Growing Fast Baby Quotes

I had always buried things, even when I was small; I remember that once I quartered the long field and buried something in each quarter to make the grass grow higher as I grew taller, so I would always be able to hide there. I once buried six blue marbles in the creek bed to make the river beyond run dry. 'Here is a treasure for you to bury,' Constance used to say to me when I was small, giving me a penny, or a bright ribbon; I had buried all my baby teeth as they came out one by one and perhaps someday they would grow as dragons. All our land was enriched with my treasures buried in it, thickly inhabited just below the surface with my marbles and my teeth and my colored stones, all perhaps turned to jewels by now, held together under the ground in a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us.

Did you indeed?” said Ripred. “It seems like only yesterday you were a baby bouncing on your grandpa’s knee. And now you’re starting wars. They grow up so fast.

For two-thirds of the twentieth century the parental zeitgeist was to deny babies and children any physical or emotional comfort. To make them grow up. Fast.

How plants grow: Quickly. Most plants grow fast and die young. People get seventy years, a bean plant gets four months, maybe five. Once the itty-bitty baby plant peeks out of the ground, it sprouts leaves, so it can absorb more sun. Then it sleeps, eats, and sunbathes until it’s ready to flower—a teenage plant. This is a bad time to be a rose or a zinnia or a marigold, because people attack with scissors and cut off what’s pretty. But plants are cool. If the rose is picked, the plant grows another one. It needs to bloom to produce more seeds.

Just as quickly as it came, the wave of excitement turned bittersweet. It was all happening so fast. My baby was growing up. First teeth, then braces, then I'll turn around and she'll be filling out college applications. I can almost see he driving away in a car packed to the brim with boxes, off to start her life...away from me. Only to come home on the odd weekend.

I learned many things at Dixie County High School. There was a class called Life Management. One week we brought in a 5lb sacks of flour. For 2 weeks we were to carry this around as our baby. It needed to return intact to get a grade. But tape could be used for repairs. So the first night I wrapped my Piggy Wiggly-brand flour baby in 2 rolls of duct tape. Added a face. Glued on some orange faux fur hair. Five pounds became 8. They grow up so fast! Over the next week we tossed this tape baby against brick walls. No harm was done. Parenting came naturally it seemed. Until we decided to drop junior out a car window while heading down County Road 55A. It bounced off the road and out into a field. We searched... but never found that sack of flour. It might be out there still. The next morning I told my teacher what had happened. Baby went out a window. Was lost in a field. She just stared. Told me not to tell anyone else this story. I still got full credit though. No one expected much of parents back then.

All that we have seen in this work shows us one clear fact: The Qur'an, this extraordinary book which was revealed to the Seal of the Prophets, Muhammad (saas), is a source of inspiration and true knowledge. The book of Islam-no matter what subject it refers to-is being proved as Allah's word as each new piece of historical, scientific or archaeological information comes to light. Facts about scientific subjects and the news delivered to us about the past and future, facts that no one could have known at the time of the Qur'an's revelation, are announced in its verses. It is impossible for this information, examples of which we have discussed in detail in this book, to have been known with the level of knowledge and technology available in 7th century Arabia. With this in mind, let us ask: Could anyone in 7th century Arabia have known that our atmosphere is made up of seven layers? Could anyone in 7th century Arabia have known in detail the various stages of development from which an embryo grows into a baby and then enters the world from inside his mother? Could anyone in 7th century Arabia have known that the universe is "steadily expanding," as the Qur'an puts it, when modern scientists have only in recent decades put forward the idea of the "Big Bang"? Could anyone in 7th century Arabia have known about the fact that each individual's fingertips are absolutely unique, when we have only discovered this fact recently, using modern technology and modern scientific equipment? Could anyone in 7th century Arabia have known about the role of one of Pharaoh's most prominent aids, Haman, when the details of hieroglyphic translation were only discovered two centuries ago? Could anyone in 7th century Arabia have known that the word "Pharaoh" was only used from the 14th century B.C. and not before, as the Old Testament erroneously claims? Could anyone in 7th century Arabia have known about Ubar and Iram's Pillars, which were only discovered in recent decades via the use of NASA satellite photographs? The only answer to these questions is as follows: the Qur'an is the word of the Almighty Allah, the Originator of everything and the One Who encompasses everything with His knowledge. In one verse, Allah says, "If it had been from other than Allah, they would have found many inconsistencies in it." (Qur'an, 4:82) Every piece of information the Qur'an contains reveals the secret miracles of this divine book. The human being is meant to hold fast to this Divine Book revealed by Allah and to receive it with an open heart as his one and only guide in life. In the Qur'an, Allah tells us the following: This Qur'an could never have been devised by any besides Allah. Rather it is confirmation of what came before it and an elucidation of the Book which contains no doubt from the Lord of all the worlds. Do they say, "He has invented it"? Say: "Then produce a sura like it and call on anyone you can besides Allah if you are telling the truth." (Qur'an, 10:37-38) And this is a Book We have sent down and blessed, so follow it and have fear of Allah so that hopefully you will gain mercy. (Qur'an, 6:155)

