Get the hankie

Awww, this made me sniffle.

Click on this link: Photographer Groans When This Mom Walks In Just Before Closing, Then He Notices Her Daughter.

Get your hankie!

Spectacular rendition of "Hallellujah"

I've always loved Leonard Cohen's song “Hallelujah.” I first heard it sung by the group Il Divo -- a spectacular performance -- and various renditions have been floating around for years.

Well here's a little 10-year-old autistic girl named Kaylee Rodgers who absolutely floored me with her performance.



This will send chills down your spine, guaranteed. As one viewer noted, "Grown man just finished a box of Kleenex. ... Whew! Thank you for touching a hardened heart, now I remember who I once was."

Merry Christmas to all.

Large families ROCK

We have some friends with six children ranging in age from nine months to 14 years. A couple of weeks ago, we had them over for dinner.

Whenever we invite them, we make sure to pull downstairs all the toys we feel would be used -- train tracks, Lincoln logs, Hotwheel cars, some stuffed animals, Polly Pockets, blocks... (We left the box of Legos upstairs since the baby is still in the stage of putting things in his mouth.)

Then when the kids arrive, things explode all over the floor. It's a chaos of toys. It's loads of fun.

Older Daughter, as our nanny-in-training, has a special touch with these kids.

I love having the house full of young children again. There's something so vital and alive about a house full of kids.

In the case of this particular family, Don and the father get along like a house on fire, and the mother and I are extremely good friends. While dinner can never be "sit down" (too many interruptions from excited young kids more interested in playing than eating), the children are so well-behaved that meltdowns or temper tantrums don't happen. (At least, when visiting us. I'm sure they occasionally happen at their home.)

And there's something special and wonderful about large families. We live in an area where large families are very common -- I know quite a few with ten, eleven, or twelve children. Almost invariably, such families are close-knit, beautifully behaved, delightful to have visit, and full of love, joy, and activity. Since space if limited, kids learn to share rooms, toys, and time with siblings, which create close-knit bonds. It's a wonderful thing to see.

Don and I are at the age where our girls will soon be leaving home. When they get married and grandchildren begin arriving, there's no guarantee we'll be in close proximity. Therefore we'll enjoy our time with children when and where we can.

Bummer children

Recently I went to visit my friend Enola Gay. It was evening and her youngest son, Master Calvin, had sacked out in her arms, safe and secure.

We started talking about a horrific case of child abuse that recently came to light in a nearby city. It seems identical twin girls, two years old, were found living in conditions of such squalor and abuse that an investigating police officer vomited from the smell. They were naked and covered with feces and scabs. The girls lived with their (cough) “mother” and (cough) “grandmother.” The toddlers were so identical that the grandmother could only tell them apart by their injuries. “They [the mother and grandmother] didn't seem to think that it wasn't that unusual, they weren't that alarmed by it,” said one of the responding officers.

Let me revert for a moment to a livestock analogy. For those familiar with sheep (and we’ve never raised sheep so I cannot speak from personal experience), apparently it is not uncommon for a mother sheep to reject her lamb, either unable or unwilling to nurse and care for her own offspring. These “bummer lambs,” as they’re called, must be bottle-raised. Although it’s a lot of hard work for the people doing the bottle-raising, the lambs grow up just fine.

Until they have lambs of their own. Apparently many bummer lambs grow up to be lousy mothers. Apparently lambs must have mothering techniques demonstrated to them before they can successfully nurture their own lambs. Apparently a sheep’s mothering instinct is so fragile that if for whatever reason a lamb’s upbringing is interrupted, a cycle of bummer lambs can result.

This doesn’t happen all the time, of course. Some bummer lambs grow up to become fine mothers. But the incidence of bummer lambs rejecting their own offspring is much higher than with sheep-raised lambs.

Enola is the one who told me about this, and she’s the one who drew the brilliant parallels to human mothering skills as well.

We discussed whether the greater increase in “bummer children” – children of divorced or single-parent homes, children of career women, children who have been raised in daycare, preschool, and public schools – is leading toward greater incidences of child neglect and child abuse. It’s as if the mothering instinct in some women is so fragile that any interruption results in abuse and neglect of their children. And so a cycle begins and continues.

It’s pretty obvious that the (cough) mother and grandmother of these two-year-old twins do not have the faintest idea how to mother. The mothering instinct was either squelched early or never existed at all. Do you think these little twin girls were ever nursed at their mother’s breast? Held by a loving father and waltzed around the room? Rocked and sang to by their grandmother?

Don playing with Younger Daughter

 Of course not. These poor kids are clearly “bummer children” – the neglected and abandoned offspring of a “bummer mother” who undoubtedly never learned a bit about mother skills from her own mother. I wonder how many generations have passed since a real mom was on the scene? Or a real dad? And will these poor orphaned girls become bummer mothers when they reach adulthood, or were they rescued in time? What a pitiful – as in, full of pity – scenario.

Which does NOT excuse what these creatures did to those children.

Enola pointed out how Scripture frequently refers to us as sheep and lambs. And, like sheep, we can sometimes be really, really stupid. Too many women have rejected the highest calling a woman can have, her God-given talent to mother. Too many mothers create bummer lambs because they cannot or will not mother their own children.

Older Daughter with her "lambs" cozily tucked in for a nap.

