Look Up

10 May

Yesterday while I was washing the dishes I felt a tug on my jeans. I looked down and there was my toddler boy smiling up.

But he wasn’t smiling at me. He was smiling past me. His eyes were alive with delight as he looked through the kitchen window.

I stopped the water and crouched down at his level, almost sitting on the floor, to see what he saw through the window.

It was blue sky. He was smiling at the beautiful blue sky.

It reminded me of another little boy who used to look up and smile at nothing in particular … his big brother.

 

When DJ was a baby he was happy … but loud.

On Sundays at Mass I would sit in the back of the chapel and physically shrink with every sound that came out of his mouth, even though they were usually sounds of delight. He looked up and around and talked to everyone and to everything in the air above him. DJ looked up at the ceiling of the chapel, happily babbling.

I told our priest and our parish coordinator that I was finding going to Mass with my infant a struggle. I didn’t want to disturb the other parishioners, but I couldn’t find away to keep DJ quiet.

And our priest told me something I’ll never forget. He said, “Maybe he’s singing with the angels. We don’t know what babies see, so young and innocent. Maybe he sees and hears the angels here in the sanctuary celebrating with us. Don’t be so quick to rush him to be quiet. Take a minute and look up with him when he’s making a joyful noise.”

 

I remembered the priest’s words while I was crouched on the kitchen floor with DJ’s brother smiling and looking up at the blue sky.

Maybe he was smiling at angels.

And it made me ache to look up more often.

 

People tell you all the time to look up. Look up from this head down adult life, take a break from the cell phone, from the keyboard, from the broom, from the laundry basket, from the sink and look up to be a part of the moment around you.

People tell you all the time to remember what it’s like to be a child. Don’t forget what it’s like to live looking up at the big world around you. Don’t forget what it’s like to be small and full of awe at the world where everything is at least three feet taller than you.

But don’t forget when you’re looking up, enjoying the moment around you, and remembering what it’s like to be small and full of awe, to include the angels. Include God and take a minute to celebrate. Because surely there are angels celebrating every minute of every day, just like there are children and babies looking up and smiling every minute of every day.

Just look up and smile and celebrate.

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“What’s called (insert any word or phrase here)?”

9 May

 

Seasonal allergies have DJ sneezing and coughing all over the place and taking extra medications to help lessen his symptoms.

For the second day in a row today his teacher greeted me with a warning that he had an especially big boo-boo today. For the second day in a row it was entirely his own fault.

Today I told his teacher that one of the major side effects of his extra allergy medication is “lack of coordination in general.”

 

As we pulled away from preschool DJ asked me, “What’s called ‘coordination in general?’”

“What’s called” is a DJism that means “what does that mean.”

First, I did a mental whoa that DJ had listened to me talking to his teacher. Followed by a reminder to myself to be careful what I say around him.

Then, I replied, “Coordination in general means how your body moves around. When you have to take medicine because of your sneezes it makes your body trip more even though it makes your sneezes better.”

“What’s called ‘to make better?’”

“The medicine makes you less sick.”

“Oh, and what’s called ‘less sick?’”

“The medicine makes you not sneeze and cough so much.”

silence.

“DJ? Did that make sense?”

“I trip more and sneeze less. Cool.”

 

Just another conversation from the intersection of preschoolers and allergies.

{Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester} / Foter

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Entertaining Toddlers on the Cheap

8 May

Alrighty. My friend Carolyn over at Making It Work is co-hosting a link-up about cheap ways to entertain toddlers along with Growing Up Geeky. I’m inspired. I love entertaining my boys for cheap. Although, who walks around saying, “I like to find expensive ways to entertain my small child?” especially when everyone knows that you give a kid an expensive toy and all he wants to do is play with the box?

Anyway.

When oldest, DJ, was little, my mother-in-law taught me the brilliance that is “Soup.” She gets out a spoon, a pan, and an ice cube and instructs the child to make “soup” while she does kitchen chores.

Here’s DJ making soup when he was two (he’s five now).

As you can see in the pictures, the ice cube melts and it makes a little mess, but it’s a very little mess especially when it you get such big smiles and a toddler who stays put for a little bit.

