Something I've documented here is that my transition to mom-life has been rocky. But in a recent conversation with a new mom, I realized how far along I've come. I see my children as treasure, not stumbled-acrossed treasure, but hunted treasure.
The kids are now 4 and 2 and I'd say it took three years to come to this. I think a lot of it was sleep deprivation. We spent most of those first three years crazy tired. Another part of it was the radical shift for me from academic life to home life. And another piece was the developmental stage my kids were at.
At their current age, my kids are able to express themselves; their wants, needs, their highs and their lows. With practice, I'm better at listening, but they have also grown into better communicating. They are becoming their own persons with their own personalities which are distinct and different.
They are so much more independent. I have to make excuses to pick them up because their fine on their own two feet. Fine and FAST. They can and do find things to amuse themselves and for extended periods of time. And they can be more or less trusted not to kill themselves. They have the sensibility that outlets are not for play, that little pieces shouldn't go in the mouth, running in the street is a bad idea -- what a relief.
The bickering they get into drives me around the bend, but I can empathize. I sure did a lot of fighting with my own siblings in my day.
Both of them also had minor but significant health scares in their first couple years. Significant in that these issues had to be attended to. Minor in that we weren't dealing with cancer or something more nebulous requiring loads of doctor and therapist visits. So on this side of things where we have their health sorted out and are adjusted to their various food restrictions, wow are they precious to us. Wow are we grateful for good health.
We have two healthy children who run around and do kid things, who marvel at the world, play with passion, cry with greater passion, who fight and hug and kiss and make up, who jump up and down in excitement about anticipated wonders like grandma and grandpa visiting and waffles and going to the park.
People talk about loving their spouse more after many years together, but somehow mothers are supposed to fall in love with their child the first moment the lay eyes on them. I'm sure it happens for some, but for me, I am much more able to cherish my kids today than when I got them. They are treasure to us.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Friday, December 6, 2013
Oh Come let us Adore Him
We have started singing Christmas Carols at church! I love it!
This week as we sang Oh Come Let us Adore Him, I thought about the "three wise men", aka rich foreigners of indeterminate number on a long trip to a backwater Roman province, and what it might have been like for them to visit toddler Jesus and bow to him.
Venerating a toddler is basically unfathomable for me. I can only grasp at it. I know that in Buddhism sometimes they have young deities. And I imagine that in hereditary monarchies people get used to the occasional young monarch or heir apparent. But I'm a Protestant American. If anything it is taboo to venerate people for anything other than their accomplishments. There's a vague notion of "First Families" but it's got a vague tint of unAmericanness about it.
But there you go. In Matthew chapter two, it says these "Magi" end up at Jesus' house, bow down to him, and present him gifts. I wonder what could have moved them to do that? It says they saw a "star when it rose" and they interpreted that as the birth of a new king of the Jews. First, how? and second, how does that lead them to conclude that what they need to do is take a long journey to find this new king and worship him which is what the text says they do? That's a lot of conviction followed by spending, the money, time and effort. I wonder what their servants thought about this whole hare-brained adventure?
Then I wonder what these guys thought when they discovered the new king wasn't going to be found in a palace but probably the village of Bethlehem? Like, is that ok? Do they question their quest at this point? A king? but not in the palace? (And I notice that Herod puts two and two together really quick and decides this new king is the "promised Messiah". This does not stop him from ordering the deaths of a whole bunch of toddlers in the hopes of getting this aforementioned Messiah dead.) But back to the Magi, in any event, they move on from the palace and a star leads them to Mary and Jesus.
As far as the text go, we don't know that Mary and Joseph had any special social status. But in the Magi go, into the house, and they bow down. Wild. Toddler boys don't look like much. Wide-eyed, with round bellies and stumping legs, they kind of hoover up life innocently. They are not worship material. They are barely contained chaos, don't-touch-that, don't-eat-that kinds of beings. Maybe toddler Jesus was special and glowed or something. But I like to believe that these foreigners simply had a God-given revelation that this kid was special and had special meaning for the world. In any event, however, they felt about the events that led up to that recorded meeting, they worshiped, and Jesus even as toddler deserved that worship.
