By Joyce Heid

There is nothing better than waking up in the morning to the smiling face of someone happy to see you…even—or some might say especially-- if that someone is one of the resident dolphins at the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

Earlier this year, my husband and I and our two sons, Matthew, 14, and Dylan, 13, and their friend Chad, 14, had a chance to wake up to those marine mammals at the Aquarium's Dolphin Sleepover

By Paula Willey

Owner JoAnn Fruchtman laughs when asked how The Children’s Bookstore has survived for 35 years, outlasting so many of its independent brethren. “That’s a good question!” she says. But it’s no mystery, and it’s certainly not luck. “First of all,” continues Fruchtman, whose shop is located on Deepdene Road in Roland Park, “I didn't get too big. I decided to stay with what we did well.” Next, she credits her customers. “I have a clientele that knows what it means to have a bookstore in their community that can get them what they're looking for.”

By Kit Waskom Pollard

“I’ve been concentrating on writing passages in my journal,” says Gretta, the bubbly fairy-in-training in Margaret Meacham’s 2007 young adult novel “A Fairy’s Guide to Understanding Humans.” “Once it’s published it will rock the fairy world. I’ll be famous, of course.”

Meacham herself is hardly as “flighty” as her pint-sized protagonist, and fairy world fame isn’t on her mind. But, just like Gretta, she understands the power of the written word.

By Joyce Heid

One day several years ago, Terri Shearer Trenchard of Ellicott City realized she and her husband, George, would soon be going from reading their 6-year-old son, Brady, stories about Winnie-the-Pooh and his honey pot to answering his questions about the birds and the bees.

By Molly Brown Koch

Dr. Ellen Langer’s book “Mindfulness” (Da Capo Press, 1990) has had a powerful effect on me since I read it 22 years ago. I suppose I didn’t give much thought to mindfulness before I read it. (Pun not intended.) So I wonder how much prior thought any of us give to the effect of our words or actions. Do we ever weigh our words before we speak them? Do we consider the impact they will have on the listener—and on ourselves? Do we think through a course of action before we take the leap? Or are our minds on “cruise control”?

By Lisa Robinson

I am convinced something lives in my 14-year-old daughter Grace's room under all the piles of clothing, trash, papers, shoes, and other things I have no way of identifying.

What really perplexes me is how she is able to make those mounds accumulate so quickly, after I have eventually given in, unable to stand it anymore, and ventured into her room to clean.

By Amy Landsman

Ruby Randol appeared to develop typically until right around her first birthday, when she began failing to hit her milestones and doing something akin to wringing her hands. At 14 months, she was suddenly struggling to eat with her hands, and she no longer could play with her parents by rolling a ball across the floor. Mom Jesse and father Jeremy, who just days earlier had moved the family from Monkton to Westchester County, N.Y.,  took Ruby to the pediatrician for a skeletal evaluation. When that came back negative, they met with a neurologist.

By Rebecca Klein

On a Monday evening in early February, Sue Grafton and her husband, Todd, are midway through the nightly homework-dinner-bedtime relay with their daughters, Sydney, 6, and Nina, 8, when three of Sue's friends arrive at their Lutherville home, ready to head out for the evening.

It’s not the “girls’ night out” you might expect. Grafton’s SUV is packed with wrapped gifts, sprinkle cookies, a sheet cake, juice boxes, and craft supplies, and the ladies' destination is Sarah’s Hope Mount Street, an emergency shelter for homeless women and children, housed in a former school building in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of West Baltimore.