JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

I didn’t think of this one
One reason to teach your children sign language via Gentle Breezes

glimpse inside another world
The Children of HAN in Somaliland

what else did girls think of?
Through Don Boudreaux I learned about a book I want to read, Girls Think of Everything and Margaret Knight, the mother of the grocery bag.

hip-Daddies dig big wheels
Brian Chin pointed to a Wall Street Journal article detailing men’s obsession with strollers:the hip-Daddy market.

how a children’s book can change you
Jeff Sandquist explained how the Berenstain bears have affected him:Old Hat New Hat has become a crede for our family.

Life with Stuart Little’s writer
The week Abigail and I were reading Stuart Little, The New Yorker published Andy, a view of E.B. White from his stepson’s perspective [first via Rebecca Blood]. It was fun to be able to share details of the author’s life with my daughter, such as the fact that he liked to go ice-skating. Betsy Devine thought that the piece suffered from TMI (too much information) regarding E.B. White’s medical conditions, but I felt it offered insight into who he was. I’d never read Stuart Little, and the book is a bit odd. I suspect it might not be accepted by mainstream children’s publishers today. For example, Stuart is born into a human family, as a two-inch mouse, no explanation given (or needed?). (I think the recent movie version had Stuart adopted from an orphanage instead). Reading E.B. White’s works (Charlotte’s Web last summer) and learning a little of his personal life painted a picture of a quirky (to borrow from another post’s of Betsy’s), courageous and sensitive artist.

I should have paid more attention to those baby smells

From Stuart Little:

(Stuart is teaching school): “Henry Rackmeyer, you tell us what is important.”

“A shaft of sunlight at the end of a dark afternoon, a note in music, and the way the back of a baby’s neck smells if its mother keeps it tidy,” answered Henry.

From U2’s Miracle Drug

Freedom has a scent
Like the top of a newborn baby’s head

Speaking of newborns…

Scott Koon and his wife started a genetic experiment (to use his words):The experiment is about 6-7 weeks along now and looks to come to fruition sometime in late Sept/early Oct.

Lenn Pryor and his wife are preparing for their baby.

I can’t wait to hear Jenny and Paul’s news sometime soon, and I’m not the only one…

…these are the moments…

Excerpt from Mitch Ratcliffe’s post on Life is fractal happiness among the eddies of experience referring to pieces Lenn and I had each written earlier in the week

…- the look in my son’s eye when he learns something or when my daughter tells me she wants to be like me, when my wife tells me she loves me or a friend shakes my hand and looks me in the eye, these are the moments when the patterns of life begin to appear out of the fragments of memory and friendships and loves past and passing.