Happy Christmas

Growth

Slate: Childhood Photos Recreated Decades Later

Wilma Hurskainen

A Cheese Course

In prehistoric times, when almost every adult was lactose-intolerant, the invention of cheese-making offered herders a way to turn fresh whole cow's milk into a food that they could consume without getting ill…In fact, evolutionary biologists at University College London have suggested that a genetic mutation to better tolerate lactose first originated in central Europe about the time this prehistoric cheese-making began. The inherited ability to digest cow's milk more easily is widespread today among people of European ancestry.

Robert Lee Hotz | "New Findings Point to Origins of Cheese-Making" | online.wsj.com

Bunk Bed

Imogen to Me:

"I want a bunk bed so that I can sleep on the top and you can sleep on the bottom."

A New Day

When I told Imogen it was bedtime last night she said, "But I'm not even tired a inch! I'm ready for a new day. I'm ready to go to a fair or something."

The Silver-White

Big Feelings

‘D’ is for Divorce: Sesame Street Tackles Another Touchy Topic

Richard Termine

I'm Dreaming

All Is Bright

The Miracle

Over The Cliff

Poor Women and Children Faced With Fiscal Threat

Diaperman

Recycle

I just read a post from May of 2008 when Imogen was almost two. She was going to throw away a clean diaper. I asked her not to and she replied "Recycle?"

Independent Thinker

"Imogen  is our Independent Thinker for the 2012-2013 first trimester. Imogen is fun to have in class and we enjoy her "thinking out loud." She can explain her abstract ideas in a way that is interesting and exciting. Because Imogen is eager to share her gift with all students in the class, she has many friends. If you ask Imogen how she arrived at an answer, she will give you details and descriptions that you had never thought of. We look to Imogen to be our role model for the Independent Thinker."

A Moveable Feast

Imogen says she's half Paris.

(She's half British.)

Thanksgiving

The Kids' Table

The Same Boat

Poverty Isn't Just a Single-Parents' Problem

A House By The Sea

Don't Patch Anything

Advice to Myself

by Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator

and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.

Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.

Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.

Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.

Don't even sew on a button.

Let the wind have its way, then the earth

that invades as dust and then the dead

foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.

Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.

Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles

or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry

who uses whose toothbrush or if anything

matches, at all.

Except one word to another. Or a thought.

Pursue the authentic—decide first

what is authentic,

then go after it with all your heart.

Your heart, that place

you don't even think of cleaning out.

That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth

or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner

again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,

or weep over anything at all that breaks.

Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons

in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life

and talk to the dead

who drift in through the screened windows, who collect

patiently on the tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything

except what destroys

the insulation between yourself and your experience

or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters

this ruse you call necessity.

"Advice to Myself" by Louise Erdrich from Original Fire. © Harper Collins Publishers, 2003.
From The Writer's Almanac

A Little Sparkle

Who You Are

How Shining You Are

I've started telling my daughters I'm beautiful
(A Must Read)

That Wild Season

No Home But You

"Amy"

Come As You Are

Imogen¾as "a girl dressed in pink"¾
prepares to take a whack at a pumpkin full of treats.

Uncommon

Have To Look

Banksy

In Real Life

A childhood is made up

of only 940 Saturdays.

-Jezebel

The Grandmother Theory

The Grandmother Hypothesis says

our mothers' mothers are why we live so long.

-The Atlantic

Good Morning Angels

Charlie's Angels Trading Cards
My sister and I had these.

A Wave Of Scorn

Tracing the Link Between Single Moms and Gun Violence -Time

Fill Yourself Up

The Jealous Curator on "The Art of Balance" interviews

busy mother and collage artist Hollie Chastain.

Baby Lapin

Lapin & Me Baby Rabbit Nightlight via Il Mondo di Ingrid

Anything For You

Cauldron Bubble

Princess Past

DesignSponge.com

Babynaming

"Uma Thurman had a baby and named it Rosalind Arusha Arkadina Altalune Florence Thurman-Busson. Here's hoping it never falls in a well."

-Jezebel.com

Three Winters

Anonymous Was A Woman

Irish Politician To Swap Lives With Single Mother For A Week

Like an episode of “Wife Swap” with feminist underpinnings and adorable accents,  an Irish politician plans to swap lives for a week with a single mother of three.

Senator John Gilroy from County Cork in Ireland will live trade lives with Andrea Gagley, an activist with Single Parents Acting For The Rights Of Kids. Gagley works a part-time job and takes a college course while raising her three sons on her own. She issued the challenge to politicians on the Facebook page for Ireland’s Labour Party and Gilroy, a married father of two, took her up on it.  He will live on her salary for a week while working at her part-time job and collecting her Lone Parent Allowance and Child Benefit Allowance (which I assume are Irish versions of welfare).  ”He is in for a very harsh landing. He may work long hours but he has back-up at home to facilitate that, whereas I have to do everything myself,” Gagley said. The Irish Herald reports that several production companies are seeking to make a documentary about Gilroy and Gagley’s “life swap."

On one hand I cheer for social experiments like this because single parents, but especially single mothers, get shat on in society. (Particularly I am referring to American society; I don’t know how Irish society treats its single moms.) People seem to think that stigmatizing single moms will punish them or scare young women from becoming single moms … as if single parenthood is a lifestyle choice every single person who goes into it has planned in advance. And yes, it’s single moms who bear the brunt of the single-parent stigma, not the absentee or abusive dads who are not in the picture.  I’m thinking, for example, RickSantorum’s helpful suggestion that single mothers needed, quote, a swift “kick in the butt.” That’ll show ‘em!

Of course, it’s a certain subset of single moms in particular that get shat on: low-income single moms and single moms of color are seen as problems in society, but being a financially well-off  woman who adopts or has her own kid(s) on her own can be seen as strong and independent, even noble. Instead we should be focusing on creating scenarios that help all women create families when it is financially prudent for them to do so through comprehensive sex education, access to contraception and abortion services.

Jessica Wakeman | The Frisky

Solid Gold

Two women will host the Golden Globe awards
and one of them is a newly single mother.
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler

Trick Or Treat

A Farmer's Friend

2012 Clallam County Farm Tour

Lazy J

Freedom Farm

Dungeness Valley Creamery

Kick It Up

I tried to snap a photo of Imogen swinging at the Dream Playground.

She accidentally kicked my phone and sent it flying.

This is the result.