Douglas the Hippo

You'd think enough had recently gone wrong in my life to satisfy the most vengeful of Old Testament gods. 

But no sooner have I caught up with all the back admin, whose omission had plunged me into a cold bath of chaos, than another thunderbolt strikes.

Douglas has changed sex again.

Hang on a minute I've lost you, haven't I? Let me step back a pace and see if I can get a little logic and sound story sequencing into this one.

A few months ago, Glasgow Science Festival kindly helped me adopt a baby hippo, which had been found orphaned last February, at just two weeks old. 

It's a process that is easier and carries less responsibility than you'd imagine. You don't actually have to raise the little guy, teach him the difference between right and wrong and get him into a good university. 

All you do is send £5 to £65 a month to help with his care, protection and, if all goes well, reintroduction to the wild. In return you get photos, an adoption certificate and regular updates on the progress of young Douglas - for that was his name - at the Chipembele Wildlife Education Trust, on the banks of the Luangwa River in eastern Zambia.

But a recent update came as shock to me and his other adoptive parents. They had chosen the wrong name for the little hippo, they told us. Henceforth he was a she and her name, god help us, was Douglina.

Around this point I began to lose confidence in the assorted vets and conservation people in Douglina's entourage, having previously assumed they knew what they were doing with young hippos. If they couldn't even tell the boys from the girls, how expert were they?

So I did a little research and found a good reason for their failure. Male and female hippos are hard to tell apart, even for experts, and especially when they're just little shavers.

As you know there are lots of lies, damn lies and statistics out there on the internet. An oft-repeated claim about hippos is that they're the most aggressive and dangerous animal in Africa, responsible for more human deaths than lions, leopards and other big cats combined. It's an assertion that raises plenty of questions in my mind. 

What are the relative numbers of these different groups, how close do they all live to humans and, critically, what were the humans doing to provoke the attacks?

Most often, it seems, the attacker is a mature bull hippo or a mother, because the bulls are aggressive in the mating season while the females are "quite protective of their young calves."

Show me any male and female mammals who aren't.

Another blindly-repeated claim is that hippos are not sexually dimorphic, which means males and females are identical in all observable respects. It's not true. The behaviour of male and female hippos is quite different, and so too are some aspects of their size and structure.

Mature male hippos tend to be larger and heavier and have longer teeth than females. They also have undescended testicles, no scrotum, and penises they keep in their pants till the time is right.

All of which brings us back to Douglas or Douglina, as they've been encouraging us to call the poor little bugger. 

The latest news, believe it or not, is that the experts now admit they've got it wrong again.

Douglina has been having an "amorous encounter with a water barrel", and they have the photographs.

During this episode it became evident to onlookers, they tell us with restraint, "that boy bits were involved." So Douglina is Douglas again and will remain so, they insist, for all time. 

I have my doubts. Watch this space. 

I will keep you posted.

Shock to the cistern

"You ever walk into a ladies' toilet by mistake?" Al asks, as we're towelling down in the changing room at the gym after a fairly ferocious workout. Al is more competitive than he likes to admit. 

"Do I take it you have?" I say.

"Too often in recent months," he says. "I have a theory that it's not my fault. So I was hoping it had happened to you too."

I pull my trousers on and zip them up. "Let me get this straight," I say. "You've started strolling into ladies' toilets but you're not to blame. Are we talking aliens and mind control?"

"Eyesight and stupid signs," he says. "Sailors and mermaids, senores and senoras, damas and caballeros."

He shoves open the outside door and we emerge blinking into a deceptively sunny day, with a hard bite to the air. "Steers and heifers, for heaven's sake," he says. 

"Then there's those modern, trendy, abstract, stupid wiggly little fuckers," he says. 

"Even if I didn't need reading specs, which I do, I'd have to peer at those for ages, trying to figure out what sex they're supposed to be."

"On the plus side, you're still outside the toilet," I say. "I'm not seeing how you take the plunge and get it wrong." 

"It's like falling between two stools," he says. "You know when you miss a three foot putt and get the same shot at the next hole? You don't want doubts creeping in so you rush it, the ball goes four feet past and you miss the return?"

"Of course."

"So now you're steaming. Panic sets in. Your ears are ringing and you've lost all touch and feel."

