Taking Stock: August

Hello lovelies. Are you keeping busy with all your summer projects? I'm always amazed at how busy I feel in the summer months, a time when I expect to move through the days at a much slower pace. Maybe I just need more practice at slowing down. Are you good at slowing down? Do you schedule downtime for yourself, or does it just happen in your day?

I read a great post yesterday about the difference between being busy and being productive and it has me thinking a lot about how I'm spending my time. Maybe if I'm spending less time being busy and more time actually getting things done, I might have more time for doing nothing at all (which for me means lounging/knitting/reading). The culture of being busy all the time is not what it's cracked up to be.

In the midst of all this busy, here is what I've been up to:

Making: Still working on knitting my first pair of socks. 

Cooking: Very little. Cooking feels like such work in the summer.

Drinking: More coffee than is probably necessary.

Wanting: Some energy.

Looking: For the bright side.

Wishing: For some routine.

Enjoying: Home summer school with the girlies.

Waiting: For the girlies to go back to school!

Liking: Not having strep throat anymore.

Wondering: How to create new habits.

Loving: Watching baseball games with Matty.

Pondering: What third grade will be like for Alyce.

Considering: Letting my grey hair grow out.

Buying: Back to school things for two excited little girls.

Watching: The Knick.
Hoping:  For more time with good friends.

Marvelling: At the fall leaves I've been spotting this week.

Cringing: At the thought of making dinner. Again.

Needing: Some gentle exercise.

Smelling: Peaches

Wearing: As little as possible in this heat.

Following: The blogs of my fellow classmates in my blogging course.

Noticing: All the new summer freckles on the girlies after a long summer playing outside.

Knowing:That I'll be feeling sad when all my friends return to school this fall while I sit this year out.

Thinking: About how to make the most of this year off.

Admiring: People on their bicycles. They look so lovely.

Sorting: Through piles of clothes for fall.

Bookmarking: The pages of the book Connected Parenting.

Coveting: Fabulous dresses.

Disliking: My sore feet.

Giggling: At the girlies and the hula hoops.

Feeling: Quiet lately.

Snacking: On dark chocolate ice cream.

Hearing: The rain.

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Do you want to take stock? I got the idea from Pip.

It's Monday!

You guys, there are only three weeks left until the first day of school! I'll be the first to admit that the girlies and I are summered out. Done. Stick a fork in us. Bring on the school year. When I say it's time to do some home school these days, the run, not walk, to the table. Do they want to go to another splash pad? No. Do they want more homemade worksheets? Yes, please. Their backpacks and lunch bags are ready, we bought new water bottles today, and everything that can be labelled has a label on it. They are ready for school with only twenty-one days to go.

Oh, August. It has some things going for it, like ice cream, beautiful evenings, and the seemingly endless supply of pears from our tree in the backyard. It is still packed full of summer but there are hints of fall at every turn, at least if you're looking for them. But even I'm not ready to completely let go of summer. There are still things to do! Like the CNE, a weekend away with old friends, and not making school lunches.

One tradition that has developed this summer, one that I hope continues as long as the daylight permits, is our daily trip to the park after dinner. Most nights it's Matty who takes them because the evening is my time to write and grade essays, but from time to time I join them. Matty brings a book, I bring my knitting, and we let the girlies just play. These nights at the park are summer to me. They are slow and easy and perfect.

So here we are at the start of another week. I wanted to say thank you for all the encouraging comments I have received on my post from the other day. I've been thinking about it all weekend and I'm feeling really good about my decision to prioritize my physical and emotional health this year. Time to get started!

Here's what my week looks like:

• No grading!
• Preparing for the next session of my class.
• Tackling our back to school list, which includes new water bottles and rain boots.
• Our home summer school theme this week is eating! We'll talk all things food and cooking, cook something together each day, and take our field trip to Kensington Market. On Friday my plan is stick close to home all day and bake challah for Shabbat.
• I want to spend some time thinking about a reward/incentive system for the girlies and chores. I've never loved rewards for work done around the house because I think it's important to teach our kids that cleaning up is just part of living in our home (and allowance at our house isn't tied to chores). But I'll be the first to admit that what we've done so far isn't working. I'd love it if you could share some of your ideas!
• Drinking lemonade, eating ice cream.

What does your week look like?

Be well!
xo

Hello, my name is Danielle. I am a self-improvement junkie.

Let's talk about self-improvement, okay? Okay.

I read this post about not being embarrassed by wanting to improve yourself and I can't stop thinking about it. If I'm being honest with myself, I'm on a self-improvement mission this year. But I never call it that. I say that I want to get healthier, experience less pain, have more energy, and reduce my stress. I'm taking an entire year off from something I adore to do it. This is big. 

