Lasting Lessons...Meaningful Moments

Zo helping Dad with his homework. Look at that pencil grip...not bad for 24 months old.

Tonight Daddy had homework to do. He's wrapping up some addiction studies at Mount Royal University in Calgary and has significant chunks of homework to tackle, naturally Zoey wants to help. So tonight this precocious little girl grabbed her pencil crayons and sat on Dad's lap to help him with his school work. She explained how she was going to go to school one day and so it made perfect sense that she get an early start, I guess. Her Dad was happy to encourage her curiosity. Blank canvas and all that...


Getting comfy with Dad as a professor lectures online from a distant campus in Alberta.

It was the most ridiculously cute thing ever. Zo grabbed her tin full of crayons and pencil crayons and crawled up on Dad's lap to start scribbling all over his notes. First she drew purple waves, and then she did her best to draw Alex from Madagascar. In the end it all looked a lot more like scribbling than anything, and Dad could barely read his quickly scratched notes (oh well, copying them out all over again translates to good study habits, right?) Zo had all the patience in the world, and was just happy to be hanging out doing schoolwork with Daddy. Did you hear that? That sigh I just breathed affectionately into the atmosphere? I think I'll study forever and ever if this little girl is this interested in sharing whatever it is that I find faith in. I'll gladly share an affinity for school work, if she's so inclined to latch onto it. It makes me swoon. Her cousin Avery always loved school and it always made me proud to see her embrace it so excitedly. Maybe, if we're lucky, and if we leave enough paint out near that wide open and empty canvas, she'll do very much the same thing. Her Father could be a worse influence than to find profound purpose in education, thats for certain.


Taking a break to doodle a little with a doting daughter. This is how education looks now.

It seems strange to be simultaneously parenting and studying, and it reminds me of what others endure at a much younger age than I am attempting to juggle it now. It's not lost on me that I or we serve as examples for her to look up and find inspiration in. I want Zo to see me doing homework and juggling responsibilities and still finding time for her and for her Mom and for myself. I want her to find nothing unusual about a household that finds any member of it spending their time with an assignment or reading or doing whatever it takes to keep the learning going. It's a different world now, and education truly has to be a lifelong experience. A twenty year old degree doesn't mean much anymore, not in the uber-competitive world of specialized skills and short term contracts. I just want Zoey to not find anything foreign about cuddling up on the couch with some school work, or pulling a chair up to the kitchen table to do homework in the company of others. That's important...very important, and it makes me happy that she's so eager to tackle any kind of connection to it so young. I hope Zoey can watch her Father cozying up to his potential and to whatever opportunity presents itself, and maybe, just maybe want much of the same. Of course, if all she wants to do is color Dad's notes then that's fine too, at least she's in close proximity to all the paint and brushes her little canvas can handle.