Baby Don't Worry

'Bout a thing. Cause every little thing, is gonna be alright.

That is the song that our children identify as their "night night song". Ash knows all the words, and Leni pounds on the consonants like nobody's business. And I truly believe that they get it, the words of the song and the meaning of the tone when we sing it together. None of us have what you might call great singing voices, but we all have voices that sing. And loving and hugging and singing with my babies at night is just about the purest form of sweetness ever. If ever there is a time when a heart is able to be felt as it ba-bump ba-bumps, our night night song time is surely it.

We've had a lot going on lately. Work is busy, family is busy, life in general is - busy. But within the busy there has been our routine, it's just required a bit more bouncing around than usual. Routines remind us how flexible those of us who can be, really truly need to be. Because the ability to be flexible is a privilege.

The situation in Somalia and the Horn of East Africa is making me ill. I so want for them, their stomachs, to have the ability to be flexible. I so want to cuddle the youngest children being dropped in the desert by their mourning mothers unable to carry them any closer to the nearest aid camp across the border - hundreds of miles away - and sing to them the song that makes my own babies feel OK to go to sleep. But Somalia and Ethiopia are so far away. And humanitarian aid cannot reach those in the most dire of situations due to the sheer awfulness of what is going on at the heart of the realities of severe drought and the politics of corrupt governments.

And then I get an email. From Ash's sister in Addis Ababa. She's wondering how her brother and sister in NY are doing and if we might be able to call her sometime soon.

You bet sweet girl. We'll call you, but only if we're not on the next flight to Addis first.

Click HERE to read Three Ways to Do Something About Famine in Africa.