What I'm really doing is trying to improve myself. I'm digging deep to try and live my life according to some of my deepest desires: I want to be healthy and I want to feel emotionally well. For me (but maybe not for you) that means dreaming up all the things I think will make an impact on my life. I want to enjoy nourishing food. I want feel heathly. I want to feel vibrant. (I also want to not feel overwhelmed by all of these things, which sometimes happens, too.)

In some ways I'm trying to live my ideal life, and isn't that what self-improvement is all about? Sometimes people will nudge me to try and step back from all these idealistic changes. These are well-meaning suggestions, meant to protect me against feeling let down if changes don't happen. These comments used to make me feel worse, as though no one believed that I could do these things and was destined to feel a low-energy slug my entire life. But lately I've heard these comments as love--as good friends wanting me to be gentle with myself. I've decided to take their advice and go gently into this year, but I won't set aside my ideals. 

And this is where my hopes and goals for a healthier life really illuminate my secret life as a self-improvement junkie. I have been stagnant since giving birth to my first daughter. I have slowly watched my health decline these last seven years and haven't been able to stop it. If change is going to happen, I need to think big. I don't just need to eat more vegetables, I need my own revolution. My ideals serve to move me, to shake myself out of this rut. I need to imagine a new way of living and slowly work toward that place. 

Hello, my name is Danielle, and I want to live a better life. There's no shame in that.

I read inspirational blog posts. I devour people's stories about how they decided to make changes in the lives and what they did about it. I leave reminders for myself around the house. But I've always done this quietly, in the background, afraid that someone might see this part of me for what I truly am: a person who sees so much possibility for better things. And one of these days, I'll figure out just what to do get there. (That's where you come in, dear readers, because I'm sharing this all with you.)

So, please, if you want to make changes, whatever they might look like look, pursue these goals without embarrassment. Run after your goals with abandon, no matter how silly you look. Believe me, we are here to cheer you on.

Be well!

xo

It's Monday!

Hello lovelies! It's Monday again, and since I feel like last week never happened, this week seems especially promising. It is also a great time for me and the girls to start our temporary homeschooling adventure. As I mentioned last week we are structuring the last weeks of summer a little differently around our house. 

The first six weeks were filled with fly by the seat of our pants playing and adventuring. We lived at parks and splash pads, played outside our house, visited friends, cottaged, went on a boat, and ate s'mores. Last week the girlies had an amazing time at a nature camp hosted by Matty's university. 

But they are bored. Scratch that, they just miss school, and after the year Alyce had at school, we're grateful she's so excited to go back. They already have their new backpacks packed for the first day, I kid you not. Since I'm almost done teaching (grades are due tomorrow!) I will have more time this month and thought we'd try something new. To be clear: we have no idea what we're doing. I'm not claiming to know anything about homeschooling, but we're doing it in our own style and are quite happy with that.

We're picking a theme each week and this week is the human body. Today we started with drawing our favourite part of our bodies (Alyce picked her kidneys, bless her) and then moved on to colouring pages about internal organs. As they coloured in each organ we talked about its job. Naturally, the kids found it hilarious that kidneys make pee. Then I traced each kid's body on big sheets of paper and I asked them to draw all their organs! All of Shira's organs had smiley faces on them, even the gallbladder. 

It was lovely. So many conversations took off as we were going about our business. Alyce asked a lot of questions about how doctors do surgery, since I had my gallbladder removed last summer. Both of them asked a lot of questions about smoking when we talked about lungs, and we even talked a bit about brain injuries and how to look after people who suffer them. So it was a success in my books! The rest of the week will include some more research on lungs (at Alyce's request) and a trip to the Ontario Science Centre.

(Lest you think everything went smoothly in our idyllic homeschool home, I tried to take them to the park for a break and they complained and whined so much on the way that we actually had to turn around and come home. Because how mean I am to suggest that we go play and make castles in the sandbox.)

I think next week we are going to study food and cooking. I'll arm myself with some cookbooks from the library, we'll head to a kitchen store for a field trip (probably Good Egg in Kensington Market (though not to actually buy something because holy cow is that place expensive), spending some time poking around produce stands to discover some new fruits and vegetables.

But enough about next week. I want to enjoy this week first. Here's what's on my list:

• On Tuesday the girlies and are packing up and heading to Peterborough to visit some dear friends, the kind you only see once a year but it feels like you saw them yesterday. I am super excited for the great conversation I will be having this time tomorrow.
• Deal with some student loan repayment business. Sigh.
• Pack up some lunch and spend Thursday at the park.
• Dig around for some good gluten-free muffin recipes (more on that soon).
• Register the girlies for some activities this fall. We haven't really done extra-curricular activities before since life has just been too busy to shuttle kids back and forth between places after school, but this year, with me at home more, it seems the right time to start.  Alyce would like gymnastics and Shira has her eye on dance.

What's on your list this week? 

Be well!

xo

That time you write love poetry for antibiotics

I just woke up from a strep throat induced coma, and I feel so much better, so much more human, all because of the most delightful and magical antibiotics (and glorious sleep). I wanted to write my antibiotics a love poem. I would have written them a sonnet if I knew how to go about writing sonnets, but his will have to suffice:

Roses are red. 

