Caffeine Free Since 2005
So here is my idealistic plan for elementary schools: Forget exact grades, for the moment (it’s always seemed weird to me to stick kids together just because they’re the same age), and cohort the heck out of siblings/close neighbours/groups of friends/kids with similar interests/or something. Figure out creative ways to make sensible, consistent small groups […]
I read a review copy of this (it comes out August 25), so the text isn’t necessarily final. Still, I’m quite confident that I can recommend it: it’s a good overview of basic privacy principles and techniques. It pays special attention to the ways in which girls and women are targeted online. There’s a useful […]
Because my child is rather unbelievably already in grade 8, in the past couple of months we’ve seen, I think, twelve high schools, both public and private. The tours (and the schools) have varied from appalling to excellent. During the appalling ones I spent my time thinking about what makes a tour (and a school) […]
Child: HEAR ME ROOOOAAARR! Me: What? Why are you roaring? Child: FOR FUUUUUUUN!
Child: There’s bacon on my pizza ewww! Poor piggies! Me: Oh no! And the cheese is made from milk stolen from baby cows! D: And the wheat! Have you heard how wheat screams when it goes into the grinder to become flour! Us: AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Us: Just eat the pizza.
I. Child: Daddy made me carry you your coffee and I brushed my hand against it and it was hot and it hurt. Me: Well, thanks anyway. Child: I hope you appreciate it came from pain and suffering. II. Child: I want to go buy some candy but I don’t want to get dressed. Me: […]
M tells us a long story about a friend snapping a shot of her brother falling over while skiing D: And so it was immortalized on film, huh? M: No, it was a picture. D: I’ll just go over here and feel old now.
Me to child: What were you DOING in the shower for twenty minutes if you didn’t even wash your hair?!? Child: I was travelling to other dimensions! Singing a pirate song!
So back in March we bought a cargo bike. We’d set out intending to buy a tandem, but on the test ride it turned out that I hated the tandem with the intensity of a thousand burning suns within about ten seconds of getting on the thing. Totally synced starts and stops? No control? Ummmmno. […]
(At Canada’s Wonderland) Me: Oh, sad, the waterpark is all closed. D: There’s nothing sadder than an empty waterpark. Child: Except a dead puppy. Us: …. OK, you win.
Me: Would you like me to turn the music off while you’re falling asleep honey, or what would you like me to put on? (We’re cottaging and if there’s music on, we’re all subjected to it.) Child: How about that guy who talks along to the music, the one you and Grampa went to the […]
Me: So how did the new raincoat work? Did it keep you dry? Child: Yeah (pause) Child: …when I wore it.
Walking down the street: M: ….it’s pretty cool. Temperature-cool, you know, not Daddy-cool. D: I’m cool? M: Yeah. But you’re never as cool as Mommy.
Me, upon entering the kitchen and finding the child on the floor at my husband’s feet, clearly in the middle of a ticklefest: Are you torturing our child? Him: Not in any way that’ll leave a mark. Child: It’ll leave a mark on my SOUL!
New Year’s Eve, 4pm M: Can I sleep over at [friend]’s tonight? Me: Um, you don’t want to be here with us? M: No. We’re cleaning [friend]’s stuffed animals. We found if you put soap on the stains and let it set, the stains come out with the soap when we wash them! Me: That’s […]
M, singing: L, O, double-L I, P-O-P spells lollipop, lollipop That’s the only decent kind of candy, candy Man who made it musta been a dandy, dandy L, O, double-L I, P-O-P spells lollipop, lollipop It’s a lick on a stick guaranteed to make you sick Lollipop for me! C, A, SS E R, O-L-E […]
M: I have a new book for school — Anne of Green Gables. Me: Oh, that’s a good one. I like that book. M: That girl talks way too much. She’s like [friend’s name] when she’s tired, all talk talk talk talk talk talk blah blah blah. Me: Well, hon, you have been known to […]
Once upon a time I was staffing a camp bus and there was this one little boy of about eight who DID NOT want to go to camp. He clung and clung to his mother who, in a moment of extreme madness, had actually got on the bus* to say goodbye to him. Two of […]
My nephew was apparently in need of some of his own dress-up clothes so for his 3rd birthday recently, I made him a cape using these fabrics and this tutorial: It’s totally reversible and the neck closure is done with a little bit of velcro so it’s pretty safe (the velcro comes undone easily so […]
Among the detritus that came home at the end of the school year, I found M’s poetry notebook. They covered cinquains, rhyming couplets and odes. It is a brave teacher, I think, who is willing to venture into Ode territory with a class of grade 2/3/4’s. “I like M’s poetry,” said her teacher at one […]