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by Sandy Jones

Few parents of babies have hours to spend reading any book from cover to cover, so I've designed this one for people who have only five minutes a day to concentrate on anything but their fussy babies. The book contains brief, comprehensible explanations and plenty of charts to speed up your search for answers. In the margins you'll find comments from other parents about their fussy babies, and some wise words from medical researchers and practitioners on every aspect of babies' crying and sleeplessness. The last two chapters are meant to help you sustain yourself through what may well be the most challenging time in your life.

One mother told me, "If my baby is going to suffer, I don't want him to suffer alone." Your baby shouldn't suffer alone, and you shouldn't, either. May this book provide the knowledge and solace you need so you can in turn help your baby to feel pain-free, comfortable, and well-loved. 

Tips For Handling Your Newborn

If your baby is sucking his fingers or fist, he may simply be hungry. Try feeding him.

Move your baby slowly to allow him time to adjust to changes in position.

Talk to him in a gentle, slow voice, as though he understood exactly what you were saying. Tell him when you plan to pick him up, and ask him if it's all right before you do it.

Hold him so that his face is about 8 inches from yours when you want to talk with him. This is the distance at which his eyes focus best.

If your baby isn't hungry, but he's a little fussy, try putting him up to your shoulder. He may stop fussing to look around.

Be alert for your baby's cues that he has had enough socializing. He may hiccup, turn his head to the side, sneeze, or begin to grimace.

Most babies don't like to have their heads controlled, so don't try to force him onto your breast by pushing him on the back of his head, and be sure to stretch the neck of T-shirts before pulling them over his head.

To avoid exposing your baby to sudden temperature changes, unwrap him slowly. Keep a warm blanket over him when you change his clothes or diapers, especially if the room is drafty.

If your baby startles easily, wrap him firmly in a light blanket so that his arms and legs are restrained. It may help him to feel like he's back in the womb, which was home such a short while ago.

All Babies Cry Sometimes

Some babies cry a lot more than others, even though they may be perfectly healthy and their parents very experienced in handling infants. The amount of time your baby spends crying each day may be less than it seems. Though you may feel that your baby is crying twenty-four hours a day, if you carefully record his actual crying times you may discover that his crying isn't really nonstop. Understandably, your feelings of frustration and helplessness may make it seem that your baby cries endlessly.

So how much crying is normal? Opinions vary. Many studies have found that crying episodes start in earnest around three weeks of age, peak at around six weeks, and decrease significantly between three and four months of age. Crying tends to be worst around mealtimes--7:00 A.M., 12:00 P.M., and between 5:00 and 6:00 P.M with the most crying around dinnertime. Some researchers say babies average an hour and a quarter of crying per day; others say two to four hours' crying per day is normal.

What is normal to these researchers might be quite worrisome to you, and might be considered a cause for alarm in a country where babies are generally given closer nurturing than they are in the United States. In India and Africa babies are carried by their mothers or other family members all day long and kept beside them at night, but here many babies are expected to be content in nonhuman baby holders such as cribs, playpens, car seats, and strollers. And this treatment usually leads to more crying.

Will You spoil your baby by carrying her too much, by answering

her cries too quickly, or by getting into the habit of going to her when she wakes

up over and over during the night? A lot of parents worry about this--especially when their babies are extra demanding. Fatigue can make you question whether you're falling into a trap of being manipulated by your baby. Doctors and relatives may try to convince you that you are.

"Maybe I'm being too soft on her. Maybe my baby needs to be shown who's boss," you say to yourself. So you stop going to your baby when she cries, or you chide her for making demands. But she only cries harder and longer.

Research has shown that parents who are the most afraid of spoiling their babies are the most likely to produce children who act spoiled. By taking longer to answer, these parents get accustomed to the crying, and so distance themselves from their babies even more. The baby's trust in her caregivers begins to erode, which makes her quicker to cry and harder to soothe. Eventually she grows into a clingy, overly demanding, and insecure toddler.

