The week after our second February holiday leaves us in a sweet haze of half-priced chocolate thoughts of love returned or unrequited. This should be a day for making resolutions:

1. Resolve to love ourselves. I mean a deep and true abiding love that makes us speak more kindly about ourselves even when no one is around to hear you.

2. Resolve to make sure the ones you love know it all year round. We shouldn't save our love letters for the fourteenth day of February. An occasional bouquet of flowers or box of candies on an average day can make it extraordinary (and will probably cost less for the joy it brings).

3. Resolve to be more compassionate to strangers. After all, the person who cut you off in traffic may be having a rough day and probably forgot about your honking horn before you finished fuming. Forgive them and save yourself some aggravation.

4. Resolve to be kinder. Wash a few dishes or fold a few towels or find some other way to be kind to the other members of your household (or workspace). Sometimes the smallest action sets off a domino effect of kindness.

Let's make the world a better place, my friends.

Little cuties have a way about them. They can do just about anything and make our hearts melt. They fill their diapers and we change them. They drool on us and cover us in spit up and we giggle and keep picking them up though we know it increases the risk of more incidents. We run toward them when they cry. We can't help it.

This morning my little goddess in training grabbed the granola bar from my hand and giggled merrily as I smiled at her. Luckily, it was still in th package. She hasn't tried any soft foods yet. I don't think her first experience with food should be a crunchy bar of oats.

of course, her smile woos more than just her starstruck parents. We were dining with some friends over the weekend, and I saw many other patrons smiling back at her. A couple even empatically tapped their dining companions to direct more attention toward my little star.