Our pal Lora Lynn left a clever comment in yesterday’s birthday post. With eight eleven fourteen four six kids a largish family of her own to mother, it cracks me up that she remembered this little sliver of nuttiness from our crew.
Have a look at this post of mine from last year to see what she’s talking about.
His eyes are ocean blue, just like his mama’s.
His hair is yellow, with a cowlick in front.
Freckles dot his nose and cheeks.
His eyelashes seem to be a mile long.
His teeth are big and boyish. His tongue pushes out from behind them as he lisps some of his words.
His legs are spotted with black and blue.
He looks and feels sturdy.
He’s loud. He’s silly. He’s physical.
He’s sweet. He’s social. He’s smart.
He’s my son.
And he’s four today! Happy Birthday!
Our friend Jill, in addition to being an all-around cool person, has mad photography skillz. She came by earlier this week to take our baby’s three-month photos.
Here’s my favorite:
I think I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I’m leading a Sunday School class at my church.
We just finished up a look at the Book of Proverbs, which is the collected wisdom of Solomon. Reading through Proverbs, I noticed that the story was delivered as a father giving instruction to his son.
I pictured a man at a dinner table or on a walk, telling his son how he’s supposed to live. And I found the crotchety old man that lives inside of me saying, “Now you listen up, you whippersnapper!” to the kid.
So often we put all the focus on the kids to make good choices and absorb the right lessons.
But I realized I need to be looking at the dad in these stories, too.
And what the dad is doing is what I need to be doing with my kids: teaching, speaking, leading.
There’s a picture in my head of what it looks like to teach my kids the difference between wrong and right, about respecting people, and about serving each other. My kids are always older in that picture. That picture is always taken at some point in the future.
“Of course I’ll teach them all the things they need to know to be good people,” I think. “Someday.”
I’m coming at all of this with the mindset that the diet starts Monday.
So this post is just a reminder for myself today that those beautiful little blue eyes are watching and listening and soaking it all up now. They see it and feel it when I pour into them. They know it when I’m covering them with my time and attention. They’re blessed by my prayers.
They want to be led, fed and directed.
Yes, my kids need to listen. But I need to teach.
Occasionally I have an early meeting that takes me past an apartment building for low-income old folks and a convenience store. For some reason, I always notice the signs for off-brand cigarettes at the convenience store.
This morning, as I read the sign for a special on Tahoe brand cigarettes, I thought it might be fun to be one of the marketing people who dreams up the brand names for those off-brands.
So today I’ve been doing some free work for Big Tobacco. If I had a huge tobacco company, here’s what I might call some of my second, third, and fourth tier brands:
BLACK EYE
STAB
JUKEBOX
SCUFFED BOOT
HARD TIME
BUZZSAW
GHOST TOWN
BULLWHIP
OLE GLORY
ROAD RASH
SIXSHOOTER
Your turn. What would you add to the list?
I think I slept for an hour last night.
It was actually more than that, but it felt like just an hour. I’ve got a cold, so I took some Sudafed before dinner and then I had some tea with dinner which was probably caffeinated. Then there’s the b-a-b-y that lives with us. She woke up for a meal, so I had to hop up and change her diaper.
You put it all together and it’s not the right recipe for sleep.
Most nights, like any normal person, I yearn for sleep. If I need to get up to change a diaper or check on one of the other kids, I try to resolve whatever it is as fast as I can so I can just get back in bed as fast as I can.
Other nights, I’m okay with being awake.
The first time in my life that I ever consistently had trouble sleeping was when Mary Craig was pregnant with our first child.
I’ll just be really honest and tell you that I freaked out during that pregnancy. And, to a lesser extent, during the others. But during that first pregnancy was when I realized that I was going to have to own my life. Not only that, but I was about to become the owner – the steward, really – of someone else’s life.
Night after night, I’d go from dead asleep to wide awake. That’s really frustrating when you feel entitled to a full night’s sleep. After a few nights, I started getting out of bed so that I could at least do something constructive with that time.
At some point during that pregnancy – Father’s Day, I think – MC bought me a really cool leather journal. I still have it. It has this soft, oily cover and nice lined pages. It looks like something Indiana Jones would carry.
I quit writing in it because the oil smells really bad and I’m a lefty, which makes it almost impossible to write in that kind of notebook. But even though I don’t write in it anymore, it’s still one of my favorite things MC has given me.
In the middle of the night, wide awake, I would open that notebook and write to my unborn child. Then I’d open my Bible and read. Then I’d write more. Read more. You get the idea.
Now buckle up, because here’s the part where I start to sound like a fruit loop. I came to realize that those hours of insomnia didn’t happen because I was stressed or anxious. In those hours, I clearly felt the presence of God. I knew that He was waking me up so that He could be alone with me.
Every now and then my son will wake up crying in the middle of the night. I rush up to his room and make sure he’s okay and ask him what’s wrong.
“I just want you,” he’ll answer. Feeling the weight and heat of his father in the bed beside him, he’ll roll over and fall back asleep.
That’s really all that happened when MC was pregnant the first time. I was there and He was there. Somehow that fixed it. Not necessarily with answers, but with peace.
Ever since, I’ve known that God will wake me up from time to time to be with me. When He does, I just go with it.
Last night felt that way.
That’s not to say I’m not wiped out this morning. I’ve had enough coffee to kill a lesser man and I’m supposed to go to a catered luncheon, which almost guarantees I’ll need to crawl under my desk George Costanza-style this afternoon.
But it’s a “good” tired, if there is such a thing.
I’m not a huge advocate for government intervention in anything. I just want to be left alone, and I think our government ought to leave most other people – except the ones I choose – alone.
There’s one big exception to my theory of hands-off government.
I think we need a Federal Bureau of ENOUGH.
As in, “Okay. No more. That’s ENOUGH.”
If I’ve noticed one major struggle in my adult life, it’s that we as Americans have a hard time knowing when we’ve had enough.
The Federal Bureau of ENOUGH would step in when there’s an obvious train wreck coming, but we seem to be doing nothing to stop it. Kinda like the FDIC swoops in right before a bank fails, the FBE would descend upon an emerging catastrophe to protect the public interest.
Here are a few ways this agency could have changed our lives:
ER would have ended when Dr. Green died.
There would only be one version of CSI. The Vegas one.
Nickelback would have released two songs, then cut their hair and bought some suits and opened an insurance agency.
Blockbuster would get three chances to sell you their deal du jour, then after that, they’d just take your money and give you a movie.
There would be two flavors of Gatorade. Green and orange.
You get the idea. Of course, this stuff cuts both ways. If the Federal Bureau of ENOUGH existed, this blog would have been shuttered in May 2007.
I say all of this because I think the FBE needs to assemble a team. For the Duggars. Baby 19. ENOUGH.
Okay, so if the Federal Bureau of ENOUGH existed, do you think they’d stay busy? What are the most urgent things they need to be tackling?
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