Okay, completely corny title to this post: “Cammy 1.0.”
Explainification: Cameron turned 1 year old yesterday, thus the title “Cammy 1.0.” Count your blessings, though, kids. Daddy is a floating-point computer geek and the title could just as easily have been “Cammy 0.1×10 1.”
Cammy turned 1YO yesterday! This little man has managed 365 days on this Earth! He’s been burped, changed, inoculated, rocked, hugged, squeezed, tickled, and smooshed day upon day upon day and has only grown stronger and savvier for all the trouble.
Happy Birthday, Cameron. Daddy loves you! Daddy thrills at the very idea of you.
- posted 347 days ago in Family &bull Parenting
Callie,
You’ve been telling me for three weeks that you don’t like soccer. You’re disappointed that the bigger kids run faster than you and that you haven’t ever scored a goal. You’ve been so frustrated that you’ve even cried on the field and screamed that you don’t like soccer and that you don’t want to play.
But twice now, in two separate games, you’ve come off the bench and run onto the field in order to defend your team’s goal. You weren’t called in, mind you. You ran on the field of your own initiative in order to assist your team in a game that you swear you hate.
I don’t know if you get so excited when intense action flares up that you just forget your frustrations and instantly jump into the game. Maybe the reason you jump in is competitiveness; not wanting the other team to score against you even in a game you don’t like. But I think that the most likely answer is that you see your chance. I think that, from the sidelines, your mind forgets all the limitations of size and skill that frustrate you, and, as that ball goes rolling by, your mind says, “I can get it!” And just like that, bang! You’re off for glory and adventure.
- posted 349 days ago in Family
Here is an article exploring why Christian teenagers continue to have sex before marriage despite the efforts of their elders to steer them into abstinence and “purity.” The author ends by saying:
I believe that Jesus spent more time talking about helping the poor than he did lecturing about the evils of homosexuality or abortion. I believe that Jesus didn’t spend most of his time condemning thieves and prostitutes. In fact, he spent most of his time condemning those who condemn thieves and prostitutes. How many Christians today would fit into that latter cateogry [ sic ] ?
Thinking about the assertion that Jesus would not stand for thievery nor for those who self-righteously condemn thieves, I began to think about Jesus’ pattern in the Sermon on the Mount, telling us, “You have heard it said … , but I tell you … “
Adultery? Don’t do it! But fantasizing about sinful behavior is also sinful behavior.
Murder? Don’t do it! But anger is a terrible motivation for doing anything short of murder too!
An eye for an eye? Even where revenge is justified, compassion is still the better response. It’s better to make an enemy whole than to make him an example.
So, children, here’s my advice: Cultivate a pure heart, not the appearance of purity. The appearance of purity without actual purity can only harm you.
Set your heart on keeping yourself holy. But if you’re not keeping yourself holy then don’t harm yourself merely for appearance’s sake. Put a condom in your purse or wallet.
Set your heart on respecting your body as a temple of the Holy Spirit. But if you don’t actually respect your body that way then seek the medical tests you need to ensure that your body at least stays healthy. You may yet treat it as a Temple of the Lord one day; keep it healthy until that time.
Set your heart on surrounding yourself with people that encourage you in your walk with God. But if one of your friends turns out to belong to a group shunned by the church establishment, be a friend to that person. Don’t deny someone the support of your love in order to maintain an image or an appearance among your church friends.
- posted 493 days ago in Parenting &bull Religion
Callie, you’ve been on my mind a lot lately. I have this perception that you’re being neglected. I’m not sure that you’ve noticed it and if you have then you’ve been a great sport about it, but you haven’t gotten to spend much time as the center of my attention lately. Between your (sometimes needy, sometimes demanding) older sister and your (always hungry or dirty) little brother there is very little time dedicated to (sweet, good-humored, self-sufficient) Callie.
Since I’ve recognized the problem I’m going to be diligent about finding ways to fix it.
- posted 500 days ago in Family &bull Inner Life &bull Parenting
I had surgery two days ago. This was my second surgery of the year and they were both related to the same tumor. Since this second surgery was going to be more intrusive into the muscles of my back my surgeon enlisted the help of a specialist who would be there to reconstruct the area after all the excising was done.
Pre-surgery, when I went for a visit with the reconstructive — aka “plastic” — surgeon, he told me that he thought he would have to “move some flaps around” to ensure a good result with the skin graft. While that seemed a little puzzling at the time, I understood it to have something to do with the fact that you can’t graft skin over exposed bone and it might be necessary to jostle some muscle tissue around and then graft the skin on top of that.
