“Just like a woman.” Someone actually said this abhorrent phrase to me this week. It’s 2016 and apparently he thought it was acceptable to make a completely sexist remark to me, right in front of my children. His shoulders shook
Just do your best
This week I have been painting fences. We share a boundary with no fewer than six neighbours, and all of those fences need a lick of paint. They have been neglected long enough; if we leave it any longer they
“When I was your age…” — connecting with our children through empathic memory
I promise, I’m really not a bad cook. In fact, I love cooking. For the past two weeks I have been clearing out old copies of a cookery magazine, which I have been collecting for 17 years. Yes, seventeen. (The
The Lies We Tell
On Friday morning last week, one of my children came downstairs with blue teeth. I didn’t notice but the other children clocked it in a second. “Why do you have blue teeth?” one sibling asked. “Oh, maybe because I was
A full time job: trying to homeschool, mother & everything else
I’ve been clearing out my suits. Recently I went through our wardrobes, pulling out the things I will never wear again (neon orange sweater? Why?) or that no longer fit (goodbye Levi’s 501s; hello elasticated waists) (Sigh). I took a
Meeting our needs as people, even though we are parents
“I recommend having a weekly massage for small business owners.” Tonight I listened to a training course for entrepreneurs. When the trainer uttered this sentence I literally guffawed. Friends, self-care here is about basic human needs. Massage? No. It’s about
Gliding through the sky: parenting now-ness & perspective
“Kee!” I heard it, thought: “buzzard,” and accordingly lifted my head to see it. There it was: a tail like a tomahawk, light patches on the undersides of its broad wings. Gliding through the cloudless sky in the way
Bopping to your own beat: parenting without comparison
“Wait. Am I even facing the right way now?” One of my Yoga students this week caught my eye and looked uncertain. Looking around the class, she could see that everyone else was doing something different from her, and she
You’ve got to get your eye in
Regular readers and Twitter followers will be well aware of my youngest child’s love affair with things that crawl. He is particularly enamoured of insects, but he simply needs to be outdoors, so he’s happy to watch birds, hunt for
Wonder
We were sitting at the table crunching our cereal yesterday morning—the twelve year old, bleary in her mismatched pyjamas; the nine year old staring off into space; and the five year old—dressed in a red and blue polka-dot monster onesie,
