a few things in June

Here are some TV shows, albums, books, and blogs I've been enjoying this month.

Borgen.  Look.  There's no Josh Lyman (yeah, I loved Josh - who didn't?), and the dialogue isn't quite as fast and funny as Aaron Sorkin-style writing, but if you liked The West Wing, you will have to like Borgen, a Danish drama about the first female Prime Minister in Denmark - her cabinet, her family, and the government's relationship to the media. I don't want to give anything away, but if you were interested in Anne-Marie Slaughter's article at Atlantic Monthly this week questioning what it means for women to "have it all," you will love watching Borgen's answer as Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg wrestles with her work/family balance.  And, as a student of intercultural studies, I also have to say that it's fascinating to observe this small, wealthy, post-Christian European country through its own eyes.

Rain for Roots. We've been listening to these folk songs for little ones quite a bit over the last month.  With lyrics by Sally Lloyd Jones and music by Sandra McCracken, Ellie Holcomb, Flo Paris, and Katy Bowser, they satisfy me both in terms of musical quality and content -- and Rosie LOVES them.  My favorite thing about them is that each song points to God.  A lot of Christian resources for kids tend to be moralistic, focusing on encouraging good behaviors - be patient, share, don't complain, obey. 

And, sure, kids need to be taught these things.  But in training our children, it's all too easy to subtly teach them to rely on her own ability to be good and acceptable to God, rather than to rely on God himself.

 Sometimes kids just need to be pointed to God. So instead of hearing, "Daniel was brave and obeyed God - you should be brave and obey, too!"  I like that Rosie gets to hear

Who heard Daniel when he prayed?
Who helped him not be afraid?
Who stayed beside him in that den?
Who brought him safely out again?

It’s God who kept him in his care.
He’ll keep you, too--no matter where!

Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices
This latest album from The Welcome Wagon is beautiful.  My sister sent it to me for my birthday, and she reviewed it here.


A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny
Amy Julia Becker, a graduate of Princeton and Princeton Seminary, writes in this book about becoming a mother to her first child, Penny, who has Down Syndrome.  I am almost finished with the book, and I appreciate her candor and care in sharing her story.  (The kindle version of the book is only $2.99 for the month of June!)


Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion
I'm about a third of the way through this book, which details the history of the garment-making industry in America and shows how "cheap fashion" has changed the way Americans dress and turned clothing into a disposable good.  So far it's dry at some points and fascinating at others, and I've got a lot of thoughts developing about how to think Christianly - redemptively - about the fashion industry. I'm sure I'll write more about this soon.  (For now, how about this example of redeeming disposable clothing?) (Full disclosure: I received this book free from the publisher.)

On the blog front, this month I've become a huge fan of D.L. Mayfield's writing, and I love the stories Jessica Goudeau shares at Love Is What You Do. Both of these women work with refugees, and some (though not all) of their writing relates to that.  Incidentally, this month I've been volunteer-teaching a group of Burmese refugees at a sewing factory in Gas City.  It's worlds different than what I usually do, teaching wealthy Korean college students, and it's a challenge.  I am stunned by the histories of these Burmese people, and by their resilience and work ethic and hope.

And, frankly, I can't wait to see Brave.

patience and parenting and princess bikes

I'm not really one to tell people how to parent. (Or how to do anything, really; I have serious reservations about making general statements of "truth".)

But.

I will say that one thing I've grown to appreciate in the three and a half years I've been parenting is the value of waiting.

When Rosie was a baby, I spent way too many hours reading books and making charts and wondering what I was doing wrong as I tried to get her to sleep through the night.

The more I talked to other moms, and read other blogs, the more I realized that there wasn't one right way to parent, and that the fact that Rosie wasn't sleeping through the night wasn't a sign that i was parenting wrong. For me, having patience as I taught my daughter that she was heard and safe and cared for was the right thing.

It was the same with potty training. I pushed Rosie to do it when I was ready and she wasn't, and it didn't work. Months later, when she was ready for it, potty training was a breeze. It took a day and a half.

So with the pacifier thing, I've been waiting. I ignored the doctor and dentist who suggested I get rid of it. Of course, I haven't been totally passive. We did restrict paci usage to bed or rest time only. And we have talked on plenty of occasions about what it means to become a big girl. But my intuition told me that I was not to be the one to force my daughter to give up her dearest comfort (the mere mention of getting rid of it elicited tears, every time) and "grow up". I kept thinking about the story Grams tells of Aunt Patty, stubbornly throwing her pacifier in the fire place and declaring she was done. I wanted to wait until Rosie was ready, like little Patty, to resolve for herself.