Parents' attitudes even during pregnancy can affect how they respond to their babies after birth. One study showed that expectant parents who said they were hesitant to pick up babies for fear of spoiling them were more liable to produce babies who cried long and frequently than were expectant parents who believed babies' cries should be answered right away.

Studies have also shown that the longer a parent takes to answer a baby's cries, the longer it takes to soothe the baby. The critical cutoff point for answering a baby's cries is a minute and a half. If a parent takes longer than a minute and a half to answer, the amount of time required to quiet the baby increases by three, four, or in some cases fifty times.

Your Baby Doesn't Learn to Sleep

Your baby's sleeping patterns change naturally as his body's systems mature. Newborns aren't equipped with day-night body cycles; they alternate between sleeping and waking throughout the day and night, regardless of what is happening around them. It's not until about the fourth month after birth that the typical baby spends most of the day awake and sleeps longer stretches during the night. By then, the baby's bodily cycles--of high and low temperature, heart rate, and urine excretion, for instance--have become more regulated. The start of sleeping through the night coincides with the appearance of day-night rhythms and the excretion in the baby's body of an important hormone, cortisol, that helps to regulate metabolism.

You can't teach your baby to sleep through the night; it isn't a skill that can be learned. But when the time is right, your baby's inborn master clock will set all of his internal operations in harmonious cycles, and his day and night rhythms will become more predictable.

Shared Sleep Is Good for Parents, Too

Ironically, the very thing that most parents do to get more sleep results in their getting less sleep. Typically, parents decide that they can sleep better if the baby is in another place, and so they put the baby in a crib in a separate room. The baby becomes frightened by the isolation and cries out to bring the parents close. A parent, aroused from sleep by the crying, gets up and feeds the baby, who goes to sleep in the parent's arms. The parent returns the baby to the crib and goes back to the other bedroom to sleep. The baby sleeps until hunger pangs and loneliness arouse him again. The baby cries, the parent is aroused, and so the night passes.

Instead of getting more sleep, the parent actually gets less sleep this way than if the baby were within arm's reach. A breastfeeding mother can nurse her baby without getting up or even waking fully. She need not sit up waiting for the baby to finally fall back into a deep sleep. And many parents have found that sleeping with their babies decreases the frequency of night wakings, so the parents themselves get more rest.

You can test this idea yourself by taking your baby into bed with you for a few nights to see if his night waking and crying are reduced. You may want to make some notes on his behavior first, so you can accurately compare his sleep patterns in isolation and in your bed.

By giving in to your baby's inborn need for closeness, you may find that you not only help him conserve his energies for emotional and physical growth, but you conserve your own energies as well.

Check List For Evaluating A Baby Doctor

You should feel confident that your baby's physician has up-to-date knowledge and plenty of experience concerning the many causes of infant pain.

He or she should refrain from giving you pat answers that don't help, or prescribing drugs that simply mask your baby's discomfort.

The doctor should listen well. He or she should treat your baby's crying as important, and your perceptions and opinions about your baby as valuable in uncovering solutions. 

You shouldn't feel rushed with your appointment or have to wait long to see the doctor.

Your physician should be readily available to talk by telephone.

Your doctor should welcome your seeking a second opinion, especially if he or she has recommended extensive tests.

You should feel that no stone has been left unturned to discover what is causing your baby's pain.

Your Crying Older Baby

Once feeding problems have been resolved and colic has peaked, your baby may cry for new reasons. He may catch his first cold, and, if you and he are unlucky, the cold may lead to his first ear infection. With the ear infection could come the most acute pain he will have yet experienced. Your baby will probably also get his first vaccination, and he may have a reaction to it. When he starts to eat solid foods, he is likely to have some bouts with diaper rash. And about the same time he starts on solids, your baby will, more or less painfully, cut his first tooth. Soon thereafter, he will probably begin to cry from a fear of being separated from you, and he just won't be himself as long as you are away.

