Friday Flashback: Bowlerama

Today on Friday Flashback, we zip alllll the way back to Tuesday, upon which I experienced one of the triumphs of my adult life: finally winning Mystery Oldie of the Day on the radio.

With my mongoose-like reflexes I dialed in and correctly identified -- with merely a two-second clip ("for-ev-eerrrrr") to guide me -- "Truly, Madly, Deeply," by Savage Garden.

Which is an oldie now, apparently. It's a song that carries for me a truckload of emotional baggage, as it was released 15 years ago, when I was in the seventh grade. Every time I hear it I feel a little nauseated and sweaty and have flashbacks to junior high dances. And no, I don't remember all the words. But Tim does :) .

Anyway -- the prize for being the Mystery Oldie Super Sleuth was a gift certificate for the local bowling alley. Which brings us to: a flashback to yesterday, and Henry's Very First Bowling Trip.

It was awesome.

So have a truly, madly, deeply good weekend, Babblists.

Blessed are the Candymakers

Easter is over but the story continues --

This is from Jim LaPage's Word series, which is awesome.
Check it out by clicking here. 

It's one that's really meant to be told again and again, and in the past few weeks we told it before bedtime, in the bathtub, at the dinner table, in the car, because Henry asked, again and again.

We stumbled through it at first -- how to tell a story so intense and cosmic and weird to a little boy, how to give him some shred of understanding. What do you want a 3-year-old to get from the story of Easter? What do you want anyone to get?

Birth, life, teaching, death, resurrection. A narrative -- but to what end? The answer found me before I could overthink it -- the answer Jesus gave an expert in the Mosaic law when he asked for the greatest commandment: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind," and "Love your neighbor as yourself."

And so we told him, again and again: Jesus taught us to love God and to love other people. The whole story is about that.

I hope he spends some time on those ideas as he grows up, keeps them at the heart of the Easter story, wrestles with their meaning and their execution.

It's fascinating, though, to see how he processes it now, to see how that intense, cosmic, weird story comes out in the preschooler mind. He loves supervillains: What were the names of those guys who didn't like Jesus? He adores his friends: What did Jesus and his friends play together?

And this:

Me: "... and so he went around the land talking to people and teaching them and helping them."
Henry: "He helped them? What'd he do?"
Me: "If they were sick, he healed them. If they were hungry, he gave them food. If they were thirsty, he gave them something to drink."
Henry: "If there was time for dessert, he gave them some candy."

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Happy (perpetual) Easter.

Check out the rest of the series: Good Egg Hunting, Euaggelion, 49 Years of Easter Awesomeness, Ode to a Marshmallow Peep  

[Satur]day Flashback: A Weekend Away

Friday Flashback is coming to you on Saturday this week because we spent the weekend (our weekends always happen midweek) visiting various family members to the north. And a fabulous weekend it was!

The snow followed us around -- but it's March in Idaho, so that's not too strange -- but we stayed warm and dry and had good time with in-laws, cousins, and my maternal grandparents. (My other grandpa and grandma live up north too but have the flu -- so here's a feel-better shout out to them!)

Two days ago we spent the entire day goofing off with Grammy and Poppy. I spent eight years of my life living about three giant leaps from their house, but being farther away now has the advantage of making every visit to their house a special time.

Read and Respond

When I shuffle through my Facebook feed every day, I inevitably run into a post -- or three or ten -- that makes me want to slam my face on my desk.

Sometimes it's because I strongly disagree. Sometimes it's because I agree strongly but am frustrated with the way the thought was expressed. A few times lately it's because I've seen people I really like picking fights with each other, sometimes directly, sometimes with subtle, indirect jabs that are still so well-placed. (And yeah, sometimes it's also because I'm friends with my teenage cousins, and most of what they say is like a secret code to me, and that makes me feel old.)

Day after day, I keep running into these posts and news stories and ideas that make me want to respond, but the idea of responding makes me feel like a scared little rabbit with a too-small cage and a too-fast heartbeat. (Unless they're sleeping, I imagine that rabbits have a running commentary in their heads something along the lines of "Ohgoshohgoshohgoshohnoohcrapohgosh...")

Part of me feels like a wuss for never, or at least very rarely, responding. When I do, it's usually to request clarification, to make a joke, or to offer up something along the lines of "this is just my personal point of view, but ..."  Something very safe. Something couched in fluff. Something that keeps the little rabbit in the too-small cage because at least that's better than the too-big world.

Career Planning for Babies

In that silly part of my mind that thinks far, far too far into the future, I've created a nice little list of Careers I Hope My Boys Might Have.

Practicing for spacewalks

In no particular order:

1. Astronaut
2. Medical missionary
3. Professional baseball player (Seattle Mariners preferred)
4. Folk-rock singer/songwriter

If you think it's weird that I cultivate such a list, then get this: I also fret about what might happen should they actually become any of these things. Medical missionaries are often in harm's way! Professional baseball players are often jerks! Singer-songwriters often live in vans! Astronauts FREAKING GO TO OUTER SPACE! 


Et cetera.

We've been thinking a lot about careers in this family lately. Mostly because none of us (babies and otherwise) have them. Wished-for careers, maybe. Magical things called "career options" that our college degrees are supposed to give us. But like anyone who's done any job hunting in the past couple years knows, "options" is a pretty meaningless word. (That, and I just really like bumming around my house doing made-up things like "mothering" and "blogging" and "reading books for fun.")

I get a little down on careers sometimes. I like the quote "Careers are a twentieth-century invention, and I don't want one," even if I don't really dig the story it comes from (Into the Wild. Overrated.)  Why can't Americans be things like hunter-gatherers anymore? Tim would have made a great hunter-gatherer.