 

Another favorite cheap toy around this house is my old cell phone.

My youngest, Rob, thinks this is his very own phone. He talks to people on it, often. This is especially useful because as many moms can tell you, the minute you want to talk on the phone is the minute toddler want your attention. So, instead, they too can talk on the phone. Also, this phone was free with my cell phone plan and I replaced it with another free phone, so if my math is right, this phone was double free.

Have I mentioned that he loves playing with his phone?

 

My third thought it’s really a specific toy or game, it’s a theory, a toddler playtime version of Pick-The-Hill-You-Want-To-Die-On.

Make sure there’s at least one area of the house that you give your child (and you) permission to be messy, even if that means that the adult stuff in that space is included in the mess.

We have bookcases in almost every room of our home. (Hello from two people who got married after they both earned degrees in English Lit from two different schools.) Some of these bookcases are right next to the boys’ toy storage in the living room.

This area is going to get messy. Toddlers learn to like unstacking a lot soon than they learn to like stacking. I could drive us both crazy by insisting the books stay in place, and I’ve tried it, and driven myself crazy trying to keep it clean.

The alternative is to teach the boys that while this area is theirs and can get messy and everything in it can be touched, in other areas of the house Mommy & Daddy’s books are off-limits (we say “no touch”). There’s been a time when both the boys have tested me on that. But once the testing period ended there’s a lot more peace in the house, for both me and the boys. And over time, they’ve been less curious about the adult stuff and made less of a mess out of it. It’s not forbidden fruit, they’ve touched it, they’ve played with it, and now they’re not curious about it.

 

So those are my thoughts. Thanks to the hosts for hosting this link up! Go check out more tips … I know I am! Just click on the link below to go check out Growing Up Geeky’s site.

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Making Butter With My Dairy Allergic Son

3 May

Note to my readers: This is a repeat of yesterday’s post. Unfortunately I ran into a glitch that makes yesterday’s post unreadable using many social media sites. So I’m republishing in order to correct that. Sorry for the mistake.

Last week I helped my son’s preschool class make butter. Real butter, made from cream, shaken in a jar until it’s more butter than cream.

When I’ve discussed the experience with friends and family since then, I’ve gotten more than one shocked response.

But DJ is allergic to dairy. Aren’t you afraid he’ll have a reaction?

First, before I get into my thoughts, let me acknowledge a couple things:

One: Yes, I’m afraid for DJ. Any time he’s away from me, so like every weekday morning, I wear my cell phone like it’s my heart beating outside of my chest. Because what if he did have a reaction to something and they couldn’t get a hold of me? In those precious seconds when they’re unsure whether to inject him with epinephrine or not, will they be able to reach me in time.

Two: DJ’s lucky. Many children with life-threatening food allergies are contact sensitive to the foods they’re allergic to. DJ’s not overly sensitive to his allergies. We know a little boy that would go into anaphylactic shock if someone opened a jar of peanut butter in the house he’s in. Not the same five foot space, not the same room, the same house. There are a lot of parents out there dealing with worse who don’t get the support they need and deserve. I can eat a peanut butter sandwich sitting next to DJ while he eats his soy bean butter sandwich. He gets a few hives when dairy milk gets on his skin, but they go away without medication.

So, we walk a fine line with DJ between giving him reasonable and unreasonable protection from his allergies.

But to live in fear and to teach DJ to live in fear…

DJ already has to handle bigger burdens than most kids his age. He can’t eat what his peers eat (think about DJ at the next birthday party you attend … DJ’s been to four in the last month). He regularly goes through painful medical treatments to assess his health. He wears a MedicAlert bracelet that visually separates him from his peers. He takes at least two medications a day.

Yet through it all DJ is joyful. He’s elastic. He goes through it all with a smile on his face wide enough to break my heart. Should I strip him of his joy and replace it with fear? Because that’s what will happen if I fall too far on the side of unreasonable protection.

I’ve seen it at the hospital in the eyes of other children. Fear of food and anaphylactic reactions have become their entire life, fears pressed on them by overly-fretful parents who wipe down the outside of juice boxes that just came out of plastic wrapping, that they also wiped down before they opened it.

