Playing with the band

they are darlins, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

If you were to ask me what I want Annabel to be when she grows up, I couldn't really say.

I could only tell you all the clichés, and you've probably already heard them: I want her to be happy. I want her to have integrity. I want her to be kind and loving and generous. I want her to use her mind and never let people with ill-intent screw with it.

One of the most difficult things to explain to a four-year-old (or even a forty-year-old for that matter) is the question: "Why don't they like me?

I hear my own mother's voice come out of my throat: "Honey, they just don't know you."

It breaks a mother’s heart to watch her child run from group to group, hoping to be included and finding only quizzical faces and flying hair as the bodies attached run in an opposite direction.

"Why won't they play with me?"

I know it's because kids are like that. Even she can be like that. There's nothing to be done but hold your head up and move on.

There we are she and I, sitting hip to hip, rocking on the hillside. I have no words of wisdom. I have no advice other than to tell her to persevere.

But I know she doesn't want to just run with the gangs that flock from hill to hill. She doesn't want to just be in their general vicinity. She wants to lead them and influence their play. She's got big ideas.

"Maybe if I play with my play picnic food someone will come up and want to play with it, too."

But as the minutes went by in our staged picnic of wooden meats, fish, cheeses and vegetables, no one was enticed.

"I know! I'll get my stickers and hand them out. Maybe then they'll play with me."

I pull the sheets of colorful stars from my bag and she runs toward the children. She wordlessly holds out her offering. Some of the kids come closer. Some of the younger ones, prompted by their mothers, wordlessly accept. Others just say "No, I don't want any stickers."

And this becomes the game she plays with herself. She no longer needs the children. She just needs the stickers.

"I have to find more people. I have to make sure EVERYONE gets a sticker!" she tells me. And then she's gone.

I catch a glimpse of her teal shirt, which, from a distance, looks perfectly free of cherry-ice stains and ground in dirt. She is milling about the clusters of adults sipping wine from glasses and waiting for the line at the buffet to draw inward, asking them if they'd like to chose a sticker.

Most oblige.

Who can say no to a little girl bestowing gifts?

Finally, she meets the only girls at the party willing to play.

Those Darlins.

And they were. Darling.

From their patch of grass in front of their performance space, the girls played with Annabel. Their friends juggled for her and played with her picnic foods. They accepted stickers. They danced with her and played hide and seek. They made sure to find her.

When it was time for their show to go on, she danced in the front row.

She was walking on air.

They dedicated a song to their biggest (and littlest) fan.

And she took every opportunity - every lull in the performance - to hug one of them around the knees (often encircling their guitars, too).

It's not every mother's dream for her children to reach for the stars, I suppose. ... But I don't really mind. I just wish Annabel didn't have to be so literal.

"I know it looks like play, Annabel, but really it's work."

Relentlesstoil is saving babies ... you can, too.

Relentlesstoil is saving babies ... you can, too., originally uploaded by toyfoto.

A dear flickr friend of mine, Keet, also known as Relentlesstoil, has created perhaps the sweetest t-shirt designs in the whole dang universe to benefit The March of Dimes in its efforts to save tiny babies like her sweet Maya Chocolate-y Claire.

You have until April 30th to help her reach her goal.

So why are you still looking at my chest reading this?

Go. Save babies.

Party Animals

oy, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

We returned from our second annual Please Send Vodka extravaganza largely unscathed. (Although, as you can tell from the photograph, I've not taken any future psychological breakdowns into account for that assessment).

Please Send Vodka (or PSV) for those of you wondering is a kind of a moms' group that meets 'round the clock in the wide open space of the internet. It's a bulletin board-type forum where people post and run or post and read as time permits.

For many of the group's members the place is a lifesaver. We show up with questions, concerns and our feelings of complete inadequacy, and we leave with answers and reassurance and enough confidence to try it again or attempt something new.

Although I can't really adequately describe all that went on at Party Central because I was drinking heavily only one small cog in the wheel of many conversations, I can give you an overview of what the experience leaves me thinking:

* First and foremost, the MEN (husbands, fathers, others) who make random guest apearances on the boards as they are often featured topics in multiple occasional complaint boxes (shush ... we dole out credit, too) deserve nothing but props for making the trip to meet people who are, to them, total strangers. Although we women feel like we're all friends because we chat online and we drop names that you have picked up in passing, you guys are the real troopers for smiling, making small talk and generally being the supportive people that you are without really knowing a soul.

* The women are all more beautiful in the flesh. And the kids are positively edible.

* Children who eat lollypop rings for breakfast, lunch and dinner can bounce in an inflatable house ALL. NIGHT.

*Beer consumption doesn't make parents equally as athletic ... but an hour long session inside the house (along with copious amounts of alcohol) makes one think 'why hasn't someone made this into the latest fitness fad before?'

*Any party involving children will be made better if there are at least two realistic looking baby dolls that can be placed in precarious locations.

*If all kids are wearing the same clothes you might go home with the wrong kid.


*Bringing temporary tattoos and teaching my kid how to apply them to others? Two words: Ice. Breaker. Also, made her not climb up in the sling with her brother or attach herself permanently to my leg. All good.

*** We've got scads of leftover tattoos. So if you missed out, drop me a line and I send one your way.