Mama-luia

It's time for another edition of What's New, starring, My Family! Elijah It was because of him that I decided to write this post... because... one week ago today, he took his first steps! After months of cruising around the furniture, and letting go for a step or two, he took off and walked across the living room into his father's arms. I was in the kitchen and heard SCREAMS coming from the adjoining living room, so I dashed over, thinking the older kids were bludgeoning each other, only to behold the last half of the blessed milestone. He was terrified by the excited screams from his siblings, though, so the whole event ended in tears. Thankfully, they were quickly soothed by me as I came to pick him up and congratulate him on his Very Big Boy feat. {Now is where I shed a wistful tear for the fleetingness of my baby's babyhood.} Elijah is such a social child! I thinks he finds his mornings while Anna is at school rather dull. Of course, I like to play w...

There has been oodles and oodles of time spent navel-gazing writing and thinking about 'self-care' in the mommy blogosphere. When I click the latest link, I expect to discover a new and crucial revelation about the need to attend to one's own needs, but I find myself usually left wanting. "Self-care isn't selfish!" we are reminded endlessly. "Put on your own oxygen mask first!" To all of this I nod appreciatively, only to read on for a few sentences to uncover the benefits of getting a pedicure. Almost without fail, pedicures, beauty regimes and hot coffee drank in silence are given as examples of good self-care. I am here to say, enough already. It's time to change the conversation on "self-care." We live in a culture that celebrates the need to "treat yo'self." Writers online can't help but preface a silly statement with "this may seem like a first-world problem  but " and then proceed to show ho...

Dear friends, it's unreasonably hot here for September! I got a sunburn yesterday wandering around town with my double stroller. Meanwhile, on my meal plan for last night's dinner, I was require dto make Cream of Cauliflower soup, because it's cheap/fast/the kids actually like it but it gives them oodles of veggies. But... Who wants soup when it's 31 degrees celsius?! (My kids, it turns out. They gulped down it like it was their last meal.) Of course, I am utterly grateful to not being lighting the wood stove yet. And I will gleefully don my swimsuit for one more dip in the lake this weekend. To be clear, I am more gleeful about the swimming aspect than actually donning of the swimsuit. Perhaps you already knew that. Soon enough, though, the colder weather will draw me back inside... by the fire... with more books! And I had better plow through them because Lawdy, I still have a substantial amount to complete to go to meet my goal of 52 books by December 31s...

After almost three weeks of school, I'm finally getting around to talking about our back to school time for the 2017-2018 year. (Also, I nearly gasped typing the numbers "2018" for the first time; that year represents us being married for A DECADE!) This was a big year in our house, because THREE of our children are now in school. Yes, Noah is in Grade 3, which sounds so decidedly grown up, I could faint, Isaiah is in Grade 1, and teeny little Anna began Junior Kindergarten. The first day was not without Big Emotions, but not from the youngest who was being dropped off for the first time ever at school. Oh no. It was from our oldest. He had been away for the Labour Day long weekend on pilgrimage with Patrick, a 100km pilgrimage to be exact, and hadn't gotten home until 11pm the night before. I knew the night before that he would be exhausted the next morning and that would be a tricky start to third grade, and I was not wrong. What I hadn't considered, tho...

I'm so behind on my book review posts, so I'm just going to do a handful I've read at a time. This means you'll be seeing a few extra posts from me, rather than cramming them all into one mega-essay. I'm personally not a fan of ultra-long blog posts, so I'm sparing you the pain. Before I begin, I decided mid-January that my one resolution for 2017 was to read 52 books. To some, that may be a small number. It seems like a whole lotta Mommy bloggers whip through books at a breakneck pace. I, however, am a relatively slow reader. At least when it comes to fiction, I tried to read at the pace in which I would read it aloud. So skimming, et cetera, is a no-go. Also, I'm not part of the goal to read any ol' garbage just to fill out my checklist. My reading choices aren't exactly Aristotle, unlike my spouse (... truly...) but I don't want drugstore paperbacks to fill up the time I would have been previously using Facebook. Wouldn't that be ...

The other day, I was out buying the last of the school items with the kids -- new pencil cases. (But... don't the older two still have theirs from last year? Why yes..., somewhere . Ahem.) The cashier looked at me with gaggle of kiddos and said, "Well, you must be excited for their first day of school!" Because none of them would ever take in from that statement that I resent their presence, that we expect mothers to find being in their kids' company a chore. Oh no, they're all too obtuse to clue into subtexts. {Note: dripping irony. They're pretty intelligent children, and we have even had discussions on people's weird comments about them afterwards. Mostly it's been my attempt to thwart the damage stranger's rude observations may make.} Here's the thing: normally I probably would have wanted to say "yes!" I certainly was a bit burn out by summer last year. Me alone with four kids, including a very new newborn... ?! ...

Imagine the joy of sharing your favourite novel with your children, something you looked forward to doing with them before they were even born. Imagine that they loved that novel themselves, and request to listen to the audio version time and time again at bed time. Imagine telling your children that they would get to see Green Gables in real life this summer, and their starry-eyed wondering and planning began immediately, months before the trip would take place. Imagine the immense delight of watching your oldest child, whom you sometimes worry is growing up too fast, skipping along the path towards Green Gables, singing over and over, "I am so excited! I am so excited!" Imagine watching your sons take in the view of the harbour in Charlottetown, and you somehow see them  simultaneously as toddlers, in their current ages, and as teenagers and beyond.  They are wonderfully young and yet mysteriously maturing, and each stage is so satisfying in it...