Weekend-adjacent linkage

1)

This week I worried a lot. Ellie met a stomach bug for the first time and couldn't keep anything down for over 24 hours. We eventually took her to urgent care to check on her hydration level, and were a few hours away from visiting the emergency room for an IV. Fortunately, she finally stopped throwing up and started to drink breastmilk and Pedialyte.

She is okay now. It was just scary for me: I don't worry when she coughs or sneezes or has a fever or a rash, but throwing up is another ball game. I don't know why. We got the stomach flu multiple times as kids, and it wasn't a bit deal (I mean, gross, but no cause for concern). It seems different when a pipsqueak like Ellie is vomiting up everything she puts in her mouth. She really is a pipsqueak, too. They weighed her at urgent care and she was barely 20 pounds!

By the way, any suggestions for a more "natural" version of Pedialyte? I am not thrilled about the multiple artificial ingredients.

2)

And then I got the stomach bug too. It was the worst.

3)

On to frivolity! Here are 24 hair hacks that I will actually use, from Elle.

And here are Russian illustrations of Lord of the Rings. They are thoroughly awesome. Make sure you look at all four posts!

4)

This is excellent, I thought: Who Has the Worst Kids?

When I was a new mum I absolutely loved being a mother and I was always so disheartened by the culture among mums of complaining about all the horrid things their kids did and joking about offering them up for sale . . .

It's a damaging lie to think that by disparaging my children I will make the other mother feel better about her kids, because the truth is I'm not only exposing my kids when they aren't at an age to defend themselves, I'm also giving the other mother permission to try and say something worse about her kids to make me feel better about mine. 

5)

"What Are We Teaching Our Daughters?" I so agree with this writer: advanced domestic skills are useful, delightful, well worth the time. But they are not the essence of femininity or even of homemaking.

Learning how to make croissants took half an hour with youtube; developing a worldview took years of reading, writing and discussions with Mum while she made meals and cleaned bathrooms . . .

Perhaps the greatest things a mother can teach her daughter are the greatness and beauty of Christ, self-denial, and the ability to learn through life. None of those are directly related to house work. But all of them make and shape the woman who scrubs her bathtub with thankfulness.

6)

"Why Society Needs to Trust Parents, Not Authorities."

7)

Excellent. Now you can hear the original D-Day broadcasts read by the likes of Patrick Stewart, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Toby Jones.