Baby Stroller Quotes

Daily I walk around my small, picturesque town with a thought bubble over my head: Person Going Through A Divorce. When I look at other people, I automatically form thought bubbles over their heads. Happy Couple With Stroller. Innocent Teenage Girl With Her Whole Life Ahead Of Her. Content Grandmother And Grandfather Visiting Town Where Their Grandchildren Live With Intact Parents. Secure Housewife With Big Diamond. Undamaged Group Of Young Men On Skateboards. Good Man With Baby In BabyBjörn Who Loves His Wife. Dogs Who Never Have To Worry. Young Kids Kissing Publicly. Then every so often I see one like me, one of the shambling gaunt women without makeup, looking older than she is: Divorcing Woman Wondering How The Fuck This Happened.

Shut up!" Henry says, "You're going to wake up Jerry Rice." "Jerry Rice?" Carter says, covering his mouth with a hand. I don't think I've ever seen Carter laugh so hard. "Carter, would you like to be the godfather?" Henry asks. "You know, in case anything happens to me and Woods this week?" "Charming," Carter says. "I''d be honored. Does JJ get to be godmother?" "Obviously," I say. "Can I hold Jerry Rice?" JJ asks. "He''s so cute." "No way, man," I reply. "I don't want to wake that thing up before practice. We'll be late if we have to feed it." "What does it eat?" Carter asks. "I have to breast-feed, cause I'm the mom," Henry says, continuing to push the stroller toward the locker room. "Actually," I say, "It eats a metal rod, made out of, like, lead. So basically, we're learning how to poison babies." "Radical," JJ says as we approach the gym,

I came to New York because I was fleeing from the double-wide baby stroller, from the culture of respectability of the bourgeois suburban middle class. And my dream is that the elements of New York that are vital—the elements that are artistic, that are alternative, that resist capital, that are humane—not only endure but thrive, and maybe they do some sort of aikido reversal. They take [diversity-killing trends] and fucking slam them on their heads.

We’ve both read the same books, so I know direct sunlight is harmful for babies. Whenever I take Jamie out, I make sure she’s wearing her hat and is hidden safely beneath the stroller’s shade screen. I pretty much treat her like she’s a vampire.

Later, when we’re home, we take Cassie in the backyard to run around, and Skylar puts Gus in a cat stroller and pushes her around the perimeter of the property. I stand on the back patio smoking, wondering how I ended up with a teen bride pushing a cat in a baby stroller across my yard.

People can't anticipate how much they'll miss the natural world until they are deprived of it. I have read about submarine crewmen who haunt the sonar room, listening to whale songs and colonies of snapping shrimp. Submarine captains dispense 'periscope liberty'- a chance to gaze at clouds and birds and coastlines and remind themselves that the natural world still exists. I once met a man who told me that after landing in Christchurch, New Zealand, after a winter at the South Pole research station, he and his companions spent a couple days just wandering around staring in awe at flowers and trees. At one point, one of them spotted a woman pushing a stroller. 'A baby!' he shouted, and they all rushed across the street to see. The woman turned the stroller and ran.

​As a little girl, a woman is groomed to become a wife and a mother. She is trained to always make wise decisions, yet there will forever be limits and boundaries. As I look back, I remember being told what I could and could not do, simply because I was a girl. A little girl is told she cannot act like a boy; if she does, she will be classified as a “tomboy”. Climbing trees was prohibited, instead, she was taught to put a baby doll in a stroller and take the doll for a walk. She couldn’t sit as she pleased; she was told to only sit with her ankles crossed. Girls were given a kitchen playset that was equipped with a stove, sink, and an accessory set of play food dishes, pots, and pans, etc., along with a tea set to bring out the “elegance” in them. As the saying goes, “Girls are sugar and spice, and everything nice.” I’m taken aback by how girls are groomed to be a certain way; however, boys are able to love life and live freely without limitations and criticism.

Richards remembered the day - that glorious and terrible day - watching the planes slam into the towers, the image repeated in endless loops. The fireballs, the bodies falling, the liquefaction of a billion tons of steel and concrete, the pillowing clouds of dust. The money shot of the new millennium, the ultimate reality show broadcast 24-7. Richards had been in Jakarta when it happened, he couldn't even remember why. He'd thought it right then; no, he'd felt it, right down to his bones. A pure, unflinching rightness. You had to give the military something to do of course, or they'd all just fucking shoot each other. But from that day forward, the old way of doing things was over. The war - the real war, the one that had been going on for a thousand years and would go on for a thousand thousand more - the war between Us and Them, between the Haves and the Have-Nots, between my gods and your gods, whoever you are - would be fought by men like Richards: men with faces you didn't notice and couldn't remember, dressed as busboys or cab drivers or mailmen, with silencers tucked up their sleeves. It would be fought by young mothers pushing ten pounds of C-4 in baby strollers and schoolgirls boarding subways with vials of sarin hidden in their Hello Kitty backpacks. It would be fought out of the beds of pickup trucks and blandly anonymous hotel rooms near airports and mountain caves near nothing at all; it would be waged on train platforms and cruise ships, in malls and movie theaters and mosques, in country and in city, in darkness and by day. It would be fought in the name of Allah or Kurdish nationalism or Jews for Jesus or the New York Yankees - the subjects hadn't changed, they never would, all coming down, after you'd boiled away the bullshit, to somebody's quarterly earnings report and who got to sit where - but now the war was everywhere, metastasizing like a million maniac cells run amok across the planet, and everyone was in it.