We had mentioned -in passing, maybe twice- that bikes were for big girls. And so on Saturday when Rosie saw the neighborhood girls riding bikes again, she came straight home and threw her pacifier in the trash. "I want a bike," she said. And she went to sleep that night, and the next, without even a single tear. On Sunday she picked this bike out, and today she has ridden up and down our street for about four hours.

Waiting until your kid is ready makes parenting so much easier.

life among the savages

I recently read "Life Among the Savages," a memoir about mothering by Shirley Jackson, who is most famous for the short story "The Lottery". While I found her prose style to be a little long winded at times, she succeeded in making me laugh out loud more than once. I think the first paragraph of the book was my favorite:

"Our house is old, and noisy, and full. When we moved into it we had two children and about five thousand books; I expect that when we finally overflow and move out again we will have perhaps twenty children and easily half a million books; we also own assorted beds and tables and chairs and rocking horses and lamps and doll dresses and ship models and paint brushes and literally thousands of socks. This is the way my husband and I have fallen into, inadvertently, as though we have fallen into a well and decided that since there was no way out we might as well stay there and set up a chair and a desk and a light of some kind; even though this is our way of life, and the only one we know, it is occasionally bewildering, and perhaps even inexplicable to the sort of person who does not have that swift, accurate conviction that he is going to step on a broken celluloid doll in the dark. I cannot think of a preferable way of life, except one without children and without books, going on soundlessly in an apartment hotel where they do the cleaning for you and send up your meals and all you have to do is lie on a couch and - as I say, I cannot think of a preferable way of life, but then I have had to make a good many compromises, all told."

yes, potty training

I don't know if this is really something to blog about...

but two weeks ago I started to feel like it was time to try potty training. For one thing, I am tired of changing diapers, and tired of washing and drying and folding diapers. For another thing, I felt like I should either do it now or wait until July, when baby brother is a couple of months old. Why did I feel that it was now or July? Well, I felt like any further into my 3rd trimester I would be too much of a whale to run a toddler to the potty, and any closer to the due date would also mean two huge "growing up" stresses for Rosemary in quick succession - potty training and becoming a big sister.

So about a week ago I started reading about potty training and talking to Rosemary a lot about it, to prepare her for what was coming.

I decided to do a version of the intense "three day potty training" method (google it if you're interested). It meant we went immediately from all diapers to all underpants (except for pull-ups at sleepytime). Some of my friends and acquaintances have used this kind of method with kids 22 months and up, and had great success, and the principles made sense to me.

And that's why for the last three days we haven't left the house. To be honest, I feel like I deserve an award, because it's really not an easy task. If anyone wants to buy me a necklace or bake me a cake, I accept. (Rosie gets lots of awards - sweets, and today, a little play kitchen that I picked up at the Goodwill last week!)

For anyone who is interested, this is how it has gone so far:

Day One: 18 accidents, 4 successes

Day Two: 9 accidents, 4 successes

Day Three: 5.5 accidents, 7 successes

Pretty amazing progress for my bright little almost two-year old, wouldn't you say?

advent, christmas, tradition

So many of the things we associate with "the Christmas season" don't have much obvious connection to the story of the nativity. Red, green, jingle bells, holly, sleighs, evergreen trees, snowmen, reindeer, the grinch, santa, eggnog, peppermint mochas, mistletoe, white christmas, it's a wonderful life, candy canes, stockings, fajitas (for the Lepines) and on and on -- they may be jolly, but they don't have much to do with the birth of Jesus.

And yet at least a few of those things do bring cheer to a winter season that can seem awfully gloomy. I don't want to have a Christmas where I don't get to see the shadows of the tree branches on the walls of a room lit only by twinkle lights. I'm not giving up peppermint mochas (you can keep the eggnog, though).

So I'm not quite sure how to reconcile these cultural traditions of the Christmas season with a celebration of the true reason for Christian joy at Christmas. In our family, I certainly want to try to keep these wintry delights present, but of lesser importance than our celebration of the true Light and Delight that came into the world when Jesus was born.

