March 2012
21 posts
3 tags
Floored
Today was one of those scrambling, overwhelming days, parenting-wise. Everything went at such a fast pace, starting right after breakfast at 7:30. Playing with water, massive clean up, they slip in the water, crying kid, bad-parent-guilt, bath-time, get kids warm and dressed, bath clean-up, snack-time, snack clean up, cuddling, storybook reading, comforting inexplicably whiny while from EA, set...
February 2012
31 posts
6 tags
Bananas plus coconut milk. Snow plus bin.
Came across this recipe for banana coconut milk pancakes I scrawled dwon this summer, and lo and behold I had both coconut milk and bananas in the house. So I tried ‘em, and they were deelish.
And I made a few important calls on my cell phone over lunch.
Also, propelled by Axel’s desperate boredom, (being tired of all his toys and all his climbing/wrecking-shit-up stations...
3 tags
Mess 11
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Wearing caps, holding hands
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Honey, honey
Don’t want to forget this combo, it totally worked: cheddar and raw spinach rolled in a Swedish pancake (kind of like a crepe) topped with honey and served with bosc pear.
4 tags
The more it snows (tiddely pom) the more it goes...
It’s snowing. Everyone is asleep. I’m leaving the dishes for tomorrow. It feels so different when it snows in late winter than when it snows before Christmas. Then there’s this buffer, you feel like it’s making everything cosy and picturesque. This feels more ominous somehow. No it doesn’t. It feels more peaceful. Or what is it? Neither, it feels like it’s...
1 tag
“And that was what she often felt the need of- to think; well, not even to think....”
– Virginia Woolf
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I`m flying my plane, right? No, I am flying my...
In Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones I read about a study on how women add qualifiers to their statements. For example “‘I like this, don’t you?” Or “This is terrible, isn’t it?” The study showed that in their sentence structure women were often looking for reinforcement for their feelings and opinions. They didn’t just make...
1 tag
“Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.”
– Theodore Roethke
2 tags
What is it?
I guessed a bear, but no, it is a groundhog. (One who sees with his body and his paws as well as his eyes, apparently. )
And this page painted black that I almost threw away, but then didn’t after I asked what it was?
His shadow, of course.
7 tags
Dirty boots are on (Sonic Youth)
Country for a couple days. Got to slow down and got to be outside a lot and got to get muddy. It was good. Went to a secret spot, climbed up to it sliding on the mud, ducking under branches.
And this was up there: green itself.
And these dark red and light straw colours were restful.
Even in winter there was plenty of play food around to collect. And when you play that your house...
7 tags
4:30
5 tags
Before we drop the subject
A. found a pile of Valentine’s themed scraps and fabrics lying around my desk. I’d pulled them together thinking I’d make a Valentine collage but didn’t get around to it. So I let her use the stuff and she came up with these two beauties. (In the first one I made lines for her to get started with.)
Inspired by hers, I made a quick one today before putting all the...
3 tags
Weekend-y
There’s been so little snow that when we get a bit we literally drop everything and run out to play before it gets rained away again.
This snow was so wet we were all soaked pretty much right away. But children, they do not care about such trivial matters.
Made asparagus quiche for my mother’s 60th birthday party dinner.
The “Puzzle Machine”. (And the...
1 tag
Today, randomly
-EA saying “hej då” (goodbye) to Per and waving
- buying asparagus
- EA and A sitting in the grocery cart looking all blasé instead of the more usual whiny meltdown mode
-coffee oh blessed coffee
-time to write for the hell of it
-clementines
-EA eating, so happily and satisfied
-A’s awesome collages she made while talking to herself in Swedish as if she was running a kids...
11 tags
Build! Use everything!
There’s definitely something in the way kids play.
There’s something in their urgency. Build! Get in! Have the party! Tear it down! Build a different one! What’s next? What’s next? Don’t stop to analyse. (What does analyse even mean?)
There’s something in making spaces for yourself to crawl into and be whoever you
want.
There’s something...
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Fave Valentines
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Biscuits
I like watching things rise in the oven. An odd form of relaxation. You’re done, now all you have to do is wait.
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Everything flimsy
I got out and it was so windy and cold my fingers were immediately frozen and I could barely see or breathe but I just wanted to see, for myself, and not just from the car windows.
I only stood there on the boardwalk for maybe five minutes, but it was long enough to shake away my cobwebs and remind me that the Wild exists. This was exactly the kind of wild ocean I used to picture and miss...
2 tags
Hard at work
You catch a toddler doing this and they look at you like, What, lady? I’m just doin’ my job! It’s part of my job description, already!
4 tags
A motley crew (no, not that motley crue)
If “The Daycare Kids” are whiny because they need snacks, then there’s nothing to be done but to bake cookies for them and make fruit cups, ASAP. Good thing a certain Aunt knows the seriousness of such a situation.
6 tags
A fine mess
I was out in the country visiting my family and complaining/freaking out about stuff. My sister Eva, who was painting at the kitchen table with A., said “Want to come make some therapeutic fold-over envelopes?”
I looked over at what they were doing and said, “Yes. Yes I do.”
They were busy making those fold-in-half symmetrical paintings like you make in like,...
4 tags
Starting the day off right
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Luminosity
Daylight is too easy. What I want is difficult: the atmosphere of lamps or moonlight.
-Edgar Degas
I love the time of day when it’s dark enough to turn on the lamps. They cast an instant warmth on that late afternoon place where I get a chill and have too many loose ends to tie...
3 tags
“Don´t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.”
– Henry Miller
(from Commandments)
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Abstract
I can love and hate abstract art. But when it comes to art kids make, I most often love it. They don’t even know what the word abstract means. They just make stuff. And okay, sometimes it’ll actually look like a dog or a house or a boat or, I dunno, say, ” a pig in a storm”.
And then sometimes it’ll look like this. When I asked what these were she just replied,...
4 tags
Wendell? Spencer? Stuart? Jasper?
Picked up this little hand-carved fellow as a birthday gift for a friend lately. I can’t for the life of me place what his name should be. He looks very earnest and like he’s hoping to be loved. What is it, what is it?
I wrapped him up in a page from an old magazine, and used a paint chip as the tag. I love recycling old magazines and books as wrapping paper.
4 tags
Family mobile
I have to cringe at this dorky, Simpsons-esque title, but I didn’t come up with the idea. (I can just hear Mrs. Krabappel say “Now children, it’s time to work on our Family Mobiles”)
A. came up with it herself out of the blue and was quite insistent that I help her make one. Not sure if she got the idea from preschool or a kids show or what but she had it all planned...
3 tags
Judith
I get my love of vintage and antiques from my mother. Last time I was at her house I took a few pics of the latest details she’d added to her home. She found this at an antique shop before Christmas. It even looks a little bit like her somehow.
This garlic in a little holder made of birch bark looks like an odd little work of art.
With all the Scottish history of the family...
3 tags
My apron strings
I wear aprons a lot these days. I wear one when I cook, when I clean, when I do dishes, when I give the kids a bath…in other words, quite often. I like keeping my clothes clean underneath, but there’s more to it than that.
Like most roles we play, wearing a costume helps us play the part more easily. If I dress in yoga pants and half-pyjamas all day, I quickly feel that my current...
4 tags
Jewellery box toaster
Dolls need breakfast too.
And animals. (I think my last choice would be the plate with the two mushrooms.)
I’ve been thinking about adding a play toaster to the toy collection. But A. beat me to it:
Her jewellery box worked great.
And it even doubled as a toaster oven.
This is what I often forget as a parent- they often need less stuff, and more time spent with us...