Post-surgery, I can tell that he certainly did something with the muscles in my back. During previous recoveries it’s been the incisions and the stitches that hurt the most. This time the largest discomfort comes from the actual muscles. It feels as though I woke up on the morning after the biggest back workout of my life. The muscles themselves are sore the way they are after I’ve put way too much weight on the bar at the gym. And it’s not confined to just my back. The latissimus dorsi and whatever connecting muscle runs from my back and down along my left-hand ribs are both so sore that it’s hard to move my left arm or shoulder without wincing.
I don’t know what the actual procedure involved — I’ll get to ask the doc at a follow-up appointment in a week — but it seems to me that he was really jerking stuff around and pulling very hard on relaxed, sleeping me.
- posted 506 days ago in Cancer
This is for Cameron, now just 5 months old.
I’ve had a quirk, an idiosyncrasy, that I’ve acted out upon all of our children. When they were babies, as I was rocking them to sleep, I would smell their scalps.
Now maybe this is pretty common. I’ve heard all about moms going crazy over each new child having that “baby smell.” But I’m not talking about just a smell that I enjoy. When I put my nose to the sleeping child’s head and breathe in, I swear my lungs fill to 120% normal capacity. I don’t know where the extra volume comes from but I can breathe more deeply when I’m sucking in my child’s scalp-scent than when I’m sucking wind on a treadmill. The scent isn’t good, it’s primal.
Countless shows on the Discovery Channel repeat the idea that wild animals bond with their offspring primarily based on scent. It’s easy to imagine that’s what’s been going on between me and my babies assuming either common descent or common design is involved.
Cameron, I go in for surgery later this week. I don’t know what the pathology report is going to say. But I’ve held you, and smelled your head, and I’ve bonded.
Your daddy is yours forever.
- posted 544 days ago in Family &bull Inner Life &bull Memories &bull Parenting
I don’t know why bedtime seems to be when Cora finds me the funniest, but…
Bedtime has developed into something of an ordeal at our house. The kids don’t want to go to bed. Duh. That happens at everybody’s house. But Cora: you are possessed of the ability to stay awake seemingly indefinitely. Once we get you and Callie into bed, Callie will fall asleep within a few minutes of laying still. You, on the other hand, can lay still for a very long time—seeming to sleep!—without actually falling asleep. Tee and I will leave the room and not hear any chatter for fifteen minutes or so and assume that both kids are sleeping. Then, when we think we’re in the clear, you will call from the bedroom or else appear in the living room to ask for something: a back rub, a drink, a snack, the nail clippers…Something!
I’ve taken to laying down with you at bedtime just to keep you in your room. While we’re laying there together you ask all sorts of questions that you pull from the events of the day or else pull from your memory as though you’ve been chewing on them for weeks and are now finally ready to ask a question.
You’re really bright in these late night catechism classes. You—only five years old—have asked about what causes the sun to rise and set, gravity, why people make faces, ethical questions about how to treat students at preschool that you don’t like, why some people beg for money instead of working, and a dozen other things that are surprisingly perceptive.
During these little chats I do my normal shtick of not giving straight answers to see if you’ll recognize it as absurd and call me on it. During the day you treat these absurd ideas as mildly amusing; in bed at night they become hilarious and you end up laughing out loud. I love listening to you laugh that way but your outbursts get me into trouble with you mom too, because now not only are you up too late but I’m making matters worse.
But I’ll keep doing it as long as you’ll allow me. I love our deep, funny, heart-to-heart chats. I’ll miss them when they stop.
- posted 554 days ago in Enjoyment &bull Memories &bull Parenting
…And a puzzle of the United States of America, if she lives there.
Globe first.
I had a globe when I was little. I think my grandparents gave it to us but maybe I have that wrong. Anyway, I used to find America on that globe. Then I’d find the USSR. (Those countries were where the nukes were going to land.) There was a feeling of awesomeness as I thought about this ball in my hands that was really hanging out in space. All those oceans and lands and mountains. Wow. Is that true? Do I really live on such a tiny, tiny, tiny part of the world? (Find the Chesapeake Bay on a globe, on the east coast of the USA. From the deck of a boat that bay goes on forever in every direction. From the vantage point of a globe, that bay isn’t as big as a pinky fingernail. And on some nondescript jaggy edge of that bay is my town; my home; and me.)