Getting out of the house. Every. Single. Day. The best thing you can do for yourself, your sanity, and your baby is to leave the scene of the crime. Leave the place with the dishes in the sink and the overflowing Diaper Genie. Put your baby in a carrier or a stroller and go on a walk around the neighborhood. Put in some headphones and listen to Beyoncé or Adele or a podcast on business ethics. Do whatever you have to do to remind yourself that there is a life beyond your nest and that you are still part of it.

The mother was holding a baby, had a stroller with what looked like twin girls around three, and had a five-year-old boy who was running around the shelves with a finger shoved up his nose. I considered warning him that if he fell, he would poke his brain out, but it struck me that losing intelligence was not something he was worried about.

To be poor in a rich city brings all kinds of ironies, perhaps none greater than this: The donated clothing is top shelf. Used purple uggs and pantagonia fleeces cover thinning socks and fraying jeans. A Phil & Teds rain shell fished from the garbage protects the babys creaky stroller.

A generation of children is not only being raised indoors, but is being confined to even smaller spaces. Jane Clark, a University of Maryland professor of kinesiology . . . calls them "containerized kids"--they spend more and more time in car seats, high chairs, and even baby seats for watching TV. When small children go outside, they're often placed in containers--strollers--and pushed by walking or jogging parents. . . Most kid-containerizing is done for safety concerns, but the long term health of these children is compromised. (35)

When I go to art museums, I push a bag of midget carrots in a baby stroller, and it feels like the stuff on the wall is watching me. As a fatheresque person of curiosity, I feel misunderstood, but at least The Ducks know me.

The war—the real war, the one that had been going on for a thousand years and would go on for a thousand thousand more—the war between Us and Them, between the Haves and the Have-Nots, between my gods and your gods, whoever you are—would be fought by men like Richards: men with faces you didn’t notice and couldn’t remember, dressed as busboys or cab drivers or mailmen, with silencers tucked up their sleeves. It would be fought by young mothers pushing ten pounds of C-4 in baby strollers and schoolgirls boarding subways with vials of sarin hidden in their Hello Kitty backpacks. It would be fought out of the beds of pickup trucks and blandly anonymous hotel rooms near airports and mountain caves near nothing at all; it would be waged on train platforms and cruise ships, in malls and movie theaters and mosques, in country and in city, in darkness and by day. It would be fought in the name of Allah or Kurdish nationalism or Jews for Jesus or the New York Yankees—the subjects hadn’t changed, they never would, all coming down, after you’d boiled away the bullshit, to somebody’s quarterly earnings report and who got to sit where—but now the war was everywhere, metastasizing like a million maniac cells run amok across the planet, and everyone was in it.

The younger pushed a thumb-sucking baby in a stroller with little animals dangling—including a baby elephant. The kid’s eyes looked glassy with pleasure as it snacked on its own thumb. “What do they get out of that?” Eve wondered as they stepped into the vacated elevator. “How good could your own thumb taste?” “It’s not the taste, it’s the sucking action. Oral satisfaction and comfort.” “So, basically, they’re giving themselves a blow job?” For a couple of seconds, Peabody’s mouth worked silently. “I … I can’t possibly answer that without feeling really dirty and weirded.

Ribbons, balloons, paper flowers, candies, diapers, and dolls. An aarti tray was set up by the shrine. A long table was covered in confetti and an assortment of food: little square cakes that resembled building blocks spelling out “Welcome Baby Shah,” cups with veggie dip and long slivers of vegetables, lettuce wraps, and a watermelon carved into a baby stroller filled with fruit balls. Alongside that were silver platters of warm vegetable samosas and bowls of a dark green chutney with spicy jalapeño, and sweet date and tangy tamarind chutney. Potato and onion pakora came next, fried golden brown with hints of green herbs and creamy raita. I knew I had to get some dabeli before those went fast and plucked a small bun of what was essentially a spiced potato burger topped with peanuts and pomegranate seeds. There was, of course,

4. Radicalism of forms. If a new model once created meets with much success on account of its greater efficiency than its predecessor, it lends certain neighbouring forms a formal radicalism, which attempts to borrow from the appearance of the new form: for example, bronze tools that had reached the furthest development of their utility had a disastrous influence on stone tools, warping them toward an elegance that could only be attained in bronze. Today aviation has imposed its aerodynamic forms even on baby strollers and irons. This radicalism of forms is a result of the fact that people become bored when they do not find some unexpected element in the familiar. This radicalism might seem illogical, as the advocates of standardization believe, but we must not forget that discovery is only made possible by this need of humanity.

