A Mindful Life

Claire is an amazing little person. She is walking (toddling) pretty steadily now. When you ask her, “What does a snake say?” She replies, “SSSSSssss.” If she sees a picture of a snake in a book, she’ll point to it and make the sound. When you ask, “What does a rhinoceros say?” she responds by [...]

My mother sent a calendar that had gorgeous food photos with the suggestion I might use them with Claire. So today I quickly glued them to Bristol paper, which will make them less fragile. I’ll trim the edges once they are all dry. There has not been much time or energy for knitting or other [...]

Claire is better; her fever broke yesterday. Now I have a sore throat and a low grade fever, and I hope this passes just as quickly.
My morning started with feeling punky and then turned odious. (Warning: somewhat gross details follow.) I was eating my toast at the table and Claire was playing on the floor. [...]

I’ve never participated in this meme before, but Gerry does so I thought I’d do a quick brain dump. Reader beware: the quality of what comes next might be less than intelligent. I should also mention that the meme focuses on 10 things one is thankful for; I wrote it more generally, though it could [...]

I sit at the dining table, just having put Claire to bed at 7:45 p.m. Husband is out seeing a movie with a friend; he deserves an occasional fun outing too. The challenge has been that last week I started doing something different with Claire’s schedule, and today I’ve decided it probably isn’t working out.
Before [...]

My energy seems to have returned, which makes me feel cheerier and optimistic. This shift occurred over the weekend when I got some time to myself.
A Guatemalan friend recommended some authors to me, so on Thursday I dove into Antigua and My Life Before, by Marcela Serrano. I finished yesterday completely satisfied with the [...]

One thing I’ve noticed about having a child is that one parent typically takes the majority of the pictures, which means more time spent behind the lens than in front. That would be me. My sister intends today to get some shots of me with Claire. This was one from the early morning. I look [...]

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
–T.S. Eliot

Claire started pulling up this week, and yesterday she began cruising a little too. Today she pulled herself up under the dining table, and I had the camera handy. A few moments later she began to whimper, because she couldn’t figure out how to sit down again. In other places she lets go and sits [...]

This is how we spend 40 minutes or so before a nap. We sit on the floor with me right behind her. She pulls a book off the shelf, I read and set it aside, and she pulls another, and another, etc. until she yawns and rubs her eyes or bursts into tears for no [...]