As I walked through the main part of the office last week (across the hall from the production studio where I work with Melyssa Holik and Melissa Chianta), I was surprised by the feeling of holiday bustle. Accounts Manager Shirl Ervin and Fulfillment Manager Micki Garcia were wrapping and packing in the mailroom area, Associate Publisher Lally McMahon was bringing over stacks of boxes just delivered by UPS. When I asked what was going on, they all answered “Sophie!”

Sophie, as I learned a couple of months ago, is a charming rubber giraffe who showed up in a photo submitted to me by photographer Lise Varrette. Since the subject of the photo was also quite charming, a young girl named Harmony with a vulnerable smile that made us all Ooh!,* we used the photo on our November–December cover. And we started getting inquiries: where could one buy Sophie?

So, after poking around online and making a few calls, we decided to make Sophie available at the Mothering online shop. The orders poured in. Somehow, we found ourselves in the toy giraffe business! —packing and shipping hundreds of toy giraffes for the holiday season—which has been both a lot of fun and an unexpected little boost at the end of a really rough financial year for the magazine business.

I love it how these things happen. . .

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*A phenomenon known around here as the Ooh Factor, identified as such by our publisher, Peggy O’Mara. You know a photo’s got it when pretty much everybody who looks at it can’t help but Ooh.

This shot of Kenann Thompson, of Takoma Park, Maryland, was taken while she was exploring a cave in Barbados while wearing her two-year-old daughter in a baby carrier on her back.

The quality of photos sent in by readers with their letters to the editor seems to have improved markedly over the last few years.

Here’s a stunning shot from the new November-December issue of reader Erin Riggio, of Tacoma, Washington, taken by her brother in Assisi, Italy, as she was breastfeeding her son.

Our new November-December issue includes a very exciting article by Diana Lynn about intuition: how to raise one’s child in a way that supports the development of his or her intuitive sense.

The article lists some websites with exercises designed to hone intuition. Ad production manager/ staff photographer/web design maven Melyssa Holik and I found this fact very exciting. But, under deadline at the time, we promised ourselves we’d visit the sites later. Meanwhile, Mel said, let’s just practice with simple stuff: “What number am I thinking of? between 1 and 10?”

“7,” I responded without thinking.

“Right.”

“OK, what number am I thinking of?” I asked her in turn.

“3?”

“Yep.”

We both went back to work. (We’re still planning to visit those intuition-training sites, one of these days.)

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Shot by NYC/Toronoto photographer Lise Varrette, our new cover photo features a cutie from Toronto named Harmony, holding her beloved Sophie the Giraffe.

When Lise first showed me this photo, I said “Very nice, but we can’t have a plastic toy on the cover!”

Which shows how out of touch I am: Sophie, who has been around since 1961, is NOT made of plastic. Sophie is made of “100% natural rubber derived from the sap of the Hevea Tree;” her color comes from food-quality paint. Get the full story here.

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Hint #1: Illustrations at right.

Hint #2: Everything old is new again! No, I’m not old enough to remember these, but I’m really fond of magazines from the 1950s. . .

On the stands November 1, or you can preorder here.

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Illustrations by Melyssa Holik.