You know, I still feel in my wrists certain echoes of the pram-pusher’s knack, such as, for example, the glib downward pressure one applied to the handle in order to have the carriage tip up and climb the curb. First came an elaborate mouse-gray vehicle of Belgian make, with fat autoid tires and luxurious springs, so large that it could not enter our puny elevator. It rolled on sidewalks in a slow stately mystery, with the trapped baby inside lying supine, well covered with down, silk and fur; only his eyes moved, warily, and sometimes they turned upward with one swift sweep of their showy lashes to follow the receding of branch-patterned blueness that flowed away from the edge of the half-cocked hood of the carriage, and presently he would dart a suspicious glance at my face to see if the teasing trees and sky did not belong, perhaps to the same order of things as did rattles and parental humor. There followed a lighter carriage, and in this, as he spun along, he would tend to rise, straining at his straps; clutching at the edges; standing there less like the groggy passenger of a pleasure boat than like an entranced scientist in a spaceship; surveying the speckled skeins of a live, warm world; eyeing with philosophic interest the pillow he had managed to throw overboard; falling out himself when a strap burst one day. Still later he rode in one of those small contraptions called strollers; from initial springy and secure heights the child came lower and lower, until, when he was about one and a half, he touched ground in front of the moving stroller by slipping forward out of his seat and beating the sidewalk with his heels in anticipation of being set loose in some public garden. A new wave of evolution started to swell, gradually lifting him again from the ground, when, for his second birthday, he received a four-foot-long, silver-painted Mercedes racing car operated by inside pedals, like an organ, and in this he used to drive with a pumping, clanking noise up and down the sidewalk of the Kurfurstendamm while from open windows came the multiplied roar of a dictator still pounding his chest in the Neander valley we had left far behind.

I had to ask Scottie what TYVM meant, because now that I’ve narrowed into her activities, I notice she is constantly text-messaging her friends, or at least I hope it’s her friends and not some perv in a bathrobe. “Thank you very much,” Scottie said, and for some reason, the fact that I didn’t get this made me feel completely besieged. It’s crazy how much fathers are supposed to know these days. I come from the school of thought where a dad’s absence is something to be counted on. Now I see all the men with camouflage diaper bags and babies hanging from their chests like little ship figureheads. When I was a young dad, I remember the girls sort of bothered me as babies, the way everyone raced around to accommodate them. The sight of Alex in her stroller would irritate me at times—she’d hang one of her toddler legs over the rim of the safety bar and slouch down in the seat. Joanie would bring her something and she’d shake her head, then Joanie would try again and again until an offering happened to work and Alex would snatch it from her hands. I’d look at Alex, finally complacent with her snack, convinced there was a grown person in there, fooling us all. Scottie would just point to things and grunt or scream. It felt like I was living with royalty. I told Joanie I’d wait until they were older to really get into them, and they grew and grew behind my back.

How Madeline slowed when she passed women pushing strollers, how she smiled at the babies in those strollers, whether they were cheerful or fretful or sleeping, how she smiled and said hello to the women, asked how they were, commented on the weather, even though—Mia could see it—there was a deep hunger in her eyes. She rushed to open doors for these women, even the nannies pushing fair-skinned children obviously not their own, holding the door open until woman and child were well into the bodega or the café or the bakery before letting it swing slowly shut after them with a wistful, almost mournful look. When a mother—harried, in heels—clip-clopped past her, Madeline Ryan scooped up a pacifier thrown

into the main part of the store. Off to get Kendal, I mouthed to Celine, and she nodded. I stepped out into the September afternoon. Behind me, Eighty-ninth Street stretched several blocks to Riverside Park, a favorite place of mine and Kendal’s. Just ahead the intersection at Broadway sparkled with a steady stream of cars and our neighboring retailers’ windows. A man walking his dog nodded a wordless hello, and a mom with a baby in a stroller bent to pop a pacifier back into her unhappy child’s mouth. A delivery truck double-parked and the car behind it honked its disproval. The air held only a hint that summer was waning. September used to be my favorite month. I liked the way it sweetly bade the summer pastels away and showered the Yard’s shelves with auburn, mocha, and every shade of red. September brought in the serious quilters, those who loved spending

The little girls who invited Poppy over had pink rooms and pink LEGOs and pink comforters over pink sheets on their pink beds. They had crates—actual crates!—of tutus and high heels and dress-up clothes, stuffed animals who themselves wore tutus and high heels and dress-up clothes, Barbies and clothes for the Barbies, jewelry, nail polish, fairies, and baby dolls. They liked to draw and trade stickers. They liked to put their stuffies in strollers and give them a bottle and push them around the block. They liked to have a lemonade stand. They liked to chase each other around the house but in tutus and high heels, and when they caught you at the end, they just hugged you and giggled and laughed together instead of making a big thing about who was a loser and sitting on your head and farting. Poppy could not understand why everyone in the whole world didn’t want to be a girl.

