Sniff

So. Brother is 18 lbs 3 oz and 25.25 inches long as of today's doctor's appointment, and Miss Boo is 22 lbs, 33.5 inches long.

And Brother also apparently has a giant head at 47 centimeters. He was off the growth chart, though apparently not in a need-to-worry-about-giantism sort of way.

No wonder he doesn't fit into any of his hats anymore. Bighead.

Brother got shots, and the Husband, Miss Boo, and I all got the H1N1 vaccine that you have to sniff.

May I just say, it makes you need to keep on sniffing. Bleah. Stupid Hiney* flu.

Cheers,

Breanna

*So this lady at church one day asked Baba about his recent heavy cold-- if he had the "hiney" flu. I guess H1N1, if you use a sans-serif font, does look a little like H-I-N-I. A little.

We're Back

Not from outer space--just from a bout of the Husband having some mysterious illness which, I think, is called "Baby-Induced Insomnia Flu". Brother doesn't care...
...he's stoned on "baby-maulk", as Miss Boo calls it.

Can you tell Pat-pat is not supposed to sit on HER couch?

But then, Pat-pat has no proper respect for royalty.

Neither does the baby-maulk addict.

Cheers,

Breanna

Daddy & Boy

...it's like they share DNA or something.

Cheers,

Breanna

Tired of Your Old Dishes?

Have we got a solution for you! Try the...
Toddler Tray! Separate compartments for your duckies, "maulsh", fishies, apple, and ball, with optional compartments for crayons and animal cookies.
Amaze your brother!
Hours of fun, sorting and organizing your food! If you're clever about it, Mama won't even be able to tell you're not eating!
Make your siblings so jealous they're drooling!

On a completely unrelated note, I've been watching VH1 Classic and composing literal videos in my head. Here's one to make your Friday a bit shorter.




Cheers!

Breanna

Finally Pitchas!

We've been alive, but Mama's been working like a fool on short stories that may, in the end, bring as much as $25. So much for the divine discontent of the author.
Updowns are handy for all sorts of uses.

Brother sleeping, when Miss Boo doesn't use the updown to sneak up tp the pack n' play, grab one side, and yell "WAKE UP BRUZZA! WAKEUP BRUZZA!" Because, of course, she wants him to smile at her.

I wish a drive-by library worked for grownups. (That's the stack to a model train she's holding up to her mouth.)

I don't have much else to tell, except that Miss Boo has taken to honking back whenever we hear the whistle of a train, and all birds that are not ducks, chickens, or robins are now officially "goose" in Boovian.

It's not that we haven't been busy, but how many times can you read abou someone else's apples and diapers.

Cheers,

Breanna

It would be funny if it wasn't true

...but I haven't posted, ironically, because I've been writing. I will rectify soon. :)

Cheers,

Breanna

John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt!

President Obama has won a Nobel Peace Prize.

I got an envelope in the mail the other day instructing me that the Nobel committee would be in my neighborhood awarding FABULOUS prizes, that I could already be a winner, and to watch for the Prize Patrol van. They suggested I check out some of the wonderful offers included with the notification, although buying magazines wouldn't help me win the Peace Prize.

I knew they were lying. I bet he bought all kinds of magazines. Cheater.

Cheers,

Breanna

Well, They Didn't Know it Was Limoge

So we got satellite TV today, which I am writing about because the process was hilarious. First of all (this sounds like the beginning of a bad joke) one was from here and one was from New Jersey and had been living here for two years. (He volunteered this information upon seeing the Husband's Steelers blankie--hey, grown men in cold climates like blankies--and finding out that the Husband spent a few years in New Jersey until paroled at the age of nine.) They arrived just ahead of the Husband and were in the process of explaining to me the difference between coaxle 59 and coaxle 6 cable when he walked in.

Sat Guy: You thee (he had a lisp), if we hook up to the coakthle 59 cable, it'll jutht burn out and we'll have to come back in a week. We want to get thith done and get it done right. What we'll do ith put in coakthle thikth cable.