"Nice sporting analogy," I say, turning up my jacket collar and sinking my head down against the cold. "But I don't see the connection." 

"It's not difficult," he says. "While I have my nose hard up against a door, trying to figure out from some ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic if it's the Gents, a bloody woman barges past me and mutters 'dirty old pervert' under her breath, because it's the Ladies.

"Twice," he adds.

"Same woman?" I say.

"Different woman," he says. "Different toilet." 

"Unpleasant," I say.

"Very," he says.

We concentrate on the traffic coming fast from three directions, to negotiate Roman Drive, then pick up the chat when we're safely back on the pavement.

"So next time you rush it and get it wrong?" I say.

"I do," he says. "And it isn't a particularly hard sign either. Angels and demons." 
  
"I've seen that one and you're right," I say. "Not hard if you're thinking clearly." 

"I'm not though," he says. "And it takes me too long to realise how badly I've got it wrong."

"I'd have thought the absence of urinals would have made it obvious," I say.

"Nothing's obvious when you're brain's just going through the motions," he says. "First I notice the walls are pink. Never seen such a pink place in my life. Then there's the flowers in jugs behind the taps. 

"Finally I realise there's nowhere to take a piss and at that moment the door starts opening inward, and all the blood rushes to my head."

"Bloody hell!" I say. "What happens next?"

"I nearly get it wrong," he says. "My first thought is to hide in a cubicle. Then I realise I could be stuck in there for ages if it gets busy."

"And you'd have to listen to women in a toilet," I say. "Could scar you for life. What's your second thought?"

"Brass it out and walk past her," he says.

"I'd have done that," I say.

"I nearly did, but at the last moment I dodge behind the door. The woman comes in, heads straight for the cubicle and I start to sidle out. But you know what they're like. Asking a woman to walk past a mirror is like asking a guy's eyes to stay away from cleavage."

"She sees your reflection?" I say.

"She does," he says. "But a couple of brain cells flicker belatedly to life and I go, "You'll be all right now, madam. I've got the cistern working again."

"Smart," I tell him, as we turn into the drive of the Bearsden bungalow Al has lived in for 40 years. "Nice recovery."

"But how do I stop it happening again, as my brain slows and my eyesight fails?" he says.

"Don't drink," I tell him. "Avoid public toilets. Get a guide dog, a catheter or a kind lady to take you by the hand." 

"There is always an answer, isn't there?" he says.

"There is," I tell him, as we step inside his house. "Why does your toilet have TOILET in huge letters on the door?"

"You don't want to know," he tells me.

To be or not to be - who cares?

My sister is a big Shakespeare fan. Me, not so much.

"Hamlet is a long evening of nothing happening, at the end of which everybody dies," I tell her, as we're sat in the living room of her house, during a long evening of nothing happening, at the end of which nobody dies.

"I'd rather be stuck in a lift for the weekend with Noel Edmonds than sit through four hours of Hamlet's self-obsessed chuntering," I say.

"No you wouldn't," she says.

"No, I wouldn't," I say. "But it's close." 

"Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet - these are wonderful plays," she says. "A Midsummer Night's Dream is packed with poetry."

"I'll give you that," I say. "'I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, where oxlips and the nodding violet grows...' Lovely stuff." 

"'Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine, With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine...,'" she says. "The first time the teacher read that to us, it sent shivers up my spine."

"But you need more than evocative words and clever rhymes," I say.

"Like what?" she says. 

"Like plot," I say. "Humour. How about a happy ending once in a while? I'm with John Cleese. You can be serious without being solemn."

"I think when you're young you're drawn to that dark side," she says. "I know I was. I read a lot of other serious writers like Graham Greene. All that tragedy to other people is comforting when you're struggling with adolescence. 

"And there is humour in Shakespeare," she says. "For a long time after his death he wasn't taken seriously by critics, because he mixed humour with tragedy. But humour doesn't last. You think people will laugh at Peter Kay's jokes in five hundred years?"

"Dunno why they laugh at them now," I say. "But it's not just the depressing endings and black-hearted behaviour. It's how Shakespeare says the same thing in forty different ways. There's a preening quality to that. He reminds me of Paul Jones."

"Who?" she says.  

"Blues singer. You thought he was lovely when you were 14."

"So I did," she says. "He was."

