{Big learning curve}

I've never been quick to embrace "the latest" in anything. I'm thinking I would have been one of the ones to say that television was "just a fad." In the last month or so we've purchased both a digital camera and a new computer. A MAC no less. Can you say "big learning curve?" I feel like parts of my regular routine--checking email, posting on message boards, even checking the weather--require a lot more brain power than they did just in October. I wonder if it's a waste to have this fancy machine and not know much about it. Then I see a digital pic like this and I wonder what we were thinking in delaying.

These hands belong to my 9-year old. The photo was taken at Agribition, a huge agriculture and livestock exhibition we spent a day at just over a week ago. The chicken people have a nifty display of newborn chicks that they allow the children to hold and my 4 are fascinated by this. However, this photo is not really about the chick for me. It's those hands. Those hands that I inspected when they were just a few hours old, counting the fingers and marvelling at their perfection. Those hands that started to hold things, those little fingers that curled around mine. Those hands that were washed countless times in a day after eating finger food (like spaghetti), playing in the dirt, and touching everything they could. Those hands that slipped into mine to cross a busy street. Those hands that curled around a pencil to write a name for the first time, to form the letters of the alphabet. Those same hands now play guitar, write whole stories, have the ability to hold a lot of candy at a time. They rarely slip into mine to cross a street anymore and he can wash them himself, although not always as thoroughly as I would like. I am the mother of those hands and the half grown person that is attached to them. I still love those hands.