Husband walks in. Sat Guy repeats all this to the Husband. I've been nodding like a bobblehead the whole time and jiggling Brother, who is wide-eyed, and hoping that all this talk of coakthle won't wake up Mith--er, Miss Boo from her nap.

They thud around outside for awhile before finally waking Miss Boo with a drill that sounds like six banshees have been tied together and swung round with an elk bugle. They used the drill again in my living room, with Sat Guy 2 (not the one with the lisp) scattering shavings merrily around my just-vacuumed carpet.

Sat Guy 1 eventually had to leave to go rescue some other hapless Sat Guy 2, leaving OUR Sat Guy 2 to fumble around with the remote and directions and finally clean up his shavings with an extremely loud shopvac. (A dustbuster would have done it.)

However. At last he left after I picked up the remote and demonstrated that I already knew how to use it (better than he did) and we shooed him out the door. So now I have learned how to record things on the DVR, and I am watching Out of Africa and thinking I ought to go to bed.

This is what we get for being decadent. Hey-ho!

Cheers,

Breanna

Oh, And...

...Leila at "Like Mother, Like Daughter" (see sidebar) has this cool series on education. Here is an article she linked to. Hmm.

When I reflect that out of the 15 public schools in my district, 4 (4!) achieved accreditation this year--and when I reflect on exactly the low standards used to give accreditation--it makes me more glad than ever that, barring the miraculous, Miss Boo and Brother are going to school right at my own parentheses-overusing, long-division-hating knee.

(Overuse of parentheses: What will happen to the children who are supposed to go to these non-accredited schools? Will the schools close? Will the principles or teachers get fired? Will the children get vouchers for accredited private schools?

Are you jolly kidding?

The kids go to the crappy non-accredited schools, of course, and everyone in the all-powerful teacher's union keeps their jobs. Nobody enforces these things. Nobody even stays mad about them.)

Home education cannot be a bad decision. Miss Boo is, after all, the only one in her Sunday School class who knows the colors, not to mention she can count to ten with the niggling absence of 7 and can say the alphabet only leaving out E, V, and M.

Cheers,

Breanna

Today, Tomorrow, or the Next Day

A certain little girl who shall remain nameless (not me or Miss Boo or Aunt Kenny, though) used to pray that God wouldn't let the communists come today, tomorrow, or the next day. That way, you see, if she missed a day, she'd be covered.

My reaction to this story until this morning was always along the lines of, "oh, how cute" with an undercurrent of "children think such funny things about prayer". Which meant, I suppose, that I assumed that a prayer like that didn't do any good in something as big as holding back the communists.

This morning, as the Steve Green "Hide 'Em in Your Heart" CD that Miss Boo likes warbled "Let the little children come, let the little children come, let the little children come to me/For of such is the kingdom of heaven" it occurred to me that it's surely very arrogant to think children's prayers don't do anything. Given that the Lord told us over and over again to make ourselves like little children, it would be a better to assume that their prayers have lessons for us adults.

How do we know, after all, that the little girl praying for the communists not to come today, tomorrow, or the next day didn't hold them back?

Granted, some childrens's prayers are just cute. Like two nights ago, when I asked Miss Boo what we should thank Jesus for that night. As usual, she responded:

"Mama, Daddy, and Brother." We have to move on beyond this, so I said:

"And what else?"

"Dogs." This is also standard.

"Thank you Jesus, for dogs. And what else?"

"Pat-pat." Our dog isn't included in the general category, you see.

"Thank you, Jesus, for Pat-pat. And what else?"

This is the part of the nightime prayers that gets interesting, because she chooses things evidently at random to be thankful for. The dog had bacon grease poured over his food that morning and had been odiferous all day. She thought for a moment, then said:

"Pat-pat's stinky butt!"

I had a hard time keeping a straight face as we solemnly thanked the Lord for Pat-pat's stinky butt.

Cheers,

Breanna

Here's How We're Getting On

Recently my writer's circle had a polite but passionate debate over whether you should capitalize "their" in a title, as in "Bees: Their Lives and Habits". In case you're wondering, you should.

Baba & Grammy came up last week, and Baba carries magic nap-inducers in his beard. He's handy to have around.

