Summer

Summer is a time for listening. Listening to crickets and birdsong, to the wind rustling in the treetops and the frothy murmur of the endless waves of traffic, the airplanes overhead, and the buzzing air-conditioners that never, ever turn off this time of year. It's time of pausing to realize just how little silence there is, a time of noticing and acknowledging all the noise.

Above all it's a time of listening to toddlers, of stopping to figure out what that tantrum was really about. The louder it gets, the harder it is to listen, but listening well is usually a prerequisite to peace.

But in this season, even peace is pretty noisy, and Dadders and I seem to be the only ones craving stillness. Well, September, too, but at any rate, we're soundly outnumbered. And even now, as I write out loud to the wuggies, Kai-kai insists that he doesn't want to listen to my song, he wants to listen to Bopatado. (The round red guy who hangs out with Larry the Cucumber, in case you're not used to listening to this particular two-year-old.)

He's really asking quite sweetly (though insistently), and you know, I think we will.

There's a time for stillness, and a time for Silly Songs With Larry and Bopatado, everything in it's season under the glow of the setting sun.

Sticky-Sweet

Nathan wants me to write on the Wuggy Chronicles.

About Kai-kai and Amos, perhaps. Or bees.

I guess you could say that we're swarming with new life around here. Fortunately, the apiary contingent has been safely relocated to the farm of some delightfully eccentric beekeepers, who captured our imaginations with their amazing stories while they sucked up 10,000 or so honeybees with their shopvac. An alpha-swarm, they told us gleefully, and presumable ready to produce gallons and gallons of honey. 150 pounds a year, if Isaiah's memory serves correctly, and Nathan remembers that they said it would be enough to feed a whole village, though I'm not certain of what size or honey-consumption patterns.

(Nathan also reminds me to tell you that the beekeepers have lots of enormous bullfrogs on their farm, and that one of their friends had been killed by bees, and that they didn't kill our bees, but put them in a box. Of which box we were very sternly warned: Do. Not. Touch.)

 I'm told that when honeybees try to settle into a new home, they build precisely one new row of honeycomb per day. Sure enough, there were four rows of snow-white fresh honeycomb, one for each of the frantic days that it took to get someone out to our house to get those bees out of here. Apparently bee migration season coincides with peak honey production season, and every beekeeper in the area had a several-week waiting list. That would have added up to at least fourteen rows of honeycomb, not to mention all the honey.

But during one of those (many, and mostly fruitless) phone calls, a wild rumpus broke out, and it became manifestly obvious to the beekeeper on the other end of the line that there were children in the house. Lots of them. (Six, in case you've lost count. Nathan would like me to be sure to tell you that Amos was born four months ago. But back when this happened, he was still only three months old, and still colicky.) At any rate, the interruptions made my case better than I ever could have, and he agreed to drop everything and come that very evening, which is how it happened that the wuggies only got four rows of honeycomb and only one bee sting.

(Kai-kai was a very good sport about the sting, and his big brother Willie showed so much compassion that this part of the story is actually one that I treasure dearly in my heart.)

Finally the wuggies have something to take to the zoo trading shop, assuming that they don't use it for sealing wax instead, and we've all become a little bit obsessed with bees. Bees are more wonderful and fascinating and important and dangerous than I ever imagined, and bee-keeping has assumed a delightful role in all our agrarian fantasies. But oh, how my skin is crawling as I type, just remembering all those bees swarming by the front door of our townhouse.

Ever since the wuggies first grew old enough to upend their bowls of cereal all over the dining room floor, I've known that the promised land was a mighty sticky place. Back then I thought it was just a silly pun; mere humor.

But slowly I'm learning that there's nothing "mere" to humor at all, and even puns can be profound. The rose comes with its thorns, and the honey with its stings. Everything is bittersweet, and sometimes the only way to see clearly is to laugh so hard that the tears stream down your face.

Life is good. God has blessed us abundantly, overwhelmingly. We're so grateful, and so exhausted. It's very, very sweet, and very sticky. And when I remember to laugh, there's a sweetness in the sticky, too.

Overheard

"The wall is a very bad man. It hit me on the head."

Love

We've still been running the air-conditioner off and on, but suddenly it is heater weather. A simple flip of the switch, however, revealed that this means that it is going to be on and off jacket weather inside our house until the repairman comes out to fix the heater.

Texas, unlike California, actually has seasons, and this time of year, you can experience all four of them in the space of a week.

"Mama! You have ant bites, too?!"

Texas also has ants. Ants seem to be particularly fascinating to young blue-eyed boys, and Texas ants are the biting kind. Kai-kai, September, and Isaiah have always tended to stay clear of them, but Willie is enraptured with their swarming patterns, just like Nathan was at his age.

Stroking me sympathetically, Willie took a closer look at my arm.

"Oh, those aren't ant bites... you're just cold!"

He whipped his jacket off, and offered it to me. I thanked him for the sweet gesture, and told him that perhaps he could go fetch me my own jacket off the banister.

He immediately went scurrying off, and the moment he was back, and my jacket was safely in my hands, he picked up his own little black and red puffer.

"There. Now I'm going to put my coat back on. Because I'm freezing."

Song

It's the sort of day where you savor your mug of hot tea, as much for the warmth as for anything else.  Where you never bother to get out of your pajamas, but you do scrub the kitchen floor--or at least part of it--and it feels so good, if only in contrast to your stuffy nose and your thickly pounding head. The sort of day when your little boy grins at you with those melty-chocolate eyes, and somehow you feel the wonder all the more for being sick.

Or maybe it's just that like a snake swallowing its tail, all those voices of silence have choked themselves off.  They've dried up and blown away in the crisp November wind, and I feel so light and glad.

I can just taste the redemption that might be, that could be, and whatever stories there will be, I rejoice that it is offered.

Do they know? Do they know?

Those words have suffocated us all for so long, speaker and hearer alike, but now those words have crumbled into ashes. At the sound of the breaking pots, they've turned on themselves in the torchlight, and those words of darkness can never again drown out the words of light.

Do they know? Do they know?

They will say what they will say, and live the story of their choosing. I hope they come stand in the beautiful wind with arms wide open, and watch the ashes blow away, as far as the east is from the west.  But whatever words they choose to live, my heart overflows with gladness at the story that's been offered.

And as for me, I will play checkers with my daughter, pour another cup of tea, and sing the song of the redeemed.

My Sons.

I'm proud of 'em, and I get mamma-bear mad when folks have low expectations of 'em.

And then I take it as an opportunity to clarify my philosophy of education. In sonnet form, of course.

http://thereforeiambic.blogspot.com/2011/01/these-fine-strong-sons-of-mine-it-is.html

Plumb Line

One of the best things about having lots of kids is that you get to hear yourself reflected back--my interactions with them get played back over and over again in the way they talk to each other, and so I get to find out how I really sound.

And so it was that I was doubly pleased the other day, when I heard September speaking to Will with such gentle, loving firmness.

"Willie, I'll let you play with my football, but not in the bathroom, because I don't want you to flush it down the toilet. You shouldn't flush things down the toilet that don't belong to you."

Clutter

I’ve been reading the newspaper this afternoon—a rare indulgence. Newspapers are terribly messy and clutterful, and so I tend to get most of my news from the internet. With all the temptingly distracting hyperlinks, I suppose that the internet produces even more mental clutter, but at least it all stays contained in my head, rather than getting scattered about the house.

Of course, mental clutter is even more crazy-making than paper-clutter… until in finds its way out onto paper. It works just the same way as with the house—the more stuff you let in, the more of your life you have to spend organizing it all. There’s a richness in simplicity, and I’m trying to rid my life of extraneous junk. At the very least, I’m trying to count the cost for everything I bring into my life—not just the initial investment, but also the cumulative cost of constantly having to put it away, over and over again. It’s all too easy for the meaningless to crowd out the meaningful, for words to multiply, and dreams to crowd out their fulfillment.
Of the writing of books there is no end, but once they’ve been scattered all around the floor for the umpteenth time, they need to get put back into place so I can stop tripping on them. Yesterday, when I was trying to pick up the week’s accumulation of clutter, I found myself instead following my husband around while he cleaned, and chattering incessantly. I was explaining to him about why I really needed to write more, so that I wouldn’t drive him up the wall by talking his ear off quite so much. I stopped short as soon as I picked up on the irony, but he assured me that I wasn’t actually annoying him. He doesn’t mind when I talk about writing. It’s just when I talk about… certain things. He couldn’t remember what.

This afternoon, our beautiful, newly tidy room was strewn about with comics and economics and the weekly “Around the Area” column on local murderings and gristly accidents. I read aloud all the particularly infuriating snippets from editorial after editorial, and Andrew finally remembered what it is that always bugs him. Ah, yes. Politics. He can’t stand it when I talk about politics.

