Ordinary Time

(E) Our youngest, D, continues to be in the running for the most charming child in the world contest. D loves everyone and everyone (so far) loves him. He is usually happy and has quite a gift for making a person feel comfortable, loved, and appreciated. (Not bad for a three year old.) And he can always make me smile. This morning as I was finishing getting dressed, he announced to me, "Oh, are you going to wear a necklace, Mommy? You will look so pretty!" He will often compliment me on my clothing choices, "That is a pretty outfit, Mommy." But the classic statement from D, which is the favorite of the whole family, is when he walks up to a family member and announces (D always announces, never just says) "I like you!" How can you not love that? A side benefit, apart from just getting to live with this little, cheery person, is that he is starting to rub off on TM. TM will happily re-announce whatever pronouncement his brother has made and recentl

(E) I've been thinking a lot about attachment recently, mainly because of a recurrence of raging by TM. For a while, the raging had almost stopped. We would see one every few weeks and they were pretty tame. But in the past week or so, it is almost as if we are back in Vietnam. The raging is back to being long, physical, and often. So, I've been doing what I always do when confronted by a problem, I read and research, this time on attachment. Now I had done a lot of reading on attachment before we adopted TM, but there is nothing like experiencing something first hand to add a bit of focus. Attachment can be a somewhat fuzzy subject. For instance, different sources of information have different lists of what might be signals of attachment problems. On one list, TM is perfectly fine. He has none of the behaviors listed. While this may be reassuring at first, how are other things explained? Those worries that sit in the back of your head and cause uneasiness. Finding some of TM&#

[J] Eldest daughter, the amphibian biologist wannabe, received several ideal gifts from her indulgent parents and grandparents. And when I say "ideal," I mean "related to dissection," of course. First, there was the complete dissection kit, with scalpels, probes, and all manner of shiny devices. Next came the shrink-wrapped frog, a beautiful specimen, preserved like an Egyptian pharoah for eternity... or at least until someone dissects it. Finally, the coup de grace, a bucket of dead things awaiting the scalpel... worm, perch, crayfish, rat, fetal pig, and who knows what else. Suggests a whole new set of verses for "The Twelve Days of Christmas." (As an aside, we ordered the bucket o' specimens from the Edmund Scientific catalog and anxiously awaited their arrival. When the order didn't arrive, we called the Edmund company, and they confirmed that the order had been shipped and delivered. The UPS man apparently just left them on the front porc