We were looking for a good example to draw from, and I pulled out the huge tome about Paintings in the Louvre Museum that DH and I lugged home all the way from Paris. We leafed through and as the book starts with art from the Middle Ages, the predominant image was of Jesus on …
Category Archives: emotional development
Sick: She Wasn’t Faking It
We’re all sick. Amie came down with a cold on Friday. She often has a bit of a runny/sneezy nose in the mornings, and Friday morning was no different, except that she didn’t want to go to school. She loves her preschool, but only gets “fully committed” when she is actually there, or after she …
Why the incessant WHY? Also, why (or how?) WHY? is not the same as HOW?
Amie started asking “Why?” a couple of weeks ago and hasn’t stopped. Some of her why-s are genuine questions, asked out of curiosity, but many (more, I suspect) are not. It’s fascinating and annoying and often a challenge. I find myself in conversations like these: Amie, please don’t make that mess. Why? Why do you …
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Dinosaurs are Extinct: Death, Mourning and Our Children
I’m reading an interesting book called Talking with Children about loss, written by “Good Grief” counselor Maria Trozzi and co-authored by Kathy Massimini. I’m always picking up books like those. I read Hope Edelman’s Motherless Daughters, for instance, when I was pregnant, and got many comments, mostly in the vein of “how can you read …
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Real and Fake
Amie has been having nightmares about a dinosaur coming into the bedroom at night. It has spurred us to investigate whether she understands the difference between what is real and what is not, or “fake”. It is a good idea – we agree with several child developmental specialists – to make sure she does understand. …
Amie Plays the Memory Game
Turns out Baba is just as much a softie as I am. When we went to bed after yesterday’s ordeal, I found Amie had finally fallen asleep in her own little bed. We lay there on our big bed for a minute or two, then I whispered: “I wish she were here with us…” He …
Live Blogging: Amie wants Mama
I’m sitting in the living room, it’s 9:30 pm. And I am listening to Amie screaming that she wants Mama to lie next to her and that she wants to go see Mama. DH has been ill for a week so he has been sleeping in the guest room/study and has also not been putting …
“In my oooooown bed!”
I haven’t slept two nights in a row now. It’s like back in the newborn days, with one difference: Amie sleeps. But I don’t. What’s going on? For over two years now we have been cosleepers (“sharers of the family bed”). Many time I have thought of writing a co-sleeping entry or article about how …
Child Belonging
Thoreau’s gift to me Walking around “Walrus Pond” the other day, I had that great feeling of belonging. I haven’t gone there often (this was my third or fourth visit in the ten years that I live here), and perhaps that is why it is each time so special. I’ve read Thoreau, of course, lots of …
2 Year-Old Paintings
As you can see, Amie has been painting – you can also see her in action in my previous post.  And as promised, here is some of her artwork (my favorites): I apologize for the terrible photographs. I’ve been waiting for a clear day to take pictures of them without a flash (they’re on large format, so …