We’re pretty much on the same page, and though our views have evolved through the years, they’ve been changing in lockstep. But our attention spans are different, and Andrew is forever drawing me out of the endless round and round of the now, back to the slow, meticulous study of history that makes sense out of it all.

And of course, when I sat down to write, I had the intention of drawing some profound point out of all this.

It was terribly profound and wonderful, but it seems to be buried in a big pile with several pages of newspaper, some dirty dishes, and some unfolded laundry.

Poetry Blog, Take II

Okay, so I don't think, therefore I mess up the launching of my new blog, and then go get a puppy, and never make it onto the internet for a few weeks.

Here it is, for reals: thereforeiambic.blogspot.com

I'm starting out slow--expect weekly Saturday posts for now.

First up, a resurrection poem.

Because Christ is risen!

Hallelujah!

Oh, and in case you're wondering, she's a little white furball of a mini schnoodle, her name is Terpsichore, and although she's very cute, everything they've ever said about housebreaking small dogs is true.

Poetry Blog

I'm blogging in metered verse over at I Think, Therefore Iambic Pentameter.

First up, I've got a metaphysical sonnet about teabags, with sweetly innocent children's poetry, ruminations on fear of death, and even a little bit of cynical politics coming soon.

I'm also writing nonsense rhymes to supplement the wuggies' phonics lessons, and I may post some of that, too.

I hope you drop by soon.

Remember the Alamo!

We just got back from a little jaunt to San Antonio.

It's an inspiring bit of history, and we like being part of a state with an identity like that.

Along the way to the Alamo, we ended up traipsing through the backroads, and meandering through an old cemetery.

We like walking through graveyards, the skeletal outlines of lives long ago, a set of dates held together by a few lines of poetry. It is good to stand at a distance, to see what really matters after time has smoothed away most of the details, while magnifying others, as an ancient winding stream carves out the riverbed.

Remember the Alamo!

It's strange to think that after all these years, it really doesn't matter whether they won or lost, but it matters tremendously that they died and died valiantly.

We remember that they lost the battle, and we remember that their defeat was part of how the revolution was won.

But sooner or later, I'm sure it all would have turned out this way in the end, and it doesn't really matter how we got here.

But it matters that these brave men fought to the death against hopeless odds, and it matters that their comrades let them die alone and unsupported, and waited to bravely fight the battles that were theirs to fight and win.

All these years later, what matters is not how long their lives were, or even whether in the dying they accomplished their goals. What matters is that they chose wisesly, fought bravely, and died well.

The vic'try or defeat is but a token
of the glory spilled from lives valiantly broken.

Complicated Passages

I was reading a bit of Galatians to the wuggies this morning, simply because that's what I was reading to myself before they got up. Of course, this required a bit of context-building before we launched into the text. We looked up Galatia first on the map in the back of the Bible, then found the corresponding area on the globe, and discovered that it corresponds to modern-day Turkey.

After I explained to them how the people of Galatia had been led astray by bad teachers, September wondered if the Insulations ever got things straight again.

I didn't know the answer to that one.

Nathan, on the other hand, really just wanted to know why the area had changed names.

Another stumper.

But then, all on his own, he figured it out.

The land must have been invaded by chickens.

And there you have it.

Oot!

Paggles is talking! Vague-sounding complete sentences have been emerging for some time--it always sounds just like he must be saying something that makes perfect sense--but now his conversation is peppered with distinctly intelligible words. Like Mama, Da-ee, Timmo, Na-tin, Iyaya, and eat. Eat! Eat! That boy sure loves to eat, and to talk about eating whenever there's food in sight. But if there's one thing that he likes more than eating, it's goofing. There never was such a boy for goofing. And so his very favorite word of all--except maybe for "Mama," which to my great chagrin, is his word for any and all beverages... well, anyway, his second-favorite word of all is "Oot!" Which simply means that it is time to burst out into gales of laughter, because that's an awfully funny sound to make.

And since we're talking about Paggles and the meaning of nonsense words, I suppose I'd better explain how he came to be called Paggles.

It's really quite simple and rational. It should be fairly obvious why we took to calling him snufflupagus. But then we would jokingly shift around the emPHASes of the sylLAbles, and have protracted discussions as to whether he was really a snufflUPagus, or maybe actually a snuffloPAgus. In the end we concluded that he was definitely a snuffloPAgus, which slowly morphed into Pagus... Pags...

And that is how it came about that he is Paggles, and he says "Oot!"

I just realized...

...that I spent most of my writing time this evening trying to find somebody (anybody!) who had already said what I had to say, so maybe I wouldn't have to write it.

It was during the chunk of time when I was looking for a potential publisher for this half-written article, that I realized why nobody is saying it.

So for now, I'll just have to say it here, on my unfunded little blog.

Every word in the mainstream media is funded by big corporations.

Not something that mainstream media is likely to point out, and not something that you can really do much about, without making matters worse. It's simply a fact of modern life--our society has an awful lot of mighty effective megaphones available for purchase, and most of that purchasing happens in ways that are utterly untouchable by campaign finance laws.

Thank God that ordinary citizens are now permitted to pool their resources, and make their voices heard too.

Even if they aren't quite rich enough to buy the whole television network.

It's always bittersweet...

...to find a splendid library discard.

I remember...

...that little gold typewriter.

It was so very beautiful.

And I would sit there in my little yellow director's chair, at my little white desk, and while Daddy and Mommy clacked away, I'd do my "exegesis on Luke."

And now my very own little girl sits next to me at Starbucks, with her little purple notebook and her little blue pen. We like to go write together, her and me.

And it is very sweet indeed.

How We Homeschool

Emily wonders how we're going about the business of homeschooling.

The short answer would be: mostly incidentally.

See, school is about 90% socialization, 10% academics. I'm pretty sure I'm not saying anything controversial there. Most advocates of public school (or private school, for that matter) that I've talked to readily agree that most students can get through all the necessary academic coursework at home in anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. But school isn't just about academics; in fact, socialization--learning how to live well in community--is a much bigger, and much more important part of the education of a virtuous soul.

But there's some pretty intense disagreement among parents about how exactly they would like their children socialized, and thank God, America allows us the freedom to agree to disagree, and socialize our own children according to our own beliefs.

So, even in the states with the very strictest requirements for homeschoolers, the law only addresses the academic 10%.

There are a lot of great curricula out there that would enable us to give the kids the academic portion of a public school education, with a pretty minimal time investment, and others that would let us give them a much more intensive education with a bit more thought and work. I can respect either approach.

But for us, academics is just a way of life. We talk about number theory while setting the table, Plutarch and philosophy of history over the dinner. We listen to Cry the Beloved Country while we wash the dishes, and then we sit around the fire and read the Odyssey. I'm planning on periodically assessing, and making sure that we really are covering all the bases... but I'm not too worried about it. This is one of the perks of living in Texas; as long as I'm using some sort of written materials to teach my children the three R's, good citizenship, and Texas history, I can be as loosey-goosey about it as I please.

The kids really do have to learn to read, though. HAVE to. For my sake as much as theirs... I want them to start looking up their own history questions. (And mine, too!) I've found that they just aren't mature enough to pay attention to words when there are any pictures whatsoever on the page, so I'm just using the primer in the back of Why Johnny Can't Read. It's a bare-bones set of word lists, and we're grinding through, just a little bit of sounding-out and a little bit of dictation every day. It's amazing how important the dictation is--it turns out that spelling comes easier than reading, and it's through learning to spell that they're learning to read. Anyway, it's slow slogging, but there's a whole library full of history books at the end of the tunnel, and I read them fun books as a more immediate reward.

As for the 90%, I'm of the opinion that participation in a vibrant, healthy family (and church!) is the best socialization. Learning to navigate friendships with kids their own age, and also spending time with older kids, and godly grownups. And learning how to pull their own weight around the house. And camping, and spouting poetry, and building stuff--from tiny wooden boxes to grandiose universes, worlds in which Jim the Warrior was there to stop Alegdander of Jalon from stealing the whole world, and in which the Titanic was truly indestructible, but had enough lifeboats anyway.

All Done Being Angry

The Common Room is always a great place to go for fantastic discussions of philosophy of education.

The Deputy Headmistress is mad, mad, mad about Berkeley High School's proposal to try to address the racial achievement gap by cutting science labs.

I can see how one might be angry about this. Why, yes... it's quite maddening, isn't it? I can also see how the school might want to do this, though. Not because science is too "white," but because other resources might be more immediately beneficial to students who can't even read. First things first. Who shall we throw under the bus first? The struggling students or the students who are starting to get somewhere?

Round and round and round it goes, and never any answers, never any answers. And I'm tired of it. Tired of it being that way, but also just plain too tired to keep caring about it.

