The Art of Becoming

We like to celebrate the achievement of goals.  Some in our culture might call that being pro-victory.  Regardless of your political views, being pro-victory in the Bushlack household means celebrating accomplishments.  Some major ones for the adults are Tom completing his PhD and my last day of work on August 1, 2011.  Some major ones for the kids are Audrey rolling over (to which we respond with clapping and shouting "hooray, Audrey!") and Sean beginning to show more signs of wanting to potty train.  In September I thought Sean was ready to start potty training after we hosted a string of visitors who had 3-year-olds who were potty training (thank you, Victoria and Mia, for shining a "light' in the bathroom, a 'light' on the training potty).  He showed some minimal interest then and I jumped all over it: I bought Disney's Cars stickers from Target, Sean and Tom drew a 11X14 picture of a road, and we encouraged Sean that any time he tried sitting on the...

Curiosity has been anecdotal-y blamed for killing many a feline.  I might suggest, however, that much more than cats get killed when curiosity takes over.  For example, this morning, in a flurry of gathering items to get ready to leave the house (two kids, coats, hats, gloves, carseat, blanket, toys, snacks, water bottles, box to ship at UPS, laundry tag to pick up coat, items to return to our neighbor, grocery list, directions to grocery store, keys, wallet, cell phone, diaper bag, diapers, wipes, powder, etc.) I completely forgot one crucial item for my day:  deodorant.  As Sean would say, "Oh Man!"  Or as I said to myself a mile from home, thinking of the stench that could emit from my armpits later that day, "Son of a..!"  One might argue that this forgetful moment was not brought to you by curiosity but rather by distraction, and that could be correct.  But the following are examples of when curiosity really stonewalled a situation. Sleeping So...

I was at the YMCA with the kids on Monday changing Audrey's diaper on a bench in the middle of the lobby.  This bench sits just outside the studio area where a group of (mainly) middle-aged women were taking a dance class.  At that precise moment, they were dancing to Jeff Buckley's version of Hallejuia, and a woman stopped in the middle of her dancing to come out to the lobby to see me.  She very kindly walked over to our bench and said: woman: I just had to stop and tell you that there is light coming from you. me: oh! well, thank you! woman: it's just, such a lovely light, it's almost like... and here she touches my face (I'm not kidding) and has tears in her eyes woman: Mary and child.  it's clear you have so much love for these kids. me: well, what a nice thing to say, thank you! Merry Christmas, lady, seriously, that was the sweetest thing someone could have said.  However, this lady did not see me but two hours later dragging a kicking and s...