She did not like it that Jasper should shoot birds; but it was only a stage; they all went through stages. Why, she asked, pressing her chin on James's head, should they grow up so fast? Why should they go to school? She would have liked always to have had a baby. She was happiest carrying one in her arms. Then people might say she was tyrannical, domineering, masterful, if they chose; she did not mind. And, touching his hair with her lips, she thought, he will never be so happy again, but stopped herself, remembering how it angered her husband that she should say that. Still, it was true. They were happier now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea set made Cam happy for days. She heard them stamping and crowing on the floor above her head the moment they awoke. They came bustling along the passage. Then the door sprang open and in they came, fresh as roses, staring, wide awake, as if this coming into the dining-room after breakfast, which they did every day of their lives, was a positive event to them, and so on, with one thing after another, all day long, until she went up to say good-night to them, and found them netted in their cots like birds among cherries and raspberries, still making up stories about some little bit of rubbish - something they had heard, something they had picked up in the garden. They all had their little treasures... And so she went down and said to her husband, Why must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be so happy again. And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life? he said. It is not sensible. For it was odd; and she believed it to be true; that with all his gloom and desperation he was happier, more hopeful on the whole, than she was. Less exposed to human worries - perhaps that was it. He had always his work to fall back on. Not that she herself was "pessimistic," as he accused her of being. Only she thought life - and a little strip of time presented itself to her eyes - her fifty years. There it was before her - life. Life, she thought - but she did not finish her thought.

The 49-year-old Bryant, who resembles a cereal box character himself with his wide eyes, toothy smile, and elongated chin, blames Kellogg's financial woes on the changing tastes of fickle breakfast eaters. The company flourished in the Baby Boom era, when fathers went off to work and mothers stayed behind to tend to three or four children. For these women, cereal must have been heaven-sent. They could pour everybody a bowl of Corn Flakes, leave a milk carton out, and be done with breakfast, except for the dishes. Now Americans have fewer children. Both parents often work and no longer have time to linger over a serving of Apple Jacks and the local newspaper. Many people grab something on the way to work and devour it in their cars or at their desks while checking e-mail. “For a while, breakfast cereal was convenience food,” says Abigail Carroll, author of Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal. “But convenience is relative. It's more convenient to grab a breakfast bar, yogurt, a piece of fruit, or a breakfast sandwich at some fast-food place than to eat a bowl of breakfast cereal.” People who still eat breakfast at home favor more laborintensive breakfasts, according to a recent Nielsen survey. They spend more time at the stove, preparing oatmeal (sales were up 3.5 percent in the first half of 2014) and eggs (up 7 percent last year). They're putting their toasters to work, heating up frozen waffles, French toast, and pancakes (sales of these foods were up 4.5 percent in the last five years). This last inclination should be helping Kellogg: It owns Eggo frozen waffles. But Eggo sales weren't enough to offset its slumping U.S. cereal numbers. “There has just been a massive fragmentation of the breakfast occasion,” says Julian Mellentin, director of food analysis at research firm New Nutrition Business. And Kellogg faces a more ominous trend at the table. As Americans become more healthconscious, they're shying away from the kind of processed food baked in Kellogg's four U.S. cereal factories. They tend to be averse to carbohydrates, which is a problem for a company selling cereal derived from corn, oats, and rice. “They basically have a carb-heavy portfolio,” says Robert Dickerson, senior packagedfood analyst at Consumer Edge. If such discerning shoppers still eat cereal, they prefer the gluten-free kind, sales of which are up 22 percent, according to Nielsen. There's also growing suspicion of packagedfood companies that fill their products with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). For these breakfast eaters, Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam may seem less like friendly childhood avatars and more like malevolent sugar traffickers.