The post delves into lots of great discussion of Hirsch and Mason and Russeau.... good stuff, excellent stuff, marvelous food for thought. But round and round and round it goes, round and round some more. Shall we teach kids things, or shall we teach them how to learn? Hirsch is absolutely right--kids can never learn how to learn without things on which to learn. Children need the core knowledge which is the basis of cultural literacy.

So he went on to carefully devise a curriculum on that basis.

I have no doubt that it's a very fine curriculum indeed. (Really. I've heard fantastic things about it.)

But, oh, the years of high quality work put into adapting the great works of western civilization, making their important ideas compatible with the school setting.

Round and round and round it goes.

These questions and dilemmas are fascinating, and I'm sure I'll revisit them over and over again, like crosswords and sudoku puzzles, and probably I'll also revisit them to slightly more purpose as thinker, as a writer, as helpmate to a professional educator. But in my capacity as a mom... there's only one way out of this Gordian knot. I'm done with the endless puzzles, the endless dilemmas, round and round and round.

And I'm going downstairs, to read to my kids. Real books, books that matter, books that haven't been edited down to their level... or mine, for that matter. Books that challenge and change me, even as they challenge and change my little ones. Funny books, too, that delight and entertain me, even as they delight and entertain my little ones. And yes, the dull grunt-work of endless word-lists and dictation. But even that, we're doing straight-up, unadorned but for the promise that at the library downtown, they have more history books than would fit in our whole house, and if you'll just get through these few dull lessons, my child, you can read them all.

New Day, New Year, New Post

I write from Starbucks--our computer sort of died, and so that made for a nice opportunity for an internet fast.

I miss being able to instantly dash upstairs and get a kazillion answers to sift through, whenever I have the slightest question about anything.

The fruit of the tree of knowledge is intoxicating and addictive, but it's been good to stop the information flow for a while, and just figure out how to live according to the knowledge that I do have. To seek wisdom as hidden treasure.

But I do terribly miss writing.

My parents came for Christmas, and among the lovely and generous, carefully selected gifts they placed beneath our tree, was a bound copy of The Wuggy Chronicles. A touching gift, a valuable archive... and above all, a not-so-subtle hint.

And I came to the conclusion that I'm am in the wrong career.

As Aristotle would say, my proper function is my unique function. Nobody else can mother my children quite like I can, or educate them like I can. All this is most definitely my proper function.

But as for housekeeping,... well, actually, there are quite a few people who could do that part of my job considerably better than I can. And so, even though I have no intention of pursuing a career that will let me outsource my mothering responsibilities, I see no reason why I shouldn't work toward levering my strengths so I can hire somebody to clean my house for me.

And you know what? Proverbs 31 doesn't say a single thing about cleaning. The excellent wife is good with textiles, and she uses the profits from those skills to dabble in real estate, and she takes good care of her maids, and makes sure that they take good care of her house. I owe my husband a well-kept home... but maybe I don't have to be the one running the vacuum cleaner.

Of course it takes time to convert words into supplemental income, and I'm not quite sure how I will go about it. But I do know of at least one way that I can. I have a lovely plan for teaching flute lessons during naptime to leverage myself into some serious writing time--the time the housekeeper is cleaning the house would be sacred to the non-creative gruntwork of cover letters and queries and such. On the other hand, as I was flipping through my old (very out-of-date) Christian Writer's Market Guide, I realized that the whole process is much, much less intimidating than I had imagined it to be. I've never really worked up the nerve to seriously pursue publication, because I'd heard that it was impossible for the unpublished to get published... But while that is true for the big publications, there are plenty of small publications that really do read unsolicited manuscripts. There's a finite number of steps to take, and it's really not so complicated after all. No guaranteed outcome, of course... but no reason I can't give it a try. And if the family suffers from the time investment it requires, I'll go the flute-lessons-for-now route.

I'm excited. =)

And now, if you'll excuse me, a have a touchingly humorous grandparent/grandchild story to write for some small Christian seniors' magazine.

Deliver My Life

I finally heard back from Crossway, and got permission to use the ESV for my Psalm settings and scripture songs.

So... if you happened to be looking for an arrangement of Psalm 6, for solist(s) and congregation, shoot me an email!

Psalm 6 is one of those crazy, shocking Psalms--I always wondered how David had the audacity to pray such a thing.

"Turn O Lord, deliver my life.
Save me for the sake of Your steadfast love,
for in death there is no remembrance of you,
in Sheol who will give you praise?"


It was only through song that I was able to make any sense out of those words, through the strange process of trying to find a tune to which David could have sung such a thing.

And now it is one of the very dearest of Scriptures to me, speaks to me with a deep assurance of the bedrock foundation of our salvation.

God doesn't save me for my sake, but for His own sake. I don't deserve it, but I can be absolutely certain that God will rescue me, preserve me, sustain me, and make me ever more like Christ. Because He wants my life to be a testimony to His glory. If it was all about me, I'm pretty sure God would have changed His mind a long time ago. But it's not about me. God will be glorified, and so I know that He will be faithful.

Even though it's April

Sing a song of September,
of the richly red-gold ember
of the summer's blazing heat.
Of the velvet crinch-crunch soft beneath your feet
of the leaves all spent and tender,
but mostly, darling sweet,
of you.

Another collaboration between September and myself,

being about a rather poorly illustrated biography of Leonardo da Vinci. Perhaps there is a time and a place for crudely cartoonish illustrations, but at any rate, its proper place is certainly not in a biography of Leonardo. But of course, I didn't notice just how silly it was until September pointed it out, although I'm not quite sure that September's objections were the same as mine. In fact, I'm not 100% certain about the precise nature of her objections in the first place. But at any rate, here they are.

This book is a bad book.
It's a bad book, she said.
There's people who cover people--
And they don't like it.

She took another long look,
Took a long look, then she said
They're trying to take a horse--
And it's not good.

But cuddle up, sweet mama,
and fold me in the blanket
so we can be toasty.

Onward Christian Soldiers

"Hey Mom, wher're we goin' today?"

"Well, I was thinking of taking you guys to the Salvation Army store."

"Do they sell guns there?"

"Um... no."

"Why don't they sell guns there?"

"I don't know. Maybe they do. I've never checked. They sell a lot of different things."

"Oh, so do they just sell swords and spears and bows and arrows, like in the Bible?"

"I don't think so. They just sell clothes and furniture and stuff."

"Oh, okay, so they have soldier boots there? Is that why it's called Salvation Army?"

You should probably beware the brioche dough of the Pharisees, too.

I'm guest blogging at the evangelical outpost about my life-changing experiences with bread dough.

No, not the one a few years ago where I sort of ate too much brioche dough and the yeast sort of colonized in my stomach, and I sort of thought I was going to explode, until raw garlic came to my rescue for the first of many times.

No, this time I'm blogging about good experiences with bread dough, experiences in which none of the dough made it into my mouth before first being baked into wonderfully scrumptious breads.

Although I guess that other bread dough experience was a very good one, too, because that was the first time I discovered the anti-microbial properties of raw garlic, and though I've never repeated that particular mistake of eating anything containing live yeast, it turns out that garlic can kill all sorts of unwelcome invaders and has saved me a tremendous amount of agony, not to mention thousands of dollars in copays for doctor visits and antibiotics.

But I think these experiences with bread dough were even better, because while the other helped me understand garlic better, these helped me come to a deeper understanding of the gospel.

And the gospel is even more powerful and healing and cleansing and purifying than raw garlic.

Which is actually saying something.

http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/2009/04/the-kingdom-of.html#more

A few days later...

Easter Sunday was just lovely.

The process of tumbling out the door to church was fraught with more than usual chaos. It seemed that everything that could possible go wrong did... but then again, it seemed that nothing that could go wrong really mattered. Death itself is conquered--is there room in this flood of joy for fretfulness over smaller troubles?

And in the end, we did make it to Sunday School--and very nearly on time, too!

We'd planned on a picnic, but in the chaos of the morning, I'd forgotten the food, and anyway, it was pouring rain. So we just went home.

But by the time we got home, the rain was gone, and Andrew set up the grill on our own little porch, and smoked our burgers with some chips from some gorgeously aromatic purply logs he'd split a week or so earlier. (What a wonderful place Houston is to go scavenging for firewood!)

So we had our burgers on the porch--our newly open sunshiny porch, now that Andrew has gotten rid of one of the overgrown shrubs--beside our new little barely-sprouting vegetable garden, and the big stack of fragrant firewood. It was as pleasant a place as you could ask for, and the burgers were delicious, with avacados and mushrooms and swiss cheese and carmelized onions, on sourdough rolls fresh from the oven. An nontraditional Easter feast, perhaps, but a very yummy one.

