Mama-luia

I leave the baby for a few short minutes now, and he backs himself under the couch, where he is incapable of freeing himself without someone's help. The giggles this elicits from his older siblings, I fear, will further his desire to trap himself on a regular basis. I tend to think of this photo as a symbolic representation of our February. We experienced an aggressive stomach flu, coupled with a chimney fire -- while Patrick was out of town, naturally -- and a suspected (but thankfully ruled out) case of carbon monoxide poisoning for the kids. Thus, we backed ourselves further and further into the abyss until it became actually laughable how "stuck" we were. Like innocent babies jammed under an IKEA couch. We're through the worst of it, though, and are regaining our equilibrium. The big kids are back at school, and Anna is back to vacillating between wanting to "help" me with everything (like gift-wrapping the potatoes for the oven, one of he...

I feel like I have spent a lot of my "career" as a mom putting out fires, so to speak. I have grown accustomed to living in a state of reaction -- from broken glass, to spilled drinks (or an entire bottle of canola oil on my kitchen floor once), to sibling fights -- I feel like I am two steps behind the next mini-meltdown; I can't begin to say how exhausting this is, because there's never any "progress" made when I am simply responding to the next problem. The other day, I was thinking about hospitality, and how it's something I want to grow in. There are countless times when I'll have a guest over and the work-from-home husband will quietly slip out of his office to put the kettle on, and he'll politely ask me whether I've offered my company something to drink. Sadly, the answer is regularly "oops, I forgot." My desire for my guests is to anticipate their needs. How embarrassing -- to wait until they are parched and opening cup...

Winter is slowly, ever so slowly, waning into spring. A glance outdoors would suggest quite the opposite; just how much snow can one province get? And yet... dinner is no longer eaten in darkness. There is a new brightness in the sky. The noticeably longer days are giving me hope. Yet until the snow melts a bit, or the temperatures rise, I still choose to play the part of the hermit, and stay put under a blanket with a book at the ready. I recently deleted my Facebook account (for many reasons which can be boiled down to my own lack of self-control) , but I enjoy having something to occupy my mind while I'm nursing, or when the children are sleeping... or when I am hiding in the bathroom.... Don't pretend you don't sometimes take extra long bathroom breaks, too. :) So I have returned to my old love of reading. I used to wonder how so many moms got so much reading time crammed into their full days. And now I see, I had been reading, plenty , it was all just through s...