i am finding that one way to connect my children together and to myself is to find something very simple to do. today my big girl built a nest out of bedding and was a robin in it, and i sat the babe in the nest, a visiting chickadee. yesterday, reminded of the game by a dear friend with the same aged children, we blew up a lovely pink balloon to bat around and keep up in the air together. the moment we began, the baby burst into delightful laughter!

as a child i loved spinning tops, cats cradle, jump rope. i once spent weeks playing with a piece of silicone which had solidified in its tube; it would bounce in unpredictable ways, almost impossible to catch.

(excerpt from simple pleasures**)

I am very proud to introduce our daughter Elisa’s blog appleturnover**. As a mother of two young ones, she writes in a gentle and thoughtful way about parenting and homelearning, about home, family and community in the environment and culture of the Pacific Northwest. I love reading about how she plays with her little girls and remembers her own childhood, which in turn brings back memories for me too. Coming soon are some stories and games. Elisa is an artist too. Please welcome her with a comment on her blog, especially if you are also a parent (or grandparent!) of young children.

**UPDATE April 13th, 2009: Elisa’s revised blog and website is now here. The starred expired links have been removed.

Another meme! I’ve seen variants of this floating around the blogs for some weeks and now I’ve been tagged by Linden! Here goes, it’s tough to limit some of these to four:
Four Places I Have Lived
Varkaus, Finland in the Lakes region
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Fort St. John, on the Alaska Highway, northeastern BC, Canada
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Four Movies I Can Remember
Ararat
Whale Rider
Latcho Drom
Sound of Music (everyone knows this one!)
Four Favourite Artists
Kathe Kollwitz
Robert Rauschenburg
Betty Goodwin
Liz Ingram
Four Things I Love To Do
blogging and reading blogs
printmaking
Nordic walking
gardening, indoors and out
Four Bloggers I’m Tagging
So many of my blog friends are doing memes, so I’ll just make this an open call to anyone interested!

This blog is nearing its second anniversary and I’m forgetting some of what I’ve written, so almost every day of late, I am looking back at entries of a year ago that day. It’s like I sometimes would do with those little five year diaries with tiny locks on them in my preteens that I would try to faithfully write into, but eventually give up on when there were more blank pages than full. I think these blog entries make for more interesting reading than those few words by a quiet shy schoolgirl leading a quiet uneventful life.

Still feeling in the doldrums, I’m surprised, yet not, that last year on this date I wrote about January blues and melancholy. I know it’s a combination of the letdown after holidays, the dreadful weather (after a nice weekend for a change we’re back to incessant heavy rains) and fighting off a bit of a cold. I happened across this quote which seems to match the mood:

Live each season as it passes, breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each. – Henry David Thoreau

Today I’m baking stollen with marzipan filling, a German Christmas bread that is one of our very favourites. Because of food sensitivities to wheat and dairy in two daughters and yours truly, I’m also experimenting with a small batch using spelt flour, goat milk and xylitol sugar. So far it seems very slow to rise because the flour is heavy, like coarse whole wheat…so wish me luck! In between watching the dough rise, then baking the many loaves, I’ve been dropping by here to visit some blogs and prepare a post I’ve been wanting to do for a few days.

Anita Konkka, a Finnish author of many books, posted a meme that she picked up, “What is in front of you?” It’s now circulating many other Finnish blogs. I don’t often do memes but this one seemed to draw me in. Here’s a translation:

DIRECTIONS: 1. Post a photo of, or describe, a picture, painting or scene that is in front of your eyes (behind your monitor), that you automatically and naturally gaze at everyday when pausing in your writing while trying to think of a word, or simply when you get lost in your daydreams. 2. Invite your friends to do the same and link.
GOAL: This may be utopian, but in spirit let’s start a web chain gallery.

So today, when for a little while the day seemed brighter (we are back to warm rainy westcoast weather!) I took a few photos. Here is my view on my right, next to my computer (you can see a sliver of the monitor). I sit facing a corner with small shelves of attractive objects made by my youngest when a child, and on the left wall is one of my prints. But my eyes always go to the window, looking out onto the backyard with its tall trees, the changing sky, and many birds and squirrels. This month, our bare magnolia tree out there is lit with clear minilights, another focus for my wandering and dreaming gaze in the night darkness beyond the window. (And it’s good for the eyes to let them look into the distance often as a break from staring at the monitor!)

What do YOU gaze on? Have a look at some other views at Mayday 34°35’S 150°36’E*, Blogisisko*
and ikkunaiines*.

Finally, on a Christmas theme again, check out some neat links in my post of one year ago. (Oh sorry, a couple of them have expired, sigh!)

UPDATE Dec.21st: I should have mentioned that the meme began at Kirogurun kurakori*. See comments below for more links.

Only yesterday I started reading Threading Thoughts written by a fabric artist in the UK and she’s now picked up the meme too, with a lovely description of what she sees beyond her monitor. Hooray, it’s going around the world!

* expired links removed