By Beck It’s been an unusually cold couple of weeks here, and even though intellectually I know that my kids will be out of school in mere days (ten school days left, I think), emotionally I still think that it’s months and months away. Technically, the kids will still be in school for a few…
Author Archives: Beck
Gruff
By Beck I just got back from watching a classroom performance of The Three Billy Goats Gruff – my son was a very appropriately gruff-voiced troll, crouched underneath a set of classroom play stairs. The three little goats were three little girls, title of the play to the contrary, and they traipsed over the stairs…
Babies
By Beck My daughter’s grade four class has had a visitor every other week over the past school year. A baby has come to her class, and the kids charted her development and took pictures of her and sang her songs and this past week, the class baby turned one. “Babies grow up so fast,…
The grains beyond age
By Beck Yesterday started off oddly, with me waking up to a silent computer. “What will I do now?” I thought, and then set about my day – getting all of us off to school (I was volunteering for the morning, The Baby crabbing alongside me, sorting and counting the supplies for the school’s breakfast…
Little Dolls
By Beck When I was young, I had very decided tastes in names: I liked them antique. I liked them flowery. I liked them long and rippling with syllables. Arabella! Cordelia! Sebastian! And then I got married and pregnant and found out that my husband expected to have some say in what our children would…
Magic
By Beck My Baby finished her last session of nursery school (or “library school”, as it’s called locally) this morning, and it was moderately bittersweet, as these things are. I held an ACTUAL baby while I was there – a little dark-haired boy, who looked at me somewhat dourly because I’d stepped on his hand…
As Long As I’m Living
By Beck My youngest child turned four this week, which feels kinda funny, really. And I found myself talking to my sister-in-law – who is expecting a baby this very summer! – on the phone and comforting her about her upcoming labour, which has me thinking back on babies and pregnancy and all that, of…
The Bear Went Over The Mountain
By Beck Where I live is very, very rocky – not mountains, really, but just giant outcroppings of rocks and hills – and the other day my kids were outside and I was occupying myself my cleaning up the detrius of winter (its coffee cups and chip bags) when I realized that not one of…
And Bingo Was His Name-O
By Beck The Baby has an Easter party to go to tomorrow. I’ve already made trays of bunny cupcakes, since I’m always on the snack list because a) she has celiac disease and b) because she’s my third kid and I’m pretty calm about making snacks for kid parties at this point. All of the…
You Can Never Hold Back Spring
By Beck The top of the small climbing gym popped above the snow in the backyard yesterday, which is how I know that spring is finally here. We still can’t quite go into the backyard yet – it’s DEEP snow back there and soft and we sink in, hip-deep. (Or shoulder-deep, in The Baby’s case.)…