Tonight Cora is up late after Tina has tried to put her to bed and fallen asleep in the effort. Sitting on the couch looking thru her Kid’s Encyclopedia, she came across the word “night” with a picture of the Sun and the Earth, one side sunny and one side dark. She asked me about the picture and I grabbed her globe and then aimed our reading lamp right at it. By keeping her eye close to the Chesapeake Bay and looking at the lamp she was able to figure out which parts of the Earth’s rotation were sunrise, noon, and sunset. Smart fiveyearold.
So, I like globes.
I also like puzzles of the United States. I can remember being elementary-school-age and sitting in our dining room putting together my big USA States puzzle. That’s how I learned where all the states were. Because I learned it from a puzzle I didn’t just learn the shape of each state, but I also learned which states bordered it. And best of all, that puzzle served as a mnemonic device when we’d have a geography test in school, because the name or shape of any state brought to mind all the names and shapes of the states around it.
I bought the girls a U. States of A. puzzle at the toy store today. We’re going to tag it up with markers as they visit each state. We’re going to learn to put that puzzle together forward or backward, blindfolded, in the dark, in pain, under distraction, as Republicans and Democrats argue in the background about the will of the American People while voting to give each other raises and legal immunity, while Rush Limbaugh and NPR gnash each other to gristle for the benefit of anyone in earshot.
- posted 556 days ago in Enjoyment &bull Family &bull Memories &bull Parenting
Well kids, today I spent a fair amount of time on the phone and email trying to coordinate help for a woman—let’s call her Maria—as she deals with the collapse of her marriage, finances, and security. I spent time away from you to make my calls; I put you in front of the TV so I could write my emails; I left you with your grandmother so I could plan out the details. I want to explain why I made that choice: the choice to dedicate my time to Maria and her kids instead of to my own children.
Before I go on let me just say that our family is blessed to have a steady income, healthy children, and a mommy and daddy with an ongoing love for each other. Maria currently has none of those.
Maria has so many problems that she’s in despair. She and her husband are going through a divorce, her young daughter is suffering potentially life-threatening health problems, and her loss of income due to the divorce and the illness has put her behind on every debt she owes. But Maria’s most imminent problem is personal safety for her family. She has reason to believe that someone has a key to her home and has been getting into her house when she’s not there. Obviously that means that they could get in when she is there too. Only part of Maria’s request today was financial: I need help with this bill before it comes due. The other part of her request was about her family being in danger.
Sometimes, handling requests on the Mercy Committee at church, there is a certain amount of comfort provided by the committee process. All the time, people have sad stories about why they need help and I often end up feeling torn, thinking that maybe I should help them right there, right out of my own pocket, and that if I don’t help then maybe I’m not compassionate. But with a committee process I can take a step back from the immediacy of this other person’s problems.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! I’m just figuring out the depth of your needs. Then I’ll present your request to The Committee and The Committee will decide whether to help you or not. I’m on your side, but I’m not the guy with the power. I’ll just wait with you to see if The Committee decides to help.”
But today, with a terrified woman and her children in danger, I couldn’t wait for The Committee. I knew immediately that The Creator had just fingered me as the guy who should be made aware of this terrified woman’s need, and that I was the one to do something about it.
So that’s my answer. I didn’t help Maria today because I’m on The Committee, I helped her because she brought her problem to me, and suddenly I knew that I was on the Jericho road passing a battered stranger in need of help. What do you do?
- posted 557 days ago in Inner Life &bull Parenting &bull Religion
Kids, I don’t know if you’ll ever own a Rubik’s Cube but I’m certain you’ll always be able to find one if you want to take a look. The Rubik’s Cube was a puzzle from my childhood that you had to solve by twisting a cube this way and that to try to get patterns of colors to line up. At times lately I feel like I’m trying to solve that puzzle as I twist my arms, legs, and torso to find a way to stand up from my bed without hurting my back.
I’m a week out from my surgery now. A surgeon removed from my back enough skin and tumor and muscle to leave a hole about an inch deep and about three inches in diameter. That wound hurts when I use the muscles that were involved or when I twist or stretch my back in a way that puts pressure on the wound. As you can imagine, trying to go from lying flat to standing up without using your arms or back is impossible. To keep the pain to a minimum I end up moving from position to position to try to navigate the trip up with a minimum of discomfort.
I thought about the Rubik’s Cube analogy as I was trying to get out of Cora’s bed tonight after laying down with her to help her sleep. Roll from my side to my back. Ow! Roll onto my side again and push my torso upward with my left arm. Ow! but not as bad. Then twist my hips so my butt’s flat on the bed. Okay. Then use my abs to raise my whole torso up to sitting position.
I’ve been doing this all week and by now I’ve worked out most of the moves I need.
- posted 558 days ago in Cancer &bull Memories
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