We welcomed baby Ida yesterday around 12:30 pm.
She looks just like her sister!
All concerned are doing well. Thanks be to God.
Into your hands, O God, we place your children. Support them in their successes and in their failures, in their joys and in their sorrows. As they grow in age, may they grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child, BCP
*William Blake
This article got me thinking about babies and our children and how frivolously we speak of them in and out of the womb.
Indeed, “there is clearly more going on than just a remarkable natural process. It is mysterious and miraculous that a creature would be able to reproduce itself.” Entirely new beings! As a grandmother I have relished watching my three grandchildren grow and change and progress. I paid attention to this with my own kids, but I was always so busy and distracted that I probably didn’t notice all that I should. A grandmother can focus more.
It is amazing to see Katie’s vocabulary expand and her ability to express herself increase daily. She is so similar to her mother and her aunt in looks and demeanor, and yet, she is her own little person.
Of course, our twins, born three months prematurely and spending three full months in the NICU, really are modern-day miracles. Even at a pound and a half, they were fearfully and wonderfully made. The fact that they are bright, healthy, normal kindergartners blows my mind every day.
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139:13-16)
The other day I quoted from an article where the author said that we live in an age marked by infantile ingratitude. Don’t fall into the trap of being ungrateful. Be grateful for your parents who bore you and to the God who created you. As Walt Whitman wrote, “As to me I know of nothing else but miracles.”
What’s the story, Morning Glory? What’s the word, Hummingbird?
Well, we’re all here, hanging out in flyover country.
Toasting with Margaritas at Club Taco.
Frolicking on the lawn. Life is good.
Today we’ll get the wading pool out and the wee cousins will come over. And in between we’ll get ready for our party tomorrow.
Have a great weekend! Make good choices.
This morning I am going to the airport to pick up daughter #2, DN and Katiebelle! They will be here for the weekend and will attend our 200th Birthday of Missouri Statehood party on Saturday. Also on Saturday is my DP’s second son’s re-scheduled wedding. How did this scheduling snafu happen you ask? Long story…but c’est la vie! This weekend is party central for both DPs.
This was an interesting article about raising children by Episcopalian Sam Bush. “God does not aim to quell our anxiety by offering us helpful tips or boosting our self-esteem.” Yes, but I do get tired of articles that go on about how hard everything is, including child-rearing. Everything is an excuse for anxiety. Of course, raising children is hard, especially in this iPhone-addicted age. But your children do not ultimately belong to you; they belong to God. Turn your worry and your cares over to Him. A lot of our modern problems are due to our trying to go it alone, with only “science” to help. Good luck with that. Be sure to watch the Parks and Recreation video–priceless Ron Swanson (who I have no doubt is a Calvinist.)
And I found this article to be quite compelling.
Happy birthday to Wendell Berry, who turns 87 today. It is also the birthday of Guy de Maupassant, the master of the short story. He wrote his own epitaph: “I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing,” which should be a warning to us all. A toast to them both!
“Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears.”
Robert Farrar Capon, “Between Noon and Three”
Kilroy was (t)here. (We missed you!)
I hope everyone had a lovely Easter weekend. Mine was exhausting! SO much social activity after weeks, months, a year of not much going on.
I was busy on Friday getting ready for Saturday.
Mimosas are a good start to any party.
Liz got emotional opening daughter #1’s handmade baby blankets. After a yummy lunch (chicken salad, of course) we sat outside in the sun and watched the wee babes frolic on the driveway. After her husband picked Liz up and daughter #3 went home with the babes, we went to pick up margaritas at Club Taco. We finished Ben Hur, which we had started the night before.
On Easter morning we got up early and went to the 8:00 am service at an actual church. It felt great to sit in a pew again and sing hymns. God-honoring worship with the Word of God faithfully preached and the Lord’s Supper celebrated was much appreciated. It will take awhile to get used to not kneeling and to drinking grape juice at communion, but I think I can manage.
