Some Small Thrills

I know - two posts in one day (go ahead, read the other one, too!), during the busiest week of my recent memory. It's kinda strange how that happens. Maybe I am learning to stop and smell the proverbial roses after all. So of course, I just have to share four things that have thrilled/fascinated me in the last couple days:

1. This little beauty just made me rethink my mental block on breastfeeding and made me have hope that the comfortable, portable, inexpensive maternal bonding bliss that comes so naturally to everyone except me might actually happen. At least I will be covered while trying yet again to make a go of it, which is sometimes half the battle. I think I really must get one. And I really must tip my hat to the woman who developed the idea. Brilliant, really. And funny: "hooter hiders." You just have to love it.

2. I am learning a lot from magazines at the doctor's office these days. Today I discovered a little blurb on interesting ways to learn/see the letters of the alphabet. This naturalist discovered letters and numbers in the patterns on butterfly wings and without harming the creatures, managed some phenomenal photos of every letter of the alphabet and the numbers 0-9. Check it out here. BRowse the gallery and all. Honestly, it's truly fascinating and beautiful. Who knew?

3. When you live with a man like my husband and have a serious thinking son like Calvin, at one point or another you will catch at least a piece of some animal show on TV. And you will learn something you never knew. The other night Calvin and Dad were soaking in some info about "flowingos." The thing that I found fascinating? That flamingos are pink because they eat shrimp - whatever it is that makes shrimp go pink when you cook them is the same thing that makes flamingos' feathers pink because they subsist almost entirely on shrimp. Is that not cool? It does make me wonder what hue I would be if my color represented the mainstays of my diet. But we'll try not to think too much about that.

4. Finally, my favorite awe-inspiring thought of late. Calvin shared it as I was tucking him in bed tonight: "Mom...you know?...At the bottom of outer space...is...more outer space..." Perhaps even more wonderful than that thought is the little boy who can come up with such a thing, out of the blue. And that he likes to tell me about it.

I'm just thrilled with people who think up things that make life easier, people who have learned to see things in nature and share it with everyone else, the marvels and diversity of God's creations, and the immensity of being the mother of my boys.