As we were finishing up, we noticed two little pairs of eyes peeking through the fence, and so for most of the afternoon we were joined by a very adorable pair of boys from our neighborhood. A good time was had by all.

It was one of those days to savor, a bright sunshiny day of loveliness and bliss that sparkle out like jewels among the days of one's life.

Yesterday morning, September wanted to know if it was still Easter.

Yes, my child, it's still Easter. Now and forever.

Have you ever noticed...

...how raw carrots smell like roses?

And make superb teethers for little ones?

And have rings like trees?

And have give a musically percussive snap when you bite into them?

And are altogether wonderful?

God makes good things.

Overdone

We've been reading Now We Are Six. There's a lovely little poem about a charcoal-burner, and Nathan wanted to know what on earth a charcoal burner was, and so I looked it up on wikipedia. It was also a good chance to clear up a trivial controversy that had been floating about our house--Andrew and I had been disputing whether charcoal was partially burnt wood, or simply another word for coal.

Turns out we were both sort of right. All coal is vegetable matter that's been condensed down through heat and pressure. It's a process that can happen over many years, deep in the bowels of the earth. Or people can make it happen much faster.

Of course I don't understand the process very well, but I did my best to explain it, and Nathan seemed to find my account very satisfactory indeed.

Dawning recognition broke forth on his face. "Oh! Like when you have a special piece of meat, and you cook it very carefully... that's charcoal!"

A new kind of bullying

September approached me, in tears.

"Nassan tried to flip me."

Concerned, I asked her to explain. She didn't look injured... but that sounded pretty serious. "He tried to flip you?"

"Well, yeah. He had the pancake flipper, and he tried to flip me."

Oh.

How They Did It: Abraham Lincoln

Amid the mass of contradictory ideas about education, it's hard to know which way is up. A few things, however, are clear and certain.

History is filled with glowing examples of powerfully brilliant and effective people.

And some of them have left us with some valuable insights into how they were educated. Or (more often) how they educated themselves.

As I think about what I want for my children, I want to take their words very seriously. The sheer quantity of contradiction makes me think that my own reasoning powers are very likely to lead me astray on this extremely important topic. I need some solid authority.

It's not enough simply to listen to brilliant men give their hypothetical plans for how they would go about educating other people. They contradict each other all over the place, so clearly at least some of them are very wrong. This is one area where the truth matters very much, and one of the best ways I can think of for sorting it all out is to ask the truly well-educated how they got that way.

For starters, I bring you Abraham Lincoln, in this snippet of conversation with Rev. J.P. Gulliver, published September 4, 1864 in the Independant. (found here)

"But let me ask, did you not have a law education? How did you prepare for your profession?"
" Oh yes! I 'read law' as the phrase is; that is, I became a lawyer's clerk in Springfield, and copied tedious documents, and picked up what I could in the intervals of other work. But your question reminds me a bit of education I had which I am bound in honesty to mention. In the course of my law-reading I constantly came upon the word demonstrate. I thought, at first, that I understood its meaning, but soon became satisfied that I did not. I said to myself, 'What do I do when I demonstrate more than when I reason or prove? How does demonstration differ from any other proof?' I consulted webster's dictionary. That told of 'certain proof,' 'proof beyond the possibility of doubt;' but I could form no idea of what sort of proof that was. I thought a great many things were proved beyond a possibility of doubt, without recourse to any such extraordinary process of reasoning as I understoof 'demonstration' to be. I consulted all the dictionaries and reference books I could find, but ith no better results. You might as well have have defined blue to a blind man. At last I said, 'Lincoln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate means;' and I left my situation in springfield, went home to my father's house, and stayed their till I could give any propositions in the first six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what 'demonstrate' means, and went back to my law studies."
I could not refrain from saying, in my admiration of such a development of character and genius combined, "Mr. Lincoln, your succeses is no longer a marvel. It is the legitimate result of adequate causes. You deserve it all and a great deal more. If you will permit me, I would like to uase this fact publicly. It will be most valuable in inciting our young men to that patient classical and mathematical culture which most minds absolutely require. No man can talk well unless he is able firswt of all to define to himself what he is talking about. Euclid, well studied, would free the world of half its calamities, by banishing half the nonsense which now deludes and curses it. I have often thought that Euclid would be one of the best books to put on the catalogue of the tract society, if they could only get people to read it. It would be a means of grace."
"I think so," he said laughing; "I vote for Euclid."

Poem

The smartest men who ever wrote were sometimes rather smart;
Perhaps I'll learn a thing or two by practicing their art.
And so I'm writing sonnets just as best as I am able,
Except for how I add the odd, and oddly said, syl-able.

A funny thing it is, the way the structure shapes the thought;
It seems a touch more arbitrary than it really ought.
The poem tends to turn in ways I never quite expected,
For words don't always go the places where they've been directed.

I used to think that Shakespeare wrote a lot of lovely rhyme,
But that's a thought that's fading with the spinning on of time.
Now I think that it was Shakespeare who was written by the sonnet--
If I would like to be wrote, too, I'd best be getting on it.

WockyJabber

(A collaboration between small September and myself, over a McDonalds ice cream cone. I said I wanted to write a poem, so she told me what to write, and I wrote it. )


She says that Jabberwockies are some very scarry birds,
And Jabberwockies are the things to verse of with my words.
The Jabberwockies may be fierce, but she is unafraid.
I asked her how this could be so, and this is what she said:
I think you're funny of me.

Oh, what would happen if you had a toylike Jabberwock?
A funny thing to talk of; nonetheless we still will talk.
You'd turn it on its button--it would roar a fearsome roar--
But it would never bite you, says the learned Jabber lore.
Toy Jabberwocks snarl safely.

For I can write a 'T' or 'H', but not a single 'O'--
The 'T's and 'H's are quite straight, whilst 'O's are not--although
Some are. (Which ones?) The ones that do not want to wrinkled be.
So what's the purpose of this tale?
I think you're funny of me.

More on Picture Books

Thanks for the great comments. It's impossible to get clarity and perspective without... well... perspective. =)

I'm still in the middle of muddling through this issue, but if I had to say right now, I'd say that I think GOOD picture books are good... but that just being a book doesn't make it good. (And really, picture books are books in a very different sense from normal books, anyway...) I'm starting to rethink my "the more the merrier" policy on picture books, and the time we spend with them, but I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Patti's comment has me thinking that there's a whole 'nother side to the question though. In addition to thinking about whether to read picture books to my children, and which picture books to read to them, perhaps I ought to be thinking harder about how to read them to my children. Patti writes:

I think there's something to be said for teaching your kids to "read" pictures as well as words--that these are skills that will translate when they watch TV and movies, and that learning to think critically about visual presentation is just as important as learning to criticize words and rhetorical presentation, especially in a world that is more and more dominated by the visual. That said, moderation is definitely key!

This is a very important point. I need to equip my children with the tools to understand images, and not be decieved and manipulated by them.

How do I make sure that I'm training them to understand images, not training them to be dependent upon them?

Picture Books

Everybody knows that if you want your kids to grow up into intelligent, literate, critical thinking people, you have to read to them lots and lots, starting when they are very very young. And everybody knows that the thing to read to the very young is picture books. Lots and lots of picture books, with lots and lots of brightly colored illustrations, and a few words sprinkled in here and there.

Everybody knows this, right?

Now I have lots of logical reasons and trustworthy authority to back up the idea that certain sorts of literature are extremely beneficial to small children... but it suddenly occurred to me that I believe picture books are indispensable precisely because the folks who bring us Sesame Street say so. Not to say anything against the sundry wonderfulnesses of Sesame Street--I like Cookie Monster as well as the next girl--but if you think that Sesame Street is the key to becoming an excellent reader, I have a few Nigerian bank accounts I'd like to sell you.

This doesn't necessarily mean that my belief about the importance of picture books was wrong. It does, however, mean that I had the wrong reasons for believing it.

Just because silly people believe something doesn't make it false, but it certainly doesn't make it true, either.

Picture books may, in fact, be incredibly important--but I need a better reason.

So can you help me out here?

Why should I read picture books to my kids?

Good Work

My Daddy has a great story about getting kicked out of school.

Twice.

When he was homeschooled.

While his mother was busy with his brother and sister, he'd slip out the back door and ride his bike around the cow-paths. Finally Grandma gave up and told him "Go ahead and grow up to dig ditches." I can just hear her saying that, too. Grandma was quite a lady.

****

As a member of the board of directors for our townhouse association, Andrew's been pretty busy over the last week or so.