I’ve imagined it when I read on food allergy forums that parents are calling for a total ban on bake sales at school because it’s not fair to their food allergic child to not get to eat all those treats and it’s not safe for their child to be exposed to all those allergens.

So I waver somewhere in the middle between reasonable and unreasonable, trying to find ways for DJ to participate in every activity available to him while worrying that the accommodations aren’t enough or are too much or won’t prepare him for adult life.

Like making butter with his classmates. Cream in a sealed jar, cleaned after it was sealed is pretty low threat. DJ, on the one hand, learned about how butter is made, without fear. It was a great visual lesson that holds special meaning to DJ because it shows him how one substance he’s allergic to can transform into another substance he’s allergic to. On the other hand, I learned how completely unreasonable and unnecessary my fear of the situation ended up being. I volunteered to be there to help just in case there was a medical issue. I ended up being a help by shaking the jar of cream when all the little arms got tired.

It’s not just a lesson for parents of children with allergies. It’s a lesson for all parents.

How often do we hold our children back? How often do we make their safety bubble smaller than it needs to be? And just as hurtful as the overly permissive parent is the overly strict one, the overly safety-concerned one. It’s a lesson of balance. Holding on while letting go.

We have to give our children space to bloom, even, and especially, in non-optimal environments. We have to teach them that conditions in this life will never be perfect, but there’s always opportunity to bloom.

As DJ’s taught me throughout his life, there’s always room for joy, if we give it space to grow.

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My personal goal for a new season of parenting.

30 Apr

Adding the gym into the daily routine has the boys and I all a little off-kilter.

Like, right now I’d really like to say that Rob is doing this:

But he’s not.

He’s having a really interesting conversation with himself in his crib instead.

And that’s because I let him do this in the car today when we went to pick DJ up from preschool:

Usually he’s a horrible car sleeper. I put on the brakes or DJ says one sentence and he wakes up. So I just let him take what I thought would be a two minute snooze as we waited in line at preschool pick-up. But even when DJ got in the car and started chatting away about owls and friends and whether his uncle likes his birthday card, Rob didn’t move.

And as any parent of a toddler will tell you, they think that nap they took in the car is enough, but it’s not. However, trying to get them to take another nap at home is like getting a toddler to do anything else they don’t want to do.

Here’s the thing. Adding the gym to our morning schedule is packing the mornings tight. Probably a little too tight. We drop DJ off, go to the gym (and Rob to play-care), run errands and then pick DJ up in the space of about four hours. But come mid August DJ will be going to school full day and the tightening we feel right now will loosen. We’ll get to leave the house a little later and that’ll help too.

There’s different seasons in the parenting. I’ve heard this a couple of times, most notably in Kimberly Hahn’s book about being a homemaker, Gifted and Graced. This season is going to be a tight one time wise. Which means something has to give. I won’t be able to get everything done that I’d like to every day. A chore, time to really read the newspaper, spending the morning catching up on a mountain of laundry – every day I’m going to have to give up something.

But the most important thing I’m going to give up is having a hurtful mental attitude about it. It’s so easy as a stay-at-home parent to judge my worth based on the number of things I’ve accomplished every day. It’s so easy to look around the house as I go from one task to another and see all the things that I haven’t gotten done. I go to help DJ brush his teeth and see the full laundry basket waiting to be folded. I make lunch and see the breakfast dishes still in the sink. It’s easy to let that get me down. It’s so easy to withhold approval from myself because of the imperfections in my homemaking.

I’m giving up letting it get me down. I’m giving up being my worst critic.

I think it’ll be even harder to manage and maintain than the morning time crunch, but the rewards will be way more substantial. Sounds like what I heard at the gym today – no pain, no gain.

No pain, no gain. That’s a good mantra for this season of parenting.

And while I’ve been writing this, Rob finally fell asleep in his crib. (cross your fingers)

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Seven Quick Takes: Gimp Goes to the Gym

27 Apr

— 1 —

Our two boys have zillions of toys and books, but this is what they spend at least an hour a day doing:

Usually I stop them before someone gets hurt.

