You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You […]

My first baby was not going to use a pacifier.

How awful they looked, like garish plastic plugs. They were tooth-terrorizing drool dams. I likened them to baby’s first bubble gum, smacked and sucked and chomped on rudely. Pacifiers were a crutch for lazy, uncaring parents who couldn’t or wouldn’t take the time to […]