There's a bunch of rotten trim on some of the units, and we've hired a contracting company to replace it all. The crews are doing very high quality work... on about a third of affected boards. Now they've started caulking tidily over the rotten wood, and they're asking for clarification about paint colors. Andrew and the other board members have been going crazy trying to make sure they actually do the carpentry work, and don't just paint right over wood that's so soft you can stick your finger through it.

It's... been... very... frustrating.

I'm not sure what's going on--if they're trying to cheat us, or if there's some serious miscommunication, or what. And you know, I really don't want to know--wise as serpents, harmless as doves and all that. But what kills me is that every bit of this project is being done by human beings, made in the image of God. Human beings, made in the image of God, endowed by their Creator with reason, called by Him to rule the earth with order and reason in a glorious display of His magnificence... and they're skillfully caulking over squishy rotten wood.

We'll get the work done, one way or another. But the human tragedy makes me sick inside.

****

The spectre of ditch-digging kept driving Daddy back to his lessons... but the lovely hills of the Brazillian countryside would ever lure him out again.

Finally Grandma gave up for good, and sent him to a Christian boarding school back in the States. You know what they say about homeschooling not being for everyone? I guess it must be true.

****

We have a new landscape maintenance guy. I waved hello while I was out getting something from the car, and he put down his rake and offered a firm handshake. Exuding courtesy and professionalism, he spoke with me about his vision for improving the quality of the landscape. He was still waiting for some of his equipment, so at the moment he was only able to water those lawns which happened to have hoses right there, but he assured me that he would soon get the grass nice and green for us. He also mentioned that he was looking forward to getting a leaf blower... but in the meantime, it was obvious that he was cheerfully and thoroughly getting the job done with the limited tools at hand.

A few days later, I saw him out front again. "I see you've got your leaf blower now."

He grinned back at me. "I'm like a kid with a new toy!"

****

Off at boarding school, Daddy found a deep relationship with Christ, and became an earnest scholar, a serious thinker, and just the sort of young man to make any mother proud.

But his first job out of college was digging ditches, and Grandma never did let him forget it.

****

We went camping last weekend. We've been thinking so very hard about so many important things--I was looking forward to a break. But I guess the wilderness is not always a resting place. Sometimes it's simply the space to see where you've been all along. We thought about our thinking, and we thought some more, and most of it came back around to what we really want for our kids, educationally speaking. I guess it's just more of that same conversation that started in the writing center in Sutherland Hall, nine years ago.

We thought and we thought, and we talked and we talked, and you know what I realized? It really doesn't matter to me what work my children do. I want them to do good work, and I want them to do it well. If they grow up to dig ditches, that's just fine with me, as long as they bring the full and glorious dignity of their humanity to bear on their ditch-digging.

Perhaps they'll be doctors or lawyers or engineers... I hope to provide them with an education that will open up whatever vocational doors they choose to walk through. But oh, when they are stronger, and can choose what they're to do....

Mr. Stevenson, I hope they'll go 'round at night and light the lamps with you.

Authority

Since I've started categorizing my beliefs, I've discovered that I believe a lot of things on authority. That's not surprising in itself. I'm very small, and there's no way I could possibly figure out for myself everything I need to know. People who don't take anything on authority generally die from eating poisonous mushrooms. Or the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden. Or legos, for that matter. (Oh how we miss the legos, now that Willie's dooping about...)

Of course I take things on authority. What's strange is that I accept on authority precisely those things that I think I'm basing on logic.

This is a terrific way to be duped.

We should take things on authority only from people we consider trustworthy. We must have reason to believe that they (a.) know what they're talking about, and (b.) are telling us the truth.

If we are serious about truth, we need to make wise judgments about which sources are trustworthy. We can only do that if we are conscious and intentional about it.

If we think we're operating on the basis of logic and evidence, we'll accept Edmund's testimony over Lucy's every time.

Which is a great way to get yourself conned.

Why?

I have a confession to make.

I always sort of assumed that epistemology was a dry and dusty discipline, mostly theoretical, with little to recommend it in the way of real-world application.

Not that I have anything against dry and dusty disciplines--in fact I've always found them fascinating. But, well... sort of in the same category as crossword puzzles or sudoku. Brilliant fun and all that, but that's about as far as it goes.

I feel very, very silly admitting to these thoughts. Of course if I'd ever actually thought about them explicitly, I would have denounced them immediately... but never having had occasion to put words to these assumptions, I was free to keep right on assuming them until quite recently.

So I shall now state the obvious(which was obviously not obvious to me).

Epistemology is terribly important for anyone who'd rather not be suckered.

If you want the truth about anything--anything at all, from how to make a good pancake to the origin of the universe--you'd jolly well better make sure you're skilled in the ways of knowing the truth about stuff.

So I've started asking myself "why?"

Not asking why it's true--I'm quite used to asking myself that question--but rather asking why I think it's true.

There's a subtle difference between the two questions, and they're both important. It's important to know what evidence supports your beliefs, but it's also important to know why you accept that evidence, and in what way that evidence supports your belief.

Do I believe this on the basis of reason, a compelling logical argument that I clearly understand? (Logos)

Or do I believe it on the say-so of a trustworthy authority? (Ethos)

Or is it simply because it resonates with my soul, and I know it must be so? (Pathos)

CPSIA Goes to the Farmers Market

Dear Congresswoman Lee,
Please vote no on H.R. 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009. As written, this bill would effectively squash local farmers markets under mountains of paperwork. Eating locally grown food is a good idea at any time, and in the event of a major national disaster, it could very well become the only way to eat anything whatsoever. Please protect my right to buy local food from people I know and trust, without bureaucratic interference.

Mommy always warned me against accepting food from strangers. Unfortunately, it's pretty much unavoidable these days. Government regulations can help make that a little less dangerous--but I'd still rather buy food from my own neighbors.

Please protect my right to buy local food for my children. Vote NO on H.R. 875.

Thank you,
Elena Johnston


http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-875

Hat tip to the Deputy Headmistress.

Contact your own representative here.

Baby Doll

"Mommy, I have a baby just like you!"

"That's wonderful, sweetheart. What's his name?"

"Oh, he doesn't have a name. He's fake. But YOUR baby's not fake!"

Lenten Carnival

You should head on over to Homemaking Through the Church Year, where Jessica is hosting a lenten carnival.

I know most evangelicals don't observe lent. And there's certainly nothing obligatory about it. But the themes that our liturgical brethren are thinking about during this season are important ones for every Christian.

One of the reasons why liturgical churches follow a unified yearly schedule is so as to facilitate a sort of worldwide conversation--lots of believers thinking about the same things all at once.

Right now they're thinking about repentance, and sanctification, and the costly grace that makes it possible. About the long, hard process of disentangling oneself from the things that keep us from being fully devoted to Christ. Living in the already and the not yet, waiting for Easter.

Of course, I don't agree with everything in all the posts, but I do think the conversation is worth listening in on.

Remember, O man, that thou are dust, and to dust thou shalt return...

In Which Kanga Decides She Really Must Read Some Cicero

There's an idea--a set of categories, really--floating about the intellectual waters hereabouts. I think it comes from Cicero, but I am sadly unaware as to which work. My exposure to Cicero is limited to De Amicitia, and involves quite possibly the most romantic attempted breakup story ever... but that's another tale for another time.

Now, where was I? Ah, yes. Epistemology.

Somebody once said, (and I think it was Cicero, but I'm not sure where) that there are four ways of knowing. Or perhaps it was of convincing; I think it matters not. At any rate, they are as follows: Logos (having to do, predictably enough, with logic), ethos (having to do with authority of character), and pathos (having to do with emotion and aesthetics.) The obligation to believe is produced through the union of these three elements.

I'm quite sure that I'm not doing these ideas justice at all, and I'm equally certain that they are of Extreme and Great Importance.

So I need to read some Cicero. And if anyone has any suggestions as to which particular works I need to read, I'd be quite grateful.

In the mean time, I'm finding that these categories have all sorts of uses in organizing the cluttered closets of one's mind.

CPSIA links

Here's the statement from the CPSC saying that "ordinary children's books published after 1985" are okay. (It's on page 4.) A footnote explicitly excludes books with plastic or metal parts.

Is this reassuring, or dreadful? Well, it all depends on how you spin it.

It sounds to me as though our freedom of speech is spinning swiftly down the drain.

Please, I beg of you, dear men and women of the Congress, convince me otherwise!

Walter Olson is providing fantastic coverage of the CPSIA issues, with lots of links.

And the Deputy Headmistress has a good many posts showing why we should care deeply about this issue. And phone numbers for whose switchboards to bombard. =)

Lent

Wait, wait, O my flesh.
Wait, and learn to trust.
Wait, for it is in the waiting you are sanctified.

Wait, wait, O my soul.
With patient longing, wait to be made holy.
Wait, for it is in the waiting that you learn to trust.

