it was all downhill from there
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Squawk likes Ai Weiwei's "Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn" but she wants to know why he used only black and grey and white Lego pieces. Her first lesson that art lies in (and relies on) restraint.
Category: squawk
i really do spend an inordinate amount of time counting
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Squawk doesn't quite get Hide & Seek. Usually, she hides in the same spot used in the last round. If she does come up with her own, it's the cat tunnel. Where's Squawk…? Oh, she's behind the door. Where's Squawk…? Oh, she's behind the door. Where's Squawk…? Oh, she's in the cat tunnel. It gets […]
toddlers and writing and making it work
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I normally* get up at 5:30am so I can get 1-1.5 hours to myself purely for writing. *It invariably doesn't work out at all. Squawk will wake at the same time and set up such a hollering that no writing gets done; or she'll have woken up so many times overnight I'll sleep through my […]
family in chalk
Posted onTonight's quiet play before bed involved some drawing on the new easel Squawk received for her birthday. After the usual gamut of flowers and monsters (and the truly baffling instruction to "draw blue! using green!"), Squawk asked me to draw a picture of her: Then she wanted a picture of Dad: So then she drew […]
"I broke it. 'cos that's why."
Posted onView this post on Instagram A post shared by Deborah Kalin (@debkalin)
it's the one book neither of us ever dare skip a page
Posted onOne book before a nap (more correctly, these days, enforced alone time) and two books before bed. Plus whatever we happen to decide to read together throughout the span of any given day. Lately, I read out loud a lot, is what I'm saying. Inevitably I'll end up reading Squawk something I don't much enjoy. […]
in which ideas aren't special snowflakes unique to me and that's even more awesome than if they were
Posted onToday, spurred by a last-minute reminder and possessed of an odd amount of energy for a Saturday morning, I packed Squawk on to the train and we trotted into town to catch Shaun Tan's "The Singing Bones" at the No-Vacancy gallery. I very nearly didn't go: Squawk is tired and cranky on Saturdays, which meant […]
all told, she's a considerate fallen god
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Squawk sings — constantly, about whatever she last overheard, or whatever stray thought passes through her head, or who knows where she gets her inspiration. I don't. This morning… this morning I overheard her crooning a dirge to Ani about hairballs.
Yesterday Squawk was questioning me about ambulances. She knows they're for treating sick people, and whenever she sees one she'll put on her face of earnest sympathy and proclaim "Someone's feeling sick!" — but yesterday she wanted to know why this imaginary person was feeling sick. (We've been in the "…whyyyyyy?" phase of toddlerhood for […]
experiments with sleep deprivation (aka where motherhood and mental health fail to meet)
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Since finishing Cherry Crow Children, I've not had a true writing routine or heck, any routine whatsoever beyond the putting-out-fires approach. Namely, I do what I need to for Squawk and the dayjob and the running of my household and relationships, and try to squish thinking time on the new novel and promotion for Cherry […]