Violets are blue.  

My throat had strep,

And then you came along and made the birds sing, the rainbows sparkle, and I could finally drink my coffee again, you gorgeous little pill. 

(Look at you reading poetry on a Sunday!)

Strep throat hits me hard, and by hard I mean a meteor hit me square in the neck and knocked me down for the past three days. I've always been vulnerable to strep so you'd think I'd be used to it by now. Nope. My throat starts to ache, my neck gets sore to touch, the fever hits, and I can't function like a human being. I know the symptoms so well I should have gone to the doctor Thursday morning when my instincts/fever told me it wasn't a common cold. But I HATE going to the doctor when they just tell you it's viral and go home and blah blah blah. Instead I wait until I'm in as much pain as I can handle (which is a lot, ahem, I birthed two babies) and then I finally crawl into my doctors office begging for penicillin and painkillers, which is how I spent my Friday. And then! By yesterday afternoon I was human again, having been nursed back to health with my mum's peach pie.

All of this is to say I've been too busy crying in my bed most of this week to get any writing done. Or much of anything at all. If I were to look over my Monday list from earlier in the week, most of my tasks are still waiting for me, like grading a ton of papers, prepping for homeschooling over the next few weeks, and showering. But that's ok, sick happens. 

How was your week? Fill me in and let me live vicariously through your adventures. 

Here's to a happy and healthy week to come.

Be well!

xo

It's Monday!

Hello again! It's a holiday here in Canada, so this Monday kind of slipped away from me. But then an hour ago reality hit and it was time to make my to do list. But first, how was your weekend? The heat wave broke and we had an evening of glorious thunderstorms with a lightening show that went on for hours. We spent most of the weekend working on projects at home, lazing around watching movies, and then last night I went out for drinks with some fellow midwifery students (it was exactly what I needed). 

I'm really excited about this week. Do you want to know why?

The girlies will be in nature camp all week long.

It's like a vacation! I have four straight days to work, write, nap, and (cross your fingers that I actually do this) start my yoga practice! The summer has been a bit bumpy so far because it turns out I have children who love the structure of school. The splash pads have lost their sparkle, the library makes them yawn, and I can't even get them excited about baking with me anymore. We need a bit of a break and camp is the answer (and thank you universe for having a camp with two open spots for the week, a summer miracle here in Toronto). After their week at camp we are starting "homeschooling" for the rest of the summer, something they are very excited about. They have enjoyed tons of unstructured time already, so the last four weeks will be filled with projects, field trips, and maybe a science experiment or two. I'll have a break from my job for most of August, so while it will be a lot of planning work on my part, I'm hoping I will end up hearing less about how bored my children are. Because if I don't hear that again I'll be a happy woman. 

Here is my list for the week:

• Finish grading my students' papers and calculate their final grades.
• Prep for my class this coming September.
• Work on my blogging course, which means playing around with photo editing and finally writing my About page!
• Planning for homeschooling week one: the theme of this first week will be the human body, because I am an anatomy nerd.
• Start my first week back at yoga, with classes on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.
• Nap, because I can.

So that's my week. What does yours look like? I hope it's a wonderful one.

Be well.
xo

Our week

Hello lovelies, how has your week been? We were planning on going camping this week but plans change (as they do), and my body was particularly sore this week, so we stuck around close to home. A trip to the dollar store landed Shira these spectacular swimming goggles which she has worn to Starbucks, in the shower, and while doing summer homework (both girls are missing school terribly and have taken to doing homework on a daily basis). In Canada we don't start school again until September which means five weeks left to go still! Fortunately, there are still plenty of adventures to be had while wearing swimming goggles.

Toronto enjoyed a heat wave this week, which drained much of our energy and patience. Or at least mine and Hille's. We ate a lot of ice cream.

We rented our apartment three years ago and this is the first year the pears on our backyard tree seem edible. Last year they were tiny and withered looking, but this summer they look perfect for eating and baking. I'm don't love pears in fruit crisps (too mushy) so I'm thinking of making a muffin. Any ideas?

Raise your hand if you love agendas as much as I do. Seriously, I was giddy this morning when I noticed that the calendar had changed to August, making it time to buy my new agenda. I found this one from the Rifle Paper Company after indecisively going back and forth between a few options. It is a splurge that I look forward to every year. I usually go with a simple Moleskin, but this year I needed some colour. Plus the first page had a quotation from Van Gogh that I loved: Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

Dinner tonight was roast chicken with Gwyneth Paltrow's Mexican chopped salad and green goddess dressing. Laugh as you will at Gwyneth, I love her cookbooks, especially this one that I have taken out of the library four different times now. Dinner preparation was made all the better by bourbon and ginger beer cocktails.

Tell me, what have you done with yourself this week?

Be well!

xo