Depth of Texture

At 6 months, Willie spends most of his time closely examining sundry objects. It's just what you do when you're 6 months old, as inevitable and instinctual as the craving for mother's milk.

The merest twig is well worth close examination. The works of God are marvelous, and their beauty bears up even under a lifetime of inspection.

There is a time and a place for the bright flashing plastic, so demandingly undemanding, that lulls him into forgetfulness while I tend to other things.

Yes, there is most definitely a time and a place--but it is for my sake much more than his.

For his sake, the pinecones and leaves, that he may not strive endlessly after mudpies, but be content with the sea.

In Which Piglet teaches Pooh and Tigger about Time

September: Mama, I'm feeling eleven-o'clockish.
Isaiah: I'm feeling twelve-o'clockish!
Nathan: And I'm feeling two-o'clockish!
September: No, Nassan, two-o'clockish is for later.

Testing, testing, 123

My blog seems to be gone? Individual post pages are still there, and the sidebar... but where's the main page?

Help?

Gutenberg all over again

I just can't get over the fact that now, thanks to audible.com, an ordinary housewife can afford to have a first-rate actor read the scriptures to her and her kids all day.

This is huge.

Many books today are written to be read.

Not so the Bible. The Bible was written to be heard.

And this ESV audiobook is phenomenal.

Good stuff. Life-changingly good stuff. I can't recommend it enough.

Hello, stranger!

It's been a while, hasn't it.

I'm surprised you even bothered to check.

I guess I should have expected that I would slow down on the blogging after the arrival of wuggy number 4.

And sure enough.

But somehow it's not because life with four kids is so much crazier, and I don't have time to think.

It's that life is calm. Reflective. Good.

Very good.

And my whole soul has been abuzz with so many thoughts... big thoughts... unfinished thoughts. And while those thoughts we're buzzing, I couldn't really write about them--not 'till I figured out what they were. And I certainly couldn't write about anything else.

But now, though I'm far from answers, I at least know a few of the questions I'm trying to ask. So I think I might be at a place where I can write about them a little bit, and also at a place where I can write about other things.

Like the family of roly-poly bugs in the compost, a young couple expecting their first child. Whom they will indubitably name Harry.

So hello again, and thanks so much for stopping by. I look forward to chatting again soon.

Dear Senator Hutchinson,

I stopped by the local friends-of-the-library book sale yesterday. There's a sign up saying that they are no longer permitted to sell used children's books.

I hadn't taken the internet rumors seriously, but there's no denying it now. Regardless of the good intentions of the law, the CPSIA, as it currently stands written, is preventing me from purchasing old books to read to my children. Vendors now understand it to be illegal to distribute children's books published in the year 1984 or earlier, and many sellers are no longer selling any used children's books at all.

Inside the library, the librarian assured me that they hadn't removed any of the books off the circulation shelves yet. The CPSC has granted libraries a temporary immunity from enforcement of the law.

I'm glad I can still check books out of the library for one year more... but my right to read to my children is now at the mercy of a bureaucracy.

This is not the American way. I never had a chance to vote on the members of the CPSC. They do not represent us, they are not the ones with whom the Constitution has entrusted the responsibility of guarding our rights. I want to live governed by the laws that you write, Senator Hutchinson, you and the other fine men and women of our congress.

I know that these are busy times for senators. You are being asked to vote on more bills than you could possibly have time to even read. This may not seem very important by comparison.

But it is.

As we speak, our children's consciousness of the past is literally being thrown into dumpsters all across America.

Those who are unaware of the past stumble blindly through the present into a future marred by avoidable foolishness. This matters, and it matters now more than ever.

Thank you for your service in representing me and my fellow Texans.

May God give you strength and blessing as you guard and protect the freedoms that make our land so great.

God bless America!

Elena Johnston

Above and Beyond

Upon seeing Andrew riding his bike to work, a family at the school realized that we must be in serious need of a vehicle... and gave us a perfectly gorgeous 2000 Expedition.

No, I'm not joking.

It's sitting in our carport right now.

And the van--which had been running smoothly ever since we began to pray for it incessantly--has now stopped running.

We were fully confident that God would provide for our transportation needs. We just had no idea that He'd do it so spectacularly.

And His timing, as always, was nothing less than impeccable.

Idyllic afternoon

It's been quite nippy out--it even snowed on Wednesday--but this afternoon was lovely and sunshiny. Isaiah led the older three in assisting the roly-poly bugs in their farming endeavors--didn't you know that roly-poly bugs plant their crops in neatly plowed little rows? Willard discovered grass, and Nathan collected fallen leaves, showing me how each leaf changes color progressively, green-golden-red, while I ambled slowly through the Republic. Plato improves with interruptions, I think--it gives the dialogue breathing room, keeps me from rushing on too fast. All the questions about the good life become so much more immediate, too, and it's very sweet indeed to step back and see that this is precisely it.

Baby's first camping trip

Campfire Questions

For Thanksgiving, we went camping with some friends from Andrew's work. It is a good thing to strip everything away and touch what's real. Even the rain dripping into the sleeping bags is real, and being real, it is good.

A good way to judge the real-ness of things, I think, is to try to explain them to a four-year old. As it turns out, it is much easier to explain electromagnetism to a preschooler than, oh, say, the CMA awards. Or the phrase "dot org." The things God makes are quite frequently much more complicated than the things man makes, but they are real and solid on every level.

Kids this age will ask a million questions wherever you are--it's just what they're supposed to do. The difference is that out in the woods, the questions that they ask are all well worth answering. Sometimes I don't know the answer, like the question "what do armadillos eat?", and sometimes the questions lead to more questions, like "what is fire made of?", but the questions are always worth exploring.

In case you were wondering, armadillos snuffle through the leaves looking for grubs. And although I still have no idea what fire is, I can tell you that the pre-Socratics make a whole lot more sense when you're sitting around a campfire with preschoolers.

Lost in Translation

So funny.

My husband...

...is on his way to work.

14 miles away.

on his bike.

Yup. He's been riding 28 miles a day, and we're doing just fine as a one car family.

My husband is so cool.

=)

Confused

So let me get this straight. The world leaders got together last week to discuss the global financial crisis, and to establish a spiffy new international bureaucracy to keep an eye on things, so that they won't be blindsided again. Because all this was so very, very shocking. Nobody saw it coming. Did I mention that it's shocking?

Fine.

But then how is it that several years ago, several different people--ordinary people, not privy to any sort of special information, just ordinary statistics about mortgage rates and such things--explained to me that we were on a collision course for global economic meltdown in 2008?

I'm confused.

Better Parenting through Laryngitis

I'm rediscovering the power of a whisper all over again.

solidarity

I forgot to change my address, so I was still registered to vote in our old neighborhood. We had a little picnic in Angie's back yard before we all trooped down together to the elementary school to vote.

September wanted me to vote for Miss Angie. 'Cause she's a girl.

Nathan wanted me to write in George Washington. Because of the crazy hair. Nathan still regrets the decision to let me buzz his head, and looks forward to the day when his own crazy hair grows back out. I think I'll draw the line if he ever wants a powdered wig, though. There are limits.

Andy's classes were almost over by the time we were done, so we went and picked him up. His students and coworkers cooed over the baby, and then he rode home with us instead of his usual carpool.

Andy was registered to vote in our new neighborhood. I waited in the car with little Willie and sleepyhead September while Andy and the others trooped in to the polling place. He said there was a television reporting election news inside, and lots and lots of cheering. Probably illegal, but inspiring nonetheless.

I didn't vote for Obama. I disagree with him profoundly on many issues. On some issues we strongly support the same goals--we just have different opinions on how to get there. My biggest hope for government is that it will be too limited to engage in massive oppression. Cynical, I know, but I really do think history bears this out.

Even if I was more optimistic about government in general, though, there's still that one issue where I think Obama's position is not merely misguided, but actually quite wicked.

Frankly, I'm a bit worried about what's to come in the next four years. At least, I would be, if I wasn't working on a setting for Psalm 131. Good words for times like these.

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up
My eyes are not raised too high.
I do not occupy myself with things to great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother.
Like a weaned child is my soul within me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord, from this time forth and forevermore.
(ESV)

I didn't vote for Obama, and I obviously don't think he was a good choice for our nation.

Nevertheless, I can't help but be excited for my neighbors. Really, really excited.

In as much as these sorts of things matter, this is WAY cooler than having a woman, or a guy with great hair, in office. I profoundly disagree with the man... but there's a sense in which this is a truly beautiful and inspiring moment in our nation's history.

Some things need no explanation.

But the moon definitely needs a sign.

Compliments of Isaiah, with some help from MS Paint.

It says "moon," and I think it might even include an explanation about how it's made out of cheese.

Now doesn't that clear things up?