Us in our Steelers gear and blankies (night game).

"Pitcha?"

"Oh, pitcha mama." (Mama then notices Miss Boo still has Mango Tango juice from breakfast on her face.)

Some of the harvest... one of the pumpkins is ceramic. Bet you can tell which.

We also picked:

1 5 gallon bucket of carrots

40 or so lbs of potatoes

20 lbs of tomatoes

20 lbs of turnips

4 dinner-plate sized heads of sunflower seeds

2 gallons of corn

4 measly beets...

...and we haven't even picked apples or parsnips yet. (The horror.)

Cheers,

Breanna

Pics Coming

..if the kids ever take a nap. We harvested the whole garden this weekend... yikes.

I will be back!

Breanna

Conspicuous Christianity

I found myself the other day referring to C.S. Lewis as "aggressively Christian". I've been thinking about that, and I don't think the phrase was correct. He wasn't a particularly aggressive Christian--in that "aggressive" has pejorative connotations--but he was definitely a conspicuous Christian. And I don't mean he had a fish on the bumper of his car. (Come to think of it, I don't know that he even owned a car.) Is conspicuous Christianity desirable?

This brings up two kinds of conspicuous Christians: the bumper-fish kind, and the do-all-things kind. They are usually, though not always, mutually exclusive.

The Bumper-Fish conspicuous Christian has, as you might guess, a "Jesus fish" on the bumper of their car. Their radio at work (which they have been asked to turn down) is tuned to the local Christian radio station. Probably not the one with sermons on it-- the one with cheap evangelical knockoffs of the secular music that was popular five years ago. They end their emails, under their signature, with quotes like "Let go and Let God". Even their work emails. They regularly write inarticulate but outraged letters to networks and congressmen, can be counted on to give a flustered statement to the local news, and they wear buttons at Christmas that say "Jesus is the Reason for the Season."

Am I a snide jerk, that I think this kind of conspicuous Christianity is sometimes undesirable? I hope not; I don't wish to make anyone act against their convictions. Rather, I want to challenge people who think that a fish on the bumper is sufficient witness to examine the rest of their conduct.

For instance: it's cliche, but if you have a fish on the bumper you'd best not break any traffic rules and be polite to a fault in parking lots. If you're going to play Christian music at your desk, you'd better be extra careful that your radio doesn't annoy anyone. (And no, your boss asking you to turn it down ISN'T persecution. He's your boss. He gets to decide what you can have on your desk and how loud it is--he's paying you to sit at the desk. It's really his desk.) If you're going to sign your emails with a Christian quote, 1) be sure they're not representing someone else, like the company you work for, as Christian and 2) make sure it's a good quote. "Let go and Let God" is so cute and so elderly that it registers with about the potency of "We'll leave the light on for you."

Which leads me to the Do-All-Things (as in, For the Glory of God) folks, of which I think Lewis was one. These people do not go out of their way to partake of alternative Christian culture, though they don't avoid it either. They read secular books, watch secular movies, and work in secular jobs, but they bring with them a clearly Christian mindset. Thus, for instance, they are not tricked into thinking adultery is all right by the brilliance of the writing in Out of Africa, and they can even trace the personal havoc it wreaks. As well, they don't go out of their way to label their things "CHRISTIAN" at work, but when asked to give an opinion on which worldviews differ, they'll quietly give a Christian opinion. Some of them may have fish on their bumpers; but I think most find that if you truly attempt to take every action from a Christian perspective, your oddity becomes apparent without any identifiers on your car. ("But...why aren't you moving in together with your fiancee? But...if you just didn't mention it, no one would know! But...everyone pads their time sheet. But... I know the bartender and I could get you in. But...but...")

You see why the Bumper-fish folks are so much more common? It's much easier to identify ourselves with branding than it is with behavior--whether the brand is the WWJD bracelet or the Hannah Montana sweatshirt--and we're much more comfortable simply displaying something than we are taking a difficult action.

The Church is not a brand. When we treat it like one, we are treading very close to sacrilege.

Something to think about, eh?

Cheers,

Breanna