Ladies and Gentlemen!

Look at nothing in my hat.

Now, I'm going to lay an egg.

Abadabba.

Ta da!

Thank you ... thank you very much.

Guess what we did yesterday! While I should have been writing interesting blog posts on important topics, we were on a mission ... a mission to save baby sea turtles.

My friend, Julie, phoned in the early afternoon to say that the sea turtle nest in her garden was seeing some action. (She'd relocated the nest a couple of months ago, after realizing the mother had laid eggs too close to the waterline.) She found one baby in her kitchen the night before, obviously disoriented by the house lights and missing the ocean... more

Continued from here ...

Because I live on the other side of the world, I've missed far too much in the lives my of brother's children ... all my brothers' children, actually, since I have three of them -- brothers, that is ... but suddenly I find myself in a position to play catch-up, at least with one niece. We're now pen pals! Rebecca was eight in October, but reads, writes and thinks like kids much, much older.... more

I'm not the only older parent in my family.

Yes, I am the oldest older parent (not that we need to point that out all that often, thank you very much), and the only adoptive older parent, but geezers with kids are not rare buds on my family tree. Forty-ish with babies has happened often enough ... even my dad fit the category, being thirty-seven when my youngest brother was born ... and if we thought about it long enough to take a for-or-against stance, I'd say we're all pretty well in favor.

One of my brothers just turned fifty-four... more

So, today was the day. My boy is now a school kid.

He woke up so ready for it all, happy to get dressed and sport his brand new backpack, full of enthusiasm and chatty all the way down in the car. Mark took the day off, and that made the whole event a bit more special. The crowd gathered outside the creche (the word used for this kindergarten-like building to the side of the school) was intimidating for all of us, and we were relieved when we were invited inside the building.

Apparently, sending notices with instructions doesn't work well here, so almost an hour was spent with the head teacher laying down the ground rules ... for the parents ... which had kids and grownups... more

We have guests! Yes, my dear friends from California have arrived for a visit on their way ... okay, way out of their way, but we're ignoring that ... to a six-month working holiday in Italy. Jane and I have been friends for 20 years or so, and because we're fair about such things, over the years we have shared our toys with her husband, Lanny, and let him play ... sometimes.

Although Jane and I met when she was a zoo person, she's been a teacher of second graders since shortly after I left the States, and this is... more

In the news, no little controversy over some pretty drastic measures taken to insure that a little girl won't get big. As shocking as this may sound, a compassionate and informed look at the circumstances builds understanding, and must cause any parent to ask what they would do if the child was theirs.

The child at the heart of all this is Ashley, now nine years old. Normal at birth, at three months of age she stopped developing. Diagnosed... more

Without any intentional parental massaging of inclinations toward sexual stereotypes, my kids seem to naturally fall on either side of the divide that separates boyness from girlness, and enthusiastically so.

It's certainly not as clear cut as sugar and spice verses snips and snails, but there are differences that run deep as veins of precious ore through the substratum that makes them them and have little to do with the gap between their ages.

One of these fundamental distinctions is Cj's fascination with... more

Contrary to my own predictions, I'm ready for Christmas ... or as ready as I'm going to be. The house is fru-frued, the tree is up, the gifts are wrapped, the turkeys are thawing (2 of them because they're so small ... Cornish game turkeys, or something, are all that made it to the island this year), the mulling spices are at hand, as is the wine. Our tradition has it that we do an open house Christmas Eve. Even in 85+ degree heat, we'll be toasting the season with hot, mulled wine and snacky foods will be in abundance.... more

You know how you'd do anything to spare your children pain? Every bump and bruise they get resonates in our very bones. If it weren't for having to put a brave face on for the child's sake, wouldn't many of us bawl our eyes out at the sight of even simple injuries ... our darlings bleeding from split lips, grazed knees and imbedded splinters? If we could eliminate the possibility of pain for our kids, would we?

An article in the latest issue of the journal ... more