Rainy Sidewalk Fireworks

Morning comes to the sidewalk. The long green grasses stretch their stalks in front of the grey cobblestone wall behind them. They tilt sideways, holding their pose in an elegant still-life ballet—perfectly confident—adorned with nothing but dewdrops.

The wildgrasses primly hold their brown tuft faces still, ignoring the rush of traffic on the wet pavement a few feet away as they perform their morning yoga.

People trudge by, clinging to their red Tim Horton’s coffee cups, their minds swirling with tasks and unaware of the zen moment occurring near their feet.

Amid the viridescent grasses, the dandelion puffs are tiny white fireworks, exploding with enthusiasm for the new day. Drunk on fresh rainwater, a perfectly organic energy source, the little lions laugh at the Starbucks across the road. No need for a cuppa joe here. They greet the world with bright-eyed grins.

The transformation of their blond manes to bursts of white worries them not a wit. They know nothing of paperwork, or headaches, or housework; nothing of gas prices, or housing markets, or wars. 

I want to lie down in the grass with them, the invigorating rain water soaking into my skin. If I shed enough worry, perhaps I’d become light enough to fly away with the dandelion seeds. Perhaps the little spinning helicopters and I could land somewhere softer than the harsh sidewalk under my feet.

A Witch’s Children Seldom Sleep ✨

A witch’s children seldom sleep;

they stay up in their rooms 

conjuring up mythical lands,

building kingdoms and castles,

or run through the house—

all wide-eyed wildness

once the full moon comes up,

and mirrors itself in their round, blue eyes.

They dance, cackle and fly about the room

until a crash into the wall—or each other—

signals the doom-bell of bedtime.

The later the louder;

the more tired the more terrible,

until their witch-mother’s exasperated hair 

shoots out in all directions like flames.

Finally, she has to resort to softly chanting spells

to soothe her tiny witches and warlocks to sleep.

When their dark lashes lay on their cheeks at last,

they almost look like ordinary children,

but the witch grins to herself…

she knows better!

✨✨✨

Spell Weaver ✨

Her hair is askew;

she has the rakish look of a wild one 

who has been up with the werewolves,

swaying under the 3 o’clock moon, 

chanting spells to lure the world to sleep.

She can often be seen muttering over her pots, 

consulting her glowing spell book 

and adding one by one to her potion 

pinches of hope, dashes of courage, and handfuls of strength.

Her bittersweet sacrifice of love 

rises like incense from her steaming cauldron.

She has a healing touch 

to soothe the brows of feverish toddlers, 

comfort crying babies, 

and reassure the young witches in training, 

as they begin to see shapes in the darkness around them— 

the fears they must face and fight 

on their journey to take flight.

But even the life-giving, spell-weaving woman 

gets worn down at times, 

and caught up in the storm around her, 

she shoots lightning from her eyes 

and thunder from her terrible mouth 

so that all things might cease!

She longs for a moment’s solitude, 

to untangle the lightning from her hair;

refill her well with starlight 

and the song of flowers

to weave into spells the next day.


In the hush of a deep breath she remembers

that her most important spells do not decorate 

life’s struggles in sparkling cobwebs;

rather they reveal to her children the deeper magic 

that was around them all along, 

and help them draw life from it,

even in the darkest moments before dawn.

✨✨✨

The End of the World

A little vignette about bedtime…

She knew it might be bad, but she hadn’t expected it to be this bad. It wasn’t like she had done it violently or without warning. Nevertheless, it had plunged her daughter into the depths of despair.

“I will never eat again!” she declared, lower lip trembling as her eyes began to redden.

“That’s too bad; you’ll get pretty hungry.”

“I won’t open my presents. I won’t come to Easter or Christmas.”

“Really? How sad. That’s a lot to give up.”

“I won’t ever let you help me!” she threw out this statement like a well-aimed spear, sure it would conquer her enemy and bring victory.

“You’re only hurting yourself, babe,” her mother deflected the spear with a shield of serenity. “I’m sorry you’re so sad.”

The girl thrust out her jaw and glowered up at her mother with narrowed eyes.

“I’m not sad, I’m angry!”

“Ok, I’m sorry you’re angry, then. But why don’t you go up to bed, honey? It’s time to sleep.”

“I will never sleep. I will just stand by my bed with my eyes open. I will never shut my eyes again!”

“Oh, really?” the woman sighed. Determination was a great trait. To be sure it had helped her daughter finish the steep, two hour hike up the mountain with her Dad the other day, chattering the whole way up. But when it was bedtime, determination to have one’s own way was a distinct disadvantage in a child of three.

“Sweetie, you can play more Reading Eggs tomorrow. I had to turn it off ‘cause it was 9:30. Now it’s 10:15. You have to sleep.”

“I will never sleep!”

The woman rubbed her head and sighed. You can’t fight crazy. She climbed into bed and nursed her baby to sleep. Eventually, the war-weary toddler climbed in under the blankets and hid. That way no one would see her eyes close.

Our New Pregnancy Book: A Gift From Moms To Moms

Beginner’s Guide to Growing Baby

Happy Belated Mother’s Day everyone! I hope you all had good days…whether you have one child or ten, you deserve wonderful things! It’s a big, full-time job nurturing life.

