Tag — parenting
favorite things: child of my heart
He comes to me in my dreams, this child of my heart, separated now seas and ages.
Sometimes the dreams are all absurdity. Last night in my somnolence he came to me with a new love. I asked after her: what captivated? what called? His serious reply: “She taught me the word “Huntington’s.” Ah, what meaning in that then? Pizza for dinner, perhaps.
Othertimes they are wrought with meaning — Jungian symbols all in a row. He is lost in the woods. And what are these clamps there on his shoulders, at his gut? What is written on this new scroll? Are we falling or flying?
When he feels far from me, this child of choice, I wear this ’round my neck. A charm passed to me from my soulsister, long ago when I was the age he is now. Touch it with one finger there at the hollow of my throat. For safety. For comfort. For joy. Hoping to only connect.
A talisman then, swinging there over my heart.
In this photo post: Favorite things, culled from a vagabond’s backpack while on furlough from Denmark in the States, and posed on a swing which has held three generations.
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Small is Beautiful Saturdays
Last weekend in the tiny world of the Pacific Northwest, two like-minded spiritual mamma’s met. Shari MacDonald Strong and I first fell in love during Paul’s PAF days where we both got all up in arms over unjust crap that was going on in our region. Since then we’ve been nurturing a soul sister romance over the internet, stalking each other’s blogs, and longing to meet each other IRL. After several aborted attempts to hook up — one which included a raging round of the stomach flu on a northwest island — we finally gathered our clans together and took all five kids out to eat at Portland’s family-friendly Old Wives’ Tale restaurant. Over two spilled glasses of water (the twins) and fifteen trips to the salad bar (our girls), Shari and her husband Craig told us about all their small but beautiful projects.
Craig has done one of those miraculous things and launched a successful small business, LensBaby, which makes specialized camera lenses for print photographers. Shari is nurturing spiritual-seeking parents over at Literary Mamawith her regular column Zen and the Art of Child Maintenance. She also has a great little self-titled blog where she writes wonderfully about editing, parenting, and recovering from evangelical Christianity (all favorite topics of my very own.) Stop by one of their sites this week and tell them thanks for believing that small is beautiful!
And now for a Small is Beautiful Update: Jen and I are still working on the art for the SIB button. We’re also continuing to collect web addresses for small sites that would like to be featured in a Small is Beautiful Saturday write up. You can put your name in the hat by emailing your website address to moi at magpie dash girl dot com. In upcoming weeks we’ll also be featuring pdf downloads of small but beautiful gifties, micro give aways, and fun collaborative projects to inspire and delight. Keep watching this site on Saturdays!
Much love,
Rachelle
Mid Winter Blues
I have not written for many, many days because at least one person in my household has been sick, or in pain, or both, everyday for the past three weeks. Most the time this was me, because my botox wears off two weeks before the FDA will let me have another round and because I got the flu. (Really, there’s no one wimpier in this house than me.) Cate got the flu too, and managed to be cute and flushed for 48 hours before completely recovering. Eden got it twice and on the second round she spent a full four days lying on the couch. And did I mention that it’s mid-winter break, a random week off from school that our district uses to torture working mothers. Arghhhhhh!
Look, February is a hard month, especially in the Northwest, where the sun tends to hide until the end of March. It’s grey and it’s wet and the wind is blowing and you’re definitely sick of the sweater you got for Christmas and you start to think in vain of your every-so-easy flip flops and the sweet little swishy skirt you bought last August on close-out at Old Navy.
When I moved to Washington from California my college orientation leader told us “never change your haircut, your major, or your boyfriend in February.” It’s good advice.
So what can you do during the end of winter dull drums? Here’s my favorite list:
1) Get thee to a tanning booth. No one will judge you if you get a little sun kissed and feel warm for 15 minutes a week.
2) Priceline a hotel. I don’t know about where you live, but in Seattle $80 will get you a five-star hotel with a hot tub, an indoor pool, HBO, a very fluffy bed, and the Sunday paper.
3) Use a lip balm that smells like pina coloadas. I like this one in Coconut Cream“> from Alba.
4) Ditch your regular body lotion for sunscreen. MMMMmmmm smells like Summer!
5) Turn on all the lights in the house whenever you are home. While you’re at it start swapping regular incandescent for full-spectrum light bulbs.
6) Reserve a campsite, yurt or cabin on-line with your state park. Look forward to June! We’re going here in August.
7) And my very favorite….run the tub with lots of Bliss Bubbles“>, put the laptop on the toilet seat, and watch your favorite TV show online. Most of the major stations have streaming video of their top shows. My favorite? Bones at Fox on Demand.
Happy surviving!
Search for the perfect….
Everyone who comes to my house in the winter is greeted with this.
I mean that literally. It’s hanging off the front door knob.
If you do not use it, you are either foolish, or deluded or quite possibly both. Anyone who lives with children who are in grade school — or preschool, or in playgroup, or who ever darken the door of a McDonald’s ballpit – all of these people know that the indoor play season is one ripe with germies and creepy crawlies of all kind. Hand sanitizer Must. Be. Used.
[NB: My husband, Paul, also recommends one of these. He’s become an evangelist for these things. Oh, and for people the web over who are typing comments right now about the virtues of good ole’ soap and water, I get it, okay? But sanitizer beats the line to the ladies room...]
If anyone knows of a hand sanitizer that is nice smelling, doesn’t turn your skin into ash, and is maybe even affordable, please let me know. The best recommendation will receive a complimentary Magpie-Girl magnet! Which isn’t actually strong enough to affix a crayon drawing to the fridge, but is kinda cute because it has my little birdie on it! (Guess who discovered printable magnet paper! Oh, the cleverness of me.)
Just Another Day in Paradise
I started out the morning by catching on fire.
I was standing at the stove, stirring in the oatmeal, when all of a sudden the back shoulder of my pink terry robe was on fire. How? I have no idea. All I know is all of a sudden it was “stop, drop and roll.”
Eden pretty much lost it as her excellent imagination spun ahead of the facts and created a major motion picture in her head called “When Momma Died from the Oatmeal Fire.” I had to dig her out of the back of her closet to calm her down. Cate on the other hand was only concerned about the fact that the rubber duckie appliqués on my robe were scorched. Poor duckies!
This derailed me and I didn’t keep on top of Cate every second of the get-ready process, so it was after 9 o’clock before I finally got her dressed to her socks. (She gets “distwackted.”)
To be honest with y’all, that’s not exactly how my morning started. It really started two hours before that when my foster son slid a note under my door, asking if he could go to a party that stretches from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. Never mind that he’s just told us another whopper of a lie, and by all rights should be on restriction until he qualifies to be a member of the AARP. Sigh. Raising teenagers is like nailing jello to a tree. (If anyone is foster-parenting a teenager and is will to advise of email, contact me!)
At any rate, they are all off at school now and I’m ready to tackle the lovely stack of ‘zine orders that has come into my inbox. I’ve been so encouraged by the amount of interest in Hiver. I’ve printed a run of 30, but only hand-bound about half of that. I got caught off guard by orders! I’ll be sending out paypal invoices today and plan to have the orders in the mail by Saturday.
Thanks so much! Your support will carry me though this crazy oatmeal-fire day!
