Parenting. It`s written by partners Tracy and Koun Franz. Koun is a Soto Zen Priest and Tracy is a writer and teacher. They co-write a beautiful blog about their experiences raising two young children.  Instantly, I felt a kind of kinship with their writing and one of my favourite posts so far is  Two Hands Mama .  Their deceptively simple, reflective and well written posts document their spiritual journey towards mindfulness in parenting. Blogging has been a forum for me to understand more deeply my and others experiences and reactions to parenting.  Writing through the regret for things ...

Kid: "Mama, have you ever heard the expression, good things come in small packages?" Mama: "yes, I have.  Like babies and diamond rings." Kid: "Yes, and rocks."