Just a note…some of this is a re-print from an earlier blog I wrote, and some of it are new thoughts I had on the same subject that I wanted to add on! Feel free to comment… My daughter and I sit on her bed. We have just finished reading her two bedtime stories, her …
Surveying the dirt and debris before me, I feel overwhelmed and disheartened. What was a garden in a previous year now lies piled high with clumps of sod, charred remains of tree branches, twigs and thick, prickly thistles. It is quite simply a mess. Where to begin? And will there be an end? I start …
Sunday evening, and I am finally ready for the weekend to begin. To begin again, that is. How is it that we are able to completely press speed dial when it comes to Friday through Sunday, but the rest of the week is like waiting on hold with elevator music playing in the background? Sunday …
Saturday morning, chore day. There is a to-do list as long as my arm, and I am trying to decide where to begin. The girls had a sleepover the night before, and the boys are attending a Men’s Breakfast. I relish a few precious minutes to sit, think and read before the rush. An hour …
Four little girls are snug as bugs in a rug under blankets and surrounded by pillows on my living room floor. They are eating me out of house and home, and what they don’t eat will go in the cupboard for Daddy’s late night snacks. They are watching Mr. Popper’s Penguins. Every once in a …
They urgently run in the door looking for cousins. No formal greetings made, there are games waiting to be played and stories to share. Some gather in the T.V. room and get sidetracked with a show while others rush outside to the swings. Two wait impatiently for a game of Risk, two go upstairs to …
Rushing, always rushing. I grab a bag of snacks and wait impatiently the three minutes it takes the corn to pop. My oldest daughter opens the side door of our house and hollers that one child is pulling another’s hair inside the van. It will be an all-out brawl if I don’t get out there. …
I was cleaning up after supper, when he suggested that we sit out on the veranda for coffee. I turned around and saw the box of chocolate truffles waiting as an invitation for something more, a date with my husband on the porch swing. I could feel the excuses surfacing…remnants from supper lay hardening on …
She is finally asleep, that little ball of energy, my spitfire. A half-dozen times, I have lost count now, my baby girl calls for me to do one thing or the other, always stalling for time. It is a battle, sleep does not come easy for her. I hear nothing for a glorious stretch of …
It is a wet, cold rainy evening. April showers to bring May flowers, if we are so blessed. My husband sits in the entry way to our house with a wet dog at his feet that keeps passing gas and trying to escape the confines of her clearly defined boundaries. I come downstairs after stories …
I am standing at the back of Coles book shop, my head buried in an interesting new read I have found tucked in between a few other books on discipline. The book happens to be Bringing Up Bebe, by Pamela Druckerman, her controversial book on how the French parent differently than their American counterparts. I …
Funny stuff kids said to me today (at school and at home): Me: “Little girl, I love your long hair. Did you ever cut it before? Little girl: “yeah, my mom cuts it with a knife (illustrates with a whiplash effect with her hand) And another… Me: “What does your Dad do?” Little Boy: …