As I look ahead to 2014, I am exploring whether to commit my time to a couple new projects. My thing with projects that involve people is that I like metrics but I believe in the value of people. So left to my instincts, I will pursue outcomes over individuals. But as I think about venerating a teething, drooling, pooping toddler, I'm reminded that just as Jesus deserved worship before he "accomplished" anything, that if I take on a project my first goal is not to fulfill metrics. Instead I need to live as a human being treating others as other human beings who have a Jesus-derived worth.
This week as we sang Oh Come Let us Adore Him, I thought about the "three wise men", aka rich foreigners of indeterminate number on a long trip to a backwater Roman province, and what it might have been like for them to visit toddler Jesus and bow to him.
Venerating a toddler is basically unfathomable for me. I can only grasp at it. I know that in Buddhism sometimes they have young deities. And I imagine that in hereditary monarchies people get used to the occasional young monarch or heir apparent. But I'm a Protestant American. If anything it is taboo to venerate people for anything other than their accomplishments. There's a vague notion of "First Families" but it's got a vague tint of unAmericanness about it.
But there you go. In Matthew chapter two, it says these "Magi" end up at Jesus' house, bow down to him, and present him gifts. I wonder what could have moved them to do that? It says they saw a "star when it rose" and they interpreted that as the birth of a new king of the Jews. First, how? and second, how does that lead them to conclude that what they need to do is take a long journey to find this new king and worship him which is what the text says they do? That's a lot of conviction followed by spending, the money, time and effort. I wonder what their servants thought about this whole hare-brained adventure?
Then I wonder what these guys thought when they discovered the new king wasn't going to be found in a palace but probably the village of Bethlehem? Like, is that ok? Do they question their quest at this point? A king? but not in the palace? (And I notice that Herod puts two and two together really quick and decides this new king is the "promised Messiah". This does not stop him from ordering the deaths of a whole bunch of toddlers in the hopes of getting this aforementioned Messiah dead.) But back to the Magi, in any event, they move on from the palace and a star leads them to Mary and Jesus.
As far as the text go, we don't know that Mary and Joseph had any special social status. But in the Magi go, into the house, and they bow down. Wild. Toddler boys don't look like much. Wide-eyed, with round bellies and stumping legs, they kind of hoover up life innocently. They are not worship material. They are barely contained chaos, don't-touch-that, don't-eat-that kinds of beings. Maybe toddler Jesus was special and glowed or something. But I like to believe that these foreigners simply had a God-given revelation that this kid was special and had special meaning for the world. In any event, however, they felt about the events that led up to that recorded meeting, they worshiped, and Jesus even as toddler deserved that worship.
As I look ahead to 2014, I am exploring whether to commit my time to a couple new projects. My thing with projects that involve people is that I like metrics but I believe in the value of people. So left to my instincts, I will pursue outcomes over individuals. But as I think about venerating a teething, drooling, pooping toddler, I'm reminded that just as Jesus deserved worship before he "accomplished" anything, that if I take on a project my first goal is not to fulfill metrics. Instead I need to live as a human being treating others as other human beings who have a Jesus-derived worth.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Cool Tools of 2013
--Camelbak water bottles: I wish there were plain ones without the weird graphics, but after having my son shatter several cheap water bottles, this is the one that has survived. The nibs got shredded every time he teethed, but I found the replacement easy to order online at Amazon. Now that he has all his teeth, his nib has remained intact. Over the same amount of time, our older child only wore out 1 nib.
--Real pipe cleaners: These have cotten bristles with some stiffer plastic? ones too. Clean the gross crevasses of kid things very well. Particularly the aforementioned Camelbak nibs.
--Kitchen timer: I know I've praised the kitchen time in previous years for kitchen things, but now we have an owl shaped one for the kids. We sometimes dole out "toy time" when both kids want the same item. 5 minutes each, for example. All too frequently, the first kid doesn't even play with the toy for the full time allotted, but at least the screaming stops. Other times, we give the toy itself time out and neither kids can play with the toy for a bit. I love my timers.
--Emergent Task Planner: I occasionally follow David Seah's productivity blog and found this there. I printout a week's worth of pages on Sunday and line up my calendar for the week. The big win for this thing is that I use it to keep track of what I can do in the nooks and crannies of time I have.