"Well he's still performing and my pal Iain tells me he's one of the best harmonica players in the world. But he's got a narcissistic personality that comes through somehow in his music. Don't ask me how.

"I get the same feeling with Buddy Rich on drums and Shakespeare with words. It's like 'Look at me; I'm wonderful.' It damages the art by drawing attention to the artist."

"But Shakespeare is so inventive," she says. "I love that about him. Half the clichés in the English language weren't clichés then. He made them up. Language and literature would be hugely impoverished if Shakespeare had never written a thing."

"I'm not so sure," I say. "Dickens is just as fluent, inventive and articulate. But what he's got is humour in his phrasing and rhythms. And he says something once and moves on. He's absorbed in the story, same as you are. He's like Steve Gadd on drums or Dylan on the harmonica."

"I can't take all the dirt and squalor in Dickens," she says. "It's repulsive."

"I see," I say. "Murder, suicide, rape and incest are fine in Shakespeare. But you can't take dirty fingernails in Dickens?"
  
"No I can't," she says. "The one thing I agree with you about is Hamlet. It's not a great plot and the hero does go on a bit, I'll give you that. The best criticism of Hamlet I ever read was in a school essay by your son David."

"Now he is clever," I say.

"Funny too," she says. "His essay had just one sentence in it. His teacher wasn't impressed, but I thought it was great."

"Yeah, what did he say?" 

"'Hamlet is a big girl's blouse."

Swimming in a fish bowl

Things went downhill frighteningly fast last week, after I wrote a piece confessing to being slightly estranged from reality.  

Me and reality came to the end of the road. We parted and it wasn't amicable. There is no chance of reconciliation. We're through.

You don't want the details. You'll need to wait for the film, if you do. Suffice it to say that a paperwork cock-up left me, on the way to an important meeting, standing at the roadside among the former contents of my car, namely two computers, a travel bag, three shirts, a paperback copy of Middlemarch and my shattered dreams of ever being a grown-up.

Standing beside me, looking as shell-shocked as I feel, Rachel shakes her head, opens her mouth a couple of times, like a goldfish at feeding time, and utters a few broken words.  

"Only an idiot ... ," she says. "Why on earth didn't you...." She punches my arm gently. "Words fail me," she says. 

"That's good," I tell her. "I'd hate to see your usual chatty, cheery self at a time like this. It would be insensitive."

"Can I hit you harder?" she says.

"You should," I say. But she doesn't. Never hit anyone in her life, the soft southern nancy.

Later that day, having been rescued and sent on our way by a sympathetic Susan, I get chatting to my son inside his flat, among the creative ferment of a sculptor at work. 

It is somehow soothing. Chaos inside and out. The last thing I need, with my brain in turmoil, is neat and tidy surroundings. 

"Don't worry about it," he tells me. "It's genetic. Your dad was smart but dopey. I'm the same. Get over it."

"I'm worse than either of you," I say.

"You're not," he says. "What's the dopiest thing you ever did?"

"Where do I start?" I say, trawling the memory banks. "I went to Paris once. Took a woman but not the address of the hotel we were booked into. Or its name. Beat that."

"Easy," he says. "My mind wandered in chemistry class once and my body set itself on fire."

"Jeez," I say, in sudden alarm. It's 15 years since he was at school and he's clearly fine, but a dad's instincts don't die. "What happened?"

"We were using these wee meths burners," he says. "I spilled some on my hands and it caught fire. Funny stuff, meths. It flows easily and burns kinda cool at first. 

"So I wave my hands around, not too bothered. But that doesn't help. So then I try to smother the flames."

"Does that help?" I say.

"Sets my armpits on fire." 

"Bloody hell."

"It's getting toasty by this time. And I'm not sure what to do next. So I scratch my head and guess what?"

"You set your head on fire?"

"Correct," he says. "My lab partner Cathy Small is running around now, screaming like a banshee. So the chemistry teacher, a big bugger we called Moby - can't remember his real name now - he strolls over with a basin of water, hurls it at me, which puts the flames out, then sends me to the nurse. 

"She rubs cool stuff on my hands and head and says I'm fine. I go back to class and the guys give me a big cheer. Moby, the bastard, gives me detention."

He scratches his chin and grins. "The day I set my head on fire. I think I win," he says.

"I think you do," I tell him.

