Fitting in fitness

Trying to fit in fitness as a mom is tough. Pre-parenthood, I brisk walked about 5 times a week and followed a few workouts online when I felt like it. Now, I'm lucky if I can fit in a 10-minute workout a day during the week. So now, most of my weekly workout time is clocked on Saturday and Sunday.

We're all supposed to get a minimum of 150 minutes of exercise. At the start of Saturday, I only had 57. Now, I've clocked 224. Yeah, baby!

No gym. No fancy equipment (other than this watch that my husband bought cause I'm far too cheap to buy such fancies, but I do love it). It's possible.

On learning to draw

A friend of mine asked my advice on teaching her art-loving young child to draw using how-to guides/formulas and my gut response was Nooooo! I couldn't explain why, but I've been thinking about it and here's why I wouldn't try to teach a young child how to draw... 

1. Learning the so-called rules for drawing often overpowers the most important thing about drawing - the ability to see.

2. The implication of teaching someone how to draw is that there is a right way and a wrong way to draw. If that was the case, all art would look the same.

3. An artist will learn through the best possible means - exploration - there's no need to assist them, only to equip them.

3. Formulas for drawing often follow a left-brained way of thinking and it encourages copying images like a camera. But we have cameras, so...?! 4. Left-brained formulas for drawing are downers for predominantly right-brained creators and can hamper a growing love for art.

5. Drawing formulas assume perfect proportions (like symmetrical faces) when nothing is perfect.

5. There's a magic to a line that is drawn freely, without hesitation, and it's easily lost when drawing according to the rules.

A little Christmas miracle.

Yesterday evening, we cleaned our yard and put up solar-powered fairy lights. 

We lost track of time and before we knew it it was almost 8pm and we had a very tired 3-year-old. He wanted the lights to work, but they needed 12 hours of sun to charge first (according to the box). E lost his mind. He was screaming and crying for the sun. I explained that we can't make the sun come up - it's God's work. He said he wanted God to change the world (we took him to the planetarium so I think he remembered about the world moving around the sun). 

Long story short, in the bath he cried to his dad about why he couldn't see God and why couldn't God just come here. Emotions were wild. How do you explain this to a 3-year-old when you don't know either. So I was honest, I said that as old as I am, I don't understand everything about God either, but I do know that God shows himself in different ways.

I went to fetch something we left outside and our tree lights were magically on. So I showed E and told him that God heard him crying for the tree lights, and even though they shouldn't be working, God made them work to show him that he is real and he listens. E, full of wonder and awe, said, "God heard me and changed the world." 

Yes, He did.

P. S Don't ruin it by telling me some logically reason for the lights to work, I prefer a little Christmas miracle.

The Christmas Rush

I'm starting to feel that frantic rush to get everything done before Christmas. 

I have to remember that done is better than perfect and presence is more meaningful than presents (that's a good thing cause I think I am a crappy gifter). Oh, and to purposely slow down.

Pic from back in November inside Helderberg Nature Reserve, Somerset West during our first family mini-vacay.

The beginning of devotion

Its official - I’m bad with phones. Last year, I lost/broke three phones and recently, my latest mobile was stolen. Every single time, I’ve thought, ‘what is God trying to tell me?!’

After phone loss number two, I opened one of Crystal Moody’s newsletters on creative habits and came across the quote: “Attention is the beginning of devotion” by Mary Oliver. 

Bam! Could this be my message?  

I want to need it

I do pay a lot of attention to my phone (except when I’m not...and then I’m losing it. Haha). I’m not big on chatting via typed messages (I prefer face-time) but I do love Instagram.

I need it or, as I tell my son when he says he needs something he doesn’t really need, “I want to need it.”

I love taking photos with my phone. It’s almost replaced my camera, which is sad because I have a really awesome camera.

Is it meaningful?

From a creative perspective, maybe I’ve allowed adding an Instagram filter and crop to a quick snap to fill my creative void a little too much.

Of course, it’s fun and creative in its own way, but is the process enriching and meaningful? And could time spent scrolling be better used reading, writing, drawing or just being?  Maybe.

One of my goals this year is to start writing again - for myself and not solely for work. 

So I’m spending a little less time on my phone and writing, in the little insta chunks of time being a working mom allows. It’s a new beginning.

Photo by Linda Xu on Unsplash