Category: Children

What, when, where, and how.

Babies!

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I love babies.

Why do we love babies?Their clean, new innocence makes me want to hold them, smell them, touch them.

I know I am not the only one. Every day, someone wants to chuck a baby’s chin, stroke a baby’s arm, or hold someone else’s baby. In the store, at church, even total strangers smile and want to see the baby or hold their children up so they can see it. Even stodgy, young-upwardly-progressive types give half a smile and nod to the babe-in-arms.

What makes most people give those goofy faces and noises just to extract a smile back from a baby?

Why—when newborns look basically like little old men—do we croon about how beautiful they are? And when they get fat and develop a glistening dribble of spit on the lip, why do we exclaim how adorable they are?

I think it’s because we naturally protect. Our nature causes most of us to envelope the innocent and helpless. Some think of the potential lying in that baby carrier and all the life ahead of it. We imagine how confused we must have felt when we were that size. We think of this small bundle as incapable of wrongdoing, worthy of protection and advancement.

Our thoughts mirror those Socrates called for in his dying words, that our children justly deserve our input during their journey to be our rulers.

We naturally call up thoughts like Plato expressed in his Republic, that the beginning is the most important part of any work, for that is when the character is formed.

We echo Aristotle’s Rhetoric where he says pity may well up in those who think we may eventually find some sort of good inside a person.

Greek HelmetWe may not realize we have such bold and universally defended thoughts, but even in Homer’s Iliad, we find:

He stretched his arms towards his child, but the boy cried and nestled in his nurse’s bosom, scared at the sight of his father’s armor, and the horsehair plume that nodded fiercely from his helmet. His father and mother laughed to see him, but Hector took the helmet from his head and laid it all gleaming upon the ground. Then he took his darling child, kissed him, and dandled him in his arms…

Written a bazillion years ago, this tender scene touches most of us as much as meeting a stranger’s helpless baby in an elevator. The thought of a ferocious warrior, removing his armor for a baby, rings true in our hearts, makes a great story.

The Conclusion

Why Love Babies?The FACT is that every human with a truthful heart cares about a baby. We can even say that about dogs and several other animals. Often they sense, they know—the protection due a baby can alter what we would expect their reactions to be, can surprise us, as does the reaction of a seeming iron-clad soul in a chance meeting with a baby.

And Jesus took them up in His arms and blessed them.

Moms everywhere! Lay aside your armor; take up your babes and bless them!

M + K, Bff’s

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bowl of pretty rocks, collectionMy 20-year-old niece suffers from the affliction commonly called Down Syndrome. She functions on a high level and even participated in the cheer-leading squad in her public school. She loves collecting things and has a large collection of horse statues and an enormous collection of pretty rocks.

Recently she was a bride’s maid in my brother’s wedding. She basked in every minute, and although she is a funny trickster, during the rehearsal she agreed to the importance of being sober-minded during the actual holy occasion.

So many were so happy for her.

The other bride’s maid was a niece of the bride, a young lady about the same height and build as my niece, but only ten years old. The two young maids bonded instantly and became fast friends. Dressed and coiffed alike, pressed into the same elegant lady mold, choreographed, required to wait and be quiet together, how could they have become anything but fast friends?

Several weeks have passed since that wedding, since that time of sweet, girlish friendship, but my niece has continued remembering her new friend, as she does all friends. She has spoken often of the girl, how they have so much in common, how they both love that their dresses were “twirlable”, how happy she is to have made a new friend.

We all wondered if the other niece would remember her back. Heartbreak between girlfriends is too common these days, among girls who see each other often, let alone girls who met once and will not often see each other again. We waited . . .

My niece received a wrapped package in the mail, yesterday, and it was given to her while we were celebrating several happy family occasions at a restaurant.

The gift included a bff card! Of course!

But the simple perfection of the contents of the package brought tears to my eyes.

Somewhere in this country lives a sweet, ten-year-old girl who understands gifting: My niece carefully unwrapped the heavy and rattling package to reveal a pretty dish of my niece’s favorite color, purple.

The perfect gift between friends: a bowl of prety rocks.And in it? Pretty rocks.

Hand-selected and washed spotless.

For her collection, of course.

Perfect.

Have You Ever Been Kidnapped?

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When someone takes a child away from his parents against their will, without any provocation, what do we call it?

Kidnapping, of course. Right?

So why are we okay with the government taking our children away from us and locking them into unarmed-police-state type institutions?

Oh, yes, we did vote, long ago, for free, compulsory education. We overlooked the fact that “compulsory” is not free.

Now we see.

Good has come from the schools of long ago, including the intended results that all US citizens enjoy a common language and all voters be well-educated.

The big idea, that all voters be well-educated is slipping away, fast.

As is the common language that made us so strong.

Although I tend to reminisce a lot about the good ol’ days, I must realize we are not there, anymore. The idea of the states controlling their own educational systems was good, but is fading as Uberama takes over.

These days have big troubles that have stemmed from the good ol’ days when folks trusted so much, they even forgot what they learned in school and began trusting the government. For some reason, they did not know that government of the people, by the people, and for the people would not be what we would get from an education that is of, by, and for the government.

Instead, we now have the government killing as many babies as it can, then appropriating more and more money for brainwashing the few who remain.

As our government attacks us more every day, we need to hug our children ever closer to our sides, like the targets of kidnapping they have become.

Unhappy child.

Frowning.

What can I say? It was free. Now it’s gone. And…

“Although I tend to reminisce a lot about the good ol’ days, I must realize we are not there, anymore.”

Go home.