by ·0 Comments

Sunday, the day of rest. Too bad my daughter doesn’t appreciate the value of a good nap on a Sunday. Some friends of ours invited us over for lunch today after church: wonderful way to spend an afternoon, eating together and just having a chance to get together and talk. As hurried and jam-packed as the rest of the week always is, and as tempted as we often are to fit some of the overflow from the week into our Sundays, it’s definitely refreshing to just, well, REST on Sunday.

Our Sunday school lesson a couple of weeks ago had to do with resting on the Sabbath. The Sunday school kid answer to why we rest is “because God did”. And why did God rest? “Because he was tired”. The Almighty? Tired? Nah. He rested to show us just how good it feels.

by ·0 Comments

My mother-in-law (who graciously takes care of our daughter 3 days a week so that I can work: thank you!) has made a prediction that our now 8 month old daughter will be walking before she’s 10 months old. Our daughter’s intent on motion – at 6 1/2 months she was scooting/crawling backwards and content nearly only when standing. At 7 1/2 months, she figured out how forward works, and has been taking full advantage of it ever since.

The problem is that I’m just getting used to having a baby who moves from where you put her. It used to be, you could put her down and be fairly certain that she’d stay within a few feet of where you put her. Within the past couple of days, though, she’s figured out that she can crawl to where you are. I’m having trouble adapting. I used to put her down somwhere in sight of whatever it was I wanted to accomplish, give her a toy, and then happily do whatever it was that needed to get done but couldn’t have a baby in the mix (lots of things involving cleaning products fit into this category). The idea of her walking and all the various things that that’ll impact are just frightening! I have some basic idea of what it’ll mean, but I’m certain it hasn’t hit home yet.

We want our child to grow up, to experience and learn new things. It’s all happening very quickly, though, and I’m just not keeping up! I just get used to how things work at one stage, and she’s off and running (figuratively, for now) to the next thing. I have this fear that I’m going to wish my baby was still at some particular stage (I can actually see this wish coming), and that that’s going to convince me that we ought to have another child. Never mind that the logical side of my brain says that babies/kids are a whole lot of work, that my patience level isn’t what I’d hoped it’d be, that two kids are probably more than twice as hard as one kid. Some part of me will want to have a snuggly baby who can’t move more than a few inches away from where I put her.

So, the prediction is that she’ll walk before 10 months. Today’s her 8 month birthday. I’m scared.

by ·1 Comment

Some days there are just too many topics swirling around in my brain. Stuff ranging from the completely mundane to the nearly, possibly sublime. I have this hunch that, were I ever to filter out the mundane and concentrate on the sublime, that something amazing might just bubble up. Wonder if that’s how genius works? Folks can either filter out the mundane thoughts that clutter the rest of our daily lives, or they can connect it with the sublime and make something sublime-er. Or maybe they can just bubble the sublime stuff quicker – make a quicker cup of caffeinated thought.

Maybe I’ve just got too much gunk in my filter.

by ·1 Comment

The Ghosts of Christmas Present(s) has appeared to me, beckoning me to the mall and to the online retailers, calling me to steal o’ deals and wonderfully chosen gifts. The list of things purchased is slowly beginning to gain ground against the list of gift recipients. So, if you think you’re on my present list, or think you ought to be, now’s a good time to both be nice to me, and drop hints!

by ·0 Comments

I’d like to do so many things. In fact, I’d up that word “like” to “aim” – I have aims to do many things, in many different arenas. In the space of today, ideas for craft projects, marathon training, and knowledge management systems have run through my mind and excited my interest. Then something else runs through my mind and steals the cycles for some other interest. And nothing gets done. Day dreaming is exhausting. . .

by ·0 Comments

I’m a sucker for management-type books and magazines. The One Minute Manager, Fast Company magazine, any of Tom Peter’s books. . . I’m an optimist, thinking that businesses can and should be run better, and that just maybe I’m the person who can run them better. But I just loved John Scalzi’s review of Who Moved My Cheese?. It’s worth reading his review for his list of unintended conclusions he drew about business, based on the book.

by ·0 Comments

Today was my first day without Internet access at my fingertips – I suffered withdrawal. Had to turn my work laptop back in, so didn’t have anything to plug the wireless card into. Cora and I had to just veg, not veg and surf. Surfing was my refuge from just sitting there holding/feeding/entertaining a baby; as long as I could surf at the same time, then my brain was being fed, even if my body just sat there like a lump. Bleah. Lump days aren’t very inspiring.

