Miranda at the pool!

We joined our friends Weslie & Ben and Rebecca & Hanna at Southland pool on Wednesday. It was great! (As evidenced by the happy face below.) Miranda really likes the water and tried to take off several times, which resulted in several partial and one total submersion. (Does anyone else remember how water burns when you get it in your nasal cavity? I do!!!) Overall we had a ball.
This is fun, Mom -- cold, but fun!

Miranda and Ben trying out their pool legs.

Rebecca and Hanna.

Expressing affection through the "Face Smash." (Miranda returned the favor.)

Why does Mom get a cool straw hat, and mine just makes me look like Gilligan?? (See previous photos.)

Stop snuggling me, Mom, I'm trying to check out the ladies on the waterslide.

Maybe the hat works better on its own...

Over the hills and through the woods...

...to PAPAfest we go! Miranda and I are headed down to Tennessee for PAPAfest tomorrow morning. (Billy and John, and about a dozen others from our community, will follow on Friday.) This will be a great weekend -- full of fun, conversation, and fire-eating. I've never camped with Miranda (especially in the heat) so hopefully all will go well. I'll bring updates on Monday.

We also had a good time at the baby shower for Anne Rust, owner of Baby Moon (where I did my prenatal and baby yoga), who just adopted a precious baby girl. I love showers!

Have a great weekend!

Could this happen to you?

Note to self: Monitor Miranda closely during all trips to museums and art galleries, at least until she's weaned.

Rocking and reading

We've been having some very rough naptimes at our house lately. Miranda has suddenly decided that she'll only nap if someone is holding her in the rocker. Place her in her crib and she stands and yells and crawls around and screams... for over an hour if we let her go that long. It's pretty crazy.

So, on the days when I just can't fight that battle for that long, I get a glass of water and a good book, and gather up my girl and rock her while she sleeps. I'll read and just look at her sweet sleeping face. It's actually one of my favorite times of the day, after I've submitted to it. Billy and I are not exactly of the same mind about this situation, but we're doing the best we can.

On the way to the rocker yesterday, I grabbed our copy of The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. It's an amazing story about sheltering Jews in WWII Holland, and I'm not sure I've ever read it in its entirety. And I started to wonder, How did this book find its way into our house? Why did I get this in the first place? And I realized that I first read it (parts of it, anyway) as a child in Lubbock. There must have been a copy at my parents' house when I was young -- certainly before junior high. I started thinking about some of the books that I read (or began to read) during that time:

• Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
• Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins
• The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

I'm not sure that I fully understood any of these books at the time, but I had enough of a connection to want to return to them later in life. And I think I understood enough to be impacted by them, to be introduced to the themes of intelligence and human worth, and racism, and genocide, and spirituality, and optimism and inner healing. They sank roots into my heart and mind.

So, here's a big shout out to my parents, who had the good sense to fill their home with good books for us to discover. And here's hoping that the same thing happens with our little non-napping scrunchie.

Scrunchie and Daddy

What I saw yesterday morning when I left for the library...



Seeking connection with her Daddy.



What I saw this morning when I left for the library...



How does she sleep all folded over like this???


My two sweeties.

Check out the ashram

I did a couple of posts on our community's blog, the ashram, about some folks that were visiting this week on their way to Ichthus. They are the Psalters and they're great folks. If anyone happens to be going to Ichthus this weekend, check them out tomorrow morning (that's Friday) on the Edge stage at 10:45 AM.

The virtues of chicory

[I'm on a blogging roll today..]

After my two trips to Texas last month, I realized how much I like about Texas. This is another post entirely, which I'll do later.

Having said that, I also realized that I love being out East. The spring brings blooming fruit trees and clusters of daffodils along the roads, and the fall has the gorgeous arrays of changing leaves. It's breathtaking.

Summer also has lots of stuff in bloom, many things which wouldn't grow in my arid hometown of Lubbock unless you spent the kids' inheritance on irrigation. I especially enjoy the June-blooming daylilies under our bedroom window. But I was thinking today about the summer arrival that I most anticipate -- the sudden bouquets of chicory in almost every corner of the city.
Chicory is really beautiful. It has sky-blue flowers that open every day. Its hardy, woody stems grow in nice clusters for good visual effect. And it seems to appear, without fail, just about everywhere. It grows alongside telephone poles, in vacant lots, and in cracks of sidewalk. It's quite the survivor. During a recent city meeting on planting flowers to beautify Lexington for the Equestrian Games, someone stressed the need to plant flowers which would thrive without constant attention, exposed to exhaust fumes and choking dust. I wanted to nominate chicory.