Charles ventured into the room — and saw then that Gareth was not alone.  Cradled in his left arm and smiling adoringly up at him was the little girl he'd glimpsed last night, the little girl that he, Charles, had sired — and who would grow up calling Gareth "Papa" instead of him. Dear God.  Dear God, above.  His gaze flashed to the door. Gareth noted the direction of his suddenly unsure gaze. "Want to hold her?" Charles swallowed, hard.  "I . . . I am not sure." "Charlotte," murmured Gareth, and Charles saw his own uncertainty reflected in his brother's eyes.  "Charlotte, this is … this is, uh … your uncle, Charles." The child turned her guileless blue gaze on Charles.  The smile that dimpled her cheeks abruptly faded. "Here."  Gareth stood up and walked around the table, the little girl securely in his arms.  "Say hello." After all, if things had gone differently, she'd have been yours. Charles tensed as his brother placed the toddler in his lap.  He looked down into eyes as blue, at hair as blond, as his own, and was assailed by a hundred different emotions, none of which he could name, none of which he could, in his current state of mind, of heart, understand.  Panic assailed him.  This was too much.  Too fast.  Too unexpected, and too damned awkward.  He looked helplessly up at Gareth, and in that moment Charlotte, unsure, and now fearful, screwed up her face and began to cry.  Struggling in Charles's arms, she reached for Gareth in a desperate plea to be rescued by the only man she would ever know as her father. Gareth all but grabbed the child from him, making a lame and embarrassed comment about "having to get used to them first," while Charles retreated, stiff-backed, rejected, and confused. "Uncle," he murmured, softly. "Yes, and that is how it must remain," Gareth said, with a level look that brooked no dispute.  "I am her father, Charles.  Not you." "Yes … yes, you are." His heartbeat was returning to normal, but it was too painful to look at the toddler, this solid and unmistakable evidence of a "mistake" that he had once made, a mistake that his own brother had taken it upon himself to fix.  In time, maybe he would come to regard little Charlotte with affection.  With love.  He certainly hoped so.  But right now … right now, his heart was too raw, his guilt too great.  It had been like holding a stranger's child, not his own flesh and blood.  She might look like him, but the baby was Gareth's, not his.  She would always be Gareth's. What

The thought turned him topsy-turvy. It seemed to summarize the whole worthless way of the world--if there was one. And versions of it began to flutter wildly through his head. You have to look round to see straight. Good enough. Useful. And the rough places plain. But all that's geometry. But it measures the earth. You have to go slow to catch up. Eat to get thin? no, but fast to grow fat, that was a fine one. Then lose to win? fail to succeed? Risky. Stop to begin. The form made noiseless music--lumly lum lum or lum-lee-lee lum--like fill to empty, every physical extreme. Die to live was a bit old hat. But default to repay. And lie to be honest. He liked the ring of that. Flack! I'm white in order to be black. Sin first and saint later. Cruel to be kind, of course, and the hurts in the hurter--that's what they say--a lot of blap. That's my name, my nomination: Saint Later. Now then: humble to be proud; poor to be rich. Enslave to make free? That moved naturally. Also multiply to subtract. Dee dee dee. Young Saint Later. A list of them, as old as Pythagoras had. Even engenders odd. How would that be? Eight is five and three. There were no middle-aged saints--they were all old men or babies. Ah, god--the wise fool. The simpleton sublime. Babe in the woods, roach in the pudding, prince in the pauper, enchanted beauty in the toad. This was the wisdom of the folk and the philosopher alike--the disorder of the lyre, or the drawn-out bow of that sane madman, the holy Heraclitus. The poet Zeno. The logician Keats. Discovery after discovery: the more the mice eat, the fatter the cats. There were tears and laughter, for instance--how they shook and ran together into one gay grief. Dumb eloquence, swift still waters, shallow deeps. Let's see: impenitent remorse, careless anxiety, heedless worry, tense repose. So true of tigers. Then there was the friendly enmity of sun and snow, and the sweet disharmony of every union, the greasy mate of cock and cunt, the cosmic poles, war that's peace, the stumble that's an everlasting poise and balance, spring and fall, love, strife, health, disease, and the cold duplicity of Number One and all its warm divisions. The sameness that's in difference. The limit that's limitless. The permanence that's change. The distance of the near at home. So--to roam, stay home. Then pursue to be caught, submit to conquer. Method--ancient--of Chinese. To pacify, inflame. Love, hate. Kiss, kill. In, out, up, down, start, stop. Ah . . . from pleasure, pain. Like circumcision of the heart. Judgement and mercy. Sin and grace. It little mattered; everything seemed to Furber to be magically right, and his heart grew fat with satisfaction. Therefore there is good in every evil; one must lower away to raise; seek what's found to mourn its loss; conceive in stone and execute in water; turn profound and obvious, miraculous and commonplace, around; sin to save; destroy in order to create; live in the sun, though underground. Yes. Doubt in order to believe--that was an old one--for this the square IS in the circle. O Phaedo, Phaedo. O endless ending. Soul is immortal after all--at last it's proved. Between dead and living there's no difference but the one has whiter bones. Furber rose, the mosquitoes swarming around him, and ran inside.