So while you'll find a miniature Christmas tree in our house (actually, two of them), decorated with lights and some of our favorite childhood ornaments (eventually, I'd like to decorate a tree with just ornaments that have special meaning related to the nativity story), and you'll find stockings waiting for presents on Christmas morning, and chewy peppermint candies too, I hope that the traditions which will stand out more for us and our children will be our advent traditions.


Advent Candles
There are four Sundays in Advent (this year, it begins November 28). On the first Sunday, the first candle is lit. On the second Sunday, the first and second candles are lit. Etc. And then on Christmas Day you light all four, as well as a fifth for Christmas. Each candle has its own meaning. In our family, we'll have a Bible verse to read for each candle, too.

We don't actually have "advent candles" yet- which should be purple - but we also won't be home for most of the advent season this year. We'll be traveling. So for now we're just using five candles which we already had as our advent candles.

Advent Calendar






You can find quite a few Advent calendars for sale online, and you can also find a lot of ideas for making your own. I think this is one of the best (you can find it on Amazon, but it's actually cheaper here). Although I do hate how blonde Mary and the angels are, the construction is excellent, and it's very user-friendly for kids, as you can see. Each day in December, the children can open one box and add a character to the scene. I've also written a little script that we'll read each day. Toddlers and preschoolers will have the story memorized in no time. We might move to a more sophisticated script as our kids get older, but for now it's this. The idea is that you read the same lines for the first four days, then you add a few lines every couple of days afterword, until Dec 24, when you're reading the whole story.

Day 1-4 (add the stars)
The world was dark because of sin. (Is. 9:2)
God said, “The true light that gives light to everyone is coming into the world!” (John 1:9)

Days 5-10 (add the wise men and camels)
God wrote his message in the Bible and in the sky. “A baby is coming to save you!” he said. (Is. 9:6)
Wise men read the message in the stars and began to follow them to find the baby Jesus.

Days 11-16 (add an angel, Mary, Joseph, donkey, and two cows)
An angel told Mary that she would be the mother of Jesus. While Mary was pregnant, she and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem to stay with Joseph’s family. The house was full of people, so they slept in the room with the animals.

Days 16-23 (add an angel, shepherds, sheep)
While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born.
An angel announced the good news to shepherds in a field nearby, who were keeping watch over their sheep at night. “Your savior was born today! He is Christ the Lord! You will find the baby laying in a manger.” (Luke 2:11-12)

Day 24 (add baby Jesus)
The shepherds hurried to find the baby Jesus, and they worshiped him and thanked God for sending a great light into the land of deep darkness.

Shepherd's Pouch
One of the traditions that Noel Piper wrote about was the tradition of a shepherd's pouch in which the family would collect money through December to give to a person or organization they had chosen. Whether or not we use an actual pouch, we will certainly emphasize a spirit of giving and an awareness of world Christianity as we celebrate Christmas. Perhaps we'll give a goat to a hungry family in Uganda. Certainly we'll send Christmas gifts to the children we sponsor through Compassion International. And maybe we'll try to do something locally, as well, like Angel Tree.

Songs
And we'll always have songs and dancing.

This is just the beginning!

some of Rosie's favorites

Rosemary knows how to use my iphone. She can unlock it, choose the photo album, and then watch videos, all by herself. I have a little toddler piano app she likes to open too. Playing with my iphone is definitely in her top ten favorite pastimes. I kind of worry about the effect it might have on her to watch these little video clips of herself over and over again.

She loves to watch the videos of herself swimming with G-Daddy.

We had a great time with Uncle Jim during his visit last week. Of course it was a pretty slow, sleepy little week in Upland, but I think that was ok.



Another thing Rosie likes right now is pigtails. When I first put her in pigtails, she took 34 pictures of herself on photobooth.


She also likes to wear a "hairband" on her arm, because I always have one around my wrist. It really makes her look like a rock star.

36 of 52

I have been reading this book for a long time. I can't remember for sure, but I may have started it in January, because I know that I only have it because I picked it up in my parents' house in Little Rock.

I don't know why it took me so long to read. It wasn't that I didn't like it. Maybe it was because it doesn't give a lot of direct application to parenting babies or toddlers, and so I never felt compelled to continue with it out of my immediate need in the moment.

That said, this was one of the best parenting books I've read. I hardly found a thing in it with which to disagree (and as a contentious person, I can rarely say that!). (On the other hand, I did have a major problem in the concluding chapter, when he wrote, "Grace is an amazing adjective.." --- grace isn't an adjective, sir!) (Grammar and vocabulary dork here.) (Hate myself sometimes.)