The Miracle Scale

We've been reading Charlotte's Web lately. Having watched the animated version more times than I care to admit, the wuggies are obsessed with the story. Throughout the day I see them acting out stories about Fern and Avery and Wilbur and Charlotte, and Nathan in particular was clamoring to have me read the book to them. We've been enjoying it a lot.

This evening we read the chapter in which Mrs. Arable sits down with Dr. Dorian to discuss her concerns about Fern's stories of talking animals.

Upon hearing Dr. Dorian express his readiness to believe such things, Nathan became very thoughtful.

"Animals don't talk in God's story. God's story is about us."

As the story continued, Dr. Dorian remarked about the miracle of the ordinary spiderweb, and Nathan once again became thoughtful.

"If an animal spins a web, that's a little miracle. Not a big miracle, just a little miracle. If an animal talks, that's a little miracle. But if an animal starts playing the piano, that would be a huge miracle. That would be a ten miracle."

He paused for a moment, carefully weighing the various quantities of wondrousness.

"And if an animal came in and cleaned the refrigerator, that would be a five miracle."

And there you have it.

MetaHobby

The other day, I zipped down to the gas station to pick up an Auto Trader. I must have done this countless times with my Daddy as a little girl, but this was decidedly the first time I've ever had any intention of looking at it myself.

I'm trying to cultivate an interest in cars. We will be needing a new van sometime in the near future--the days of our dear doopah-mobile are numbered, I am afraid. Our mechanic (thank God for honest mechanics!) will not allow us to put any more money into fixing its overheating problems. We're managing the symptoms quite effectively for the time being, but we know that the end is near at hand for our four-wheeled friend.

So there will be big decisions to make in the near future... and it's hard to make good decisions when you're bored by the topic.

However, I'm thoroughly confident that if one intelligent person is interested in a topic, surely there must be something interesting about it, and any other intelligent person should be able to develop an interest in it. It's an important principle, and one that has a vital role in my parenting philosophy. My goal is to encourage the wuggies to become interested in worthwhile things, not to entertain them with the things that already interest them.

So now I'm seeing that I need to apply this to myself. It would be very useful right about now to be interested in cars... and there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to become interested in them. After all, my Daddy finds them fascinating.

So I've been spending quite a bit of time on the phone talking about the respective merits of vans and minivans and station wagons. I expected him to have lots of good advice on the vehicle-shopping process, and to point me toward good resources. I did not expect him to be able to instantly rattle off the names of every vehicle on the market which seats 8 or more passengers. Along with sundry details about the construction of most of the different models. I knew Daddy knew a lot about cars, but I had no idea he knew this much.

I think my project might be working. I'm not entirely bored by cars anymore, and estimating the real cost per mile of different vehicles is actually a lot of fun.

But really, it's the process of becoming interested in things that interests me the most.

I think I might be starting to make a hobby out of developing hobbies.

Graduation

When the generous folks at church throw you a lovely baby shower, while the baby of undiscovered gender is still snuggled up inside, you get a lot of diapers.

As I sorted them according to size, and added up all the size ones, I realized that there were about as many there in that pile as we were likely to go through while he was still small enough for them.

There was something bittersweet about seeing all his size one diapers all lined up together in one pile. It was a big pile... but finite.

The other day we came to the end of the pile. It was time to break open the size 2 diapers.

It's a bittersweet moment, and all the more so because I knew it was coming.

Calm after the storm

We made it through the hurricane unscathed, and our utilities are back up and running, although we're still supposed to boil the water.

Airplanes are flying overhead once again, the stranded crawfish we rescued is safely back home in the bayou, and things are just about back to normal for us.

At least, as normal as they can be, when life is so far from normal for so many other people. Most of the grocery stores are still closed in our neighborhood, and with all the gas lines and impassible roads and non-functional lights, it's really not a good idea to drive very far. So I'm still getting creative with the food in the pantry. But the options expand substantially when you have electricity. =)

Meanwhile, all the schools are closed, so Andy has the week off, although he'll probably go in later in the week to help clear out the rubble.

God has been very merciful to us. Ike brought so much devastation to so many people, but for us the storm brought only the soft glow of candlelight, and a chance to get to know our neighbors better.

Waiting for Ike

You start paying a whole lot of attention to the weathermen when 100 mph winds are on the forecast. So far, however, we haven't seen anything more than some heavy cloud cover and a slight breeze. But I feel like we're well prepared for what may come our way any moment.

We're quite a ways inland, so the storm surge will not be affecting us. And the storm surge appears to be the really fearsome part of this strangely sprawling hurricane. There's really not a lot to be worried about in our area, just lots of precautions to take.

So the grill is in off the patio, so that it doesn't become a missile flying through our window, and the windows are all taped up so that if somebody else's grill goes flying, at least the shards of glass won't scatter too much... you know, just in case.

And we're ready to whisk everything up to the second floor in the unlikely scenario that the Bayou floods enough to put water in our house. But mostly, we're just setting up for a jolly indoor camping trip.

Nathan likes his new brother very much. All the wuggies do, but Nathan in particular.

He loves his brother, and he loves the idea of big families, with lots and lots of babies. He's taken to rattling off the names of the dozens of babies he and his wife will have one day, and he insists that now that "Baby Jack" is here, I need produce a little sister named Katie. Tomorrow.

I keep telling him that giving birth is something I only do on very special occasions, but he just won't take no for an answer.

While snuggling with my newborn and recovering from this gloriously special occasion, I listened to a series of Focus on the Family broadcasts featuring the parenting advice of Dr. Kevin Leman. To be perfectly honest I was a little disappointed with the first two installments. It wasn't the content so much as the tone--I was mildly irritated by comments like "kids everywhere are going to hate [my latest] book, but parents are going to love it." Nevertheless, I kept listening, and the Q and A session on the third part was so good that we actually ended up ordering a copy of his latest book.

When the package arrived, Nathan peered eagerly over Daddy's shoulder. "What's it say? What's it say?"

And despite Dr. Leman's predictions, at least one child was ecstatic over the book Have a New Kid by Friday.

Statistics and tidbits

7 lb. 12 oz.

21 inches

1 min. Apgar score of 9

He has "opposable toesibles," with a very independently wiggly thumb of a big toe.

He likes to keep his ankles very, very flexed. It's delightful to recognize those knobby little heels that were always poking out of my belly.

Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name...

We had a name picked out. Really. It was just that once he was born, we couldn't get it to stick.

So we've been trying on various names for size, as he gazes up at us with those lovely liquid newborn eyes, so alert and trusting and interested and content... and so utterly indifferent to the question at hand. He could care less what we call him, just so long as we snuggle him and feed him and change his diaper.

I was actually about to call the midwife to tell her to go ahead and file the birth certificate with a completely different name altogether, when we suddenly flipped back right around to where we were in the beginning. We're naming him after Great-Grandpa Davis and Great-Grandpa Johnston.

There's a touch of irony in the fact that the name we've finally settled on, after so much flip-flopping, would mean "resolute."

In any case, we love you, little Willard Robert. There's not a trace of indecision about that much, and we're having a marvelous time getting to know you. Whoever you are.

Weeping may endure for the night...

but BOY! cometh in the morning.

Childbirth in slow motion

I'm a little less than halfway there.

In other words, right about where I was two weeks ago.

My midwife assures me that all it will take is a few good, hard contractions, and everything will be moving rapidly.

This is what she said two weeks and 5,437 contractions ago.

This time it might actually be true, though... through much acrobatics, I managed to dislodge the baby from his poorly (but tightly!) engaged position that was impeding progress. Once, while I was slouching horrifically (which you should never, ever do if you want a properly positioned baby) he even turned right way around.

He's back to sideways again, though. So we'll see what happens.

Next time around I won't get nearly so worked up about all the preterm labor scares. I just take a long time having babies, and my body likes to get a head start, that's all.

Meanwhile, my stretch marks are getting stretch marks, and my belly button is dilating rapidly. My midwife assures me that there's never been a case of spontaneous cesarean... but I can't help but thinking there's a first for everything.

Worth Reading

This post is very funny. That is not so surprising. Lots of posts make me laugh, and Amy is very good at being funny.

No, what's remarkable about this little piece is that it makes me laugh, and then suddenly makes me stop laughing.

And then laugh again, gently and joyously, without a trace of bitterness... laugh at myself for laughing.

Pass the carrots.

It's 10:00... way past her bedtime. I should be getting to bed, too. But oh, the glowing of her grin, the softness of her skin... and where on earth did she get that strange little tender pout, and that achingly sweet little croaky voice?

"Mama-bunny, I love you."

My baby.

It's 10pm, way past her bedtime. I should be getting to bed, too. But tomorrow she may not be such a baby, and tomorrow I may have another baby in my arms. Time slips away so preciously, and I must hold her while I can.

