Time management wizard, Amanda Butland, teaches moms to live by their priorities. I interviewed Amanda Butland, founder of Momtasking Masters, last December, peak holiday crunch season. She calmly assured me that she had ample time to talk and a “flexible” schedule — This, while juggling a job, family, multiple businesses, a real estate portfolio and […]
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A Book For My Mix & Match Girl
The tradition was set a few years back, when I made my daughter a birthday card with an “Isla word” for every letter of the alphabet. “Are you going to make me a card every year?” she asked, expectantly. Which was like asking an eager chef for second helpings of her latest scratch: How could […]
Milestones & Magic: A Workshop
Can writing about your children strengthen your bond – even (especially?) when they aren’t there — and long after they are no longer children? Theresa Puckett, founder of Relational Parents, invited me to explore this question in a virtual workshop on Milestones and Magic Moments, delivered by Zoom, on Tuesday, September 21, 2021. From the […]
A journey to be savoured and shared: Illustrator, Judi Abbot talks about how to get more out of reading picture books with your kids
For artist, Judi Abbot, each book she illustrates is a journey, often lasting three months or longer. First, she reads the manuscript, “starts to understand the characters” and scavenges the text for clues about setting. “A reference to a scarf can suggest an entire world,” she notes. Then she experiments with exploratory sketches and researches […]
Let’s Hear it for the Boy(s) (and Girl(s))!
Parenting involves a modicum (read: perpetual avalanche) of correcting, warning and reprimanding. But to connect with our kids – and gain influence – we must encourage their strengths and potential. We can only encourage what we truly believe in. Therefore, as parents, we must periodically allow ourselves the essential luxury of basking in our sprogs’ […]
The Sprog Log: A Parent’s Odyssey
November 20, 2010: I was walking to the post office with Ali, musing nostalgically that this is our last month of constant mum-and-son togetherness before the Yuletide arrival of his baby sister, when a woman walked past, pushing a Bugaboo. Ali burst into tears, blurting in anguished outrage, “EVERYONE has their baby already except ME!” […]
Dispatch to Malory Towers
Has there ever been a better time to escape into boarding school literature? With a return to virtual learning, the end of Christmas holidays brought no change of scene – only, at best, a change of screen. “I wish I were taking the train to Cornwall to go to Malory Towers,” my daughter, Isla, remarked […]
Birthday Spell!
Happy Tenth Birthday, Isla! Every year, my daughter requests a homemade card for her birthday. It must include a word game, and it must be at least as good as last year’s. Every year, in the run up to the special day, I ride the emotional roller coaster from — “What’s wrong with Hallmark?” — […]
Phoenix Turns Eight – Let’s Celebrate!
Two decades ago, at the end of my first gruelling semester of law school, my torts professor, Peter Schuck, proved himself to be, as I’d always suspected, a fellow undercover wordsmith. We had spent the term litigating the fictional libel case of Sands v. Mudd, and were waiting for him to render a final verdict. […]
Letting Down My (En) Garde!
“Of course you can’t beat me. I’ve been fencing half my life,” my son consoled me, after another of our lopsided bouts. “The question is, can you beat you? At the end of your lesson, can you thrash the fencer you were when you began?” How did I find myself cast in this generationally reversed […]