Ordinary Time

It's the big day of birthdays here, with B. hitting the milestone birthday of 21! I'm still not sure how that happened. Surely yesterday the (not so) little girls were just babies and B. was a little boy. Like this... And now the little girls look like this... And B. looks like this. (That's G., if you were wondering.) I love all three of you and also love the special connection these birthday sharers have for each other. It is sweet to watch.  G.... You are so sweet and loving. You always watch out for your sister and take care of her, plus any stray panda bears that happen to be around. You are bright and full of interesting ideas. L... L., you keep us on our toes. I love your imagination and the way you throw yourself so fully into everything you do. My life is so much richer with you in it. B... Oh, my darling son. I love you and am so proud of you. (I hope I tell you that enough.) You are a smart, kind, and caring man. Plus, you have a te...

Life is always interesting around here. In fact, some of it I just couldn't make up. For instance, when your daughter announces upon arriving home from work, "Ahhh! There was a duck in our yard and a rabbit jumped out of the apple tree at me!" I'm not sure what one replies to that, except that everyone will be keeping a very close eye on the front yard to see the rare tree-climbing rabbit. This thrills L. as you can imagine. Rabbits falling from the sky near her is pretty much her fantasy. This is the same daughter who is life guarding for the summer. It's always exciting when she arrives home, even without falling rabbits, because of the host of stories she has about her day at the pool. Let's just say, I won't ever view public pools with the same eyes ever again. We will probably be filling up our small pool this afternoon. Not only is the weather cooperating, but it will help to rinse off the flour-covered children. It all happened because I too...

For over ten years we have been collecting postcards. It started when I participated in a postcard exchange with a group of people from around the country. We each sent the group a postcard from our state. It was a lot of fun and everyone eagerly anticipated the arrival of "real" mail and then taping the postcard on our large map to see where the state was from which the card was sent. Since then, we have slowly added to our collection. I try to pickup postcards from where ever we've been and friends and family will sometimes send or bring us postcards as well. I realized I had never shared this with you when our most recent acquisitions arrived recently... one sent from Denmark and two which came from Japan (and were attached to a book... a double gift). I keep them all (alphabetized) on a metal ring and leave them about for people to look at, which they do. I've been recently thinking that there must be some sort of fun geography game I could come up with that w...

I've now started and not finished three blog posts. I'm feeling crabby and unsettled and am prone to bursting into tears over silly little things. The little girls and I have been doing quite a bit of therapeutic coloring together (because when I'm unsettled, they are as well), that is, when I'm not trolling shelter sites and Craig's List for cute fuzzy animals that need homes. I'm not sure where "Desire to acquire cute pets" falls in the stages of grief, but I really think it should be added somewhere. If you are looking for actual content, you'll have to make due with the article that just published: 7 Ways to Help Smooth the Transition from Orphanage to Home

L. - Mommy, Leonardo da Vinci liked to paint. I like to paint. I'm just like Leonardo da Vinci! And so she painted.

"The father's experience of recognizing how his own window of tolerance had narrowed due to financial stress, and how it had impacted his boys through their resonance circuits, helped him make a conscious decision about reengaging in playful activities with his family." from The Interpersonal Neurobiology of Play: Brain-Building Interventions for Emotional Well-Being by Theresa A. Kestly (p. 182). I love this book so much. I finished it a couple of days ago and about half the book has pencil underlines helping me to find key points. It is just so good. Probably my excitement about it stems as much from the information as from it providing real neurological science to explain some of my pet theories. I love that, too. Anyway, back to the first quote. Any parent can tell you that an upset and stressed parent will guarantee upset and stressed children. It turns out there is scientific basis for the phrase, "When Mama ain't happy, nobody's happy." We ha...

My darling son (name withheld to protect the not-so-innocent) has been dutifully counting down for me the days I had left being young. In his mind, everyone under 50 is young and everyone 50 and over is old. By this reasoning, today is my very first day of being old. Who knew old feels very much the same as young? We didn't plan it on purpose, but it worked out nicely that we went down to the Museum of Science and Industry with friends to see the Lego exhibit and have one last field trip together . While we were waiting, the P. Family mom helpfully(?) pointed out that this marked the end of 18 years of field trips together. Because that is just too sad to think about on my birthday, I'm going to move on. The Lego exhibit was fun, with lots and lots of chances to build things which the masses seemed to enjoy. I spent the morning wandering around the exhibit, looking at the historical buildings done in Lego, and counting to nine repeatedly to make sure I knew where everyone w...