When we got home, I made Episcopal Souffle (ironic, yes) and then the boy and his family came over. The babes opened their Easter baskets.
Daughter #1 gave the wee laddie a book on Porsches (estate sale find), which he opened to squeals of joy. He carried it around for the rest of the day.
We had a super fun egg hunt.
Once again we sat on the driveway in the glorious sun and watched the world bicycle/drive/stroll by. Two days of beautiful spring weather and a little social interaction can do wonders for one’s spirits.
And now it’s Monday. What the…
“Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
Eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh; ours.The same hinged thumbs and toes
The same valved heart
That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered
Out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose.Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.”— from John Updike’s Seven Stanzas at Easter
Spring is here and the Florida Room is open for business. I worked all day on Saturday, taking everything out of the room, cleaning it, cleaning everything, moving it all back. Then I moved all the plants in. Phew, was I tired when I finally finished.
I deserved some refreshment afterwards.
My friend Carla came over on Sunday for an inaugural SP21 visit to the Florida Room and we gabbed away, catching up–sans masks. All these little steps seem like a bigger deal these days, don’t you think?
The wee babes came over after that and frolicked outside. Running down the hill,
playing velcro catch,
driving the Cooper,
drawing the solar system on the driveway,
and so on. All the fun stuff. Pappy barbecued a feast of hamburgers and hotdogs. We had ice cream sandwiches for dessert.
And I have to say, after a work week full of rain and dark skies, there is nothing like sitting in a folding chair on the driveway in the sunshine watching the wee babes frolic.
Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.
Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
I found my Steiff animals packed away in the basement. Now what?
This weekend the wee laddie wanted to play with “Tiggy,” the Steiff tiger my father bought for me when I was born and which I had kept from my own children because they might harm him in some way. He went upstairs on a mission to find him, even though he had been told previously that Tiggy was off limits.
But I let the WL take “Tigey,” as he insists on calling him, down from his place of honor in my office. Daughter #1 said it was a good choice. Tiggy, she said, had no doubt been waiting 40 years for that Velveteen Rabbit moment.
“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’
‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.
‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’
‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’
‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
–Margery Williams
I am a great one for saying we should all use the good china and the linen napkins, so why are the Steiff animals different?
From snow on Sunday to gray skies and frosty winds earlier in the week to spring-like weather today, we are experiencing typical flyover weather patterns.
Our throwback photos remind us of those trips in bygone days to the Botanical Gardens when spring was in the air, but we still had to bundle up in winter coats.
And remember: No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.
Have a zen throwback Thursday!
I took this picture of Ollie (one of the boy’s cats) a couple of weeks ago. He and daughter #3 have three (yes, three) cats. They are cat people.
We had a cat once. His name was Marcellus, but we called him Cat.
He doesn’t look so tough in this photo, but he was a badass.
We got him because we were having an issue with mice at our old house. He took care of things swiftly and efficiently. He was a born killer. That is what cats do.
He also protected our home and children. He would sit up in the branches of a tree that overlooked our driveway and survey his territory.
Once a wayward black lab came trotting up the driveway while the kids (and our dog) played merrily inside the fenced yard. The cat waited until the dog was directly underneath him and then pounced on him from the tree limb. The poor dog never knew what hit him. Cat chased him away.
Once Cat brought home our corgi, who had gotten out. The dog, although cute, was no Lassie. I’m not sure he would have found his way home on his own. But before he had a chance to get really lost, the cat led him home. The cat and the dog got along fine, but there never was any question who was in charge.
As it turned out, I am quite allergic to cats and so we have never gotten another to replace our original Cat.
But then, he was kind of irreplaceable.
And this made me smile.
“He saw clearly how plain and simple – how narrow, even – it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one’s existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.” (Kenneth Graham, The Wind in the Willows)
Hope you are enjoying your countdown to Christmas! Try to slow it down and enjoy the simple things.
dual personalities 