To my memory, I've read seven parenting books (not including books about vaccines, sleep, baby diet, etc):

Shepherding a Child's Heart - Tedd Tripp
Parenting with Love and Logic - Cline and Fay
Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood - Fay and Fay
Parenting is Your Highest Calling (and 8 other myths) - Leslie Leyland Fields
Don't Make Me Count to Three - Ginger Plowman
Gospel-Powered Parenting - William Farley
Grace-Based Parenting - Tim Kimmel

Of these books, I absolutely recommend Grace-Based Parenting for principles, and Love and Logic for practice. And while I think I'm done with parenting books for a while, I'd still love to hear any other recommendations if my readers have them :-)

The foundational idea behind Kimmel's book is that every child's three driving inner needs are for security, significance, and strength, and that parents meet these needs by giving their children love, purpose, and hope. In delivering grace to our kids, we need to give them the freedom to be different, to be vulnerable, to be candid, and to make mistakes. Kimmel fleshes these principles out beautifully with personal examples and biblical support.

I think what was most convicting for me in the book was the idea that a graceful relationship with God is contagious. Do I know that I'm loved? Do I recognize my purpose? Do I live in hope and free from fear? It will be harder for my kids to believe in grace if I don't believe in it myself. And my deep drive to be "good enough" makes it hard for me to live in grace!

big sister

Coming in early April, Lord willing. Thanks for your prayers.

what i do

I stole this off another blog because I think it's a fairly good explanation of what I do all day. You can click on it to see it a little bigger.

cute things

Rosemary is hitting my favorite age. As a babysitter and big sister, I always loved 18-36 months, and Rosemary at 17 months seems exceptionally cute. Her vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds. In the last week or two she started using her first personal pronoun, saying things like, "I juice," "I down," and "I go." Two of the cutest, though:

--Yesterday we boarded our flight in Cincinnati and were then told that our pilot's incoming flight was delayed and he wasn't even on the ground yet. At one point while we waited, Rosie threw her hands above her head and said, "Airplane Up!"

--People - I should say, strangers, - always smile and wave to Rosie. Yesterday when someone smiled, I said to Rosemary, "She's saying hi. You can say hi, too, if you want to." Rosie burrowed her head into my shoulder and said to me, "Shy." I didn't even know that she knew the word. So now I'm working on teaching her "friendly".

9 of 52, or Time to Stop Reading Parenting Books for a While

Gospel Powered Parenting by William Farley came highly recommended, and the author is a pastor of a Sovereign Grace church in Spokane, so I had high expectations for it. But when I finished reading it, in the car on the way home from Silver Falls, I felt totally bummed out. Going back through the book this morning has been good, because I've realized that the majority of the book was helpful, and it was just a small part that bummed me out so much.

The book pretty neatly divides into three sections. The first two chapters provide the foundational ideas for Farley's thesis. Chapters 3-5 detail the gospel mindset that parents need to adopt, and the remainder of the book looks at some practical applications of the gospel in parenting.

The thesis of Farley's book is that "The gospel is the power of God for parenting...{and} Effective application of the gospel empowers parents to reach their children's hearts" (p. 40). He begins by delineating his assumptions:

{1. Parenting will not be easy, but it will be worthwhile
2.Effective Christian parents are willing to hold God's sovereignty and their responsibility in tension
3. Effective Christian parents assume an offensive mindset (that is, they assume their children are not Christians and aim to set before them the beauty of Christ)
4. Effective Christian parents are shrewd about new birth
5. Effective Christian parents labor to focus their families on God, not on their children}

and defining "parenting" and "gospel," emphasizing that parenting is not primarily about doing the right things, but about having a right relationship with God - one that is informed by the gospel.

In this first section, I especially appreciated Farley's argument that the "primary focus of Christian parenting is not morality," which can foster an ugly self-reliance, but heart transformation.

In the second section, Farley explains what it means for parents to have the fear of God, what it means for God to be holy, and what it means for God to be gracious. I appreciated the review of these key doctrines and Farley's connection of them to parenting.

The remainder of the book offers more practical implications of the gospel for parenting, and overall, I found that I agreed with the majority of his conclusions. First, parents teach through example, and our marriage is the most powerful example we possess. As Paul teaches in Ephesians, the mystery of marriage is profound, and it is a picture of Christ and his church.