--MyFitnessPal: This year I tried this and the LiveStrong food tracker. I ended up mostly using MyFitnessPal, but I can't say I have a strong feeling between the two. Generally speaking, I found food tracking to be useful for hitting my protein goals for the day. But then again, I like data.
--Sanitaire Vacuum: Can't remember if I blogged this one already, but it's an inexpensive industrial canister vacuum for hard surfaces and low pile carpet which describes the most trafficked parts of our house. Works great particularly for this great price point of under $100. Not super awesome on regular carpet, but we don't have that much of that and we have lots of kitchen/living room cruft. And it is stellar there. Easy to change out the bag and an add on HEPA filter is available which we use.
--Google Calendar Reminders: N taught me this year that events added to Google Calendar can be set up to send an email a certain amount of time before the event. I check my email more than gcal, so this helps me make sure I get certain things done each week like restarting the sourdough. We've also started to use this to make sure to do other things quarterly or semiannually like calling the HVAC people for an AC checkup or changing the air filter periodically.
--WorksheetWorks.com: Alorithmically creates new worksheets in many school subjects. L is only able to do the simplest ones, but she likes doing them, and it's simple enough to print them out. Nice if your kids likes to "play" school. Probably would also be good for elementary schoolers who need more practice on certain topics.
--Local Library: This is the best place to deal with children's books. Children's books are hit and miss in quality. The library is a first line of defense against terrible books. Even then, the library sometimes gets sucked into having bad books. Fortunately, it was a collective taxpayer burden, and you can return the offending book. On the downside, if your kid falls in love with a book, eventually after all the renewals are used up, you have to return the book or buy your own copy. Hopefully, in the next year, I'll be able to go to the library with the kids again. Currently, it's too much to manage two kids in the kids' book section.
--Real pipe cleaners: These have cotten bristles with some stiffer plastic? ones too. Clean the gross crevasses of kid things very well. Particularly the aforementioned Camelbak nibs.
--Kitchen timer: I know I've praised the kitchen time in previous years for kitchen things, but now we have an owl shaped one for the kids. We sometimes dole out "toy time" when both kids want the same item. 5 minutes each, for example. All too frequently, the first kid doesn't even play with the toy for the full time allotted, but at least the screaming stops. Other times, we give the toy itself time out and neither kids can play with the toy for a bit. I love my timers.
--Emergent Task Planner: I occasionally follow David Seah's productivity blog and found this there. I printout a week's worth of pages on Sunday and line up my calendar for the week. The big win for this thing is that I use it to keep track of what I can do in the nooks and crannies of time I have.
--MyFitnessPal: This year I tried this and the LiveStrong food tracker. I ended up mostly using MyFitnessPal, but I can't say I have a strong feeling between the two. Generally speaking, I found food tracking to be useful for hitting my protein goals for the day. But then again, I like data.
--Sanitaire Vacuum: Can't remember if I blogged this one already, but it's an inexpensive industrial canister vacuum for hard surfaces and low pile carpet which describes the most trafficked parts of our house. Works great particularly for this great price point of under $100. Not super awesome on regular carpet, but we don't have that much of that and we have lots of kitchen/living room cruft. And it is stellar there. Easy to change out the bag and an add on HEPA filter is available which we use.
--Google Calendar Reminders: N taught me this year that events added to Google Calendar can be set up to send an email a certain amount of time before the event. I check my email more than gcal, so this helps me make sure I get certain things done each week like restarting the sourdough. We've also started to use this to make sure to do other things quarterly or semiannually like calling the HVAC people for an AC checkup or changing the air filter periodically.
--WorksheetWorks.com: Alorithmically creates new worksheets in many school subjects. L is only able to do the simplest ones, but she likes doing them, and it's simple enough to print them out. Nice if your kids likes to "play" school. Probably would also be good for elementary schoolers who need more practice on certain topics.
--Local Library: This is the best place to deal with children's books. Children's books are hit and miss in quality. The library is a first line of defense against terrible books. Even then, the library sometimes gets sucked into having bad books. Fortunately, it was a collective taxpayer burden, and you can return the offending book. On the downside, if your kid falls in love with a book, eventually after all the renewals are used up, you have to return the book or buy your own copy. Hopefully, in the next year, I'll be able to go to the library with the kids again. Currently, it's too much to manage two kids in the kids' book section.
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