Fruit of my labor

Having put in a week or so of gentle warm-up contractions, and 12 hours or so of intense labor, you'd think I'd have a baby to show for it.

Not yet.

But I do have this cute little bag for September's birthday.

Jessica linked to an adorable granny square tote, which inspired this (much simpler) project.

In digging the newborn clothes out of the attic, I realized just how much fantastic material I have for rag crochet. This used to be a skirt and a shirt. Much cuter this way.

It was good distraction... and it feels good to have something to show for it, anyway.

No news is... no news.

I've been slipping in and out of labor... it's been very, very slow.

I actually got a pretty good night's sleep last night, but Saturday night I kept having contractions strong enough to keep me from sleeping, just not strong enough to actually have a baby. As I lay there groaning, my husband (still asleep) sat bolt upright and firmly shushed me. It's a good thing I'm used to his sleep-talking. We had a good laugh about it in the morning. =)

Through church, I was contracting gently but insistently, and I was utterly incapable of concentration. It was a good sermon... I think it may have had something to do with the Apostle Paul? This is a very strange experience for me, to be so utterly averse to rational thought.

Afterwards, the ladies of the church threw a lovely luncheon and shower for baby and me, which September and I greatly enjoyed. The contractions were quite easy to ignore as long as I had lots of distraction that didn't require the use of my suddenly nonexistent rational capacities.

Until the very end. I didn't need to leave early... but we sure packed up in a hurry, and the pastor's wife did go over the speed limit driving Timmo and I home.

The midwife met me at home, and one of the ladies from church stayed to watch the kids.

I went upstairs and contracted until I felt like I was going to split in two, and then I contracted some more... and then it stopped.

Second verse same as the first.

This could take a while.

It's frustrating and discouraging... but all the same, I'm very glad for the good night's sleep. I feel much more ready for whatever it is that comes next.

I did NOT expect to be live-blogging labor.

But then again, I didn't expect everything to stall out after 6 hours of hard labor.

I guess I get a break. Which is okay, because my water didn't break, so we aren't on any sort of urgent timetable.

The midwife went home, but the kids still stayed the night with Uncle Paul and Aunt Lorre.

So we had ourselves a date night. Except that our idea of an ideal date involves way more intellectual activity than is possible for a woman under the influence of labor hormones.

Which I still am, just not powerfully enough to produce any major contractions. The world is warm and gentle and a little bit blurry--maybe the hormones are supposed to help me empathize with baby. Or who knows, maybe during one of those enormous contractions, some wires got crossed, and baby would like nothing better than to help Daddy out with that geometry problem.

In any case, we rented a movie.

And now, for a few observations on labor from the middle of things:

1. It's true. The first thing the midwife does when she walks in the door is tell somebody to start boiling water. Apparently midwives have known to sterilize their instruments for a very, very long time. Go figure.

2. They call it labor for a reason. It hurts. A lot. It's not like cutting-off-your-toe hurt, though... more like weight-lifting hurts, or running a marathon. You know, "feel the burn." Except that you don't get to choose when to stop "feeling the burn." You just keep right on exercising through to the point where it's torture, and then beyond. Way, way beyond. I feel like I have a better idea what the Children of Israel were going through in Egypt.

3. My own personal slave driver seems to be pretty merciful, though.... for better and for worse. I really don't need quite this many breaks, and they don't have to be quite so long, either. But that's the the thing about labor--you don't get to pick your pace.

4. I like ripe strawberries, grapes, and almonds way better than ice chips. Way better than ice chips. =)

Turn, Baby, Turn!

No, he's not breech.

But at my last appointment, the midwife pointed out that he's facing frontward. She said I should keep my spine as straight as possible to encourage him to turn around.

Well, working on my posture is always a good idea, but I couldn't see how being front-facing could be bad thing. After all, it's fun to feel lots of arm and leg movements--not to mention reassuring. Surely it can't make that big a difference which direction he's facing... right?

But now I completely understand.

I'm not even in labor yet, but last night had me ready to beg for an epidural.

I'm pretty confident about the contractions. I know it's going to be hard, but I feel ready to face it.

The back of baby's skull grinding against my spine? Not so much.

Please pray for mercy, and a rear-facing baby.

Turn, baby, turn!

The Stories that Weren't

"Mama, I'd like to tell you a story tomorrow morning."

My firstborn flung his arms around my neck and grinned at me.

"You could tell it to me now, if you wanted to. I'd love to hear it."

"Well... okay."

"So what's your story about?"

"It's about the Veggie Tales and the train."

"Oh, that sounds like a good story. So what happened."

"Well... nothing happened! Because the train didn't fall into the water, and the bridge didn't fall into the water!"

How frequently do I forget to marvel in gratefulness, for all the horrendously eventful happenings that don't.

Life on the Inside

They asked if Baby Jack had a home inside my belly. (Baby Jack may well turn out to be Baby Jill, but you have to call the child something...)

I told them that yes, Baby Jack has a nice, cozy home inside me.

And so ever since, they've been speculating about the sort of facilities he might have.

Does he have a bed? What about a potty? You know, surely Baby Jack must be busy building a log cabin, and a suspension bridge. Every baby needs a suspension bridge.

Perhaps this is why my skin isn't fitting very well.

Last night we finally made use of our community pool, having discovered the reason why it never seemed to be open when it ought to be. The spot where the lifeguard naps when nobody's at the pool happens not to be visible from the gate, that's all. I can certainly understand why he would rest in the shade when there is nobody about, but the situation seems to be rather self-perpetuating. Perhaps this might also explain the heated arguments at the HOA meeting over whether or not the pool was ever open last summer. But in any case, once you figure out that he's there, he does come let you in when you holler, so having solved this mystery, we put on our suits and went swimming.

As she skipped happily toward the door, September paused to pat my belly.

"Baby Jack's going swimming, too!"

I nodded in affirmation. We've talked before about how he's swimming around in amniotic fluid; also, Baby Jack would definitely be coming along on this excursion. I wasn't sure exactly what she meant by the phrase, but one way or another, Baby Jack was definitely going swimming.

Her next question had me flumoxed, though.

I have no idea what color his bathing suit is.

Causation

It's hot outside, because Isaiah is sweaty.

Oh yes.

Poetry in reverse

I've been thinking a lot about childbirth lately.

Might have something to do with the little feet that keep pressing insistently against my ribs, warming up, as it were, to help catapult new life into the world.

As I think about birth, my mind can't help but turn to other concepts, more abstract and more familiar. And like so many other times, my "new" thoughts are expressible only by the old words and phrases I've heard a thousand times before.

I think perhaps that being born must be something akin to being born again.

And certainly my midwife's role is highly Socratic, being someone who has walked this road herself a number of times, and now guides other women through the births of their children. You could almost say that being a midwife is like being a "midwife of ideas."

The poetry of birth is all around us, inescapably so. So many deeply important things are impossible to discuss without talking in terms of birth. Can we really understand them without understanding birth?

And so it is that I'm quivering with impatient excitement, eager to dance that poem with this, my littlest child.

Gratitude

Our food has been thoroughly blessed of late. Every night the kids argue about who will pray, and so most nights, they all do.

Tonight, after Nathan said grace, Isaiah offered up the following prayer, reproduced to the best of my memory:

"Dear Jesus, thank you for this food. Please bless it to our bodies."

Nathan gave a hearty "Amen" to this, but his brother wasn't finished.

"Thank you for the orange juice. The orange juice. Thank you for all the orange juice. Thank you for the pot lid, and the pot. Thank you for the silverware and the plates. Thank you for the plates and all the food on the plates. Thank you for the orange juice. Thank you for the table and the chairs, and thank you for the light bulbs."

At this point, we lost it. We'd been trying so hard not to chuckle, but we just couldn't hold it in any longer.

Isaiah didn't mind, though, and joined in the laughter, a natural outflowing of his unselfconscious gratitude.

It was a fitting prayer for such a meal. There are some crock-pot experiments that just shouldn't be made.

Thank you, Jesus, for the silverware and the plates and the orange juice and the light bulbs. And for Kraft Mac 'n Cheese.

We're back...

...after a wonderful and refreshing summer jaunt.

I really, really like Texas in the springtime, but summer... well, let's just say that summer is a great time for travel.

I got to take a 3 week summer class on Ephesians, while Andy took the wuggies to see Gramma and Grampa.

It was blissful, and the very best part of the whole trip was seeing my dear family again after being away for so long.

It is good to be home again.

Standards

"May I be excused?"
"Yes, but first you need to put your dishes in the sink."
"But not the knife."
"Yes, the knife, too."
"But it's still clean."
"Um, actually it's covered in egg."
"But this side is clean..."