The inner logic goes something like this: "He's crying because he's uncomfortable." "He's sleeping because he needs rest." "He's asking me to carry him because it makes him feel better." "He wants to sleep next to me because he feels safer that way."

Notes To Dad

Try to get home on time. Things can crumble in those last few minutes that your partner is waiting.

Take the baby away from the house for an hour or two so Mom can nap or take a leisurely bath.

Talk to the baby and say nice things about her. Mom wants to know there is something lovable about her.

Lend a listening ear to your partner. Maybe you can't cure colic, but there is much relief in feeling understood.

Offer to take Mom on an outing. She might say she is too tired, but she needs adult companionship almost as much as sleep.

Make a run for take-out food or cook dinner yourself.

Take over the baby right after dinner or at some other definite time each evening for half an hour or more. (Gentle, quiet touching, talking, and humming work better before bedtime than vigorous play.)

Try letting your baby sleep on your bare chest.
 
When you can count on a few minutes' break from your baby, try progressively relaxing different parts of your body while concentrating on a single image in your mind. Follow these steps:

1. Lie quietly on the floor, on the couch, or in bed, in whatever position is most comfortable for you.
2. Close your eyes, and keep them closed.
3. Slowly take three deep breaths. Inhale through your nose as deeply as you can, and then exhale through your mouth as slowly as you can. 
4. Breathe normally for about one minute as you picture a place of awesome beauty, such as mountains, a meadow, or a seashore.
5. Take a deep breath, and clench your left hand as tightly as you can.
6. Exhale slowly through your mouth as you hold your hand tightly closed.
7. Slowly unclench the hand and concentrate on the relaxed feeling this gives you.
8. Breathe normally, and concentrate on your beautiful vision for one minute.
9. Take a deep breath, and tighten your right hand, repeating steps six through eight. Do the same with other parts of your body, such as your legs, your jaw, and your back.
10. Lie still, breathing normally, for a couple of minutes before getting up.

After some practice in progressive relaxation, try staying calm in the face of stress--that is, in the face of your howling baby. As you go about trying to soothe him, imagine him as smiling and thriving, even though he may seem hopelessly far from that image right now. Picture yourself holding this peaceful baby as you walk through a beautiful meadow. Breathe deeply and relax your muscles as you have done while lying down.

If you suffer from chronic muscular stiffness and pain, you may need regular massages. Maybe your partner can provide them, when the baby goes to sleep, or perhaps you'll want to seek the help of a massage therapist or physical therapist. Loosening up those tight spots and keeping them loose can help you feel better about your body and your baby.

What Causes Colic?

Doctors and scientists have been trying to find the cause of colic for over half a century now. The reports from hundreds of studies of colicky babies are confusing and often contradictory. Some have claimed miracle cures that are hard to believe----babies suddenly got better when parents kept their booties on twenty-four hours a day, or fed them sugar water, or took eyelashes out of their eyes. Most of these studies involved only a few colicky babies and no controls, so we can't know whether the cure really worked or whether the babies got better because they outgrew the problem or their diet or environment changed. More often than not, the results of these studies could not be duplicated when the experiments were run again.

Perhaps the most valuable colic studies have focused on the baby's belly. Throughout history, people have believed that the constantly crying baby was experiencing some kind of abdominal pain; the word colic, in fact, comes from the Greek work kolikos, an adjective derived from kolon meaning the large intestine. We still don't know, however, whether belly pain is always or even usually the cause of crying in the many babies said to suffer from colic. Some parents assume their babies have bellyaches because they draw up their legs when they cry, but babies do this when they hurt in any part of the body. Besides, specialists believe babies can't localize pain--that is, no matter where the hurt originates, babies feel it in the abdominal region. Still, when you can hear your baby's belly gurgling, and when she doesn't calm down until you lay her on your arm and massage her abdomen, you know your baby's crying has to do with her digestion.

