oh, flour

Flour is a hard one for many people, and I understand it. It gets everywhere, it makes hard wood floors slippery and it can be breathed in inadvertently. However, it makes the best snow scene; the best race track for matchbox cars, the best dinosaur stomping ground, the best beach; the best cafe; the best hills for little figurines to smash down. Plus, it's oh so soft and lovely to run through your fingers.

What could be better than a tray of flour, two rice spoons, a VW match box van, and a tinker toy wheel. M, who's three and a half played with this for half an hour before bringing a tiny Playmobile lady and her baby in a jogger out for a spin around the 'park'.

 Here she is, face covered in a fine dusting of flour.

vacation in space

I'm joining (albeit very late) in this lovely idea of "A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2013" started by Che and Fidel. Her blog is so beautiful. How could it not be when she lives in Australia, is a writer and yoga teacher? 

So, here are my kiddos, R + M, doing what they do best together - - dressing up and inhabiting the characters. I think they were going on a 'vacation in space'. This photo was taken during the first week in January so I have some catching up to do!

Our Seven Senses

Alright, you say. I thought we only have five - -

Well, yes you are right. But we also have a couple more.

Proprioception

"When this sense is working effectively the brain, at all times, has an awareness of where the various body parts are in space, if they are moving or not, and how fast and in what direction they are moving...We talk about this sense enabling us to ‘feel’ where our body parts are, but this does not mean ‘feeling’ like ‘touching’ one body part with another – it is an entirely internal sensation". 

David Brown, Education Specialist with Deaf-Blind Services in CA.

Vestibular

The New York Times has a short piece about the importance of this sense saying:

"it isn’t a high-profile, elitist sense like the famed five of vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell. It’s more of a Joe Sixth-Sense, laboring in anonymity and frequently misunderstood". 

Simply put, the Vestibular sense helps us balance and have spacial orientation. No mean feat. 

My son has Sensory Processing Disorder and so he struggles to regulate his senses in many situations. Learning about the last two senses has given me more empathy in the challenges he faces every day. It has also informed my understanding of how we feed our senses and how we can unknowingly hinder their developement. 

Let's dive right in

So hello there. Where do we start?

It's like the first page in a sketch book. I don't want to wreck it with some awful drawing.  I want to it to just be done so I can get on to the 'real' posts.

I have to say I have always been a 'rusher', hustling through things as fast and hard as I can, enjoying the intensity of the moment. Quite often when I rush it has a tendency to get messy - - whether its in the kitchen when I bake, or at the dining room table when the kids and I paint with string, or a conversation when I share too much too fast.

There is joy in this kind of messiness too because it comes with connection, connection to your senses, connection to others, and connection to yourself and something greater than yourself.

I'd say my mission statement of sorts for this blog is to encourage you in the messy, through the messy, and with the messy in life. I want to post about projects that you can do with your children that will connect you and your kids to your senses. By doing these projects together you will be very present with your children and I hope you will learn more about them and your corner of the world.