My mom blogger buddy Bonnie Way and I have written a book on pregnancy, birthing and early days with a newborn and are offering it free this week until Thursday on Amazon kindle. With 14 kids between us both, we have plenty of experience, and hope our tips, experiences, and birth stories can help support you on your journey to motherhood!

You don’t need a Kindle device to read it—you can get the free Kindle app on your phone, iPad or tablet as well. Here’s the link:

Beginners guide to growing baby: tips to help you through all four trimesters

You may wonder why we say tips for all four trimesters, instead of three, but this is not a typo! During the first three months of a baby’s life, they are still so completely dependent on their mothers to keep them alive, safe and secure. There is nowhere my nine week old son prefers to be, than snuggling on my chest, sleeping to the drum of my heartbeat.

At the same time, a mother’s health and happiness depends a lot on her baby. If he is nursing well, sleeping well, and generally content, so will she be. That means her snacking lots to keep up her energy for nursing, eating well, and napping with the little one, because newborn days are pretty exhausting—but with gentle care—happy baby, happy mama. This is why we call it the fourth trimester…not so much a time to rush into getting “back to normal,” but a time to move slowly while you continue to nurture fragile new life, grow into this new role of being a mom, and find the rhythm and support you need as well.

Huge hugs to all my fellow mamas! I hope you enjoy reading our birth stories!

Welcome to the World, Tiny Foot

Your tiny foot—

softer than a silky dog’s ear—

easily fits into the palm of my hand

as you nurse yourself into a cozy milk coma

and snuggle by my side.

Only a week ago,

that same foot

was pushing up against my ribs,

knocking on the door of my heart

as if to say,

“Mama, I’m ready to meet the world!”

And oh, Tiny Foot, how ready I was to meet you!

Double birthday: new baby book and new baby born!

COVID Bucket List:

Have a baby ✅

Write a book ✅

Welcome both to the world on the same day ✅

More than one thing has been gestating during the past year of isolation at my place…and I’m excited to tell you that on the same day my son was born last week, my new book also made its way into the world, thanks to my friend and co-author Bonnie Way. Our Beginners Guide to Growing Baby: Tips to Help You Through All Four Trimesters is now available as an e-book on Amazon, with the paperback version to follow shortly.

Good job, Mom! You’ve been busy!

Here’s our blurb about it:

To give you a better idea of all the things we wanted to share with you, here are the table of contents. We keep thinking of more and more chapters, because there are so many experiences we would like you to learn from faster than we did, but we had to stop somewhere, so here’s what we chose:

As you can see, something that makes our book a little more personal, besides the fact that all our advice is based on our personal experiences, rather than on theories, is that we share all our birth stories with you. Not some overdramatized movie versions of birth, but our honest, actual stories. Keeping’ it real.

Another tidbit I’m rather pleased about is a little surprise tucked in between each section, that is, one of my poems for each trimester, birth and beyond…because the beautiful, feminine mystery of giving birth is something beyond mere prose.

I hope Beginner’s Guide to Growing Baby will be a helpful resource for both new and returning mamas and help empower them to make healthy informed decisions about what’s best for them and their babies. Bonnie and I are not medical experts, but after 14 births between us, we are certainly very experienced!

Other important credentials include the fact that as I lay cuddling my four day old infant, I am wearing an International Women’s day outfit worthy of a superhero…or at least some kind of fertility goddess/Star Wars fan gone wrong—Baby Yoda pj pants and a green cabbage bikini—see Fourth Trimester chapters on breastfeeding engorgement to learn why the heck I’m doing that!

Party on, Mom!

If you’d like to be informed when the physical version of our pregnancy and baby book is available to order online, leave me a comment and let me know so I can keep you posted. I’ll also be ordering a box of copies, so if you know me personally and prefer to pick one up from me, let me know to add you to our pre-order list and save on shipping.

Bless all the bellies and babies out there! Time to give my little one a midnight milkshake. 😋

Baby has arrived! 🥰🤗

Hi everyone.

After a big wait, I’m happy to announce that my little baby boy was born last night, just before midnight. After a very slow pre-labour, things picked up with the help of some oxytocin (which wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be) and we filled the birthing tub at the hospital. About 40 minutes after climbing into that warm embrace of water, and holding off as long as I could to let my body prepare to release him without tearing, I gave a few big pushes, and there he was. A tiny little snuggly darling all covered in white vernix and snuggling on my chest.

After a few wet kisses to the top of his head, he got passed to his Daddy, to hold swaddled while I got dried off and into bed. After some anti-bleed medicine and some pain meds for after cramps, I was ready to hold my baby and eat my midnight meal, amazingly dropped off by our sweet friends Peter and Sophia at the hospital at 10:30 pm that night!

Here we are!

It doesn’t take baby boy long to wake up and smell the milk…and within minutes, he’s nursing like a little pro. See how he’s rooting already? 🤣

Here he is with his Daddy.

And a little close up. And now, I’m back to napping, nursing, snuggling and sleeping. Xoxo