On dinosaurs

She's enamored with dinosaurs at the moment; by their size, their odd shapes and their ferociousness. We talk about concepts like "extinction" and "millions of years ago" and she nods eagerly, not quite sure, but left with a lingering sense of awe.

She pours over books and spends ages deep in her dinosaur activity book full of stickers and fact files on the T-Rex and Pterodactyls and Brontosauruses. She clutches her pens in concentration as she draws them, filling page after page of spiky monsters with long necks and teeth.

And sadly, below that, there's also the awareness that girls aren't supposed to like dinosaurs. It's there in little hints and snippets of conversations she lets me in on. Like the world has somehow decreed it's either Elsa and Ana OR dinosaurs; that there is not room for both.

Rush

Days that feel like a hundred things all grabbed together; a cup of coffee, my bag and theirs, keys, notes, last minute-thinking, a mind of scattered thoughts, the day's intentions. Days of rushing, hands full, always heavy. Always on the way to somewhere else; another task, another goal, another item on a list. From a Monday to a Friday, a morning to an evening. I have to remind myself to not be impatient with every moment, to not hasten all of them along. Not to think 'enough of this, now on to that'. So when a pause comes, glittering, shimmering in the quiet afternoon light, I force myself to appreciate how time hangs suspended in its brilliance.