Theoretically, I could have sneaked a peak at my e-mail whilst my daughter snoozed today, but then, my daughter doesn’t nap like a normal baby. Those moms that have blocks of time to get things done while their kids nap? I’m not one of ’em. I get things done either by holding a baby on my hip, listening to a baby wail because I’m not holding her on my hip, or just waiting until my husband gets home so he can hold her or listen to her wail. Add another invention to my list of useful things they ought to issue to new parents – a marsupial pouch. Nice as the Baby Bjorn was while it lasted, Cora’s too big for it now. She’d like to have a kangaroo for a mommy, thank you very much. Maybe I should just start calling her Joey.

by ·0 Comments

Jones-ing. As in “keeping up with the Joneses”. I don’t know why, but lately I’ve had a serious case. I want a laptop, a puppy, a new wardrobe, lots of things changed around the house. All of ’em seem like reasonable requests unto themselves (my husband might debate the puppy one – restraining myself from going down to the pound today), but taken together, they seem to indicate a new case of “gotta-have-it-ness”. You know, that’s the illness that says what you have isn’t good enough, that there’s something out there, something specific, that would in some way make you just a bit happier. And what’s money for, if not to spread a little happiness around, particularly if some of that “extra” happiness ends up smeared on you? Smeared even seems to be the right image – layers upon layers (figuratively speaking) of various things that are supposed to do something to make us just a bit happier. We’re like little Pig Pen’s layered with stuff, rather than dirt.

Oooh, now I’m Jones-ing for a reprint of the first strip that Peppermint Patty appeared in – check it out here.

by ·0 Comments

My husband recently installed Opera on our computer. Haven’t used it much: I guess I’m used to my Internet Explorer, so haven’t wandered afield. But, since he had an Opera window up, I hit our website to see if Jas had posted anything fresh. (Nope, he hadn’t.) Then I hit my side of the site just to confirm that it looks good in Opera. Horror of horrors, it doesn’t lay out properly at all in Opera. Note that my layout is based off of stylesheets. I’m aware that IE doesn’t always conform to the spec and so things that work fine in IE don’t always work fine elsewhere. But this is the first that I’d been hit with my stuff not working. So, for anyone looking at this in Opera, my apologies. . . It will be fixed.

by ·0 Comments

Challenged my Sunday school kids last Sunday (5th graders) to one-up me on memory verses. Each week, they get a new verse they’re supposed to memorize. As a Sunday school teacher and also a Pioneer Girls leader, I’ve given out more than my fair share of memorization assignments. But, being the adult rather than the kid, I’ve usually slid by and just memorized the reference and the basic intent of the verse. Uh, I wouldn’t let my kids get away with that, but somehow I justified it for myself. So, this quarter my 5th graders can stop me in the hall on Sunday, when I’m out in the mall, or wherever, and ask me to recite the memory verse (or any of the ones we’ve learned in past weeks).

To try to learn our verse (Hebrews 11:3), I’ve spent time each evening reading it, rereading it, and reciting it. My problem is that I tend to swap in similar words, or to mentally rephrase the verse and come up with a different spin. Not going to cut it (Proverbs 30:5-7).

I now have a bit more sympathy for my kids. For those in private school, they’ve got the verse I assigned to them, the verse for school, the verse for Boys Brigade or Pioneer Clubs, and then all of their regular school work (spelling tests, geography quizzes, science tests, . . .) on top. And we adults think we’ve got a lot to think about and remember!

By the way, the lesson for the week was about the various theories of how the world was created and how what the Bible says fits in. I’d be interested in hearing from some scientific creationists, if any shouldst ramble ‘cross this site. The kids and I had some interesting discussions. . .