Lift Up Your Hearts!

Many, many thanks to all who have been praying! Mother and baby are radiant and doing well. More details after Jon posts to their blog; I don't want to scoop the story. :)

The title says it all. We are now past everyone's guess but Heather's, but still only four days past D-Date, and Jonathan was five. You might say it's not worth posting if there's no news, but some of us like to keep in touch even when there's little to say. :)

We went to a wonderful Thai restaurant the other day, and Jonathan asked for chopsticks. They gave him the ones with training wheels—fastened at the top so all he had to do was pinch them together—and he did very well. That's okay if he's not going to have daily opportunities to use chopsticks, but probably not the best way for him to learn. I'm sure he learned to use a regular glass so competently at such a young age because he never had a "sippy cup," which is a convenience for parents but teaches bad habits.

There's something delightful in hearing a two year old say, "I want some guacamole."

Porter is here. We have a van. All systems are go. Just waiting for the star of the show to make his/her grand entrance. (More)

Tomorrow Janet will be with APA and I am so excited for all of them! No news on the baby front, except that Heather is really tired today and is now napping, having chosen that over lunch, so it can't be much longer. Porter's here now, so that accomplishes all but one of the things she was hoping would happen first—the one remaining is the arrival of a minivan, which some friends are kindly lending us as the Labor-Mobile, assuming it gets back from the shop on time.

We gave Jonathan a copy of the Three Billy Goats Gruff story, and if the words aren't exactly as I remember my father reading them to me ([sung] "Who's that tripping on my bridge? Trip, trap, trip, trap on my bridge? [spoken] Oh, it's YOU, little Billy Goat Gruff. I'm going to EAT YOU UP!"), it's still a fun story to read. Jonathan asks to hear it a lot, and has some of the lines memorized already. After he'd only heard it twice, however, he didn't quite remember the title, so he asked if Grandma would please read him "Two Horses Woof." (More)

In honor of my father, who knew to display an iris on this occasion.

I'm too busy playing with Jonathan to write much about him, but here are a few delightful Jonathan-isms:

I'll friz it to you and you friz it to me. If there's a word for what you're doing when you throw a Frisbee back and forth, it can't be any better than Jonathan's.

There's an emery board in there. He was looking in my travel kit, and he was right; I just didn't expect "emery board" to be in a 2.5 year old's vocabulary.

The baby's head is pressing on my bladder; I need to go to the bathroom again. His baby brother or sister is due in less than two weeks, so I guess he's heard this phrase a few times....

Oh, you DO have nipples! He took a nap with Grandma, and I had to explain to him that, unlike Mommy, I couldn't provide him with any milk. Later, he was with me when I was changing into my pajamas, and that's when he came out with this statement, an expression of amazement and perplexity on his face. Boy did that make me feel old: all the right equipment but totally useless.

While Mommy was cooking, Jonathan and I made up the Word/Horse game. We spread some of his word cards around on the floor, I get on my hands and knees and he climbs on my back. Then he directs his horse, pointing to a word and telling me to go there: Go to "Mommy," now go to "Aunt Janet," now to "loves." He made the game more interesting by asking me to make new cards for "tickle" and "fall off"; you can imagine what happens when the horse and rider arrive at those cards! He also has great fun with the difference between the cards and what they represented. For example, if I trot up to the Mommy card and say, "Hi, Mommy!" he laughs and says in a "how can you be so silly" voice, "That's not the REAL Mommy, that's the WORD Mommy!"

When I was in high school, a semester course in economics was required for graduation. I managed to convince the school to accept an advanced physics course instead, so I can't claim to know much economics. Yet being married to a guy who majored in that field in college helps, and in any case the following scenario not only makes no economic sense, it makes no sense at all. (More)

Any extravagance around the time of a birthday counts as part of the celebration, and thus comes without guilt. Thus when Porter wanted to attend the Mad Cow Theatre Company's It Was a Very Good Year, part of the Orlando Cabaret Festival, and even suggested we get the special dinner package, who was I to complain? (More)

Last year I was well prepared for Ash Wednesday, with a rather extensive personal program planned out for Lent. This year, what with company and an intensive two weeks devoted to reroofing our house (and not done yet), it came as a shock this morning to realize that February is over. We were thus saved from having to decide with which of our two churches to celebrate Shrove Tuesday, a small blessing but one we could have done without. No crawfish gumbo, no pancakes.... :(

Maybe I'll dust off some of last year's ideas...they worked pretty well.

Most of you will hear about this sooner or later—it was on the front page of the CNN website tonight, so no doubt it will be on the evening news. So yes, that's our Milwee Middle School at which a student brandished a pellet gun that had been modified to look like a 9mm handgun. There was a brief hostage situation; the school was "locked down"; and the student isolated and later shot by the SWAT team, after which the remaining students were sent home. The gun-wielding student, who was labelled "suicidal," is currently in the hospital on life support.

Here's a local version of the story:

http://www.wftv.com/news/6056445/detail.html

Time spent celebrating the season precludes (for the moment) collecting and publishing my thoughts on Christmas and culture. That will come later. In the meantime, please know, or remember, that hidden deep within and behind and under and through and above all the traditions and chaos and commercialism of the season lies meaning and purpose and hope and a story unequaled. And have a

Jonathan has his own small electric screwdriver, which he uses to remove and replace the tiny screws on the back of his (non-working) computer keyboard. I would be amazed enough at his physical dexterity, but what really blows me away is his knowledge of when and how to reverse the direction of the tool.

I could write so much more about the great things Jonathan is doing, and I probably will, eventually. But what impelled me finally to write was watching him peel, perfectly, a hardboiled egg for his lunch today. He only just turned two years old!