Lift Up Your Hearts!

Okay, so the wider dissemination of lesser-known comic strips is not the greatest use of the Internet, but it's fun. I've featured Baldo before, but now they have an official Baldo website to include, and today's strip is worth broadcasting.

In case you want to see the newest of the World's Most Adorable Grandchildren before I get around to updating my own image collection, you can find pictures of Noah here.

June 28, 6:02 p.m. 10 lb. 3 oz., 22.5" long, 15" head, 15" chest.

This is the quick post. The birth story is coming soon. (Really! it's actually all written on paper, just needs to be typed.) Sorry for the delay, we've had Internet problems, but Jon has it all fixed now.

(The above is from Heather and Jon's blog. Stay tuned for more. There will be pictures, too!)

(Picture added later, as the link below no longer works.)

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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. :)

Jon showed me this Speed Bump comic (by Dave Coverly), and it's too good not to pass on.

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.

I've occasionally wondered what we might be doing to ourselves by prolonging daylight with the use of artificial lights. A study by the U. S. National Cancer Institute and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences presents evidence that the use of artificial light during the hours of darkness is a signficant risk factor in the development and progression of cancer. (More)

It's been a while since I've posted a Frazz comic here (I always worry about the line between fair use and copyright violation), but it's one of the best comic strips ever, and deserves all the publicity it can get. Though set in a public school, it often captures what homeschooing is all about, and today's strip made me shout in acclamation:

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)

A recent New York Times article on the effort to promote breastfeeding includes this interesting line:

Nursing may even produce a euphoric feeling

So if you can't convince them with the overwhelming evidence of breastfeeding's benefits for the baby, try suggesting it as a new way to get high!

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

I know hurricane season began June 1, but really, we're not supposed to have to think about this till August, at least! Yet here is Tropical Storm Alberto, with the potential to become the earliest hurrcane in 40 years to hit the United States. Oh, well, my Brother the Insurance Specialist did warn me that Florida has had an unusually easy 40 years. Guess he can say, "I told you so."

On the plus side, the long-delayed rainy season may finally be upon us. My garden should be happy, if Alberto doesn't beat it into the ground.