Today is my husband's forty-first birthday. That sounds really old to him, and I'm having more than a little trouble coming up with sympathetic clucks to go along with his deep-felt anxieties over heading toward fifty ... yes, that's where he's going with this already ... and watching the last dregs of youth slide away into the ever-diminishing sunset.

He was twenty-six when we met, and he won't be as old as I was then until next year, so whining around the fringes of forty-one somehow rhyming with ancient doesn't work for me.

At forty-one I donned a backpack... more

I have shamelessly used the total cuteness of kids and dogs before for Love Thursday, but that most certainly will not preclude me trotting out both again when a new litter makes an appearance ... and it has.

Dinah gave birth without a fuss the night before last to eight adorable Rottweiler miniatures that, for the moment, look more like tiny baby seals ... and thank heaven she did!

The kids have been going bananas waiting the sixty-three days of canine gestation,... more

I am well aware of the fact that many adopted children have problems with sleeping. Early horrors may have some too fearful of the vulnerability of the sleep state to let go of conscious control and have too highly developed a defensive posture to drift off.

Some are simply always wired to the max through whatever version of alphabet soup describes the damage done to them, and have to run until they drop, often taking everyone in the household along with them for both the run and the drop.

Kids that spent too many nights falling asleep hungry can again and... more

It would not be a stretch for any child of mine to be a nature lover. My environmental credentials go back a long way, and taking every opportunity presented to give a lesson on the importance of the natural world usually has me expounding on some aspect of ecology or another many times in any given week.

These days, it's Sam that gets the brunt of my green-ness, and because conversations about biology, botany, geology and marine science ... amongst others ... have been happening with and around him since infancy, he's already well educated and deeply appreciative of... more

As I mentioned in my blog about our trip to Bird Island, we have been there before.

Sam was ten-months-old at the time of our first trip, and managed to cut a couple of teeth and take his first steps over that weekend. The images of a chubby little guy being toted on Dad's back are our burned into our memories of the islands, and it seemed almost strange to be back in a place so little changed with a kid that had so much ... changed, that is.

Although I can... more

After close to two years of writing these blogs, of being up to the third wrinkle above my left eye in adoption-related issues on a daily basis in efforts to keep myself and you informed, I find my patience wearing thin and my mood degenerating into a far less sunny disposition than would be healthy.

Okay, I've never been the Suzy Sunshine type, being far too irascible by nature to constantly look on the bright side ... the Monty Python version of the tune with that theme is more my speed ... and a tendency to over-think usually nips any overly-optimistic thought-blooms... more

Mark and I celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary this month, which followed the 14th anniversary of our meeting by about five weeks. Although I can recall both days as if they happened only a month or so ago, I am well aware that there's been no shortage of water under this old bridge of mine since those stirringly romantic moments changed my life for the better and forever.

Falling in love was an easy, natural process for us, and it truly seemed the only possible and reasonable thing to do at the time. From the first minute we shared company there was a familiar... more

Continued from the previous post.

I am well aware that much of the angst over the business of sending my youngest child off to preschool is 100% my fault and my doing. My dithering over the rightness or wrongness, the timing, the implications and consequences of sending my last baby off into the world, setting her tiny feet on a path that will lead her away from childhood, from innocence ... from me ... has rubbed off on all of us. Although Sam is now, at not quite five,... more

After all the drama and trauma I've shared over the past close-to-two-years of blogging here concerning my kids and school, I decided to hold out on y'all in the latest round of tears and turmoil.

With the crushing defeats I've suffered at the hands of my tiny and delicate little flower of a Cj over repeated attempts to interest her in a world wider than our veranda and populated with ever-so-interesting characters of her approximate shape and size, I've been reticent to blah, blah, blog on about another attempt, at least at the outset.

There's no... more

One of the wonders of life on a tropical island just south of the Equator ... and by 'wonder' I mean, 'I wonder why I have to put up with this every day' ... is a sporadic Internet connection.

Lately, it's been especially bad, and it's been up and down more often than a toddler's training pants for the past couple of weeks with no rhyme or reason given ... and a rhyme would be a nice touch when the phone calls to Botched Internet Inc. become a tedious kvetch. Often, part of the no rhyme/reason bit has to do with those three famous links to success... more