While I agreed with Farley's premise here, there was one extremely offensive sentence in this section. "When a husband loves a menopausal (or premenstrual) wife, his behavior says, "Christ loves the church even though she is sinful""(112).

Pause and read that again if you need to.

Really??? Did Farley realize that he just equated menopause with sin? Having PMS is sinful? Is having male pattern baldness is sinful too? Farley, where were your editors, dude? Women may sin while experiencing PMS, but experiencing PMS is not a sin anymore than having a headache is a sin. It's lines like these that make me want to stop reading Christian books altogether.

The next chapter, chapter 7, was the one that bummed me out. And I don't just mean that it made me feel bad - I can deal with feeling bad. It made me angry because its arguments were weak. I'll come back to it in a minute.

Next, Farley argues that the gospel motivates our discipline and becomes the goal of our discipline. I liked what he had to say here about indwelling sin and reaching the heart. He hit the nail on the head when he noted that western culture has an animosity towards authority, and this shows up in our parenting. I struggle with being authoritative personally because I feel like I can always see all sides of every issue, and that leaves me conflicted about exerting authority in areas where I see grey (I remember this from my teaching days).

Farley says our discipline must be consistent. It must be in the context of love. We should reference scripture when appropriate. The discipline should hurt, but we should hold the child until she stops crying. We should rehearse the truths of the gospel, and we should have the child perform restitution.

Obviously, physical punishment is out of vogue right now. (Research has a lot to say about spanking, including a new study from Calvin College.) The only thing that really bothered me in Farley's analysis was his claim that "If a parent does not control with spanking, the only other alternative is the verbal abuse of guilt manipulation or accusation." I totally disagree that those are the only options. While I think spanking can be a valid form of discipline in some cases if done correctly, I think we have lots of other useful tools in our discipline toolbox that should not be neglected.

Finally, Farley writes about the importance of teaching the Bible to your kids, and loving your kids sacrificially, incarnationally, and affectionately. Can't disagree with that.

Now, back to chapter seven, which aims to show that "understanding and applying the gospel motivates and trains fathers to be effective parents." I appreciated Farley's emphasis on the importance of fathers as active parents, and I agree with him that fathers have enormous influence over their children's lives. However, I think in his zeal to motivate fathers, he oversteps. Normally I get angry with parenting books for claiming too much importance to motherhood - ie "Motherhood is your highest calling, the source of your greatest joy" - but here, I got angry with Farley for playing down the importance of mothers.

First, Farley claims that "Fathers are the parents, and their wives are the assistants" (126). To support this, he states Western culture pre-1830 assumed that relationship, and that it was assumed because the Bible addressed its parenting instructions to fathers.

Where does the Bible address parenting instructions to fathers? Farley says that the OT tells a lot of stories about fathers and sons (true, but hardly prescriptive, and probably indicative mostly of Jewish culture). In some of these stories, God holds fathers responsible for their children (are we to assume from this that mothers have no responsibility?). Then Farley says, "the Bible contains few direct instructions to parents. Those few God addresses to fathers. For example, Deuteronomy 6:4-7 says,

4"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

Now, maybe there is some context I'm missing here (like Deut 5:1, which says that "Moses summoned all Israel and said to them..."?) but I don't see that this passage is directed to fathers. At all.

Farley goes on. "God holds children responsible to honor both parents, but the command is always in the context of the father's overarching authority. "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land" (Deut 5:16)."

Again, I see nothing in that verse to indicate that the command is "in the context of the father's overarching authority."

His next scriptural proof comes from Proverbs:

"A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother." (10:1)
"A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son despises his mother." (15:20)
"The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother." (29:15)

His commentary: "The idea latent in these passages is that Mom is Dad's assistant. If she fails to carry out his instruction, she will suffer the fruit in her children."

I do not see that idea latent in these proverbs at all. In fact, I think these Proverbs are prime examples of Hebrew parallelism. The first two are examples of synonymous parallelism, in which the same sentiment is repeated in different but equivalent words, and the third is antithetical, in which the parallel members express the opposite sides of the same thought. In other words, these verses are actually equating the father and the mother, not implying that one parent is more important than the other.

Farley is correct in noting that the only two verses instructing parents in the New Testament are directed to fathers (Eph. 6:4 and Col. 3:21).

In sum, though, Farley does not give his claim a strong scriptural foundation.