Letisha also misses New York, and what it offered her as a single mother, even at the same time that it made it impossible for her to stay. “In New York, everybody on the corner knew who I was,” she said. “Oh, that’s the brown woman with the baby and the dog.” This sense of community was comforting, and felt safe, even in the neighborhoods that she understood to be unsafe. One of her apartments, Letisha recalled, was “right next to a shady bodega,” but she said, “Never once did I feel unsafe in there.” She said she was never harassed on the street, often felt like the shop owners who sat outside on sidewalks served as an informal neighborhood watch, and felt comfortable enough with her neighbors, in each of her New York apartments, that she could ask for help getting groceries and a stroller up the stairs. She sometimes even left Lola in a store with neighbors while she ran across the street to pick up her laundry. “The attitude was: She’s one of us and we take care of our own,” she said. “I never felt like I was going to be in any danger. But you can’t control the shootings, and I wouldn’t go to block parties.” In her Virginia apartment complex, Letisha said, none of her neighbors acknowledge each other. For

You know what I mean,” I said. “You want to be the mother who all the other mothers gossip about? Like about how bad your parenting skills are?” Erica placed her hand on her hip. “Yeah, I do. Fuck ‘em. Fuck all those mothers. Fuck their playdates and mommy groups and fucking Melissa and Doug puzzles. Fuck their running strollers and baby couture and breastfeeding advice. Fuck their—

Practice resurrection. For me, this means forcing myself to be brave enough to enjoy simple pleasures with my family. I take long walks with Benjamin, pushing the stroller throughout the neighborhood and marveling at the gaudy excess of the bougainvillea. I bake honey wheat bread, listen to folk music, and tend the zucchini plants. I nurse my daughter, which is the most good and rightful thing I've ever done. I breathe. And little by little - baby steps - I invite the real God, the God of love, to banish my fear. How good life is.

For you make me glad by your deeds, Lord; I sing for joy at what your hands have done. —Psalm 92:4 (NIV) My golden retriever, Millie, and I were walking home from the dog park, where Millie socialized for a bit but mostly sat sedately next to me on a bench while I read. At five, Millie doesn’t play as rambunctiously as she once did. She has a few select friends whom she will cavort with, but her inner puppy rarely emerges anymore. Except when we pass Clement Clarke Moore Park, which is teeming with children. There is nothing my dog loves more than kids. She gives me a plaintive look as if to ask, “Can we go inside and have some real fun?” There is a sign, though, that says the park is only for kids and their parents or guardians. No dogs allowed. I gently tug on her leash. She is reluctant to go, dawdling and glancing longingly over her shoulder, her tail drooping. Lord, I wonder, do dogs know that they break our hearts? “Sir? Excuse me, sir?” A woman stood at the park’s gate, pushing a baby in a stroller trailed by two older kids. She waved at me. “Can my kids say hello to your dog?” Before I could answer, Millie was on the move, prancing and pulling me back. First she said hello to the baby, giving it a kiss, her tail flying. Then she bumped up against the older kids, letting them hug and pet her, all the while with an ecstatic look on her face. Finally the woman maneuvered her kids back into the park. “Thanks,” she said, “they really wanted to see a dog today.” Thank You, Lord, for giving us what we need, even a maturing golden retriever whose inner puppy still wants to play. —Edward Grinnan Digging Deeper: Ps 84:11

The South: Three-wheeled Piggly Wiggly shopping carts, grease-caked engine blocks, baby strollers with shredded black hoods, Soviet rocket parts, human skulls on spikes and orange-eyed Rottweilers on heavy chains breathing fire...

When you push your stroller past a group of elderly women, you'll see in the turning gladness of their bodies a glimpse of the children they had been, turning toward the tin music of the ice cream van.

