I recently received a scrapbook of my baby shower from a friend. It was beautiful. Each person wrote a note to me and each page was filled with scriptures written specifically to Eli.

I enjoyed looking through each page, reading the notes and praying the scripture over my sleeping child. However, with the turn of each page I cringed at the image of me. On a regular day I am a big girl.

On a pregnant day, I am huge! I couldn’t believe how big I was and that I had survived this difficult feat so late in my life. My girlfriends kept saying how photogenic I was and how cute I looked. I think “cute” is the code word for: as nice a you can look when you have a giant baby inside and have retained more water than the Hoover Dam.

I love Eli and he is a precious addition to our family. But it left me to ponder, can pregnant photography be beautiful? What’s your vote?

After years of teaching women to be more assertive and resolving conflict I am still conflicted on the subject of fighting fair. Is that even possible? Sometimes when we fight with a friend, spouse or relative we sink to child-like tactics. We low-blow, cutting down the person to the core. We be-little the person for pointing out our error. We unload, bringing up all the unmentionables all at once. We blame the other person for our behavior.
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I have 4 kids. They range in age from 16 down to 4 months. The first 2 are 5 years apart. There are 9 years between the second and third. Number 3 and 4 are two and a half years apart. Given my vast experience I have confirmed my opinion on spacing your children. Here it is…

I think each child should be 4 years apart. By age 4 a child is more secure. He does not cry when separated from you at church, he can go potty, he (hopefully) is no longer clinging to a self soothing toy, bottle or paci except maybe at bedtime. He is in preschool and about to start Kindergarten. He can fetch a diaper and play alone for at least a little while. Perfect!
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Recently, the kids and I chose to make the most beautiful smore bars that we saw featured in a magazine. We pulled out all the ingredients and read the instructions. We quickly realized that according to the directions… these smores would only taste as spectacular as they looked if we used their homemade marshmellows.

So, ambitious as our family is, we decided to embark on making homemade marshmellows. We carefully measured the ingredients and followed the instructions to the letter. We boliled the syrupy mixture to a whopping 360 degrees. The next instructions left out important details which would have been helpful. We next needed to pour this piping hot mixture into a bowl of other ingredients and using the mixer, whip it up to a thick creamy texture. I did just that.
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