#babies

Babies are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger's touch. But when you live with them and love them, you feel the softness going inward, the round-cheeked flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints are melted rubber, and even when you kiss them hard, in the passion of loving their existence, your lips sink down and seem never to find bone. Holding them against you, they melt and mold, as though they might at any moment flow back into your body. But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says "I am," and forms the core of personality. In the second year, the bone hardens and the child stands upright, skull wide and solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And "I am" grows, too. Looking at them, you can almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing through the translucent flesh. The bones of the face emerge at six, and the soul within is fixed at seven. The process of encapsulation goes on, to reach its peak in the glossy shell of adolescence, when all softness then is hidden under the nacreous layers of the multiple new personalities that teenagers try on to guard themselves. In the next years, the hardening spreads from the center, as one finds and fixes the facets of the soul, until "I am" is set, delicate and detailed as an insect in amber.

— Diana Gabaldon

#children #motherhood #parenting #vulnerability #love

I was much distressed by next door people who had twin babies and played the violin; but one of the twins died, and the other has eaten the fiddle, so all is peace. ↗

— Edward Lear

#died #distressed #door #eaten #fiddle

The truth is, no matter how trying they become, babies two and under don't have the ability to make moral choices, so they can't be bad. That category only exists in the adult mind. ↗

— Anne Cassidy

#adult #babies #bad #become #category

My sister has three kids so I've spent a lot of time around children and I've always really liked them and wanted my own. It's cool because you think all babies are the same but they aren't at all. They all have such different personalities. It's crazy. ↗

— Bode Miller

#around #babies #because #children #cool

I've been playing on Christmas for the last 10, 11, 12 years. So just got to get up early with the babies, and give them their toys and try to get a nap in and just come to play. ↗

— Shaquille O'Neal

#been #christmas #come #early #get

Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns. ↗

— David Ogilvy

#babies #bringing #campaigns #except #i

So, babies are taken from their mothers because they get temporarily insane and it's not the mother's fault. This is the thing: they shouldn't feel ashamed. They didn't cause this. It is not something they did to themselves. ↗

— Marie Osmond

#babies #because #cause #did #fault

I am comfortable around babies and children because I have two of my own. ↗

— Clive Owen

#around #babies #because #children #comfortable

'Good Morning America' exploited Joan Lunden's pregnancy, but you won't see me bringing my babies on the air. The only reason I'm talking about the babies at all is that they've been with me on the show since I became pregnant. After a while, I had to acknowledge this pumpkin tummy. ↗

— Jane Pauley

#acknowledge #after #air #america #babies

Most of us in the baby-boom generation were raised by full-time mothers. Even as recently as 14 years ago, 6 out of 10 mothers with babies were staying at home. Today that is totally reversed. Does that mean we love our children less than our mothers loved us? No, but it certainly causes a lot of guilt trips. ↗

— Jane Pauley

#babies #causes #certainly #children #does