Preventing Food Allergies

If you have allergies, or if they run in your family or your spouse's, the best way to protect your baby is to feed him only breast milk for the first six months. You might also watch what you eat yourself. During pregnancy and the first year after birth, you might completely avoid common allergens that are not essential to your diet, such as chocolate, and take only moderate amounts of others, such as citrus.

The key to a good breastfeeding diet--to any diet, perhaps--is moderation in everything. You might eat an orange for breakfast, for instance, instead of drinking a large glass of orange juice (which is equal to three or four oranges, but much lower in vitamins and fiber). You might have one chocolate instead of consuming the whole boxful, and eat only a small portion of beans, along with rice and meat, instead of a big bowlful of beans. You might change your protein sources frequently--rotating among meats, nuts, lentils, and cheeses, for example--since overeating one kind of food increases the chance of a reaction in your baby. Feed yourself as you will your growing child--on whole, minimally processed foods, in variety.

Excerpt reprinted with permission from foxcontent.com

4 Things Every Stay-at-Home Mom Needs to Know

Thinking about becoming a stay-at-home mom? Many moms agree that while it can be a thankless job, it is also a richly rewarding experience -- one that they wouldn't trade for the world. Discover some of the best-kept secrets to stay-at-home success and then join other moms on the At-Home Moms message board for more advice and support.

1. Feel Proud of What You Do
When someone asks me what I do, I tell them I stay home with my children and I'm not in the least ashamed or embarrassed. I have learned that most people who don't think much of stay-at-home moms (SAHM) don't know what's involved and how much a family benefits and appreciates what we do. My children are only young once; I can get a career later. --Parent Souper
Jackie

I tell people that I am a SAHM, and I do get some odd responses to that! "Oh, so you have no education?" (I have a masters degree and a year into a Ph.D.), or "No skills, huh?" (I used to write million-dollar grants and teach grad school). I am comfortable with my answers, but a lot of other people are not. They think my education is going to waste. I answer those people with "I'm raising my children, and teaching them. What better use of my skills?" --Parent Souper Barb

Stay-at-home motherhood has changed me in so many ways. I find the biggest challenge is setting the "right" example and being the perfect role model. I love my children dearly and I want them to see that mommy has a life too. --Parent Souper Jeanne

2. Keep in Touch with Friends
Having girlfriends is a huge support in being a SAHM, especially if they are SAHMs too. You have a friendly outlet for yourself and playtime for the kids at the same time. --Parent Souper Jackie

I don't get nearly as much girl talk as I used to, but I know, as my children get older and more independent, there will be more time for me. As for keeping working girlfriends close -- live your life, care for your family, and if these old friends want to keep in touch they will. You can offer a meeting, but don't be surprised when you see less and less of most working friends. Just remember that the true friendships will last. --Parent Souper Barb

3. Get Organized
Having a routine and making lists keeps me sane! I have three calendars -- a basic one (for doctor/dentist appointments, etc.), a school one (PTA meetings, school days off, etc.) and a perpetual birthday/anniversary one. Don't over-schedule the kids. Remember that children need time to just play. --Parent Souper Barb

First and foremost, the key is to get rid of stuff! My motto is: If we don't eat it, need it, wear it, or use it, it goes (with sentimental exceptions!). I use the plastic drawer storage to organize smaller-sized toys that would wind up at the bottom of the toy box. (My toddlers even know which toys go in which drawers.) I also use decorative baskets for mail, my makeup, keys and other small household items. --Parent Souper Jackie

I have a routine and stick to it. Monday is my "pick-up from the weekend" day (e.g. cleaning bathrooms, sweeping and laundry), Tuesday and Wednesday are our "busy" days (doing things out of the house). Thursday is laundry day and Friday is dust, mop, clean bathrooms -- "getting ready for the weekend" day. Get a calendar and write things down so you can see what you have to do. I have a purse calendar that I take with me. If anyone asks me if we can do something on a certain day, I can look right then and see if we are free to go. --Parent Souper Cindy

4. Get in Touch with Your Creative Side
Finding time for you is so important. Whether you make crafts, or are involved in the PTA, you have to have activities besides housework and children. --Parent Souper Jackie