Next, Farley claims that "God holds fathers accountable for parenting because he has given them inordinate influence over their children" (129). To support this, he does not turn to scripture, but to cultural studies, citing a Swiss study that showed that a "father's spiritual example was the primary tool that shaped his children's desire to embrace his religion". The study, from 1994, was published in The Demographic Characteristics of National Minorities in Certain European States. The article about it which Farley references does not state how wide-reaching the study was or how many participants were involved. In addition, it measures church attendance rather than personal statements of belief. Given these facts, I'm not sure that it's a study to base too many conclusions upon.

Farley uses this study to show that children are more likely to attend church when they grow up if their father attended church. The troubling finding it cites is that children are most likely to attend church if they grow up with a regularly attending father and a non-practicing mother. Farley did not address the implications of this finding, leaving me wondering if it would be better for my children if I was not a practicing Christian!

After arguing that fathers are to be the primary breadwinners, the chief parents, the ones responsible for their children's spirituality, and that children are more likely to grow up to be church-goers if their fathers are and their mothers aren't, Farley kindly gives one line for moms. "In terms of intimacy, care, and nurture - crucial functions - Mom's role is primary." He goes on. "But it is equally true that when a child begins to move into that period of differentiation from home and engagement with the world "out there," he or she looks increasingly to the father for direction." (I think this point is true, but I think it is more a reflection of the way the "traditional" 1950s style family is set up than a reflection of essential truths about men and women.)

In sum. I totally agree with Farley that fathers are crucial in the lives of their children, and that our culture has not done a good job of honoring and supporting fatherhood. However, I don't believe that he makes a good scriptural case for his claims that fathers are the primary parents or that God has given fathers more ("inordinate") influence over children than mothers have. The structure of this chapter is discouraging to mothers, and I think the reader would profit from hearing more than one line about a mother's role. Perhaps this chapter could be re-written and paired with a chapter on "Gospel Mothers" in the second edition.



I know that no one actually reads blog posts that are this long! But I had to write it for my own personal well-being :-)

Today I went to the library and checked out some poetry. I won't be reading any more parenting books until I recover from this one.

5 of 52

I've got quite the stack of parenting books to get through, and a couple that I've already read (Shepherding a Child's Heart; Parenting with Love and Logic; Parenting is Your Highest Calling (and 8 other myths)), and someday when I'm finished with them all I'll write a quick comparative review. This week I read Don't Make Me Count to Three by Ginger Plowman.



This book gets a mixed review from me. We started off on the wrong foot.

See, most of the time I hate it when people make absolutist claims about anything. Ginger does this right off the bat:

"When we respond to the high calling of motherhood with passion, the rewards are far greater than any we could ever gain outside of that calling."

I hope that she means that when we respond to God's calling {of motherhood or anything else}, the rewards are greater than those we would find if we didn't respond to God's calling. But I'm afraid she's indicating that the greatest rewards a woman can ever find are in responding to the calling of motherhood.

The greatest rewards any person can find are in responding to God's call to glorify him and enjoy him forever. Parenthood, optional.

{following quotes drawn from three books about the greatness of mothers}
"One thing is for sure. The mothers of these great men {Edison, Lincoln, Washington} knew how to reach the hearts of their children. They knew the importance of God's word in training and nurturing their little boys. They understood biblical discipline and they faithfully instructed their children in the ways of the Lord."

Really? Are we sure that these mens' mothers raised them in the Word? I have my doubts. I call upon my brother John to answer this question for me.

"We all share no greater role model than the woman talked about in Proverbs 31."
Speak for yourself, Ginger. I have found better role models. Jesus, for one.


Ok. Whew. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

After the first two chapters, things improved. The book is, in large part, a "re-working" (to use the author's phrase) of ideas from Lou Priolo, Ted Tripp, and Roy Lessin. What I found helpful in it was that - at least as far as the Tripp material goes- Plowman offers a little more in terms of practical application. She fleshes out the biblical principles with helpful examples from real life, providing sample mom-child dialogues showing how to teach biblical principles in specific situations.

A helpful book - but one to read with a careful, discerning spirit.

3 of 52

Home. Home Sunday night at 10. Yakisoba for lunch, sunshine, walk to Scarecrow. Two coffees and one nap. About 20% unpacked. Tired, physically and emotionally. But home.

I barely finished Nurtureshock, my 3 of 52, before I had to leave Little Rock.