— 2 —

Speaking of hurt, I had my first ever session with a personal trainer this week. Mostly we just talked about how bad my knees are and how much that limits the variety of exercises I can do. But towards the end, when he was discussing our next session where he’ll go over the program he’s designing for me, I caught a mad glint in his eyes that can only be foreshadowing my future pain.

— 3 —

Although, I’m already in pain. Less than an hour after my husband got us all signed up with gym memberships I fell into a break in the sidewalk off to the side of our house and did this:

Luckily nothing’s broken or sprained, it’s just sore to the touch and there’s a fun cut under that bandage where my ankle hit the cement.

I’m so gimpy just the idea of a gym membership is causing me to injure myself … the next couple of months ought to be full of bandages.

— 4 —

The gym has a childcare area where attendants watch your children while you go work out. In the last three days I’ve been more childless during the weekday than I have been in the last three months. It’s nice to know that the boys are being well taken care of while I focus on burning some Nutella Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food Ice Cream Alice Springs Chicken from Outback Steakhouse calories.

But it’s also odd. My arms feel too light and open without a child holding my hand while I’m out in public.

Though the idea of doing cardio on the elliptical while holding the hand of one of my boys sounds like a true recipe for disaster.

— 5 —

Especially since sometimes I have parenting fails just doing normal things with the boys. 

I didn’t even get out of the van today when I stopped at the grocery store. I parked the car and instantly Rob started crying. Then DJ dropped a toy which broke open and he started crying. So we waved good-bye to the grocery store. We’ll try again soon. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned since DJ was born five years ago – if they’re crying before you even get out of the car don’t go into the store.

I wonder if the nice attendants at the gym would be open to watching my children while I grocery shopped …

— 6 —

I realized today that there isn’t a picture of our family more recent than July of last year. There’s one from November, but we’re being lit from the side and it caused the picture to be somewhat pixelated. And I think my dad took one in December … of our feet in our Yo Gabba Gabba shoes my step-mom got us all for Christmas, but that’s just our feet, no heads or anything. There’s also lots of pictures of just some of us. Me with Rob, DJ with my husband, and so on.

I could just splice the good ones together and make one photo, but I just had to spellcheck the word “splice” (and yes, I did spell it wrong the first time).

So I think my goal for the weekend is to get a picture of all of us together.

— 7 —

I wrote a while ago about the need for epi-pens to be available in schools without a prescription, so that any child having an anaphylactic emergency can be administered epinephrine, not just children with previously diagnosed allergies.

So, I’m happy to share that Virigina has passed legislation for this to happen in all public schools in that state. (Now if only California and the rest of the nation would follow suit!)

Well, that’s my Seven Quick Takes for Friday. For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary! Thanks to Jennifer Fulwiler for being such a great hostess.

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Broken

26 Apr

I got a phone call about a week ago.

It was my mother.

I haven’t talked to my mother on the phone in a year and a half.

I made a choice to remove her negative influence from my life and the lives of my children. I told my mom that I was done, that she wouldn’t be hearing from me again.

It was calculated and hard and not spur-of-the-moment.

Hearing her voice again was hard. Listening to what she said and knowing that nothing had changed was hard too.

 

And finding the right words to describe how I’ve been feeling … I just couldn’t.

First, I was just too overwhelmed and raw.

All I felt was broken.

I remembered all the horrible times during my childhood. I remembered the guilt that warped my every decision until my identity became dependent on pleasing. Guilt could make me say anything, do anything, and be nothing in order to keep peace and make someone else happy.

I found all the places in my soul where there are still holes and I stuck my fingers into them, ripping open old hurts till they bled into my present life.

There’s no getting around it. The choice I made makes me a bad daughter. In this world I’ll always be broken. Part of a broken family, a broken child, an adult wondering how the brokenness has changed me, wondering if I’ll ever be completely at peace, completely healed, whole.

I sat and thought about the brokenness, acknowledging it for the first time in a while. I had to walk through it in order to recommit myself to intentionally keeping my mother out of my life. I went through my past and laid out the milestones, the times when I slowly came to realize that I was being sacrificed for the transient happiness of others, as if they were pictures placed on a table in front of me.

The abuse I’ve survived still hurts. Abuse doesn’t have an expiration date.