I have become a "Fix-It-SAHM." I do repairs, painting, hanging closet doors, putting new hardware on furniture, etc. I am constantly on the look out for projects to do for Christmas gifts. I would go crazy if I didn't find projects to occupy my time and mind. --Parent Souper Jackie

I am working on a book. It is a kid-friendly book about stay-at-home motherhood from a child's perspective. --Parent Souper Jeanne

Be creative in trying to save money. Make up financial challenges: Save for larger items or make up grocery challenges (challenge yourself!). My best money-saving tips are "live simply." Bake from scratch, make simple meals, use coupons, set a budget and stick to it. Forget the silly little perks you had working (lattés out, dinner out, etc.) and enjoy your children. Your love and attention is what they need -- not toys and the latest gadgets. --Parent Souper Barb

How to Love Being a Working Mom
by Lisa Belkin, author of Life's Work

My mother worked, and I turned out okay. In fact, my mother worked a lot. She was a teacher until I was born, then she added a Ph.D. in psychology, followed by a law degree and a legal career that would have made her father proud. Eventually she entered the international insurance business. No, I don't understand what an international insurance expert does any more than I understand what an international lawyer does, but it certainly gets her lots of frequent-flier miles.

My mother worked, and I turned out okay. I recited this like a mantra through nine months of pregnancy. Not only did she work, but she loved working, and yet ... we had dinner each night as a family (takeout, usually, but let's not quibble). I never came home to an empty house after school. There was always someone to help with my homework (or bring it to school when I forgot it) or pick me up and tuck me in when I was sick.

My mother worked, and I turned out okay. Within days after Evan was born, I knew he would be okay, too. One afternoon I loaded him into his stroller intending to sit in the broiling sun in the courtyard of our Houston apartment building and edit a manuscript while he slept. The elevator was broken. I had to bounce the stroller down the stairs. He woke up on the very last step, and his screams were accompanied by the unmistakable sound of a diaper being dirtied. I carried the stroller back up the stairs, changed the diaper, nursed him back to sleep, then collapsed in a miserable, sweaty heap on the couch.

Yes, Evan's mother would work, and Evan would be okay. But whether his mother would be okay was far from certain.

When our native Texan was three months old we moved back to New York and took up the life of suburban commuters. It was a life led to the rhythm of a portable breast pump and the whistle of the early-evening train. Missing the 6:19 from Grand Central meant missing bedtime and bathtime at home. Some nights that broke my heart. Other nights I was secretly relieved (but racked with guilt at my relief) that there'd be that much less for me to do when I finally made it home.

"How did you do it?" I asked my mother in a tone that was more accusation than compliment. "How did you study for the bar exam and keep us fed? How did you write your thesis and proofread our homework? How come your generation did it and mine is losing its collective mind?"

In the world according to Mom, the answer is threefold. First, she says, my life really is more complicated. She was a mother first. Then she had a career. She didn't graduate from law school until I was a senior in high school. When her youngest child left for college, Mom was forty-two years old and there was no one waiting at home for a bath and a story. When I am forty-two my youngest will still be in elementary school. Mom did things serially while my generation does them simultaneously.

That said, Mom gently suggests that me and mine all think too much. Working mothers, she reminds us, have always felt torn. It's just that there are more of us now, in jobs that are more fulfilling partly because they are more demanding, and we are not a group who sees a need to shoulder our frustrations quietly. There is a hint of reprimand in her voice when she says this. Her own mother worked, and she turned out okay -- but there were times when her parents just couldn't be there. "That's why they call it work," she says, quoting my grandmother.

But the most important difference between my life and hers, the reason I felt like a failure and she felt like an adventurer, is a difference I came to see only after I had children of my own. When I look back on my childhood, I remember the security of knowing someone else was always there. What my naive eyes didn't notice was who that someone was. When my mother wasn't home, my father was, straightening patients' teeth in his suite of offices attached to the house, greeting me when I came off the school bus every afternoon, bringing my homework when I forgot it (truth be told, he sent his receptionist to do that, but I was relieved to be rescued), and tucking me in when I was sick.