Baby Cooper and Aaron running around causing trouble,” Dad said, setting an album on Lark’s lap. “Aaron was a very good baby. Didn’t cry at all. Not once.” When I laughed, Dad gave me a wink. “Here was our boy at three months.” Lark looked at the picture and laughed. Knowing exactly what she thought was so funny, I explained, “They thought they were adopting a girl, so I wore pink those first few months.” “Babies grow so fast at that age,” Mom said. “No reason to waste money on new clothes when he wouldn’t know the difference.” Lark laughed at this comment and kept laughing until the pictures reached when I was three. Her eyes moistened and again I was the one to explain. “Lark’s little brother died around that age.” As Mom and Dad descended on her with hugs, I never saw my girl look so startled. Life was different for her now. No longer was she struggling to survive in a dysfunctional family of revolving fathers and a cold mother. Now, she was a Barnes and we were fully functional and only slightly on the weird side. “You have curls,” she cooed, running her finger over a picture of me at five. “I loved those curls,” Mom said. “She put barrettes in those curls,” I muttered, standing behind the three of them as they looked through the album. Ignoring my parents’ laughter, I continued, “I begged to have my hair shaved short. Once it was, I never looked back.

Once superintelligent AI has settled another solar system or galaxy, bringing humans there is easy — if humans have succeeded in programming the AI with this goal. All the necessary information about humans can be transmitted at the speed of light, after which the AI can assemble quarks and electrons into the desired humans. This could be done either in a low-tech way by simply transmitting the 2 gigabytes of information needed to specify a person’s DNA and then incubating a baby to be raised by the AI, or the AI could assemble quarks and electrons into full-grown people who would have all the memories scanned from their originals back on Earth. This means that if there’s an intelligence explosion, the key question isn’t if intergalactic settlement is possible, but simply how fast it can proceed. Since all the ideas we've explored above come from humans, they should be viewed as merely lower limits on how fast life can expand; ambitious superintelligent life can probably do a lot better, and it will have a strong incentive to push the limits, since in the race against time and dark energy, every 1% increase in average settlement speed translates into 3% more galaxies colonized. For example, if it takes 20 years to travel 10 light-years to the next star system with a laser-sail system, and then another 10 years to settle it and build new lasers and seed probes there, the settled region will be a sphere growing in all directions at a third of the speed of light on average. In a beautiful and thorough analysis of cosmically expanding civilizations in 2014, the American physicist Jay Olson considered a high-tech alternative to the island-hopping approach, involving two separate types of probes: seed probes and expanders. The seed probes would slow down, land and seed their destination with life. The expanders, on the other hand, would never stop: they'd scoop up matter in flight, perhaps using some improved variant of the ramjet technology, and use this matter both as fuel and as raw material out of which they'd build expanders and copies of themselves. This self-reproducing fleet of expanders would keep gently accelerating to always maintain a constant speed (say half the speed of light) relative to nearby galaxies, and reproduce often enough that the fleet formed an expanding spherical shell with a constant number of expanders per shell area. Last but not least, there’s the sneaky Hail Mary approach to expanding even faster than any of the above methods will permit: using Hans Moravec’s “cosmic spam” scam from chapter 4. By broadcasting a message that tricks naive freshly evolved civilizations into building a superintelligent machine that hijacks them, a civilization can expand essentially at the speed of light, the speed at which their seductive siren song spreads through the cosmos. Since this may be the only way for advanced civilizations to reach most of the galaxies within their future light cone and they have little incentive not to try it, we should be highly suspicious of any transmissions from extraterrestrials! In Carl Sagan’s book Contact, we earthlings used blueprints from aliens to build a machine we didn’t understand — I don’t recommend doing this ... In summary, most scientists and sci-fi authors considering cosmic settlement have in my opinion been overly pessimistic in ignoring the possibility of superintelligence: by limiting attention to human travelers, they've overestimated the difficulty of intergalactic travel, and by limiting attention to technology invented by humans, they've overestimated the time needed to approach the physical limits of what's possible.

