Alright, here’s the deal: at some point you begin to care how you look. For some this happens at five, others at fifteen, others…well, they’re the ones you see in saggy sweatpants and loose slippers shuffling through Walmart. Child Harbat…
Blog Archives
Parental Love
There are good days and bad days, and moments in a day like blades of sunlight cutting through stormclouds. Life isn’t a train of events, each linked to the next by the relentless curling wave of time. No, life is…
Turtle Baby
There is no accounting for love. It strikes unexpectedly and doesn’t follow rules or conventions. During an IKEA outing several weeks ago, Number Two was getting fussy, what with the endless turns into rooms full of lamps, reasonably-priced kitchenware, and…
Going Barefoot
Kids have it right because they haven’t enough civilization and experience to do what isn’t natural. Let’s face it, we are animals, in the species timescale just a blink away from striding the plains and bashing each other with clubs.…
First Camping Trip
There is nothing like sleeping out in the wilderness after a day on foot and dinner by the fire. Child Harbat and I went camping recently and she’s now an official Camper. What is like hiking and camping in the…
Stocking the Closet
It must be one of the most primary and ingrained feelings: the sense of contentment you get from being well-stocked with provisions. Tens of thousands of years ago it was the sight of smoked mammoth meat stacked in the back…
Dinnertime Craziness
It all collides at dinner: low blood-sugar, stimulus overload from a day of school, punchy tiredness, and the impossibility of getting four people at the table at the same time. Forget the genial family dinner set under the olive trees…
Child Labor
There’s a reason kids are used for tasks like this. Just look at those nimble little fingers! I was having trouble helping Child Harbat weave using a crochet hook and she found it easier to just use her fingers.…
Nothing is Too Slimey
I’ve always encouraged Child Harbat to pick up bugs and be not be squeamish or cruel about the smaller creatures of the world. So I’m pleased that she not only likes to pick up snails but wants them to crawl…
Birth, Life, Death, and a Curtsey
Sometimes you get to see an entire life cycle, to feel as old as a mountain as forests rise and fall at your toes. At our house this meant watching a pair of red house finches build a nest under…