I'd heard of this book on NPR, I guess, and had wanted to read it for a while. The authors compile tons of research about children (infants through teenagers) which they, as parents and writers, found "shocking" and counter-intuitive. Not all of it was counterintuitive or new to me, but a great deal of it was, and as a parent and an educator, I did find all of it to be interesting.

One of my favorite research chapters was the chapter on the importance of sleep. One section of the chapter showed how strongly a child's capacity for memory is affected by the amount of sleep the child gets. Even more interesting, though, is what they found about emotional memory:

Perhaps the most fascinating, the emotional context of a memory affects where it gets processed. Negative stimuli get processed by the amygdala; positive or neutral memories gets processed by the hippocampus. Sleep deprivation hits the hippocampus harder than the amygdala. The result is that sleep-deprived people fail to recall pleasant memories, yet recall gloomy ones just fine.

In on experiment by Walker, sleep-deprived college students tried to memorize a list of words. They could remember 81% of the words with a negative connotation, like "cancer." But they could remember only 31% of the words with a positive or neutral connotation, like "sunshine" or "basket".

And with that, GOODNIGHT.

baby food, cont.

So far babycakes has only tasted bananas and apples. She likes her bananas mixed with milk, and she did NOT like the applesauce I made for her. She does like to teeth on an apple slice, or on a sugar pea from the garden. Speaking of teething - yep - her third tooth has appeared, and it's another bottom tooth!

I've been doing a lot of reading, mostly online, about introducing solid foods to babies, and found some interesting ideas. Feel free to not read the rest of this post unless you have thoughts on baby food to share!

Dr. Weston Price, a dentist who studied the diets of "isolated nonindustrialized peoples" in the nineteen thirties, suggests that all babies eat an egg yolk a day from four months on. The omega-3 long-chain fatty acids found in egg yolks from pasture fed hens are "essential for the development of the brain".

After six months, he suggests adding small amounts of "grated, raw organic liver" to the egg yolk (yuck!). "This imitates the practice of African mothers who chew liver before giving it to their infants as their first food. Liver is rich in iron, the one mineral that tends to be low in mother's milk possibly because iron competes with zinc for absorption."

Banana can be added at six months, and meats, fruits, and veggies at ten months, according to his system.

La Leche League suggests this progression when introducing your baby (6 months or older) to solid foods:

* Ripe banana, avocado, yam, or sweet potato (sweet like breastmilk)
* Meats
* Whole-grain breads and cereals (rather than baby cereals)
[wheat and corn are usually delayed until baby is 9-12 months old]
* Fresh fruits
[citrus fruits are usually delayed until baby is 9-12 months old]
* Vegetables
* Dairy products after 9 months
[cow's milk is usually delayed until baby is 12-18 months old]

A lot of sources are suggesting that cereals (rice, oatmeal, etc) are not at all the ideas first foods! I've been surprised to see how many sources suggest meat as an early food.

Here's an interesting portion from their site:

Is it a good idea to add meat to the breastfed baby's diet between four to six months?

The American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Nutrition states that when a baby's breast milk intake is adequate, the order in which other foods are added to the infant diet is not critical. A study published in Pediatrics (Dewey 1996) shows that the low protein in breast milk does not limit the growth of exclusively breastfed infants. It is important to remember, however, that when solid foods are introduced, the amount of breast milk a baby consumes decreases. If protein, zinc, or other nutrients are not provided in solid foods, the amount a baby receives from breast milk could be insufficient for optimal growth during the weaning period. Therefore, adding meat to the diet early in the weaning period may be beneficial.

Meat provides additional protein, zinc, B-vitamins, and other nutrients which may be in short supply when the decrease in breast milk occurs. A recent study from Sweden suggests that when infants are given substantial amounts of cereal, it may lead to low concentrations of zinc and reduced calcium absorption (Persson 1998). Dr. Nancy Krebs has shared preliminary results from a large infant growth study suggesting that breastfed infants who received pureed or strained meat as a primary weaning food beginning at four to five months, grow at a slightly faster rate. Dr. Krebs' premise is that inadequate protein or zinc from complementary foods may limit the growth of some breastfed infants during the weaning period. Both protein and zinc levels were consistently higher in the diets of the infants who received meat (Krebs 1998). Thus the custom of providing large amounts of cereal products and excluding meat products before seven months of age may not meet the nutritional needs of all breastfed infants.

One website I came across in my reading, Eco Child's Play has given me several things to think about!

