403rd Friday Blog Roundup

I was at a nursing home this week with the kids, and I was standing alone with the ChickieNob while we waited for Josh and the Wolvog to return.  I bent down and kissed the ChickieNob’s hair while we were talking, and this woman passing by in the hallway paused to comment that the ChickieNob is such a lucky girl to have someone who loves her so much that she would kiss her head like that.

It was a very sweet moment.

Until the woman gleefully asked, “and how did you get a girl as wonderful as this?”

I smiled and said jokingly, “I made her.”

There was a moment of silence.  And then the woman wrinkled her brow in confusion and said, “how did you do that?  How did you make her?”

There was a long pause as the woman waited for me to answer, and I looked down at the ChickieNob smiling beatifically since she knows exactly how babies are made and is very proud of this fact, though I’ve asked her not to share this information with her friends and to instead wait until their parents decided they are old enough to know the facts of life.

And then I realized that my options were to give a 90-something woman a crash course in sex ed, or to feign sudden interest in the patient’s rights board right behind me.  And yes, I am sorry to say that rather than have a discussion about special hugs in the hallway while “Paper Moon” played over a nearby speaker, I opted to learn that every patient is entitled to prompt and courteous service.

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The Olympics begin tonight, and we’re crazy ready for it.  Like all-out-crazy ready for it.  Okay, I’m lying.  This week like many other weeks got away from me, and I’m more like scrambling-to-make-it-special.  But damn it, when the lights dim tonight, we will be mentally in London.

The twins were born during a summer Olympics.  We missed the games while they were in the NICU, sleeping anywhere but home.  So the summer Olympics are a bit of a marker for us, reminding us how far we’ve come.  Perhaps not quite as far as the Olympic athletes, but far nonetheless.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Is There an Echo (Echo, Echo) in Here?” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “I’m a Writer Dammit” (Single Infertile Female)
• “Online Pregnancy Websites are Fun Until You Lose the Baby” (Portrait of an Adoption)
• “Are Bystanders Ever Innocent?…” (A Half Baked Life)
• “Rhetorical Questions” (Serenity Now!)
• “Role Playing” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “Find Your Blog Voice” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “Thoughtful Thursday: This Used to Be My Playground” (Baby Smiling in Back Seat)
• “Correspondence, Connectivity, Screens, and Free-Range Joy” (Project Progeny)
• “Here Comes the Sun…” (Cullen’s Blessings)
• “And So It Began” (Freckled Citizen)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Days of Our Lives has a beautiful and heartbreaking post about the Aurora shooting, tying together a prayer she used during the adoption process to trying to understand the decision of the shooter.  My throat tightened with her last thought: “And that I can pray MacArthur’s prayer over the young men in my community who might not have a father to be saying these words and having such hopes for his son.  Hug your loved ones a little tighter today.”

Family Building with a Twist has a really interesting post about an ethical dilemma, namely while she would not allow a son to participate in Boy Scouts, she is trying to decide how she feels about eating at Chik-Fil-A and why it isn’t a clear-cut decision.  She ends no closer to knowing what to do as she unpacks various ways of looking at the situation.  Long before the Boy Scouts statement, we had decided like the author not to allow our son to participate in a non-inclusive organization, but it’s also easy for me to boycott Chik-Fil-A since… you know… I’ve never eaten there.  The fact that I describe their product as dismembered chicken corpses packaged in cardboard coffins should probably give you an idea that my issue goes a lot deeper than marriage equality.  I tried to think about a product I really do like: Special K (again, the cereal, not the drug).  What would I do if the maker of Special K came out with a statement that went against our ethics?  Could I give up the cereal in order to stand by what is important to me?  I’d like to think I could, but who knows until I’m forced to live in a world sans Special K. (Side note to the maker of Special K: please don’t come out with a statement opposing marriage equality.)

Mama Said Knock You Out has such a good post about a trick that back fires with her daughter… except it doesn’t.  I can’t really describe it without ruining how she gets the last laugh.  You’ll need to read the whole thing for yourself.

Lastly, Family Rocks: the Life of Peg has a bittersweet post about Thursdays.  She explains: “For some reason, Thursday has become my Jeanne day.  I think about her more on that day.  The tears flow a little easier.  Don’t get me wrong, I think about her a lot everyday, but feelings of grief are often intermingled with frustration and irrational anger, and tied up with the girls and our relationship.”  I both love and hate that she has this day.

The roundup to the Roundup: Strangely enough, I opted not to impart an impromptu sex ed lesson.  Olympics start tonight!  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between July 20th and July 27th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.