I hope I didn't brain my damage

My dad had a great saying, the exact wording of which I can't remember now. Something like full-blown insanity being rare but stupidity being all around us.

Frank Zappa reckoned there was more stupidity in the universe than hydrogen. Einstein said only the universe and human stupidity were infinite. "And I'm not sure about the former."

You've maybe guessed by now that I'm playing for time with this preamble, because today's topic is one I'm reluctant to delve deeply into. Stupidity. Specifically mine.

As the first graduate in our family I used to be told I was clever but lacked sense, an allegation I dismissed at the time as sour grapes. The suspicion has grown since that the grapes were fine. 

And yet it's not sense that's been lacking all these years. It's the close connection with ambient events that ordinary folk take smugly for granted. I walked in front of a swing when I was three, into a lampost when I was ten and through a plate-glass window when I was 25, in all cases sustaining cuts, bruises and contusions but lasting damage only to that aura of sophistication I aim at all times to project.

"Of course I don't think you're stupid," Rachel tells me in Waverley Station, as we're headed home from a morning meeting we have travelled to Edinburgh to attend, only to discover that the day was accurate but the week was only approximate.

"You are fairly smart most of the time,"  she tells me. "But every now and then you become - what's the word? - challenging. You don't seem to know what's going on around you. You're annoyingly dopey."

My mind wanders back to a lovely, dark-haired woman called Rosemary, who often called me that. "It's loveable," she said. No one since has found it so, assigning my dopeyness instead to various places along the annoying spectrum, from 'challenging' all the way to 'infuriating'. 

"You are doing that stupid act again," my wife used to say. "It drives me insane."

Little did she know how hard I found it, all those centuries we were together, to seem nearly normal sometimes. The relief when we split was immense, like taking a tight-fitting bra off at the end of the day.

"Watch where you're going grandpa!" a young punk shouts, as I bump into him in the information centre, stepping on his foot and dislodging one of his essential earpieces.

"See what I mean," Rachel says, taking my arm and leading me towards the cash machine in the corner. "Stand there," she says. "I won't be a moment. Then I'll show you where the platform is for the train back to Glasgow."

Suddenly I'm the one who's annoyed. "You're talking to me as if I'm a ten-year-old," I say. "I've been all over the world without you. I've interviewed astronauts in Houston and eaten fruits of the forest from tall, slim glasses in Helsinki boardrooms. I don't need you leading me by the hand and showing me the right bloody platform in Edinburgh, thanks very much."

She steps aside and I push my card into the slot, punch the code and press the option to withdraw £50 in cash. When the card reappears I shove it in my back pocket, turn on my heel and flounce off towards Platform 7. 

"Hey!" Rachel shouts at my departing back.

"What?" I turn, still annoyed with her.

"Don't you want this money then?" she asks, waving the five ten pound notes I've left in the jaws of the cash machine.

It's all about ambience

"I never thought I'd hear you say that," I tell my son as we're catching up in his white room, before heading off to lunch. "Run it past me again."

"It's an idea that comes from a French, Marxist, neo-Dada art group," he says, listening to his own words then grinning. "Yeah, I see what you mean. That stuff's starting to trip off my tongue, isn't it?"

"Didn't mean to make you self-conscious," I say. "You got to learn the jargon. Just took me by surprise. Seems only yesterday you were babbling baby talk and pulling Weetabix out your hair. All of a sudden you're Brian Sewell."

"I like him," he says. "Sounds posh but he's a good laugh."

"So what's it about?" I say.

"Psychogeography," he says.

"I had a psycho geography teacher," my sister says. 

"Mad bastard, was he?" says my son, always happy to stroll down conversational side roads. "What did he do?"

"Nothing useful," she says. "Spent all his time talking to the domestic science teachers. So I learned by heart everything he taught us but failed the exam."

"You look like it's still annoying you," he says. 

"It is," she says and seethes quietly for a while.

"So what's it all about?" I ask. "This psychogeography."

"The sudden change of ambience in a street," my son says. "The path of least resistance you take in aimless strolls." 

He scratches his nose. "Kinda how the different parts of a city impose a flow on you, as you wander aimlessly around it." 

"Sounds a bit vague," I say. 

"It's totally vague," he says. "Guy Debord was one of the French Marxists that started it and he got pissed a lot. So maybe it's just drunken rambling. But it's been picked up by more interesting guys, like Will Self and Alan Moore - who wrote Watchmen and V for Vendetta."

