Living a Little

Living a Little

Bonjour Peanuts,

In my constant quest to seek out the extraordinary and do things that challenge me, it occurred to me that I haven’t been doing much seeking or anything challenging lately. So, I decided to change that.

I struggle with exercising my creativity (I guess this blog is one way to express myself creatively, but you get my meaning) so I took a baby step and got this book by the awesome Keri Smith.

 

I’m actually having a harder time with it than I thought. My “perfectionistic tendencies” are surfacing for sure. The first page says to stand on the page and mark it up. With your shoes on. That could possibly be dirty!

I did it. And it felt oddly liberating. I daintily stepped on the page and left a little dust mark. (note to self: do over)

Hadley read through the copy when I first got it (I told her not to tell me any of the pages) and was absolutely delighted by it. She was laughing and saying she wants a copy too! It comes so naturally to kids, to dive right in, to delight, destroy and create. I need more of that in my life.

The second page (I’m going in order, like a nerd) says to splash coffee or tea on the page. Again, I hesitated, and then I just did it. And it felt good! I look forward to creatively destroying this book. Wish me luck. (I’m going to channel my most favorite artistic old same, ELK, during this project. She’ll be my muse.)

 

I also signed up to become certified to teach yoga to kids. It’s called Mindful Life Yoga for Kids. It looks really really interesting.

From the website: “The method is theoretically derived and informed by the latest research in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, positive psychology, social and emotional learning, and mindfulness.”

Mindful Life Yoga for Kids is a unique and innovative program specifically designed to help children develop:

• An understanding of how their brain works
• Attention skills
• Sensory awareness
• Emotional management skills
• Compassion & Empathy
• Ecological awareness

I honestly don’t know if I’ll even use the certification beyond my own house. I do know that the techniques are tools I would like to have in my arsenal for Hadley and Finn. 

The training is this weekend. All weekend. Friday from 5-7pm and then Sat and Sun from 9-4. I’m excited and nervous. Excited because I’ll be learning… YEAH! Nervous because lupus is probably going to be Debbie Downer as this is a lot for my body to take and I’m already feel kind of shitty. We’ll see how it goes.

And the other thing I’m doing to get out of my comfort zone is taking English riding lessons with Hadley! I’m so looking forward to it. She’s been begging for years to do it. I thought she would get over it. Who was I kidding though, this is Hadley we’re talking about. So, while signing her up, I thought “I’d like to do that too.” So, I am. We were supposed to have our first lesson on Sunday but Hadley was sick. I’ll have to get PGP to take some pics of me and my girl. I’m thrilled to be around horses. I loooooove them. And let’s be honest, the riding outfit is really cute too.

It’s an overcast day and I’m feeling fluish and achy, courtesy of Hadley and her cold. My bed beckons me.

Happy Wednesday to you. Get out of your comfort zone. It feels good. Weird. But good.

XO