 

But the choice to be a bad daughter also made me a better me, a better wife, and a better mother. So I sacrificed my status as the good daughter in order to be healthy, in order to walk away from manipulation and live my life on my own terms.

I’m broken, but I’m working on it. It’s been twelve years since I left my mother’s house, since I became an adult. Every day of those twelve years is another day I’ve been free. In some way every one of those days since I left has been a day of healing.

Really, when it comes down to it, aren’t we all broken? We’re all working to heal what can be healed and to walk away from what can’t be. The best people I know all walk a fine line between knowing every inch of their brokenness and being consumed by it, acknowledging it without making it their only source of identity.

 

I talked with a good friend of mine today who reminded me that the first step to making a good choice for someone like me, broken by abuse, is to leave guilt out of it. Every day I’m learning how to make my choices without consulting guilt. And every time I do it I feel a little more me, a little more free.

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Review: Galileo by Mitch Stokes

24 Apr

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a copy of this book for free from BookSneeze in return for writing a review on my blog; however, my opinion is my own and not for sale. Now on with the fun …

I’ve always been fascinated by Galileo. In childhood I spent long summer days trying to invent things like Galileo and Newton and Marie Curie. (I’ve told you before that I’m odd, but I’m sure that admission will confirm it.) In college I discovered The Indigo Girls, and their song “Galileo” with it’s cry of “How long till my soul gets it right?” has been on frequent rotation since I first heard it. Shortly after that I read Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel, which only increased my fascination.

So it was only natural when BookSneeze offered a book about Galileo that I jumped on the opportunity to read it.

First, I want to say that as a lover of books, I squealed with delight when this book arrived. It’s attractively designed, and heck, just that someone took the time to think about the book’s presentation is a point in its favor. The book is 7 inches by 5 inches, with a thick, textured paper cover with front and back flaps. Just lovely.

The book is a part of a series called “Christian Encounters.” Each book in the series focuses on the life of a different important historical figure with a somewhat religious twist (more on that later). So, it was a smart idea on the part of the publisher, Thomas Nelson, to intentionally design the look of the series to stand out and be something you’d want to hang on to. In the dream world where money is no object I would buy all the books in this series and keep them on display. Go by the bookcase and pet them.

On to Galileo.

Having read much about Galileo I was worried that I would be bored reading this book, but Stokes does a wonderful job keeping all the working pieces and players in Galileo’s life moving along. In this way the shortness of the book (less than two hundred pages in a little volume) was actually helpful – it helped me to see the bigger picture of Galileo’s life in the context of his world, rather than focusing on little details of his life. Stokes delivers enough explanations of science, philosophy, religion, and history to make Galileo’s decisions come to life without getting the reader bogged down in details that only a would-be master in one of those areas would want to know.

The book is advertised as part of a Christian series; it says so right on the front cover. I was curious about how the Christian perspective would come into play throughout the biography, particularly because Galileo fathered three children out of wedlock and was heavily censured by the Catholic Church during his lifetime. Stokes paints Galileo and the Church in a fair light, flattering to Galileo’s scientific achievements, yet realistic about his and the Church’s failings.

For example, when speaking about Galileo and his relationship with Marina Gamba, with whom he had a lengthy affair and three children, Stokes comments that, “It is difficult, if not impossible, for us to reconcile a Christian behaving the way Galileo did toward Marina, no matter how devoted he was to her.” I appreciated that Stokes clearly addresses the issue and concisely puts into the Christian perspective. Then he moves on and doesn’t mention the matter again. Which I also appreciate.

I’d also like to add that I was impressed with the copious Notes section in the back of the book, showing the author’s research.

Galileo would be a great read, starting with advanced younger readers learning about Galileo for the first time (especially because his faults are dealt with within an appropriate Christian framework) and including any layperson curious about his life. After having read this book I’m also interested in reading the other biographies in the series.

 

Have you read any good books lately?

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A Fun Milestone: DJ’s First Shower

18 Apr

The other night we had a fun first in our family.

Our oldest son took his first shower.

This probably seems like an odd thing to have stand out as a milestone to most people. In my own childhood it would have seemed odd to wait until age five to take a shower.

