Who did you forget to look after today?

Today I stopped at Starbucks and ordered a latte. I had an hour or two to run some errands and thought a treat would be nice. Recognizing a mild pang of hunger, I added a package of dry roasted almonds to my order. Out I walked, treat in hand. Or did I? Would you call that a treat? You see, two months ago, I would have ordered a caramel macchiato. Four months ago, I would have ordered a caramel macchiato, with an...

How simple are the things that bring you joy?

Magic is lost every day. We lose it when we forget to love life, forget to trust, and neglect to see what is around us.  Something that has been right under our noses can be lost before we even realize we have it. How simple are the things that bring you joy?  Sometimes we look for change, even when good is all around us.  What happens that we stop seeing things clearly?  When did we decide we were too jaded for our rose...

Kids and unstructured play

It’s easy to think that kids are part of some sort of superhuman disaster crew.  Really, they can leave a trail of chaos behind them that rivals any jungle.  It can feel so random, so thoughtless.  We pull our hair and think “Another mess?!?!  I just cleaned up the last one!” Usually when I have these thoughts it is because I am busy, moving too quickly – through our day, through the house,...

Mixed beans for 3.11.12

Well, shame on me, I missed last week’s mixed beans update.  I was out buying myself a pretty new laptop, after the great laptop drowning of 2012 and that took up most of Friday, Saturday and Sunday as we shopped, brought it home, figured out our file retrieval system and finally started to figure it all out. It’s been a busy couple of weeks!  Hmm, where to start?  I saw Miss Representation locally, and if...

Members Unite – talking to kids about making...

  Here’s a question for you - how old should our kids be before we start talking about some of the more serious issues in the world?  It’s our nature to protect our kids, yet, does anyone gain when we shelter them from the truth?  I think there’s always a balance to be found, and each family needs to decide what is right for them. In our family, our serious and thoughtful seven year old is plenty old...

Celebrating women on International Women’s D...

Today is International Women’s Day, and the day comes hard on the heels of my second screening of the film Miss Representation.  If you haven’t seen this film, get out to a local event or catch it when it airs (tonight on the Oprah Winfrey Network, check listings.) Between the two, I find myself overwhelmed with thoughts of women and what our lives are like today.  We have such privilege and freedom, yet...

Hunger isn’t a game – here’s how...

Spend enough time online and you’ll notice two things we all spend a lot of time talking about:  kids and food. We talk about parenting, milestones, and we swap cute stories.  Or we swoon over what we like to call food porn - oh, it’s steamy stuff all right. Recipes we’d like to try, photos of outrageous cakes, cupcakes, vast platters of party food. But how often do we slow down and talk about kids and...