Yes, my mother worked, and I turned out okay.

Thank you, Mom and Dad.

Helping Your Child Adjust to Daycare
by Ann Douglas

You've just started your two-year-old in a new childcare arrangement. You're thrilled with his new care provider, but he doesn't want anything to do with her. He protests loudly when it's time for you to say good-bye, and you drive to work feeling miserable about the entire situation.

No miracle cure exists for the daycare blues that many children experience when starting a new arrangement, but there is plenty you can do to make the transition as stress-free as possible for your child. Here are a few tips.

• Send along a favorite stuffed animal. Your child may find it easier to adjust to a particular care program having a favored toy to hold when he's feeling anxious or upset.

• Arrive at daycare at least 15 minutes ahead of time so that you can help your child settle into an activity before you have to head off to work. He'll be less likely to protest your departure if he's having fun at the arts-and-crafts table or measuring sand in the sandbox.

• Pay attention to your own body language when saying good-bye to your child. If you're feeling uncertain about the new arrangement, you could be conveying some of your own ambivalence and anxiety to your little one.

• Resist the temptation to sneak out the door when your child isn't looking. You'll simply create more problems for both of you. Fearing that you're going to disappear again, your child may become unwilling to let you out of his sight for a minute -- even when the two of you are at home.

• See if your child reacts as strongly if your partner or a trusted friend drops him off instead. He might actually be protesting your departure more than the particular childcare environment.

Ask your child's caregiver if she can provide insights about the problem. For instance, maybe he doesn't like one of the other children in his group or is having difficulty settling down for his afternoon nap.

• Avoid making other changes to your child's routine while he's getting used to a new childcare setting. This is not a good time to move him from his crib into a bed or to start toilet training, for example.

• Accept the fact that it takes time for young children to adjust to a new childcare setting. And some children take longer than others.

• Be alert to the possibility of an underlying problem. If your child hasn't settled into his arrangement after a couple of weeks, it may just be a poor choice for your child. This doesn't necessarily mean that abuse is occurring: The problem could be something as simple as a personality conflict between your child and caregiver.

True stories and jokes. I will try not to offend any race, color, or creed. I had this little convenience store in Palacios Tx and worked my butt off trying to make it the best it could be.  About 2 years into it I was working on the back row, pulling cans forward and taking inventory.  I looked up and I had a white guy, a black guy, a Mexican, and a Vietnamese in my store shopping all at the same time. At that moment I knew I had a successful business, it didn't matter that we were barely making the light bill and payment every month. That store never did make any money but we did make a lot of friends.  My best friend was Glenn Parks.  He was a little older than me and retired.  We went fishing together and became close friends. You can always tell someone's intelligence by how much they think like you do and Glenn and I thought the same on a lot of different matters.  Glenn was a very intelligent fellow. We would fish and talk about the world, family, our kids and wives or ex's, politics, golf, food -- whatever came up. One day we fished for 2 or 3 hours and caught nothing.  We upped the anchor and started moving to a different place in the bay and went by Grassy Point.  There was a boat anchored there so we shut down the motor and drifted close and asked if they were catching anything. The guy in front of their boat said they had caught nothing.  So we started off slowly to go somewhere else.  Glenn said, "That guy was from the New England."  I told Glenn, "You don't know where that guy is from, he could be from anywhere."  Glenn said "Five bucks says he is from New England." I said, "I have the rest of the United States, Canada, South America, all of Europe, and China and Russia and all the rest of the world? I will take that bet."  So I turned around and eased back to within talking range and we asked, "Where you from?" The man in the front of the boat said, "New York." Glenn asked him, "Upstate?" "Yep, he replied."  I reached into my billfold and pulled out a $5 bill and handed it to Glenn. Glenn said I am really good with accents.  That guy had not said 2 sentences and Glenn had him pegged.   A few years later, after I had sold my convenience store I walked in one morning to get a cup of coffee.  I saw Tina behind the counter at the cash register and she had on this peek a boo dress that had these little diamonds cut out on the sides and that brown skin was showing through.  I immediately went around behind the counter and put my arm around her waist and put my fingers into those holes to touch that skin.  She slapped my hand away and said, "Get out of there, I didn't invite you in. You are the second person today to do that." "Oh, who was the first?" I asked.   Glenn.