I think I’m the only woman you’ve loved in forever. And you were going to pitch me out that fast, just because I make you nervous. I thought you didn’t trust me, but now I think you don’t trust yourself.” She shook her head. “I don’t want a man like that. I need a man with guts, who’s sure of himself. Confident enough to stand by me. I need a man who’s not afraid to take a risk or two for something important.” “I’ve taken a risk or two,” he said. “And you don’t scare me. Come up here on the porch.” “No. Not until you say that if we stay solid, there will be a real relationship and a family. I don’t want any of this ‘I don’t get involved’ shit. It’s all crap, Luke. You can have some time to be sure, I’m patient. But I’m not giving you up.” He smiled at her. “I don’t need time to be sure. I know how I feel.” “Still on that? Still that ‘never gonna happen’ bullshit?” “Okay, I guess it could happen,” he said. “If it did happen, it would happen with you. I just always thought you deserved more.” “More than everything I’ve ever wanted in the world? See what an idiot you turned out to be?” He had to laugh. She was something, this woman. “Shelby, come here. I don’t have to think about it—you’re the most solid thing I’ve ever had in my life. Now come here.” “I thought I wasn’t enough for you—but I was too much,” she said. “And you don’t get to decide what I deserve. What I deserve is a man who looks at me grow fat on his baby and feels pride. Love and pride.” “Okay then,” he said. “I love you. Come here.” “Not good enough. You have to say something to convince me this is worth the gamble. I came a long way and I came alone. I was betting on you, on us. I love you and you love me and I’m sick of screwing around. Say the right thing for once. Say something profound.” He stared at her and his smile slowly faded. He put his hands on his hips. He took a deep breath and felt tears gather in his eyes. “You’re all I need to be happy, Shelby,” he said. “You’re everything I need…” He actually surprised her. Her arms dropped from over her chest and she gaped at him for a second. “You’re everything,” he said. “It scares me to death, but I want it all with you. I want you for life. I want what you want, and I want it right now.” “Huh?” “Everything, Shelby. I want you to be the lead in my shoes that keeps me on the ground. The mother of my children. My best friend, my wife, my mistress. It’s a tall order.” He took a breath. “If you won’t quit, I won’t.” “You’re sure about that?” she asked him. “Sure it scares the hell out me you’ll change your mind? Or sure I want it all? Oh, yeah, honey. I’m sure.” “I won’t change my mind,” she said softly. “I can’t hear you!” he yelled. “I can’t hear you because you won’t come out of the frickin’ rain!” She ran up the porch steps and into his arms.

We’ll never make it three months. Do you have any of the details worked out?” “Well,” she said. “Sure. Some.” He leaned toward her and smiled pleasantly. “Care to share?” “What would you like to know?” “Well, there’s nothing to suggest we have a high-risk pregnancy, but it’s pretty common for the mothers of twins to go on bed rest for a while to delay labor while they grow and get stronger. And when babies come, it’s often early and fast. And taking care of them as newborns is pretty demanding. Also, you have a financial situation that’s giving you some stress. And—” “Okay, okay,” she said. “Sheesh. I’m not too worried about bed rest, I’m in good health and I have Vanni and Mel. John Stone is watching real close for early and fast. My mom will come as soon as they arrive and—” “So will mine,” he said, and she actually grabbed her belly. “What?” “Oh yeah. We can hold her off for a week, maybe, but these are her grandchildren and she’s never missed a grandchild’s debut.” “Have you told her?” she asked, aghast. “Not yet,” he said, twirling a little spaghetti around his fork. “But I have to do that. It’s going to be hard enough to explain not telling her sooner and making sure she had a chance to meet you. They’re not just our children, Ab. They have grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins…et cetera…on my side of this family as well as yours.” “Oh God,” she said, dropping her fork. “I don’t feel so good.” He just laughed lightly. “Relax. Nothing to worry about. They’re fantastic people and you’ll be real happy to have them in your life, I guarantee it.” “But won’t they think… I mean, we’re not married and—” He shrugged, got up and fetched himself a beer from the old refrigerator, using the underside of his heavy class ring to pop the top. “I’m sure they’ve heard of things like this before. A man and woman, not married, having children. But telling my family is just one item on this list. Abby, the list is long. We have so many things to work through before you go into labor. And not all that much time to do it.” She