Interestingly, it doesn't do well as a cut flower. Try to bring it home for the vase on your counter, and it just wilts. It needs to be connected to its context, to the stems, to the soil. It wants to stay where it was planted.

There may be some lessons here for the Church. We've become quite adept at planting and nurturing beautiful seeds, which smell nice and undoubtedly bring beauty and grace into the world. The trouble is, so often they require too much work, attention, and care, whch could be going to other things. We need to take our cue, not from dainty blossoms that wilt under the baking sun or wither in the slighest drought, but from this hardy and intrepid pioneer. The Church needs no more hothouse flowers; what it (and the world) needs is bunches of chicory.

Mother of the Year???

OK, just in case you were wondering if I was in competition for your award... I'm not.

Monday night, I left an extra strength Tylenol on the bed, which she swallowed very adeptly. My quick-thinking husband called a friend and then called poison control, who assured him that one wouldn't hurt. (Although that teething fever will be history.)

Tuesday morning, after a very sleepy nursing session, I thought, "I need to roll her over to the middle of the bed. I need to... zzzzzz." Yes, I was awakened by the thud of a small, scrunchy body hitting the floor, followed by a sleepy but increasingly wide-awake wailing. After a few minutes of crying and a few minutes of nursing, all was well.

Yikes. I shouldn't make mistakes like this. Sure, everything is OK, but it still isn't good. So, is anyone else out there doing stuff like this? Tell me your stories and make me feel better (or just make me laugh, which works just as well!)

More random pics

Here are some other fun pictures of Miranda. I love the camera phone.

Billy took this one. (It's a little grainy because I enlarged it.) Apparently she was crawling by, stopped, and just popped in the paci. Billy titled it, "Minister to Thyself."





Miranda, Miranda... soy sauce is a condiment, not a beverage. But we appreciate your early attraction to Japanese food.

This is one of our favorite toys. It's a little house front with a door that opens. She loves to crawl up to the door and FLING it open, then crawl through to the forbidden books and whatnots behind it. Guess when I chose a barrier to the bookcase, I shouldn't have chosen one with a door.



It's never too early to limber up. Although, she can take her foot and scratch the back of her head with it, usually while nursing. (Does this somehow increase the flexibility coefficient?)

Some random pics of Miranda, long overdue

Am I happy?






You bet I'm happy!!

Why am I happy? Ummm... not sure.

$7000 apiece...

Ok, I'm as big a sports fan as the next person (unless the next person is my husband during UK basketball season), but this is pretty surreal. Or maybe my saying that just reveals my naivete. Anyway, the big sports news story this week is that uber-pitcher Roger Clemens is coming back from retirement, in honor of his late mother and his son, etc etc.

What struck me is the deal he made -- a reported $22 million for the rest of the season. Now, after doing the math (how many games left in the season, how many starts) and making an assumption of 100 pitches per game, Clemens will be earning approximately $7000 per pitch. Strikes, and balls, and wild pitches; homers and aces. Whether he gives up a grand slam or makes the batter look stupid, he still gets that $7000. Granted, he's worked really hard to become a virtuoso, but that's still pretty good compensation.

Now, as I consider my life and the faithful lives of my friends and family, I begin to wonder what else should be valued at $7000 per occurrence. Here a few things that come to mind:

• making my little girl laugh
• rocking my little girl back to sleep when she wakes up scared and lonely
• feeding someone who is really hungry -- Miranda, Billy, John, a stranger, the gold finches in the yard, or even myself
• John vacuuming our house for 30 minutes "because Miranda plays on the floor"
• someone letting you have the last grocery cart when your little girl is crying
• planting something in the ground and doing what you can to help it grow
• getting barbeque sauce in your eyebrows because it's just that good
• Miranda standing up by herself
• someone taking the time to chat with someone who is lonely
• my family driving and bringing diapers, wipes, tub and booster seat, etc to a vacation instead of flying so that Billy and I can travel easier
• someone letting you into traffic
• my family calling to check on how Miranda is doing and singing to her over the phone
• taking the time to read a really good book, and really reflecting on it
• telling someone you love "I really love you"

$7000? $70,000? $7,000,000?