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Steve loved showing off his new son. When we brought him home, all the zoo staff welcomed the new arrival. We have always had a good relationship with a group of Buddhist monks from Tibet. They had blessed Bindi when she was a newborn. As Robert celebrated his one-month birthday, we decided to hold a fund-raiser for a Buddhist nun’s convent where the well had dried up. A new well would cost forty thousand dollars. We felt that amount might be achievable in a series of fund-raising events. We invited the nuns to stay at Australia Zoo and planned to hold a fund-raiser at our brand-new Crocoseum, doing our part to help raise some money for the new well. The nuns wished to know if we wanted them to bless the animals while they were at the zoo. “Would you please bless Robert?” we asked. Bindi had been blessed along with the crocodiles when she was a month old. Now we would do the same for Robert. The nuns came into the Crocoseum for the ceremony. I brought a sleepy little Robert, adorned with his prayer flag and a scarf. We invited press to help publicize the plight of the nuns. Robert was very peaceful. The nuns sang, chanted, and gave him their special blessing. The ceremony was over, and the croc show was about to begin. Steve wanted to share Robert’s first crocodile show with everyone at the Crocoseum, as he was going to feed Murray the crocodile. Just as we had done with Bindi at this age, we brought Robert out for the show. Steve talked to the visitors about how proud he was of his son. He pointed out the crocodile to Baby Bob. Although Robert had been in with the crocodiles before, and would be again, this was an event where we could share the moment with everybody. When the croc show was over, Steve brought Robert back underneath the Crocoseum and I put him in his stroller. His eyes were big and he was waving his arms. This event would mark the beginning of a lifetime of working with his father as a wildlife warrior. Steve and Bindi were regulars during the croc shows, and now it looked as though Robert would be joining in as well.

My wife is so negative. I remembered the car seat, the stroller, AND the diaper bag. Yet all she can talk about is how I forgot the baby.

On Saturday morning, he'd chosen his favorite place in Taipei to show me, Chung-shan Park. We wandered on a beautiful walking path around a lake with spraying fountains, surrounded by trees, and under the shadow of Taipei's iconic skyscraper, which was called Taipei 101. It was a great place for people-watching, with young couples on romantic walks, parents pushing babies in strollers, older people practicing tai chi, kids riding bikes, and nature lovers snapping photos of flowers. Best of all were the baobing- delicious shaved ices with a super-thin texture and condensed milk that added an extra sweet flavor. I topped my baobing with mango chunks, while Uncle Masa chose sweet potato chunks on his, an addition I never imagined could be delicious until I sampled his for myself.

The only problem we had was with the judge,” the wife said. “The judge thought there was some mistake that we’d want this child because he’s dark skinned. The judge said no one would want a child like that and that there were plenty of light-skinned babies available. He just couldn’t believe that we would want him and almost treated us as though we were up to something shady because we did.” I wasn’t expecting that, and as I stroked this little boy’s cheek, those words struck me: “No one would ever want a child like that.” I picked him up from his stroller and hugged him, hoping I wouldn’t start crying in front of my denominational peers walking up and down the corridor of the convention hall. “You’re loved and wanted,” I told him. “Isn’t that great?

body finder. It looked a little like a baby stroller. The device rolled across the ground and used ground-penetrating radar to find the bones.

I couldn't help but nod agreement to this observation: The survival of the West depends on Americans reaffirming their Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique not universal and uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges from non-Western societies.  Of course, he lost me on the very next sentence.  Avoidance of a global war of civilizations depends on world leaders accepting and cooperating to maintain the multicivilizational character of global politics. "What crap."  I felt like I was speaking directly to him.  "Avoid a global war my ass.  We're in a fucking global war, you moron." I kept reading, fascinated someone so smart could understand so clearly that hate, envy, and mistrust dominate not just the lives of people but of civilizations as well, and yet avoid the obvious conclusion that survival demands getting rid of those people who hate, envy, and mistrust you.  Academics really do live in ivory towers.  If this Huntington guy had spent just a few days in my world, he'd have come to more sensible conclusions. By sunset, I'd struggled through about a third of the book.  That and finding a secluded bush where I could piss after drinking a whole thermos of coffee was all I accomplished.  The only other park visitors that day were women with baby strollers.  I watched them all anyway.  Maybe Rebecca Goldstein was smart enough to pass herself off as a mom walking her kid.  But none of them headed down the path toward the footbridge.  Finally I caught the bus back to my apartment, fixed myself a sandwich and drank a beer before hitting the

None of them could afford to go back and think about that tragedy right now. Amy needed to believe in him. And he had to stay focused on this mom and this boy. He refused to consider the possibility that this was anything more than a missing child. Anything else took him down a road he couldn’t bring himself to travel. That didn’t mean that he didn’t understand the urgency of finding Josh before his mom freaked out completely or before the situation turned into something worse. Any location that attracted a lot of children also had the potential to draw those who preyed on them. With the security staff fanning out, he turned back to Amy. “Let me take the baby, okay? Then we can leave the stroller here with Trish,” he said lightly. The little sweetheart with her blond curls and pink bow in her hair immediately beamed at him in a way that made his heart ache. “Who’s this angel?” he asked, responding to that smile with one of his own. “Her name’s Emma,” Amy said. “She’s eleven months old. Are you sure you want to hold her? I can keep her.” “I don’t mind. I have a niece who’s not much older,” he told her. He gently patted the baby’s back till she settled

I stepped out of the car. Mothers and nannies ambled by, pushing complicated baby strollers that fold and shift and rock and play songs and lean back and lean forward and hold more than one kid, plus an assortment of diapers, wipes, Gerber snacks, juice boxes (for the older sibling), change of clothing, bottles, even car first-aid kits. I knew all this from my own practice (being on Medicaid did not preclude one from affording the high-end Peg Perego strollers), and I found this spectacle of bland normalcy cohabiting in the same realm as my recent ordeal to be something of an elixir. I

Play act with a baby doll. Carry around a swaddled doll so that your dog gets used to routine baby activities. Take the doll in a stroller on a walk with the dog.

twenty-two-year-old Malaysia Goodson, a Black mother who, in January 2019, fell while trying to carry her stroller and baby down the subway stairs because there was no working elevator at her station and died (her official cause of death listed cardiac hypertrophy, which can lead to sudden death after physical stress, and hyperthyroidism as factors16).