Look at Matthew 11:16-19, “But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, and saying, we have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.  But wisdom is justified of her children.” What a description of this generation! John the Baptist came fasting, and Jesus came feasting, and they called John a demoniac and Jesus a glutton. Nothing suited them. They were like spoiled children who’ve had too many toys.  Today, our churches are filled with spoiled "adults." They’ve been petted and pampered and no kind of preaching pleases them. If the wrath of God is preached, the minister is too severe. If the love of God is proclaimed, he’s too sentimental. If he speaks in a low tone of voice, he’s dull. If he speaks in a loud voice, he’s deafening. If he stands still, he’s a statue. If he moves around, he’s a sensationalist. That used to bother me a lot until I learned how to identify these children of the marketplace. They play, they pipe, they play a wedding, they mourn, they play funeral; and it looks real, but it’s all make-believe.  And we play church just like that. I was invited to Fremont Temple in Boston some time ago for an evangelistic conference, and the pastor said, “We're so worried about playing church.” Well, I’ve heard that many times before, but what a common thing it is today to play at it and our Lord called it play acting, hypocrisy: spiritual babies who won’t grow up. The Apostle Paul experienced the same problem in the church in his day. He said, "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able," (I Cor.3:1-2). We have overgrown babies who have become such as have need of milk but not of meat, 150 and 200 pound church babies who keep the pastor busy running around with a milk bottle when they ought to have been on meat a long time ago. And, then when they call a new pastor, they say, “I don’t like him. He changed my formula.” Ah, they’re a headache and a heartache to any pastor, pouting and selfish to whom John the Baptist would be only a demoniac and Jesus a glutton.

What to do next What do you do when you’ve found a baby business you think may be a star? ★ Talk to them. Find a reason to talk to everyone in and around the company, to express your interest and learn more. ★ Do them a favour. If you can, buy something from them. Point them towards other customers. Advise them on how to expand. ★ Discreetly verify that it is a star. Ask questions suggested in the section above, ‘What are you looking for?’ ★ Work out a job you could do for them. Don’t wait for them to post a vacancy. Tell them what you can do, why they should hire you. Stress the benefits you bring. ★ Make your mark. When you join the firm, work out one thing you can do within your first month that will visibly benefit your colleagues and the venture. ★ Check again from the inside that it really is a star. If the business isn’t really growing very fast, or doesn’t fit the bill in any other way, don’t hang around. If it really is a star, work out how far the star could rise. ★ Raise ambition within the firm. Sometimes the founders of a star don’t see its potential. Open their eyes.Tell them how valuable the firm could become, if expanded to its maximum potential. Consider whether the idea can be exported to other countries, and/or franchised. Would other channels of distribution (such as the phone with Betfair) enlarge the market? ★ Consider making an offer for the firm. If the founders really don’t ‘get it’, put together a group to buy the firm. Remember the astronomical return Ray Kroc achieved from buying McDonald’s from the founders, when it was already highly successful.

What are you looking for?A baby business. Something young and small - under 20 employees if you are looking for a job; and something too small or unproven to attract professional investment if you are an investor. ★ A baby business growing very fast. Any small business growing very fast is likely to be a star. Every star business will be growing fast. So growth is a good first screen of any baby business you find. ★ An original idea. A baby business that has found a gap in the market - the creator of a new way of doing business. A star venture will be doing things differently. ★ Baby is a leader. In its gap, in its own business arena, it is the largest. It may have one or two even younger imitators, but most likely it is still unique. ★ Baby’s customers are different. You can see why the baby business appeals to particular customers, who can’t get anything as attractive to them elsewhere. ★ A baby business that you can imagine being extremely profitable when it grows up. There must be hard economic reasons why the business, when it reaches the size it can, will have fat margins. Its costs must be much lower than the conventional way of doing business, or its prices must be higher, or both.

