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Showing posts from May, 2009

Cars, and trucks, and dirt, and bugs---that's what some little girls like

My girls are girly girls. They like their dolls, their dresses, their creature comforts. My little one prefers bows in her hair. But this has never, ever stopped them from reaching out to traditionally "boy" areas of play. One of my favorite photos is of my girls and a couple of friends in princess dress-up costumes paying with Tonka dump trucks outside. In our backyard, we're creating a natural habitat. We started with the pond and it has grown from there. We're planting ecosystem- and fauna-friendly plants, and trying to make sure our backyard helps the plants and animals we share our space with. This gives our children ample opportunity to delve into the world of bugs, tadpoles to frogs, crawfish (yes!), snakes (yes!) and even some cute mammals such as bunnies, not to mention our bird families. Overall, I'd say our kids are the normal amount of skeptical reluctance to new things, but their natural curiosity leads them to try anyway, which is our general family

Women with Big Dogs (and infertility)

My husband and I were turning thirty. We'd been married for five years or so and the families had the grandchild bug bad. Both of our sisters had recently presented the Most Perfect Precious little baby girls ever born, and our parents figured, based on our niece's extreme level of adorable and intelligent, that their children (meaning us) were capable of producing wonderful babies, the best kind of baby: the sort who does cute and then goes home with their parents. Everyone loves a child whose diaper, feeding, and crying all night is not their problem. Until you actually become a parent, you really have no idea how much work the care and feeding of a baby will seem like to you. Every parent has a big job ahead of him and her, but some of us are lazier and more self-indulgent than others. But you never know that, really, before. So, one day, after caring for our two nieces--- at the same time ---we figured we were ready for kids. What's the saying? God laughs at those who

And all that's best of dark and bright, Meet in her aspect and her eyes

She gets angry, oh so angry. She is kicking the table legs, throwing sand on the playground, staring you in the eye as she defies directions. She swishes her head away and up in the air, with a big "Humph!" and crossing of her arms to add an exclamation point to the end of a sentence that is already exclamatory enough. Her tone starts at whiny and ends at petulant. Her joy is the exception now, rather than the rule. For some reason, her world infuriates her, all the time. Calm is a fighting word. Even when she is laughing or happy, it is more of a defiantly triumphant pleasure than pure joy. The people around her who care are perplexed, and out of patience. There is always something , and it is always making her oh-so-unhappy. We think if only we knew what it was, we could fix it. But what we do know is love, and this we give freely, sometimes with patience, sometimes with impatience. But if we offer it, love and calm, like stroking a frightened upset animal, it will eventu