"I'm still not getting what you have to do," I say.

"Site, place and content around the Queen's Cross area of Glasgow," he says. "Psychogeography. It's our first art project of the new term. So we've been wandering around, absorbing the ambience like nobody's business."

"We did that sometimes with the kids," my sis says. "We'd take them out and look at the lights and statues and buildings. We called them street furniture."

"Funnily enough we found a couple of old sofas, when we started psycho wandering," he says. "Carried them back to the studio. I fell asleep on one and they painted a moustache on me." 

"Is it sofa, couch or settee?" sis says. "I got laughed at the other day for calling it a settee. That was old-fashioned, they said, and I should call it a couch."

"See that just gets on my tits," my son says. "You can call things anything you want. I'm going to call this project "Ambience: sofa so good." 

"Is there a point to it all?" I say.

"You know better than that," he says. "Is there a point to particle physics? Is there a point to people? Alan Moore says magic is art and art is magic, and both come down to "the science of manipulating symbols, words or images to achieve changes in consciousness."

"Do you think we should magic ourselves off to lunch?" my sister says.  

"I do," he says. "I'm going to absorb all the ambience I can get from two fried eggs and a tattie scone."

Always an artist

Welcome to the January 2014 Carnival of Natural Parenting: The More Things Stay the Same
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have talked about the continuity and constancy in their lives. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.
***

Louise Bourgeois is best known for her spiders, particularly the monstrous but strangely comforting Maman, whose bronze, high-stepping legs I walked under several years ago, in the turbine hall at Tate Modern. 

But it's not her spiders that have been inspiring my son. "I was at an exhibition of her work in Edinburgh," he tells my sister and me, in the sculpture department at Glasgow School of Art. "She had some spirally drawings I liked. So I came back and did all these," he says, strewing sketches all over the table and the floor. 

"I was listening to Moby Dick when I did this," he says, picking one out with a pointing finger.

"Doesn't look like a whale to me," I say, and he glances at me with some scorn.

"It's not supposed to," he says. "You're not getting this. It's all part of my artistic process."

"What do I know about artistic process?" I say. "I drew a robin once and my teacher said it looked like a dead wasp. I never tried to express myself in art class again, resorting instead to sullen non-cooperation."

"I did that in every subject in school," my son says, looking stressed for a moment.

"The point is you're not trying to make something good right away," he says. "You're exploring the material. You throw these off fast, then lay them out and go, 'I like the way that's working' or 'I love how this curls around here'. Then you turn it into a sculpture."

"Is that one connected with this?" my sis says, holding up two similar-looking sketches.  

"They're all connected," he tells her. "Everything's connected."

"Why does everybody sounds like a hippy these days," I say. "Do you always start with painting and drawing then?"

"It varies," he says. "I started splitting planks of wood with a knife recently and a week later I was still at it. It's amazing how much you can learn about a material by doing the same thing to it, over and over.

"Eventually the sense of that substance gets into your brain. So you don't just see an image when you think of it. You also get its touch and texture. You feel the flow of the grain and the force it exerts on your fingers."

My sister smiles across at me as my son talks fluently and articulately about aspects of art we know nothing about. As he leads the way from the workshop, half an hour later, she and I lag a little behind. 

"That was great," she says quietly. "He's so enthusiastic and interesting. You know who'd have loved that if she was still alive?"

"Yes I do," I say. 

"She was always talking about what he was like as a wee lad. So happy and outgoing, she'd say. So creative, artistic and full of fun." 

"Then he went to school and struggled badly," I say. "It took us ages to get him diagnosed as dyslexic. By that time the damage had been done. He was a bad boy, the teachers said, surly and uncooperative. The constant criticism squelched his personality for years."

"But he is back, isn't he?" my sister says. "Twenty years later. Mum would have been glowing. Her grandson is an artist now."

My son hears the last part and calls up to us from a dozen steps below, "I'm an art student not an artist yet," he says.

"You are an artist," my sister says. "You always have been."


