Hi Kelli,

Congratulations on your new baby. I just saw the news and i'm so happy for you.

I'm Jessica. I live in Burnsville, MN, a suburb just south of Minneapolis/St. Paul, about 10 min from the infamous Mall of America. My family and I have been here in MN 5 years now.

Previously grew up mostly in Ohio, as the child of Ohio State University professor of agriculture and an elementary school teacher. Both my college degrees are from OSU. I have a Bachelor of Music, vocal performance and a M.S. in Extension Education minor in Instructional Design.

Husband and I graduated with M.S. and married next day and moved to California. We lived in the Bay Area for almost 3 years where he worked for Pixar Animation Studios on movies. Lets just say, it's cool work if you can hack the 60-80 hr weeks. 3 years was enough and we moved to MN.

We'll be married 8 years in December. We have one child, Ethan who will be 3 in July. I worked as an Instructional Designer for Tech companies, specializing in Web-based training until Ethan was born. I'm fortunate to be able to stay home with him for now. I too am a big advocate of long-term breastfeeding (2+years) and at-home-care if you can manage it. I have such a healthy, fun, clever little guy that it has to have something to do with all the one-on-one time and closeness of being a stay-at-home parent.

I'm fortunate that Ethan loves being outdoors, he is currently into hikes in the woods and especially Owls. I'm so proud to say, he has such a love for owls that he knows 19 or the 21 North American owls by sight and their calls. He loves to talk about owls all the time.

Spiritually, I'm a run-away (picture Monty Python)Southern Baptist escapee. I still very much love and respect my family's Christian beliefs but I just can't live with that myself. I was very into studying Buddhism and Wicca as a teenager, to the horror of my SB church-friends. I think the main thing that sent me away from the SB church was the intolerance for others beliefs being plausible and equal paths to spirituality. I had many friends in school from other cultures and beliefs (Jewish, Hindu, Buddist, Islam and other Christian faiths as well as a lot of gay friends) (It's really a great think to be a college profs kid, you meet the most interesting people). Valuing these people in my life made it very hard to accept the hard-line "hate the sin, but love the sinner" attitude of the SB church (which really translates to hate the sin and treat the sinner as second-class and a lesser creature). Anyway...

I am very interested in earth based belief systems and feel a strong affinity with a female/Goddess take on nature, life and creation.

I've purchased several dolls from Kelli. I have one in my home and I've given two others as gifts. I think I found Kelli's marvelous dolls through an ad in Mothering magazine. I'm so glad you started this forum Kelli! I'm so glad to meet you all.

~Jessica