Make Your Own Baby Food - and baby cereal - which I'm obviously doing. I have the time; it will be cheaper; I won't waste glass jars. But - it's not so much about making baby food as it is about making food for yourself that can be shared with baby when she's interested.



Any thoughts? What was your first baby food, or your baby's first food? Mine, according to the baby calendar my mom kept for me, was ice cream. Followed by saltines. And I turned out ok. Mostly.

looking ahead

Up to now, I've spent most of my life aware of, if not anticipating, the next "phase of life". In junior high, you have two or three years to look forward to highschool. In highschool, it's four years and then college. Then another four years, and career (or, in many cases, loafing around). Then, often not too long after, it's marriage, and a few years after that, it's probably parenthood.

So now, I'm in the parenthood phase. For the first time, the next phase of life isn't two or three or four years in the future. As far as I can tell, the next phase is either the empty nest or grandparenthood...at least twenty years away.

"Parenthood is like crossing a long desert," Jack says in response to my musing. I wait for him to make that a positive statement.
"But," he continues, "just like crossing a long desert, it's very rewarding."

I raise an eyebrow. He shakes his head.

Or maybe now you start anticipating - instead of the next phase of your life - the next phase of your child's life. But that seems too child-centric, or too much like parents who try to foist their own unrealized dreams onto their children.

So maybe I just need to think more deeply about the future - beyond the normal categories, physical markers or the "American dream" -- into less obvious, more uniquely personal categories of changes, hopes and inner growth...

mommyhood

How is mommyhood? she asks.

Rosemary, and motherhood, turned one month old yesterday. In the last four weeks, these are some things I’ve observed:

I say things all the time now that I’ve never said in my life. Words like “booger,” phrases like “she’s working on a dirty diaper”.

I have overcome my fears of cutting baby nails and putting saline drops in a baby nose.

I am much more able to survive on little sleep than ever before in my life. A year ago, if I only got five hours of sleep, I would be dead for the next day or two. Now, it happens all the time, and I keep running, even without naps.

But, in the middle of the night, I sometimes fall asleep while breastfeeding.

My mom is a genius.

I know plenty of women who love the experience of being pregnant. I know plenty of women who love the experience of breastfeeding. I would not say that I fit into either category.

Similarly, I didn’t feel that powerful rush of love that a lot of women feel when they see their children for the first time. I was too exhausted to feel any powerful emotions except relief.

If love is quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, and physical touch: my baby is super-loved.

Girls are not sugar and spice and all things nice! (This I already knew, being a girl myself -- but it’s not even true of BABY girls.) I never knew a baby girl could be so squirmy and grunty and growly.

Even thought I devote nearly 24 hours a day to my girl, I still haven’t figured out how to get her on a good schedule for sleeping.

But, she does sleep for five hour stretches at night, which is wonderful.

I still have a hard time believing that her name is Rosemary. It’s hard to believe that we made her, but it’s just as hard to believe that we had the power of naming a person.

I call her “baby girl” just as often as I call her by her name.

Most people say she looks like me. I think she looks like my dad.

Cloth diapers are great! BumGenius 3.0 are the best, but I also like using regular old Indian cotton diapers with the Bummis Super Whisper Wrap cover. They’re super cute, cheap, and less leaky (in my experience so far) than disposables.

Rosemary loves going for a walk in her baby carrier ( a Sleepy Wrap). She hates being in her car seat.

Going for a walk in nice weather is one of my favorite activities now.

For the first four weeks, I was very content to be healing, at home, and learning how to take care of a baby. Now, I’m starting to feel a little trapped in the house, and a little bored. Maybe I’m even starting to miss teaching.

However, I am excited about finding new ways to use my time.

Jack is very patient with a fussy baby (no big surprise, as he’s patient with me when I’m a fussy baby).

Jack and I would do just about anything to make Rosie smile. She can’t respond to us yet, though, so the smiles we get come spontaneously, as she’s drifting into or out of sleep. That doesn’t stop us from doing all we can to elicit them.

I can’t wait until this girl can respond to me.

We insert Rosie’s name into all songs we sing now. Mostly, we sing her Denison Witmer’s “Catholic Girl,” even though she’s not, at least not in the capital C sense.

She really does seem to be calm when listening to: lullaby renditions of Radiohead or George Strait, “Seven Swans,” “Now the Day is Over,” or Rosie Thomas.

Mommyhood is pretty good.

on second thought

I saw Sun giving birth on tv last night.
I kind of changed my mind about that whole wanting a baby thing.