When Dinosaurs Came With Everything

Children's picture books

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This is a great “mom” book.

It’s not written for moms, but I give it to moms.
It’s called When Dinosaurs Came with Everything, by Elise Broach.
David Small is the illustrator, and I like a lot of his work.
The book begins with a boy who is, as usual, unhappy about running errands with his mother.  But the tables are turned when they discover that this day is different.

They walk into the doughnut shop, buy a box of doughnuts, and a dinosaur comes with the purchase.

A real dinosaur.  A huge dinosaur.
The boy and his mother quickly discover that every purchase or service that day comes with a complimentary dinosaur.  The boy is celebrating; the mom is panicking.

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This continues as they complete their checklist of errands, and you see happy kids all over town and tired looking moms with dinosaurs following them.  At last they go home, and mom sends the boy and his new pets to the backyard while she tries to recover.  After a little while, she comes to the window to watch, and sees one dinosaur fly to the roof to fetch a frisbee for her son.

She watches for a long time, and an idea is born.

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She puts the dinosaurs to work, coming up with a way to use each dinosaur’s strengths to her advantage.

I love the last page of the book.

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She calls the doughnut shop to see if they have any doughnuts left.
They do.
So they go buy the rest of the doughnuts, which means they get the rest of the dinosaurs.
And her son knows that everything will work out fine.

Whenever I finish reading this book I think to myself  “What a great mom!”
Last May I had a breakfast for some mothers that I really admire.
I read this book to them and gave them each a copy of it.

Motherhood brings a lot of dinosaurs into your life.
Not bad things, necessarily, but unplanned things, big things, things that make us tired.
Many of them are things that our children will love, but they sure complicate life.
I think one of the signs of a great mom is one who can take the overwhelming things and learn to use them for good.
I am thankful for all the moms I know who handle their dinosaurs with determination, wisdom and grace.
They give me courage to handle my own.

So if you’re dealing with some dinosaurs today, see if you can’t get your hands on a copy of this book soon, and it will warm your heart.

I’m off to brainstorm ways to put my dinosaurs to work!

Jennifer

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Beauty in Rain

Musings on Life and Beauty

It was cloudy most of the day, and this evening it finally rained.
The clouds sort of matched my evening, if you know what I mean.  I was getting dinner ready much later than I wanted to, and generally fighting off a feeling of discouragement.  As I walked through my dining room to get something, the glistening sidewalks and street caught my eye.

Then I looked up.
It was still raining, but the sky was so lovely I had to pause in my cooking to go outside and appreciate it.
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The sun was setting, but the sky was blue and beautiful.  I loved seeing a few clouds that still glistened with the last light of the sun.
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If the sky is the daily bread of the eyes, then I needed beauty more than food tonight to feel better.
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I stood there, breathing deeply the smells of falling rain as I marveled, once again, at the beauty of the sky.
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I was reminded of a favorite passage in the book Crow and Weasel, by Barry Lopez.

Grizzly Bear has helped Crow and Weasel, who were starving, and together they are enjoying the sunset.
“Sometimes it is what is beautiful that carries you,” said Weasel weakly from his bed.
“Yes.  It can carry you to the end.  It is your relationship to what is beautiful, not the beautiful thing by itself, that carries you,” said Grizzly Bear.
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Tonight I gave thanks for the gift of a beautiful sky as it rained.  It carried me through a difficult moment.
I am grateful for a loving God who places many simple gifts of beauty in our paths to carry us, if we will just see them, through the rainy times in life.

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Real Life

Musings on Life and Beauty

I’m sitting in my family room with 4 crying children.  The three and five year old are crying because they just had a fight.  They now sit, in time out, on chairs on opposite sides of the room.  Unfortunately the chairs face each other, so they’re busy exchanging ugly faces with one another in order to keep it going.

The baby is crying because she is hungry, and the other baby (my 20 month old) is crying because she woke up with a cough and wants to be held and she’s mad that I’m holding the baby.

A few minutes ago I was seriously pondering running a few errands with all of them before I pick my kids up from school for the weekend.  THAT thought has been thrown out.

It’s obvious that they all could use a nap, but I can’t do that right now because in one hour I have to put them all in the car, and there are few things I like LESS than waking up children when they’re still tired and hearing them cry the rest of the day.  The naps will have to wait.

I find myself trying to remember what “noble” things I had intended to do this morning when I woke up and the day held all the promise of happy children and the chance to do some housework.  Was I going to do the dishes?


Perhaps I was going to clean up the piano books strewn all over the living room floor.


I need to remember to ask them why we need juice boxes, bowls and UNO cards with us when we practice.


Or was I going to fold some laundry?


Hey, at least it’s all clean!  That is, unless someone’s been changing clothes in there and leaving the dirty ones mixed in.  That wouldn’t be good news.

Usually my children sort their own laundry before I wash it.  Maybe I should be sorting for my #2 son, just in case there’s more of this in his dirty clothes hamper:


Yes, that would be a brand new, tags and stickers still on, shirt ON A HANGER in his dirty clothes!
Did I tell you that he is 8 years old?  Did I mention that the bar it hangs on is only inches away from the dirty clothes hamper he placed it in?   I made him watch me take the picture, telling him that I might need the picture someday as proof that this really happened!  We laughed, but I was serious.   And now I wonder what else he’s stashing in that pile.  I should probably check before it goes near my washing machine.

I remember now!  I think I was going to finish putting our basement storage room back together after discovering we’d been invaded by mice over the weekend.  That’s a detour I’m not ready to talk about yet.

Maybe I’m the one who should take a nap.  Or go look for some chocolate.
Real life.  Some days it’s definitely better than others.
My baby is one month old today.  Can I go back to the hospital?

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