Modern feminism as well as the pressures of modern life (heavy taxation, high mortgages, unemployment, etc.) have combined to eject countless millions of women from the home and into the workplace. Yes, I’m well aware that it is often unavoidable, so I will never roundly condemn a woman who must work. But somewhere along the lines we have rejected the notion that women should be stewards of the home. It is no longer an honorable profession, but instead has become a profession to sneer at, a profession to escape from.

But mothers – real mothers – know better. Do you realize just how much teaching takes place in the home? And just how much of that learning is lost if no one is home to teach it?

The obvious beneficiaries of this education are girls. They learn to cultivate their natural-born instinct to nurture. Under the tender guidance of their own mother, they learn the critical skills to raise children with love and discipline.

Less obvious but just as critical is the benefit a nurturing stay-at-home mother brings to boys. Boys learn what a mother should be. They learn how to treat girls. And when these boys grow into men, ideally they strive to marry a woman something like their own mother, a woman who will make a balanced life partner and thus pass the nurturing instinct on to future children. And so the healthy cycle continues.

But that cycle can be broken in countless ways. In the past, family cohesion was frequently broken by deaths. Tragically, today that cohesion is more often broken by divorce or worse, unmarried mothers. Too often these women are forced (or prefer to) work outside the home, leaving their children to grow up in institutionalized day care… where mothering does not exist. (Mothering does not exist in daycare because, almost by definition, it cannot.)

All too often, bummer children often grow up to become bummer parents. After all, they never had a role model to cultivate their mothering and fathering skills. They never had anyone there to tenderly kiss the boo-boos, anyone to teach them how to bake cookies, anyone to show what a joy it is when Father comes home after a hard day’s work and rejoins the family for the evening.

The saddest part of these neglected and abused twin girls is that we have no way of knowing – until they’re adults – how much of their early “bumming” will stick.

I pray a solid, stable, intact family adopts these toddlers and teaches them how to nurture their innate mothering instincts, so when the time comes for them to marry and become mothers themselves, they won’t reject their own lambs.

Don reading to the girls.

As I post this, my husband is reading out loud to the girls, as he does every evening for half an hour or so.  He has done this since they were old enough to walk.  Both girls are superb and advanced readers, but they love listening to their father read out loud.  He has read to them many books of classic literature.  But more important, he - and I - are insuring that our girls will never become bummer children.

Seriously creepy

Preschoolers. They're outfitting preschoolers with tracking devices in Contra Costa County (CA).

This is seriously creepy.

Sweet treats

We had a potluck dinner with some friends recently, and the main dish was a South African concoction called Bobitijie. It's served over rice. It may not look impressive but I can assure you it was so delicious I asked for the recipe.



Bobitijie
2 pounds of ground meat
2 small onions
Brown them up.

Add to taste:
Curry / garlic powder / cumin / salt / pepper

Add to meat to taste:
3/4 cup raisins
half of smallish jar of Apricot Jam (sweeter) or Chutney (more sour)

In small bowl mix:
3 tablespoons of vinegar
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon tumeric
1/2 cup of water

Mix ingredients, then add two slices of bread broken into tiny pieces (to soak up juices). Add whole mixture to meat and mix it up. Place in 11x13 pan.

In another bowl:
Beat three eggs
Add 1 cup of milk
Beat together and pour over the meat mixture in the pan. Bake in oven at 350* for 25-30 minutes.

After dinner the oldest daughter of the host family (who keeps bees) brought in some honeycomb, dripping with sweet fresh honey.



The kids (twelve in all) devoured it in minutes. And no, the didn't swallow the honeycomb once they sucked and chewed the honey out - they spit the wax out. Yum!


Not to be left out, during the summer watermelon rinds are a favorite treat for the chickens.

Lord, save us from Busybodies

Here’s a little story for you.

When Younger Daughter was a baby of five months old, a sparkling bright October day led us into town to a large grocery store. I snuggled Younger Daughter (attired in nothing but a diaper) into my trusty sling, draped a jacket across both of us, and we skipped across the parking lot toward the store. We were both in a good mood, laughing and giggling at the snappy air and pretty sunshine.

That is, until I stepped into the store. Immediately I was accosted by an outraged woman. “How dare you take that baby out naked in this weather!” she snarled.

Taken aback, I looked at Younger Daughter. Her eyes were bright, the cotton sling was tucked over her bare shoulders, she was warm against her mommy’s body, and she was laughing out loud. “She’s perfectly warm,” I assured the woman. “She’s laughing and happy. See?”

Not satisfied, the woman proceeded to absolutely lambaste me for my poor mothering skills, for my unthinking cruelty to take a baby out unclothed on such a cold day (it was 60F degrees), and quite literally threatened to call Child Protective Services over the neglect and abuse of my poor helpless baby.

I shook my head, my good mood gone, and turned my back toward the woman as I walked into the store. The woman actually followed me for a few feet, spewing verbal filth at the unpardonable sin of not dressing my baby in a down parka for the polar expedition of walking fifty feet across a parking lot in October.

She finally left me alone. I did my shopping, but before I stepped foot outside the store I confess I looked carefully around the parking lot to see if the harridan was lurking in a corner, waiting to take my license plate number and report me to the police.

That woman, I later realized, was a BUSYBODY. It was an unpleasant experience and left me shaken.

Today my neighbor Enola Gay also experienced another BUSYBODY. You can read about it here.