All the other mothers in playgroup were juicy and bountiful. Especially Vicki. Vicki’s boob was a goddamn fire hose. If Vicki whipped her boob out to breastfeed on a park bench, all the babies in the vicinity probably whooshed out of their strollers, desperate for a taste of that liquid gold.

otherwise joyous sight of a mother pushing her newborn child in a stroller couldn’t brighten the eclipsing gloom. The damned sun and its spotlight, casting its brilliant glow on the unblemished, pale skin of the plump baby, swaddled like a maggot. So full of youth. Full of life. Renfield blinked hard and shook his head. “I would never!” he declared.

She’d need to find room in her compact kitchen for a high chair. Her second bedroom, which she now used as an office and craft room, would become the baby’s. A sense of excitement filled her, unlike anything she’d ever experienced. This was her baby, her very own child. This time she’d do everything right. This time there wasn’t a man standing in the way. High on enthusiasm, she reached for the phone and dialed her sister’s number. She felt closer to Kelly than she had in years. The weekend getaway had brought them together again, all three of them. How wise her mother had been to arrange it. “I didn’t get you up, did I?” she asked when her sister answered. Tyler bellowed in the background. “That’s a joke, right?” Maryellen smiled. “You doing anything special for lunch?” “Nothing in particular. What do you have in mind?” “Can you meet me at the Pot Belly Deli?” “Sure.” Kelly had the luxury of being a stay-at-home mother. Paul and Kelly had waited years for this baby and were determined to make whatever sacrifices were necessary. That option—staying with her baby—wasn’t available to Maryellen. She’d have to find quality day care and wasn’t sure where to even start. Just before noon, Kelly arrived at the gallery, pushing Tyler in his stroller. At nine months, the little boy sat upright, waving his chubby hands, cooing happily and directing the world from his seat. “Let’s grab some soup from the deli and eat down by the waterfront,” Kelly suggested. It was a lovely spring day after a week of rain, and the fresh air would do them all good. “Sounds like a great idea,” Maryellen told her. Practical, too, since it would be easier to amuse Tyler at the park than in a crowded restaurant. Maryellen phoned in their order and her sister trekked down to grab a picnic table. Several other people had the same idea, but she’d secured a table for them by the time Maryellen got there. Sitting across from her sister, Maryellen opened her container of chicken rice soup and stirred it with a plastic spoon. Cantankerous seagulls circled overhead, squawking for a handout, but Maryellen and Kelly ignored them. “I

The harder life got, the more pliantly Nina Alexandrovna responded to its random and weak smiles, which might not have meant anything like what she was seeing from her perspective. Even she guessed how easy it was to buy her with the mere sight of a baby in a stroller or, say, the scene of a friendly conversation, when two men who were utter strangers to Nina Alexandrovna, perfumed youth wearing expensive clothing made somewhere that had to be overseas, simply clapped each other on the shoulder—but she was willing to value herself more and more cheaply because she lacked even crumbs of kindness for her emotional moisture to soften into a warm pap. Now, too, looking at her son-in-law digging the soft, thick, whitened mass out of the bowl with increasing enthusiasm, Nina Alexandrovna believed he might find a good job soon and the family wouldn’t have to stretch itself so thin waiting for pension day.

his niece. I replay the day in my head. She looked out the door at me. Maybe she saw him. It’s the only explanation for her mysterious sudden illness. I knew it didn’t add up. Her interest in baseball. In him. And then her unwillingness to see him. But not everything makes sense. “Why was she hiding from her brother?” I muse aloud. Ethan shrugs. “If she wanted to hide the baby from Grant, it may have been her only choice. Alexa’s father is out of the picture and her mother is deceased, so Caden is probably the first person Grant would have gone to in order to find her. Abused women often have to cut off ties with their entire family in order to protect themselves and their children.” I run my hands through my hair. Shit. My instinct is to find her. Protect her. But I already tried protecting her once and she didn’t let me. Things are different now. Six months ago, if I’d found her, I think I would have thrown her over my shoulder and dragged her to my apartment, baby stroller and all. But now—I’ve had time to think about things. And even with knowing her identity and more details of her past, it’s obvious my feelings were not reciprocated. She was nice to me. She even kissed me when I kissed her. But I was her doctor. And patients sometimes mistakenly see their doctors as saviors. Not men they can build a life with. The fact is, she didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth. She didn’t love me enough to trust me. She stole my heart and then she tore it to shreds. Even if she didn’t mean to. I gaze through the window of Ethan’s office. I can’t keep doing this. I have to move on. I have moved on. I’ve gone back to basics. My job. That is what I’m living for. I never should have lost focus. I’ve vowed never to allow myself to get close to a patient again. Get close to a woman again. At least until I’ve accomplished my goals. “Caden should know,” I say, gathering up all the paperwork and putting it into a folder. “I need to contact him and tell him everything. But then I’m done.” ~ ~ ~ I pick up my third beer of the night and crack it open, waiting for my pepperoni pizza to arrive. I’m spent. Exhausted from my meeting with Caden. When he was here earlier, we put all the pieces together. Caden never liked Grant. He didn’t think he was right for his sister. He and Alexa would get into arguments about him from time to time.