My daddy was a rice farmer in South Texas and one morning he and his hired hand went out to check his crop.  The neighbor's bull had got threw the fence and was in his field. My daddy sent the hired hand back to town to call the rancher and got on his Ford Ferguson tractor to go get that bull out of his field.  This little tractor had a front end loader and my daddy was thinking about matadors and bull fighting with a tractor. But those bulls in Mexico are bred small to start with and trained to charge straight at the red cape.  But this was a full grown Brahma bull, seven feet tall at the hump, and mean. He probably weighed as much as my dad and the tractor put together. Now in a straight head-on battle between bull and machine, the bull wouldn't have a chance.  Steel front end loader was stronger than head and horns.  But if that bull got around on the side he could very easily butt that tractor over on it side.  Then my dad would be pinned under the tractor or the bull would be chasing him around it. If the rancher and the hired hands came out there and found that bull chasing my dad around a turned over tractor, he would never be able to go in a coffee shop again for all the laughter.  So he wisely turned that tractor around and waited until the men and horses and dogs got out there to put that bull back in the field where he belonged.    

I remember the time we planted rice with an airplane. The man holding the flag would wait until the plane came over him and then pace off 20 or 25 steps and hold the flag again.  Two flagmen, one on each side of the field would give the pilot something to line up on. Every time that plane went over the flagman would duck down.  My dad saw that and went over and told him he didn't need to duck because that airplane was at least 7 feet off the ground and there was lots of clearance.  If fact he told him, "I am 6 foot and one inch tall so there is 11 inches of distance between the plane and the top of my head.  I will hold the flag and not duck." Well, my dad stood there with the flag and watched that airplane come across the field at him at 150 miles per hour. Right at the last second he couldn't stand it and ducked down as the plane went over.  He handed the flag back and everybody was chuckling.  The rice always showered down on everything and it would grow wherever it landed.  Some landed in the back of Uncle Rip's pickup.  After a rain, it started growing back there.  It got bigger and taller and he just left it there and it was just about to make a head.  All the farmers would meet at the independent rice dryer every morning to drink coffee and talk. They all agreed Uncle Rip was the only farmer in the world who didn't have to go out to the field to check his crop. He carried it around with him. 

Now a poem for my good friend Nelson C. in Louisiana.      I saw this in the Houston Chronicle several years ago.  There had been a gathering of cowboy poets and this was one of the poems.

Reincarnation                              by        Wallace McRae 

In a while the grass will grow upon yer rendered mound.

Till some day on yer moldered grave a lonely flower is found.

And say a hoss should wonder by and graze upon this flower

That once was you, but now’s become yer vegetative bower.

The posey that the hoss done ate, with his other feed,

Makes bone, and fat, and muscle essential to the steed.

But some is left that he can’t use and so it passes through,

And finally lays upon the ground, this thing that once wuz you.

Then say, by chance, I wanders by and sees this upon the ground,

And I ponders, and I wonders at this object that I found.

I thinks of reincarnation, of life, and death, and such,

And come away concludin’ : Slim, you ain’t changed all that much.

                                               Success

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of

 intelligent people and the affection of children;

to earn the appreciation of honest critics and

endure the betrayal of false friends;

to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;

to leave the world a bit better, whether by a

healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed

social condition; to know even 1 lif has

breathed easier because you have lived.

This is to have succeeded.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson--

 There is only one success -- to be able to spend

your life in you own way.  -- Christopher Morley