Sam

Tristan's My Sam 

June 10, 1999 - November 28, 2011

RIP Sweet, beautiful Sam. Our hearts are broken into a million pieces. We will love you and hold you in our hearts forever. 

"It's not that I am lonely for you. I am mutilated. 
For you were a part of me."  ~ Author unknown.

Why I've Never Spanked My Child

 This story is great. It perfectly exemplifies why I've never spanked my child.

 "When I was about twenty years old, I met an old pastor's wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn't believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time. But one day when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking--the first in his life. And she told him he would have to go outside and find a switch for her to hit him with. The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was crying. He said to her, 'Mama, I couldn't find a switch, but here's a rock you can throw at me.' All of the sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from the child's point of view: that if my mother wants to hurt me, it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone. The mother took the boy onto her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever: never violence. Because violence begins in the nursery--one can raise children into violence." 

From a peace prize acceptance speech given by Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstocking