a good ghosting

Have you heard of ghosting?  If you live in a neighborhood then maybe you have been exposed to this exuberant little week-before-Halloween ritual.  It’s sort of Halloween meets Pay-it-Forward meets Ding Dong Ditch. You put some goodies in a bag with a little note alerting the recipient to the fact that they’ve been ghosted.  Then [...]

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one boy’s dinner

I know the dilemma of how to get kids to eat their vegetables is nothing new.  There are millions of picky eaters out there.  I just never expected my kid to be one of them.  I’m a mama who has been known to eat kale for breakfast.  I’m in love with vegetables.  All of them. [...]

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giraffe stuffies

I do so love Lotta Jansdotter’s Simple Sewing for Baby.  It’s so nice to sit down for an easy little sewing project (one that I am unlikely to botch) and be rewarded so quickly with cuteness.  These little giraffe rattles were the perfect project for me and a little helper (okay fine, Eli stuffed for [...]

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making new crayons (from the old broken bits)

It was Eli’s idea.  I confess that I had just thrown a bunch of old crayons and broken crayon bits into the trash when he said, “Mama, don’t throw these away!  We can make new crayons out of them!”  I really wasn’t trying to be wasteful.  It’s just that you can reach of saturation point [...]

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drum lessons

We haven’t been the sort  of parents to push things.  We’ve let Eli determine his own interests and discover his own talents.  But that doesn’t mean we haven’t hoped.  We hoped that Eli might be rhythmically-inclined like his drummer dad.  We hoped that he would be all, “Dada, teach me how to play drums like [...]

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lego party

You needed a pass to get into the lego party.Then you were assigned to your station and got to work building the best vehicle you could with the allotted pieces.Some of us needed help from the brick-master himself.Auntie Erica cheated a little bit by sneaking some pieces from Eli, but shhh… A scavenger hunt devised [...]

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someone is six

How did we already go from this… …to this?

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an outing with auntie

Eliza, or Auntie, as my youngest sister is most frequently referred to, lives in western Massachusetts.  This is just close enough that she can come for a visit on her day off and still make it home in time for dinner.  And it is just far away enough to make an outing with Auntie really [...]

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ode to the road

There are so many incarnations of the road.  Scraps from mama’s paper drawer get taped and lined, trails are made in the dirt with small bulldozers, the patterned lines on a knit blanket become a busy intersection.  Roads get drawn in crayon and pencil and chalk.  Roads get uncovered in books and rugs and patio [...]

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Letterboxing

Letterboxing is a charming pastime that combines the thrill of treasure-hunting with the artistry of hand-carved stamps. It’s truly a fabulous way to motivate kids for a good hike.

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