Barrow Journal

“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.”
– Ernest Hemingway

In the mornings I’m lucky if I wake up to a quiet house. Usually it’s the galloping of the dogs’ paws on the floors as the canines leap up at the slightest sound of movement from my husband. They follow him into the kitchen, eagerly waiting their breakfast.

Other mornings I may wake up hearing one of my boys calling me from their bed or the seven-year-old’s footsteps as he runs down the hall and jumps into bed with me. Sometimes I hear a bird singing outside my window. Every once in a while, I wake up and hear nothing, and I savor the quiet. [Full Story »] 

Legos is all the rage in our house right now. My seven-year-old is happiest when he is at his table putting some kind of Lego kit together. He doesn’t have very many of them, but I have a feeling we’ll be collecting more of them. I don’t mind.

The first time he wanted to try building with Legos was after he watched one of his friends do it, so last year we got him a helicopter-airplane-boat kit. He can only make one of those at a time, so it’s a lot of fun for him to make one, keep it a few weeks, and then he can take it apart and build another one.

This Christmas he got two new sets. The first one he had been asking for because his friend has one. It’s called the Warp Stinger, but it looks like some kind of mosquito to me. The second one was a complete surprise and came from grandma. It’s a coast guard ship. He loves both of them. [Full Story »] 

This is a magical time of year for my boys, who are four and seven-years-old. That seems to be the perfect age for all this Christmas stuff, and I’m happy to be a witness to their pure joy. Luckily, their excitement is contagious, although I’ve been feeling the urge to hibernate.

It’s cold outside, and I’d like to huddle under the covers and read a good book. I avoid the malls by doing most of my shopping online. I’d like to turn off the computer, but it seems my life is too intertwined with it to shut it down completely. At least I can curl up in my bed with my laptop and avoid social media. I get sad doing our annual Christmas cards. It reminds me of all my loved ones who live far away, and my failings in trying to keep in touch with them. Christmas is about connecting with people, yet we live so much these days through Facebook. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t feel real to me.

I am warmed by the thought that I can make connecting with those closest to me meaningful, and I can reach out to those who seem to like reaching back. I’m grateful for the distant friends who return e-mails and write letters. I’m grateful for the new friends I have found recently who are becoming so important to my boys and me. [Full Story »] 

Kids love getting toys for Christmas, but after seven years of Christmases and birthdays, I have watched the toys pile up, so I’m not looking forward to adding new toys. This year I’m going to try to convince my boys to donate some of their older toys to charity. (That hasn’t gone so well in the past, so wish me luck.)

All play is good. I’m a huge advocate of giving children plenty of time for free, unstructured play because this is when the learning really happens. The best kind of play is when children have to use their imaginations, so I tend to favor toys that don’t have a lot of bells and whistles.

My seven and four-year-old boys love toy animals and dinosaurs. We have two boxes of those, and they also love blocks, Legos, and pretend food. My four-year-old is a little chef. [Full Story »] 

After working several months on my first e-book, I’m proud to say I have finally published it. Then There Were Two: Essays on Motherhood is a book of essays adapted from my first columns with the Barrow Journal, written before and after my second son was born. So it’s about a mother adjusting to life with an infant and toddler as well as musings on nature and family issues. It also has some of my photography from that time.

I’ve published it in the Amazon Kindle Bookstore, though I hope to offer it through other venues in the future. One of the reasons I published it in the Kindle Bookstore first is because these books can be read on every device, including iPads, Androids, and a regular computer using the Kindle app. It can also be sent to anyone as a gift, and all you need is the name and e-mail address of the person you’re sending it to.

There was a time many years ago that I would not have considered self-publishing a book. I wanted to write fiction and get published with a respectable publisher, but after trying for a few years and attending several writing conferences, I learned that the publishing business has more to do with making money, which is understandable – otherwise the publishers couldn’t stay in business. But I also learned that if I persevered and eventually got published, that did not guarantee I could afford to live on writing alone. [Full Story »] 

For months my son was pestering me to try paper mache, but it was one of those things that I put off because I wasn’t sure how to do it, and I also knew it was going to be messy. I promised him we’d do it one day, and he never let me forget that, so we finally made some paper mache bugs.

Paper mache is a gooey substance made out of flour, water, and paper strips, and you can mold it into just about anything. When it dries, it stays hard, and you can paint it.

This was a fun project and very easy to do, but let me save you some hassle and tell you not to google “how to do paper mache.” Every site I landed on had a different recipe. Several of them included glue. One of them said to prepare the mixture 24 hours in advance. Another said you had to boil the mixture. It will make you put off the project some more. [Full Story »] 

Last week my boys turned seven and four. I’m not sure where the time has gone.

When I started writing this column, I was eight months pregnant with the four-year-old.

My seven-year-old was still two. I can barely remember what he was like at that age.

As I write this, my four-year-old is in the living room playing with his toy animals and dinosaurs. I hear him chattering in an unintelligible language while he pretends the animals are fighting and interacting with each other.

It wasn’t long ago that he didn’t give me any freedom.

He’s a mama’s boy, and ever since he came out of the womb, he’s been trying to climb back in there. It can feel a little suffocating, but I try to give him all the affection he needs because I know this time is fleeting. And he’s pretty cute. [Full Story »] 

If you read my column regularly, you may recall that we raised Painted Lady butterflies this spring. We ordered the larvae from an online company and watched them grow, pupate and emerge into adult butterflies. Then we got the crazy idea to keep the butterflies, watch them mate, lay eggs, and raise a second generation.

I had visions of my house being invaded by tiny caterpillars, but I persevered thinking that at any time, I could throw the whole thing outside. I thought we’d just try it and see what happens.

We kept our first generation in our butterfly habitat, a roomy mesh cage about the size of an aquarium. Four out of six larvae made it to maturity, and when we observed them mating, we figured out only one of them was a female. She may have been overworked, but she was determined to carry on life, and she laid dozens of eggs on a small hollyhock plant that I had dug up and potted from my yard so that I could put it down into the cage. [Full Story »] 

One day when I was pregnant with my first child, I stepped into the entryway of a neighbor’s home. She homeschooled her children, and, in fact, she’s the person I learned about homeschooling from, but at the time, I wasn’t considering homeschooling. I hadn’t even had a child yet.

While I was speaking to her, she excused the state of her household because they had been very busy, and she didn’t have time to clean that day.

I had not noticed the interior of her house, but when she said this, I glanced over into her dining room, and I could see her table was littered with toys and other stuff. You couldn’t see the top of her table. [Full Story »]