Life history theory observes that parents have a choice: They can have many children and expect them to grow up quickly (a fast life strategy) or they can have fewer children and expect them to grow up more slowly (a slow life strategy). The fast life strategy is more common when the risk of death is higher both for babies and for adults, and when children are necessary for farm labor. Under those conditions, it is best to have more children (to increase the chances that some will survive) and to have those children early (to make sure the children are old enough to take care of themselves before one or both parents dies).

bush, as little children should, kept them always at lessons, working, working, working, learning week-day lessons all week-days, and Sunday lessons all Sunday, and weekly examinations every Saturday, and monthly examinations every month, and yearly examinations every year, everything seven times over, as if once was not enough, and enough as good as a feast—till their brains grew big, and their bodies grew small, and they were all changed into turnips, with little but water inside; and still their foolish parents actually pick the leaves off them as fast as they grow, lest they should have anything green about them.

For example, consider one of Intuit’s flagship products. Because TurboTax does most of its sales around tax season in the United States, it used to have an extremely conservative culture. Over the course of the year, the marketing and product teams would conceive one major initiative that would be rolled out just in time for tax season. Now they test over five hundred different changes in a two-and-a-half-month tax season. They’re running up to seventy different tests per week. The team can make a change live on its website on Thursday, run it over the weekend, read the results on Monday, and come to conclusions starting Tuesday; then they rebuild new tests on Thursday and launch the next set on Thursday night. As Scott put it, “Boy, the amount of learning they get is just immense now. And what it does is develop entrepreneurs, because when you have only one test, you don’t have entrepreneurs, you have politicians, because you have to sell. Out of a hundred good ideas, you’ve got to sell your idea. So you build up a society of politicians and salespeople. When you have five hundred tests you’re running, then everybody’s ideas can run. And then you create entrepreneurs who run and learn and can retest and relearn as opposed to a society of politicians. So we’re trying to drive that throughout our organization, using examples which have nothing to do with high tech, like the website example. Every business today has a website. You don’t have to be high tech to use fast-cycle testing.” This kind of change is hard. After all, the company has a significant number of existing customers who continue to demand exceptional service and investors who expect steady, growing returns. Scott says, It goes against the grain of what people have been taught in business and what leaders have been taught. The problem isn’t with the teams or the entrepreneurs. They love the chance to quickly get their baby out into the market. They love the chance to have the customer vote instead of the suits voting. The real issue is with the leaders and the middle managers. There are many business leaders who have been successful because of analysis. They think they’re analysts, and their job is to do great planning and analyzing and have a plan.

the past plummeting towards me like a vulture-dropped hand to become what-purifies-and-sets-me-free, because now as I look up there is a feeling at the back of my head and after that there is only a tiny but infinite moment of utter clarity while I tumble forwards to prostrate myself before my parents’ funeral pyre, a minuscule but endless instant of knowing, before I am stripped of past present memory time shame and love, a fleeting but also timeless explosion in which I bow my head yes I acquiesce yes in the necessity of the blow, and then I am empty and free, because all the Saleems go pouring out of me, from the baby who appeared in jumbo-sized front-page baby-snaps to the eighteen-year-old with his filthy dirty love, pouring out goes shame and guilt and wanting-to-please and needing-to-be-loved and determined-to-find-a-historical-role and growing-too-fast, I am free

My grand baby is growing so fast, I can't believe she's already celebrating her first birthday in this month of October 2016. Happy Birthday Norah Grace, grandma loves you.

Hey!” The voice isn’t mine. And it isn’t my attacker’s. It’s distant, but I can still tell it sounds rawly outraged. “Get the fuck off her!” The man must process the voice because he grows still, but he doesn’t get off me. He looks surprised more than anything else. Then it’s too late for surprise. Or anything else. I hear a gunshot. A deafening crack. The man goes limp and falls on top of me. I squeal as I feel his full weight collapse on me, the scent of him overwhelming and sickening. I squirm frantically, attempting to push him off. But I’m dizzy from the hard blow on the head and stunned by the fast sequence of events. I can’t get him off. “Chloe!” It’s Jimmy. I recognize his voice now. “Chloe, baby. Oh my fucking God.” Then he’s there. He hauls the man’s limp body off me and tosses it to the side. He crouches down beside me, running his hands up and down my body like he’s looking for injury. “I’m okay,” I manage to whimper. “I’m okay.