Three years ago, today, I was sitting on the patio at my Dad's house enjoying a nice, hot, beautiful, Michigan vacation with family, when my phone rang. It was my husband, of course I answered it. On the other end, there was a lot of noise and my husband frantically said, "What do you want me to save?" I was completely confused. No "Hello" or greeting, just a question. I walked away from my family and went to my room. "What? What are you talking about?" I replied, even more confused but now with a gut sinking feeling in my stomach. "We're getting 10 feet of water. It's going to flood. We have three days to get everything out before the water gets here. What do you want me to save?" I was in shock. Wouldn't you be? I mean for months we'd been watching the river in the town rise, and to have a little flooding after a long, record breaking winter made some sense, but 10 feet of water? In our house? "Everything.......

You can I can probably think of some pretty good insulting names that start with the letter B. But in the minds of children, those words don't exist, and even more importantly, their B word is MORE of an insult than the ones adults choose to use. How could this word exist in their language and view of the world? Where do they hear it and why is it so debilitating? What exactly is this word that brings children age two to eight to tears when they are called it? Baby. I remember a few months ago when our oldest son was called "baby" by some of his classmates. He was angry, upset and didn't know how to respond except to start calling them a baby back. His teacher stepped in and got him to calm down and insisted he wasn't a baby at all. Later that day, we discussed the word and what it meant to be an actual baby, and why someone might call you that as something mean. Hank insisted he wasn't acting like a baby when he was called that word, and he vowed to ...

The discussion on whether to have a child or not is one thing. The decision to expand that family is another. Eric and I always  knew we wanted to have children, in fact, when we were teenagers, Eric knew I wanted to be a mom more than anything when I grew up. I was more eager to start that family than he was, but we agreed that the timing was right for us after a little while and so we started our family and got Henrik. I always wanted my children close, probably because my sisters and I are close in age and I liked that dynamic. But, I also wanted to get it over with too, there's a lot of physical demand that happens to a woman when she has a child, and I thought, if I had them right in a row it would be better in the long run (the jury is still out on that one). So, when Henrik turned one, we decided to have another child. There was never any doubt about having Theodor. Once we had one kid, we knew we wanted another for playmate reasons, shared childhood experiences, shari...

* Your birthday was May 2nd, I'm just now getting to posting it. Please forgive me, son.  Dear Henrik,  Today is your fourth birthday. I actually cannot believe that four years ago today, you made me a mother. I wanted nothing more in life than that, and, on a cold, snowy day in North Dakota, that wish came true. In the first seconds of your life we knew you were sensible, we knew you were patient, we knew you were going to be an easy baby. We didn't know that you'd carry those traits with you these past four years. May 2, 2010 To this day, you are cautious but curious, inquisitive but reserved, sensible but sneaky, talented but humble, smart but modest, and polite but sassy. You absolutely amaze me every day, from your reasonable requests to smart-ass comments, to the sheer talent you have in every thing you do, to the sweet, heart melting secrets and always strong, genuine hugs. September 2013 You son, can do anything you want to do in life. You wer...