***
Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!
Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

• Always an Artist — Some kids take longer than others to come into themselves, so you have to stick with them, as a parent, long after everyone else has given up, writes Douglas at Friendly Encounters.
• Not Losing Yourself as a First Time Mom — Katie at All Natural Katie continues to stay true to herself after becoming a new mom.
• Using Continuity to Help Change {Carnival of Natural Parenting} — Meegs from A New Day talks about how she is using continuity in certain areas of her life to help promote change and growth in others.
• Staying the Same : Security — Life changes all the time with growing children but Mother Goutte realised that there are other ways to 'stay the same' and feel secure, maybe a bit too much so!
• Harmony is What I'm After — Tribal Mama gushes about how constant change is really staying the same and staying the same brings powerful change.
• A Primal Need For Order and Predictability – And How I Let That Go — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama shares how she overcame her primal need for order and predictability once her awareness shifted, opening her eyes to the impact this had on her young daughter. Take a short journey with Jennifer and she bares her soul, exposes her weaknesses and celebrates her new outlook and approach to living life, even in the face of total chaos.
• Breastfeeding Before and After — Breastfeeding has come and gone, but Issa Waters at LoveLiveGrow finds that her relationship with her son is still just the same and just as good.
• A Real Job — Back in high school That Mama Gretchen had a simple, but worthwhile career aspiration and today she is living her dream … is it what you think?
• Comforting — sustainablemum never thought she would want things always being the same, but she explains why it is exactly what her family wants and needs.
• 'The Other Mums' and The Great Illusion — Marija Smits reflects on the 'great big magic show of life' and wonders if it will continue to remain a constant in our lives.
• Unschooling: Learning doesn't change when a child turns four — Charlotte at Winegums & Watermelons talks about the pressure of home education when everyone else's children are starting school.
• Finding Priorities in Changing Environments — Moving from Maine to a rural Alaskan island for her husband's military service, Amy at Me, Mothering, and Making it All Work found that keeping consistent with her priorities in changing environments can take some work, but is vital to continuous health and happiness.
• Keeping it "Normal" — Kellie at Our Mindful Life has moved several times in the last two years, while doing her best to keep things stable for her kids.
• The Evolution Of Our Homeschool Journey — Angela at Earth Mama's World reflects on her homeschooling journey. Homeschooling is a constant in the life of her family but the way in which they learn has been an evolution.
• Sneaking in Snuggles: Using Nurturing Touch with Older Children — When Dionna at Code Name: Mama's son was a toddler and preschooler, he was the most loving, affectionate kiddo ever. But during the course of his 5th year, he drastically reduced how often he showed affection. Dionna shares how she is mindfully nurturing moments of affection with her son.
• Steady State — Zoie at TouchstoneZ writes a letter to her partner about his constancy through the rough sailing of parenting.
• A Love You Can Depend On — Over at True Confessions of a Real Mommy, Jennifer has a sweet little poem reminding us where unconditional love really lies, so it can remain a constant for us and our children.
• Same S#!*, Different Day — Struggling against the medical current can certainly get exhausting, especially as the hunt for answers drags on like it has for Jorje of Momma Jorje.
• New Year, Still Me — Mommy Bee at Little Green Giraffe writes about how a year of change helped her rediscover something inside herself that had been the same all along.
• One Little Word for 2014 — Christy at Eco Journey In The Burbs has decided to focus on making things this year, which is what she is loves, as long as she doesn't kill herself in the process.
• The Beauty of Using Montessori Principles of Freedom and Consistency — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now shares the continuity of her teaching, parenting, and grandparenting philosophy using a combination of freedom and consistency.
• My Husband's Mini — Crunchy Con Mom shares which of her sons looks more like her husband's baby pictures — and the answer might surprise you!
• Growth Happens When You Aren't Looking — Lori at TEACH through Love is treasuring these fleeting moments of her daughter's early adolescence by embracing the NOW.
• A New Reality Now - Poem — As Luschka from Diary of a First Child struggles to come to terms with the loss of her mother, she shares a simple poem, at a loss for more words to say.
• Making a family bedroom — Lauren at Hobo Mama has decided to be intentional about her family's default cosleeping arrangements and find a way to keep everyone comfortable.
• New Year, Same Constants — Ana at Panda & Ananaso takes a look at some of the things that will stay the same this year as a myriad of other changes come.
• I Support You: Breastfeeding and Society — Despite how many strides we've taken to promote "breast is best," Amy at Natural Parents Network talks about how far we still have to go to normalize breastfeeding in our society.