But a major part of the treatment for DJ’s eczema is a nightly twenty minute bath. This bath rehydrates DJ’s skin, helping his body maintain healthy skin that doesn’t need medical intervention. Basically, this bath has kept him from needing countless doses of steroids and antibiotics.

So DJ’s never taken a shower. He’s been in the shower a couple of times to rinse hair from his head and neck after a Daddy-done hair cut, but that’s it.

His skin has gotten so much better though. And he’s getting so much bigger. He can even apply his own moisturizing lotion after his bath all by himself.

So, with careful supervision from Jesse and a lot of happy tears from me, DJ took his first shower.

He had fun.

He got soap in his eyes.

Mostly he just played around with the steam from the shower on the glass shower door.

But he did it independently.

 

When DJ was so sick as a baby and a toddler, when he had been prescribed five different medications a day, when he had only a handful of “safe” foods to eat, when we fought for months to get him into an outpatient treatment program for allergies, asthma, and eczema, I wondered if he’d ever find independence. I wondered if he’d ever have anything close to a typical childhood or a typical life. I wondered if he’d been able to live in a college dorm if his skin required him to take a bath. I still wonder how he’ll navigate cooking and sharing a kitchen where foods he’s allergic to are present.

But I’ve tried to focus on one day at a time, helping DJ do the best that he can do that day.

Which now includes cheesy grins from the shower.

 

And just so you know that even shower time was a little goofy around here, I should tell you that while Big Brother was getting all the attention in the shower, Little Brother went and found an inflatable hammer DJ received as a present at a carnival and started hitting us with it.

He was almost as pleased with his independence as his big brother was with his shower.

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The Beginning of the Journey Through the Land of Cool

17 Apr

This is how it starts. It seems like any ordinary day. It’s warm so I tell DJ to pick out a t-shirt to wear to preschool. A t-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it, a recent gift from his Nana, is at the top of his pile of shirts in his drawer. He puts it on and the morning goes by the typical way.

Until I went to pick up DJ at school.

I could tell as I waited in the line of cars at pick-up that he was agitated and it had something to do with his shirt.

He pulled down on the bottom hem of his shirt and I could barely make out a teacher telling him, “Well, I like it.”

And I know what conversation we’re about to have. It’s one that I’ve put off for a lot longer than I thought possible, but DJ hasn’t cared about it before.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve entered the Land of Cool.

DJ was teased at school today for wearing this Mickey Mouse t-shirt because Mickey Mouse is not cool, according to DJ’s classmate. The classmate then refused to play with DJ because of his uncool shirt.

DJ ended his explanation of the event with a plea to wear a cool t-shirt tomorrow so that his friends will want to play with him.

First, let me say, I could wring this little classmate’s neck … or his parents’ necks since they’re teaching their preschoolers to be wrapped up in the world of cool. I’d love to fight this battle for DJ or shelter him from this kind of thing forever.

Little kids can be so mean.

(Oh, and if it’s possible, I love DJ’s teacher even more than before. She put the classmate in timeout for his mean words.)

But, yes, finally I’ve had a conversation with my oldest child about level of cool and clothing and picking out what you want to wear and not caring what other people think and still being polite. I don’t know how much of an impression I made. I guess time will tell. Mostly he just wants to wear something that will enable him to have fun with his friends and I don’t blame him.

I’ve listened to my friends with little girls struggle through this land of fashion choices and coolness for a while now, never envying their struggles. It’s so hard to find the balance between being fashionable and being a follower. I don’t want my sons to be part of the crowd … but I don’t want them to feel the alienation of being apart from the crowd.

I’ve told DJ that he gets to choose what’s cool for him. I even made it a little mantra: I get to choose what’s cool for me. Something for him to recall quickly if and when this situation comes up again.

Mostly today though, I’m thinking about how this is just the beginning. It’s going to be a long journey through the Land of Cool. This is just the first of many incidents as they navigate this world. I’m humbled by the responsibility of helping my sons prepare to handle their peers and this culture.

How do you handle the Land of Cool?

And can I say that I’m a little sad that Mickey Mouse and this innocent part of his childhood are leaving so soon?

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