Have a seat right here, ma'am! Please watch your step. If you'll have a seat, I'll bring your food to you." "Thank you! It's so nice that you have a restaurant that can accommodate our baby stroller." "Would you like me to bring you a spoon, along with chopsticks?" "Please! That would be great." "Oh my gosh, that girl isn't the shrinking violet she looks like either! That is some confident and conscientious service for someone her age!" "The ideal for customer service is 100 percent satisfaction from all customers... but the reality of limited time and manpower makes it difficult. When things are at their most crowded, you must calm yourself... Consider everything a customer may want, and then prioritize what is most important for whom!" "Now is when I have to make the best use of everything I learned over Stagiare Week!

Ella begins to fuss in her stroller... I feel a wave of love for her as my nipples tingle on instinct - my milk coming down.

Her hands are curled around a stroller bar, housing a baby who appears to be fast asleep. “Of Mice and Men,” she replies with a soft grin. “My friend insists I need to read it, and she gave her copy to someone else.” My gaze shifts to the left, spotting a petite blond, her hair a similar color to Gabe’s, with her nose in a book.

To be poor in a rich city brings all kinds of ironies, perhaps none greater than this: The donated clothing is top shelf. Used purple Uggs and Patagonia fleeces cover thinning socks and fraying jeans. A Phil & Teds rain shell, fished from the garbage, protects the baby’s creaky stroller.

Yet, at the café tables in the morning, young mothers with designer sunglasses rock their babies in strollers with one hand and and sip morning coffee with the other. Normality is the most beautiful of all things, especially considering such a past.

I don’t want anything to do with boys—I just want a tiny little girl, to dress up in soft, chic beige and pink and gray dresses and bounce in my lap. I wouldn’t get one of those top-heavy strollers but a sturdy one with a big basket on the bottom for when I’d go grocery shopping with her to make her baby food. All-organic porridge with a little bit of meat and mushrooms and beans and carrots. No salt or sugar until she’s at least two. Definitely no cookies or juice or television.

Thieves stole a small horn shark from the San Antonio Aquarium using a baby stroller to smuggle the shark out.

On her way toward the shore, she kept coming across weekend tourists. Every cluster of them presented the same pattern: the man was pushing a stroller with a baby in it, the woman was walking beside him; the man's expression was meek, solicitous, smiling, a bit embarrassed, and endlessly willing to bend over the child, wipe its nose, soothe its cries; the woman’s expression was blasé, distant, smug, sometimes even (inexplicably) spiteful. This pattern Chantal saw repeated in several variants: the man alongside a woman was pushing the stroller and also carrying another baby on his hack, in a specially made sack: the man alongside a woman was pushing the stroller, carrying one baby on his shoulders and another in a belly carrier: the man alongside a woman had no stroller but was holding one child by the hand and carrying three others, on his back, his belly, and his shoulders. Then, finally, with no man. a woman was pushing the stroller: she was doing it with a force unseen in the men, such that Chantal, walking on the same sidewalk, had to leap out of her way at the last moment. Chantal thinks: men have daddified themselves. They aren't fathers, they're just daddies, which means: fathers without a father's authority.

showed the hospital staff the photos

To her further surprise, she found a breakfast tray waiting for her on the table with bagels, cheese and an assortment of fruit. But what caught her eye was the tiny pair of yellow baby booties. She picked up the soft, fuzzy little booties, her throat knotting as she read the accompanying card. Because you said you didn’t have a pair yet. Love, Ryan. She sank into the seat, her eyes stinging with tears. She held the booties to her cheek and then touched the card, tracing the scrawl of his signature. “I shouldn’t love you this much,” she whispered. God, but she couldn’t help herself. She craved him. He was her other half. She didn’t feel whole without him. And so began a courting ritual that tugged on her heartstrings. Every morning when she crawled out of bed, there was a new present waiting for her from Ryan. There was a baby book that outlined everything she could expect from birth through the first year of life. One morning he left her two outfits. One for a boy and one for a girl. Just in case, he had written. On the fifth morning, he simply left her a note that told her a gift was waiting in the extra bedroom. Excited, she hurried toward the bedroom she’d once occupied and threw open the door to see not one present but a room full of baby things. A stroller. A crib that was already put together. A little bouncy thing. An assortment of toys. A changing table. She couldn’t take in all the stuff that was there. She didn’t even know what all of it was for. How on earth had he managed to sneak this in without her hearing? And there by the window was a rocking chair with a yellow afghan lying over the arm. She walked over and reverently touched the wood, giving the chair an experimental push. It creaked once and then swayed gently back and forth.

