Search Results for: blog when my friend lost her baby

The Baby

I’m a dad. I’ve got a wonderful wife and together we have a very adorable little son. He’s got ten toes and a cute face and beautiful eyes (like his mom) and a heart-melting smile. But he’s not the baby I’m talking about. No, I’m talking about his “baby,” a little doll that was used once for an acting project by a friend of mine and donated as a toy to my child long ago. At the time he was too little to even play with a mobile (he couldn’t even focus his eyes on it way back then), but … Continue reading →

When My Best Friend Lost Her Baby

When I found out I was pregnant last spring, my best friend, Jessie, was one of the first people to find out. A few weeks later, she called me with some news of her own; she, too, was pregnant. She was a week and a day behind me. We were so excited; we were going to have babies together! But Jessie was in a completely different situation than I was. She had a Mirena IUD in place, which had been there for almost five years. She had some tough decisions to make. She decided right away that she wanted to … Continue reading →

My Family Is On Facebook

I come from a very large family. Most of my family lives in the Midwestern United States, and I live in California. The distance can make it difficult to keep in touch with all my relatives, because I cannot easily drop by for lunch, or attend birthday parties and other family events. I never expected to find so many family members on facebook, but there they are! I resisted joining facebook for a long time. I’m not very involved in “social networking”, and most of what I heard about facebook involved description of time waster games, (such as the popular … Continue reading →

Yes, I Teach My Teens Abstinence

Despite all of the sex education being taught in school, the condoms that are being made available on some high school campuses and the trend of “friends with benefits,” I have chosen to, yes, teach my teens abstinence. Abstinence teaching is not given much thought. If it is taught in sex education it is more likely a topic that is quickly glossed over. Not much attention is given to that concept because we seem so sure that every teenager in America is going to have sex whether we like it or not. My personal thought on that is we have … Continue reading →

Curb Shopping for Others Mission

I haven’t really been a curb shopper lately. Years ago, I used to go out with a clever friend who was really into curb shopping. It was very deliberate. But just yesterday, my family and I rediscovered curb shopping, in a sense, as a sort of little family mission. Let me explain. Have you heard about that family who decided to go on a hunt for loose change out in the world and then donate whatever they find to charity? They posted a website and listed how much money they found. I tried to find this website, but I cannot, … Continue reading →

Baby Registry Problems

My wife and I have been having problems with our baby registry at a certain national retail chain of baby related goods that will remain unnamed. If you’ve been reading this blog you know that I am currently a doctoral student in the arts, particularly theatre, but what I haven’t said before is that I have an undergraduate business degree. I worked for a number of years as a lead teller at another national bank before the questionable ethical behavior (at least at those lower levels) made me too uncomfortable to continue cashing in in the business world and I … Continue reading →

The Waiting Child: How the Faith and Love of One Orphan Saved the Life of Another

This book is a tearjerker, but so much more. The Waiting Child: How the Faith and Love of One Orphan Saved the Life of Another is an adoptive mother’s account of adopting a four-year-old from an orphanage in China, then discovering that her daughter, at such a tender age, had already been responsible for caring for younger children at the orphanage—including one whom she called “her baby”. Even after bonding intensely with her “forever mama”, she advocates tirelessly for this little boy to be adopted also. She worries about him constantly, explaining that it was her job to dress him … Continue reading →

My, How Hospitals Have Changed!

I can’t remember the last time I was in a hospital — maybe it was back in 2001, the summer that both my grandmother and grandfather passed away. If I’ve been in a hospital room since then, it’s lost in memory. But I was in a hospital room today — some very good friends of mine welcomed twins into the world. After I stopped being distracted by holding the tiny babies, I started looking around. Things certainly have changed! Probably the most impressive thing (at least to me) was the wristbands. Mom, Dad, and twins all had barcoded wristbands. This … Continue reading →

Do you let your kids drive with friends?

When I was a teenager in the 9th grade, a car full of neighbor kids were in a terrible accident. The group was going into The Bronx from Yonkers NY to treat the birthday girl to White Castle hamburgers. She had just turned 13 years old. She never made it home. A truck jackknifed in front to them, and several of them died instantly. Others were injured. Our community lost a 13 year old girl, a 15 year old boy (my classmate’s brother), and the 18 year old driver. An 18 year old passenger lost his arm (that he had … Continue reading →

Gisele Bundchen–Loving Stepmother or Insensitive Troublemaker

She’s a drop dead gorgeous multi-millionaire with a super star new husband, and now women of the world have one more reason to hate supermodel Gisele Bundchen. Apparently, marriage has made the rich (rhymes with witch) more arrogant than ever. If you missed the headlines (and the thousands of subsequent Internet posts), Bundchen is speaking out for the first time about being more than just a stepmom to John Edward Thomas Moynahan, the 18-month-old love child of her new hubby New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and his ex-girlfriend model-actress Bridget Moynahan. In the latest Vanity Fair issue, Bundchen let … Continue reading →