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Lutheran friends (and anyone else interested), I encourage you to read this post by a pastor we know in Pittsburgh. Some good devotional practices have been mostly dropped in our churches because they’re deemed “too Catholic.” But we are free to, and Luther encourages us to,
and there are good reasons to continue these practices!
She’s getting around pretty well doing the “army-man” crawl. Also, we discovered that she laughs whenever you make a slurping noise! Yes!!
Oh, yeah — SHE IS STANDING UP IN HER CRIB AT DAY CARE! Just this week she started doing it. She pulls up all by herself. Tonight at home she pulled up on the coffee table until she was fully up on her knees so that she could grab a toy. I quickly had to move several sharp/expensive items off the coffee table!
(There are new photos, too; — check out the Photos link at the top of the page.)
Yesterday, a very interesting guy came to our door. His name is Oz (rhymes with “toes”), and he’s an art student from Israel, soon to transfer to U.T. He and some friends had tried selling their art in galleries, but the gallery’s cut was really high, so they decided to try selling door-to-door. How enterprising!
After looking through the paintings he had with him, Karianne, Kaeta and I decided that we really liked this one of a field of sunflowers. Oz told us the scene was painted in Tuscany.
It’s a very nice oil painting, about 3ft. by 2ft., and I think we got a good deal. Kaeta seemed really interested in the painting, and her room is yellow and has a blank wall, so that’s where it’s going!
Of course, I totally neglected to ask the name of the painter or the painting, so if she becomes famous we’ll never know! Oh, well, we like it for its intrinsic value, and isn’t that enough?
My baby girl will be seven months old on Tuesday. I’m very baffled by this because I swear she was only born three weeks ago. I just can’t believe how fast the time has gone. Yet at the same time the past seven months have felt like a lifetime — of course! — Kaeta’s lifetime! And my lifetime of being a mommy. Things inevitably change when you become a parent. You hear people say after a few months they can’t even remember what life was like before they had a baby. Well there’s a reason people say that — it’s because it’s true! I can still kind of remember what life was like before Kaeta was born, but only as far back as the night we found out we were pregnant. Everything before that gets pretty blurry; I can still recall individual memories, but those moments really do seem like they happened a lifetime ago.
The thing I remember the most about my pregnancy is feeling like it would never end. Toward the end, of course, I did get pretty tired and big and itchy and just wanted it to be over…. But that’s not quite what I mean. Even though I knew in my head that the pregnancy would of course end, and then we would begin our new life with our brand new little baby, I never quite believed it until, well, I think I still have trouble believing it sometimes. But the thing that strikes me now is just how transitional my pregnancy was. Well duh, you say, but it just never occurred to me at the time. It was a time of preparation, a time for growth and change, a time for moving from our old life to the new…. it was a time of purpose.
But did I think about such things then? Hardly. I think my main concerns during pregnancy were more along the lines of what was I going to eat next, and what shoes will fit me today? Some of my friends worried about things like going into labor and what if my water breaks in public? I didn’t really worry about things like that because I didn’t honestly believe I had to; afterall, I was never going to have the baby.
I remember feeling the same way when I was engaged. I promise you 2002 was the longest year in history, I don’t care how many calendars you show me. It was because no matter how many days passed, December 21st was just as far off as it had ever been. It was this unattainable date that would never arrive. Then I remember waking up the morning of December 21, 2002, and thinking that it finally, FINALLY came! And suddenly it was over in the blink of an eye. And now I have this new life to live that I never even really thought about in more than a dreamy, happily-ever-after kind of way. And it never dawned on me how temporary that time was.
And I can think of so many more examples of this in my life. Like when I was 12 and counting the days until my 16th birthday (when my life would suddenly and completely fall into place), and when the year 2000 was still mere science fiction (by the way, where are all the shiny silver spacesuits we were all supposed to be wearing?). So you’d think I’d have learned by now. December 21st will come. The baby will be born.
And what’s more, someday she will be seven months old. But not just someday, TUESDAY she will be. And someday she’ll be wearing the clothes that we received at our baby showers and I thought, “The tag says 9 months. The baby doesn’t need this. Don’t these people know how small this baby will be?” And it suddenly occurs to me that even this time is transitional. Kaeta is growing and changing every day. She won’t be a baby forever. Such an obvious statement, I know, but you wouldn’t believe how easy it is to deny until I’m packing away another set of clothes that I know she will never, ever wear again. And I’m looking back at pictures of her from Halloween, remembering how that little leapard costume swallowed her whole. Then I see her friend Abigail getting ready to toddle away, leaving her parents chasing after her. And I can’t help but notice my almost-8-year-old nephew deal with his broken arm with the courage of a young man. Wasn’t it just year before last that he was Kaeta’s age??
Then I realize that life will always be like this. Life, as we know it, is temporary. It’s a transitional time; a time of preparation, a time of growth and change, moving from old to new… a time of purpose. With every day and every season God sanctifies me, showing me how things will always change, everything goes from old to new and new to old; only the Word of God lasts forever. And we can too because of the salvation that was won for us on the cross. Because with the cross there is renewal. There is purpose. As hard as it is to believe, this life is merely a transition period.
I made a bookplate! I don’t know why, I just decided I wanted to. The woodcut is by Albrecht Durer, the Reformation-era artist who also painted some famous praying hands you may have seen.
I just liked the phrase “Ex Libris Rhinoceros” — it sounds like a band name or something. And I imagine a rhinoceros’s library would be quite similar to mine. Anyway, if you borrow a book from me, you may find this on the inside cover!
This week I went to the dentist and had a panel taken. Nothing says “I live in a dystopian dreamworld” like having clamps hold your head still while you bite down on a hunk of plastic and big white rectangles rotate around your head, shooting your skull full of x-rays.
Anyway, I went to the dentist because my gums are really sore at the back right side of my mouth. This tooth is the problem:
It’s the first of my wisdom teeth to come in. The dentist said I should get them taken out, so I guess I’ll do that.
One cool thing is that when Kaeta’s teeth start coming in and she’s uncomfortable, I’ll be able to sympathize, since I’ll know just what it feels like!
Here is a video demonstrating an easy way to peel the skin off of a potato. (Warning: the video is all in loud, exuberant Japanese.) A few nights ago, I gave this a try.
First, you make a thin cut around the center of your potato. Then, you put it in boiling water:
I left it in there for about 10 minutes. Next, you pull the potato out and stick it in ice cold water:
Wait about 10 seconds, then pick up the potato and squeeze the skin off. Well, that’s the idea, at least. Apparently, the Japanese are more skilled at this step than I am — for me, the skin came off easily, but in about 20 little pieces. Also, I sloshed water all over the counter and floor. But it did work, sort of:
It was fun to try!
Liturgically speaking, we are still celebrating Easter!
We had a pretty big hail storm pass right over our house for 10-15 minutes today around 5:15pm. Here’s some video of the hail in our front and back yards:
Hard to tell from this picture, but it dinged up the Honda pretty well!
Around 9:30pm we had another storm pass by, so I tried to take pictures of the lightning. Here are my best attempts:
Pretty exciting!