Keep your vision in front of you Are you believing for a child? Go buy a baby’s outfit and hang it in your closet where you can see it every day. Keep your vision in front of you. A friend of mine who wanted a child decorated her whole baby’s room, bought the bed and the stroller, spent all this time, money, and energy. Her friends thought she was a little far out, preparing a baby’s room with no baby on the way. But she understood this principle: What you keep in front of you, you are moving toward. A year went by and still no baby. Two years, no baby. Five years. Ten years. She didn’t get discouraged. She kept thanking God that her baby was on the way. All through the day when she’d walk by that baby’s room, the seed was growing. It didn’t look like anything was happening, but she was moving toward it. Twenty years later she had not one baby, but two. The stroller didn’t work. The bed was out of date. She didn’t care. She had her babies!

I am with Victor, the two of us holding hands and laughing and somehow I know it is in the future—whether years or weeks, I can’t say. We are walking along the beach at noon—the sun hot and bright overhead, the sunshine warming my skin as it hasn’t in many long years. I look up at it, squinting the way you do on a bright day, but I am not afraid. The sun is no longer my enemy but a warm, benevolent friend. Victor says something I can’t hear. I looked over and asked him to repeat it. “I said, I think she’s hungry…” “Who?” I ask but then I look down and realize I am pushing a baby stroller. Victor is already kneeling on the sandy beach, cooing to whoever is inside the stroller. “Daddy’s little princess is hungry?” he says, picking up a baby who looks to be about one and a half years old. He brings her to me and I look at her in wonder. She has Victor’s big chocolate brown eyes and my dark brown hair. Her little face is heart shaped and delicate with a button nose and a sweetly pursed candy pink mouth—perfect in every way. “She’s beautiful,” I whisper, in awe of the precious little girl. “Just like her mom,” Victor says proudly. He holds her out to me and she puts up chubby little arms, eager for me to take her. “Momma!” she says when I hold her. She nuzzles close and presses her chubby little cheek to mine. “Momma… love you.” “Oh, sweetie,” I whisper, holding her tight. “I love you too. Momma loves her little girl so much.” Victor puts his arms around both of us. “And I love you both. My two sweet girls,” he rumbles and I feel loved and protected and perfect in every way. The waves shush along the beach, the sand is rough and warm under my feet, my little girl is safe in my arms and my husband loves me—loves both of us completely. The sun beams down on us like a golden blessing and I feel a joy like I have never known, a joy I never expected to feel after Celeste… after she… she…

So, instead of doing your email as you push your daughter in her stroller, talk to her. Instead of putting a digital tablet in your son’s baby bouncer, read to him and chat about the book. Instead of a quick text if you find a conversation going stale, make an effort to engage your peers.

Well God knew I was like that, so God gave me Kaitlyn. Hyperactive from before birth, we thought Kaitlyn was going to be a boy, because the lore is that the more active babies are inside their mother’s womb the more likely they are to be boys. Well she wasn’t. Trying to hold Kaitlyn when she was a year old was like trying to hold a live salmon. I had a spiritual crisis because of this child. Many Catholic churches have the tradition of young children sitting with their parents at mass. It was no fun with Kaitlyn, because she was the worst-behaved child at church, which was not only embarrassing, it was bad for business. I treated half the children in the congregation and if my child was the worst one, people would lose confidence in me. So after a while I stopped going to church. Have you ever seen children on little yellow leashes in the mall? After having Kaitlyn I believed in little yellow leashes because she was always trying to get away. But my problem was that I wrote a column in the Daily Republic, a local newspaper where I lived, and whenever I went to the mall people recognized me and said things like, “Hey, you’re Dr. Amen! I loved your column.” I just could not deal with, “Hey, you’re Dr. Amen! Why is your child on a leash?” So what I used to do with Kaitlyn was put her in her stroller and tie her shoelaces together so she couldn’t get out. Now, I am not proud of that but when you have a hyperactive child you do things just to survive.

... and I had spent the last few years staring at babies in strollers, unable to focus my eyes on anything else when they were around. I would pick up friends’ babies and hold them tightly until the very moment their mothers demanded them back. I thought of what my own child might be like. I thought of how it would feel to bring a life into the world, to give the four of us another being to focus on.