Smartie-cakes Cutie

Daughter’s favourite – FAVOURITE – activity is wrapping presents. “Presents” = anything, particularly random pieces of paper, loose office supplies, balloons or small toys. Tonight she said (for the 4th or 5th time today), “I want to wrap some presents!” Attempting to postpone the inevitable, I asked her what kind of present she wanted to …

Living with less

As we go through a family conversation about what we’re doing and how we want to live our lives, my spouse and I are also taking time for our favourite activity: decluttering. Unfortunately, we’re stalled part-way through the process with piles of cardboard boxes, stacks of stuff, and half-filled give-away boxes all over. We’ve been …

Bye bye, Ballet

Like all good mothers, I enrolled our daughter in ballet recently. She was so excited! Dance slippers, tutus, a dance class (no, wait: “ballet class, not dance class!”) with a teacher. So what went wrong? The teacher didn’t do enough to bring our quiet child into the classroom. She was always at back of the …