Valentines for 5-Year-Olds

valentines

“Great job writing your friends’ names, buddy. Whose do you want to do next?”

“I want to do mine.”

“Well, let’s pick one for someone in your class and then you can have the ones that are left over.”

He does two or three more, and the conversation repeats.

“Should we do Jackson’s?”

“I want to do mine.”

“…Okay, but you don’t normally give a valentine to yourself. We do have to do one for everyone in your class.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m your mother and I’m smart.” He looks unconvinced. “I’ve done valentines before. Who’s next?”

“I’m going to do mine.”

“All right, fine. Do one for yourself and then we’ll keep going on the list.”

He does one for himself.

To: Connor

From: Connor

Momentarily satisfied, he writes a few more classmates’ names, and then we move from the cards with the gel things to the ones with the button things. “You’re wild!” says the card with the monkey picture.

“I want one of these too,” he says, and addresses another one to himself.

To: Connor

From: Connor

I don’t even argue this time. It occurs to me that one of us doesn’t get it, and I’m not sure it’s me.

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Join Greta from Gfunkified and I for #iPPP (iPhone Photo Phun), a weekly link-up that requires nothing more than a blog post with a photo from a phone camera (any phone camera, not just iPhones). We want to see your funny, your yummy, your heartfelt, your favourite phone photos of the week. 

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Penmanship

“Look, I did a really good 6.”

“That is a really good six. Good job, buddy.”

He looks over at my side.

“Your numbers are really good too.”

writing-numbers

I’ve been really sick the last three days and have barely ventured out of my bedroom. Yesterday, Connor asked me if I would put him to bed, and, in a moment of maternal optimism, I agreed. And then bedtime came around and it was clear that was not a good idea. When I told him Daddy would have to put him to bed instead, he cried and cried.

Funny how these things—when Mom has been a bit MIA and you’re catching the same bug and will be throwing up by morning—can seem like the end of the world.

It took a while to get him to calm down, but he enthusiastically agreed to my suggestion that we sit together while Daddy put Ethan to bed. He brought his new erasable mat so he could do some writing practice and generously agreed to let me do some of them.

It was nice. Better than bedtime stories, even.

And apparently I’m good at writing inside the lines.

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Join Greta from Gfunkified and I for #iPPP (iPhone Photo Phun), a weekly link-up that requires nothing more than a blog post with a photo from a phone camera (any phone camera, not just iPhones). We want to see your funny, your yummy, your heartfelt, your favourite phone photos of the week. 

Quiet at the Car Wash

Sometimes moments of quiet appear in the oddest places.

car wash entrance

I’d been staring at my horribly dirty car for a few weeks, feeling like finding the time to get it washed was one more thing I couldn’t fit in. Maybe even the one thing that would put me over the top from managing to it’s-all-too-much.

You know how sometimes it’s the silly, stupid, small things that do that?

I decided not to let my dirty car do that.

Last weekend I had a window of time on Sunday afternoon. I had some other errands to do that would take me in the neighbourhood of the car wash and decided I’d run through while I was out. But instead of just tacking it on to the end of a series of errands I decided to use it to my advantage.

I took a magazine with me, turned off the radio, and sat in the quiet. I waited in line at a time when I would normally have felt rushed and I just…sat.

Self-care at the car wash. Who knew?

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A Winter Rant

This is a rant. Just so you’re warned.

I love winter. 90% of the time, anyway. But lately winter is just messy.

We had some really cold weather and a ton of snow in December (more in that one month than in an average January, February, and March combined, apparently). And then it got warm. And then it froze again. And then it got warm and froze again and repeat.

And now the sidewalks look like this:

icy-sidewalk

I love winter, but this I do not love. It makes it very hard to walk the dog without breaking one’s neck.

And this makes it very hard to get into one’s driveway without 4-wheel drive:

winter-slush

And this is what our street looks like at the moment:

piled-snow

I don’t know what this is (Snowpocalypse? Icemageddon?) but it’s not the winter I love.

Anyone have a dump truck full of ice melt?

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Missing: Inspiration

The new year is normally soaked with inspiration for me, like a path laid down just waiting for me to walk it.

I never quite found that path this year.

snowy path

I looked for it. I waited. I read the usual things and saw the usual references to potential and opportunity and new. But by the time the new year came it seemed like the path had been walked by everyone else already.

This time last year I was pursuing my goal of exercising for 30 days straight and looking forward to a year of adventure and exploration. This time last year, not incidentally, I was on mat leave.

Maybe the path is always well-worn and maybe it’s up to us to find our own footsteps or our own way to walk it. Or maybe my path is just filled with other things right now.

Every other year, it seems, I have felt like I can do anything. Anything! I just have to decide what to aim for. And then of course the inevitable everydayness sneaks in and turns that anything into well, maybe something and eventually it’s more like at least I can do a few things, but it has always started as a wide open space.

This year that wide open space is filled with laundry.

It’s hard to make new goals and seize opportunities when it’s all I can do to remember which day we need to put the bins out and when I’ve been carrying cheques in my wallet for weeks (months?) because I can’t figure out how to get into the bank to deposit them (because cheques in US funds need to be deposited in person and do you ever find yourself in a situation like this where you wonder if it’s really worth the 30 bucks?).

So I haven’t found my 2014 inspiration. I’ve chosen my one word for the year—or, I suppose, it chose me—but I haven’t quite managed to commit to it. I haven’t spoken it out loud.

Maybe this year, this time – maybe right now I need a different path. Maybe inspiration will only come in small doses.

Think small instead of big and a month instead of a year at a time. Chase moments instead of mountains.

It’s a different path forward, but it will be okay, I guess.

It’s an okay path.

I’m trying to believe that.

How is your new year going?

 

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Join Greta from Gfunkified and I for #iPPP (iPhone Photo Phun), a weekly link-up that requires nothing more than a blog post with a photo from a phone camera (any phone camera, not just iPhones). We want to see your funny, your yummy, your heartfelt, your favourite phone photos of the week.