• School Time!

    My kids go back to school tomorrow. It’s insane how quickly the summer went by, but I guess that is what happens when you are on different road trips for 3/4 of it. I may have been a bit ambitious planning THREE different long distance trips in two months. Between the trips we had just enough time to unpack, do the laundry and pack up again. Something else I made a mistake doing was planning their last trip at the END of August. We don’t have enough time to get them back in to routine for school. Their sleep schedules…

  • My Daughter Inspires Me

    When was the last time you thought of a bigger goal than your own comfort? When was the last time you took time to protect your wellness and mental happiness? My daughter did each of those in two days straight and inspires me more every day. My daughter turned 7 years old yesterday. We threw a party for the Morison side for her, since her grandma was in town. We could reconnect the family and celebrate my daughter turning 7 years old. SEVEN. Six sounds so small and child-like still, but 7 years old sounds incredibly old. Little lady sounding.…

  • My Kids Learn How to Place a Call.

    Do you know what I realized as I dropped the kids off at their grandma’s for a week? I haven’t taught my kids how to dial a phone, or make an emergency phone call! I am kind of appalled with myself. So…before I left grandma’s house for the long drive home, I taught the kids how to dial my phone number and reminded them how to make an emergency call…and also what constitutes an emergency, just in case they thought not being able to find a toy counted. The wonderful off-shoot of this life skill being taught? My daughter has…

  • Mother’s Day!

    Mother’s Day, as my husband let me know this morning, was invented by a lady to celebrate her mother, as she never had kids of her own, but she ended up resenting the holiday. How strange! She is, however, a genius. All mothers should be celebrated randomly with love all of the time, throughout the year, but it is nice when kids get a chance to make special cards and celebrate in very specific ways. Mother’s Day is also near my wedding anniversary! My husband and I got married on May 8, 2010 and so we hit the five year…

  • Thank you, Doctor Who.

    Here is a photo of me with my new Tardis necklace (blurry, too bad), sweaty from the hot day outside and hot C-Train ride home. I always said I wanted something from Doctor Who, but nothing too garish. This was perfect. I bought it, last minute, from Comic Con this time around. It didn’t cost very much but it makes me very happy. I bought the necklace on Sunday, just as Comic Con was shutting down. I wore it all Monday with a smile on my face, thinking that I should watch all of the Doctor Who episodes again. Especially…

  • Nightmares

      So Isabella is still having nightmares. I am going to have to figure out a way to make her room super zen and feng shui and just the right amount of light so that she can sleep soundly. Last night we had to lay beside her for her to settle. She is a super restless sleeper and fights REM sleep. We accidentally saw an animated video of a song about zombies at Comic Con this weekend. Izzy was sobbing because every time she closed her eyes she saw it and it scared her. I lay beside her and caressed…

  • The Terrible Twos are Back Again?

    I love my kids. I feel I need to say that before I post this next thing. If someone were to threaten either one of them I would lift up a car and throw it at them, no problem. I would be so enraged my superhero strength would surely kick in. That said, my kids are little adults in training that have their own opinions about everything and sometimes piss me off. When they are little you think, “This is just a stage. This will pass soon, and we will be (thankfully) on to the next stage and challenge.” You…

  • My Daughter of the Active Imagination!

    My Isabella has a new recurring nightmare. It has been a full week now. Thankfully our wonderful friend S. gave us LED lights that don’t get too hot and can be on all night. Life saver! We call them her “fairy lights”. I agreed she can keep them on at night until she feels the dream has passed. I also told her that, since we talked about it today, it probably won’t come back. Dreams, I said, melt in the sunlight. When you tell the story of your dream in daylight the words fly out of your mouth in to…

  • Learning To Read

      My daughter is learning to read and is busy reading EVERYTHING. Packages, sign posts, lost posters, books, brand names…she sees, she reads. Yesterday she asked me what the word ‘bounding’ meant. The snow leopard went bounding through the snow. She wanted to know how to do that too. It makes my brain work in new and wonderful ways to explain words that I know the meaning of and take for granted. I find myself reaching far in my brain to bring out words that she will understand. Sometimes defining one word leads me to defining five more words within…

  • To New Moms

    If I could write to all new moms I would say so many things. One of those things is that the biggest lie out there is it gets easier. You will just have to rise to new challenges. Some of these challenges will seem less, um, challenging than the last but it will never be easy. If it is easy then you have a kid who acts as if he is always on Prozac. Wait, that’s a new challenge right there. You will never feel like you have had enough sleep, you will never feel that you have enough time,…