Maria Monto is a contributing author in Chicken Soup for the Mother of Preschooler’s Soul: Stories to Refresh the Soul and Rekindle the Spirit of Moms of Little Ones by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Maria Nickless and Elisa Morgan.

Does your car CD collection range from The Best of Rock-n-Roll Classics to The Best of Barney? Does your idea of a good dinner out mean crayons and paper placemats for all? Can hearing the words "I love you, Mommy" make your whole day? Then chances are good that you are not only a mother of a preschooler (or soon-to-be one), but that you are in need of some laughter, inspiration and camaraderie.

In just a few minutes of alone time these stories will give mothers of preschoolers a place to release the day's stress, connect with other moms and evoke much-needed laughter. These stories will rekindle your sense of self and spirit, and remind you how to enjoy this precious period of time in your life.

Excerpt (from “When it Rains, It Pours” by Maria Monto © 2005, Chicken Soup for the Mother of Preschooler’s Soul):

“Girls, Barbie doesn’t grow hair like you and me. Our hair is always growing, so we need to have it cut sometimes,” I explained. “Barbie is a dolly. If you cut her hair, it won’t grow back.” I looked at each girl in turn. “And then her hair will be ugly for the wedding when she gets married to Ken.”

Mission accomplished. Even at their tender ages, my girls knew that every bride is beautiful, and Barbie should not be denied. The girls glanced, almost apologetically, at their tuxedoed Ken dolls sitting stiffly against Barbie’s pink house. Lauren put the scissors down. Out came the coloring books and crayons, and I left them to play again.

Ten minutes later, I stepped back into the playroom and found Lauren, again, with scissors in her chubby little hand. And there was Andrea, looking like Rod Stewart on a great hair day--her wispy bangs now half-inch spikes. Beside her left ear, a chunk of chopped hair dangled. My daughter now had a sideburn.

“It means the baby is going to have a lot of hair,” one of my friends told me when I brought up the subject at a play date with our children.

“What?” I snapped, wondering whether she was teasing me about something I didn’t find the least bit amusing.

“Haven’t you ever heard that? It’s an old wives’ tale: if you experience a lot of heartburn while you’re pregnant, the baby will be born with a lot of hair.”

Frightening images of hairy infants swept through my mind--a tiny baby girl with hair piled high, ala Dolly Parton; a sweet baby boy with a mullet; a monkey-faced baby covered in hair, head to toe. I shuddered.

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. What could heartburn possibly have to do with how much hair my baby does or does not have?”

“I’ve heard it, too,” chimed in another well-meaning mom of twin boys, both bald at birth, if I remembered correctly.

“Well, I don’t believe in old wives’ tales,” I said. “But if it’s true, at this rate, we’re going to need a barber on stand-by in the delivery room.”

In my mind’s eye, my maternal grandmother still dotes over newly planted roses, geraniums, and peonies in our yard, trowel in hand. I was a child when she moved in with our family following the death of my grandfather, and it was her therapy, I suppose, to watch as new growth took form--a promise that life continues even as we mourn what is lost.

During the winter months, she would fuss over an indoor display of fuzzy African violets against the sun parlor windowsill, and it was not unusual to find her in the yard early on summer mornings watering the garden long before the hot sun burned its way through. When I began to show interest in this hobby, Grandma urged me to kneel beside her on the soft earth where I learned the importance of aerating the soil, how to deadhead a begonia, and pull a homegrown carrot from the ground. Playfully, she showed me how to gently squeeze a snapdragon to make it “talk“. She pointed this way and that, telling me the name of each flower. Of all the blooms, the ones I loved best were those she called “snowballs”. Some bushes were white, others blue, but all were lush with big green leaves and flowering clusters, very much like huge, fluffy snowballs. In time, Grandma assigned one of them to me and it was my chore to water my blue friend each day.

Grandma passed away nearly 30 years ago, and not much remains of the garden at my mother’s house. Cruel winters and neglect destroyed what was once a colorful patch of blossoms, and landscapers have since planted grass where my grandmother once toiled. Only one bush endured the last three decades, thriving beneath the shade of a cherry blossom tree in the yard. My hydrangea.

Now a middle-aged woman with a garden of my own, I spend my early mornings in the yard. I weed, I till, I prune, yet still consider myself to be a novice. My garden is small by Grandma’s standards and the perennials may or may not remember to return as hers always did, but I am hopeful. During the winter months, I pore over garden catalogs and I visit the local nursery every spring to find something new to purchase and plant. Some take, others do not. Then the guilt sets in and I wonder how Grandma would have done it.

“You remind me of your grandmother, fussing from one flower to the next,“ my mother remarked during a visit one late June afternoon. Every so often I would rise from my chair on the deck and gently pluck a spent flower from a planter, or walk down to the garden to pull a weed. The conversation turned to my Mom’s recent decision to sell her home now that my Dad has passed. She suggested that I take a cutting from the hydrangea bush before she moves and try to propagate it. I had never attempted this before, but was intrigued enough to research it further in my gardening books. The instructions weren’t entirely clear to me, but I brought my clippers to her yard a week later and carefully took a cutting. I drove home with a piece of my old friend in a wet paper towel and followed the directions, warily cutting off the leaves closest to the bottom node, and snipping the other set of leaves in half. I placed it in a container of potting soil away from direct sunlight on the deck and moistened the soil. The instructions stated that it would take two to four weeks before the roots would grow.

By August, I was delighted to see light green leaves budding along the hardy stem. “See? You did inherit Grandma’s green thumb,” Mom praised when I told her of my accomplishment. “Now you will have something that lives on from both of your grandmothers.”

I questioned the plural. “Grandmothers?”

“Yes. You spent so much time with Grandma in the garden, I thought you knew. Many years before she herself died, your father’s mother gave my mother a potted hydrangea as a gift. Grandma planted it in the backyard and it grew like a weed under the shade of the cherry blossom tree, into the same bush you see there today.”

And now my little hydrangea continues to thrive on the deck despite the October chill. I will bring it indoors before the frost, lovingly watch over it this winter, and transplant it outside next spring. If all goes well between now and then, I will have not only a wonderful addition to my garden, but a living heirloom from my grandmothers--snowballs!