But you can't buy cars or houses or every Toy Story action figure known to man as a hunter-gatherer. Or as a stay-at-home parent, or a worker in a low-paying but enjoyable and easygoing job, or anything like that. Nooo, you've got to work your butt off, then work off the layers of muscle and bone beneath your butt. And if you don't, you're lazy, or a moocher, or unmotivated, or whatever -- no matter who you are otherwise.

I haven't solved the problem of work, or money, or rat-races, or any of that, and I don't suppose I will by the time my boys grow up, unfortunately.

I can't guarantee they'll be any of the things on my list, or any of the things on the wish-lists they'll have someday. I can't guarantee they'll like those jobs if they have them. I can't even guarantee they'll have jobs they like even a little bit at all. But I can start now telling them it doesn't matter.

If my kids want a career, great. But I don't want them to need one. I don't want a job to be what makes my babies happy someday. I want them to find their joy and peace and identity in God, in their families and friends, in their communities, in all the things they do that they're not paid for. I'd love it if they loved their jobs, but I don't ever want them to think their worth is in their career. My parents never put that expectation on me, and I'm thankful for it, especially on days when I start beating myself up over lack of big paychecks and important credentials.

Someday, when my boys are grown up and someone asks me "So what do your kids do?" I'd like to answer with something like, "Well, they spend a ton of time at home with their families, they have wonderful adventures wherever they go, they serve God and their neighbors, they build and create and explore."

(And then -- maybe -- I'd like to add, "on Mars.")

Amazing Beautiful Creatures

This is one of our all-time favorite Sesame Street clips. Henry's been especially into it lately, asking me to sing the Beautiful Creatures Alphabet instead of the usual song. At the end, he always adds in the little ululation (which I love, because it gives me an excuse to use the word "ululation.")

Ladysmith Black Mambazo always makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. When Henry was born my parents bought me a collection of world lullabies to play for him. In that first week, when I nursed all day and night and Henry never seemed to sleep, I listened to it over and over and over. This song was my favorite:

Be Still My Child (Album Version)

Friday Flashback: New glasses, old band nerds

Ohhh, week, you elusive little booger, where did you go? Here we are at Friday again. And almost the end of February!

Fridays are now Flashback Fridays at Tarababble, because I need some regular features, and I like alliteration.

I'm modeling the idea on a feature that lots of newspapers run, looking back at the headlines at certain points in the past. The idea is to dig up some fun stories otherwise lost to time (but not lost to Facebook Timeline!), and maybe get you reflecting a bit on points past, too. Let's hope it's fun, shall we?

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One Day Ago Today: I am the purchaser of new glasses! Present glasses have a nasty scratch and are missing most of an earpiece and also the world has become a little blurry through them, so it was time. I tried on all the Super Awesome Hip glasses and bought the least hip. My face just can't take hip. When I wear thick frames I look like I belong in a old yearbook. Not doing something awesome like A/V Club or ham radio, though. I'm that kid who wandered through the background of someone else's scene and has the hem of my pants tucked into my socks.

One Week Ago Today: Was ... a Friday ... aaaaand that's all I've got.

One Month Ago Today: Henry's third birthday was imminent. I spent most of the day painstakingly making handmade cupcakes in the shapes of Cars characters, inspired by a recipe I saw on Pinterest ... hahahahha, no. I did eat some frosting out of a can, though.

Chaos - Order - Entropy

Here, for no particular purpose but my own sanity and your entertainment (I hope), is a story about Friday:

Most people understand the concept of chaos – parents especially, since even the best-behaved children are by nature tiny chaos machines.

If you’d asked me Friday morning if I understood chaos, I may have answered yes, but more likely would have flung a screeching preschooler at you and fled.

Chaos Part 1: The Doctor’s Office

We arrive early. We have the first appointment of the day – no waiting, yay! Henry is giggly and charming, if slightly wiggly, as the nurse weighs and measures him. He balks at the blood pressure cuff, but no biggie. He’s distracted by a super-awesome dinosaur-truck book, so who has time for blood pressure? I notice his little hands trembling as we turn pages. I assume he is excited.

We wait. We play “I Spy” and “I’m Thinking of a Tasty Food” and I start getting cocky, hoping the doctor will walk in just as my barely-3-year-old is effortlessly pronouncing “stethoscope” or something. Someone does walk in, but it’s a nurse informing us that not only is the doctor late, no one knows where she is or when she’ll be back. Henry bolts behind the exam table when the door opens. I assume we are playing hide-and-seek.

Finally the Doc arrives. And Henry explodes.

Year Three

Well, here we are. In just more than three hours, Henry will be 3 years old. 

Or, to be technical, in 7 hours and 2 minutes I will mark precisely three years since I first looked into the  face of my baby boy. Man he's changed since that moment. He's less slimy and screamy for one -- most of the time, at least. He walks and talks and all that good stuff. Sometimes I want to set him free in the wild to be the feral child he so longs to be, but for the most part I'm pretty fond of the little guy.

I've already gushed about him -- just couldn't wait all the way until his birthday for that post. So today I'll meditate for a moment on another milestone taking place January 26: It's been three years since I became a mother.

Henry's World

Henry was staring off into space, deep in thought, while we were eating our oatmeal this morning. 

“Mommy?” he asked. “What do chameleons eat?”

“Bugs,” I said.

A moment later: “Mommy, what do frogs eat?”

“Flies,” I said.

“And bugs!”

A moment later: “What do chickens eat?”

We discussed the chickens at his great-grandparents’ house, and how they like chicken feed and scraps and watermelon rinds. He suggested we should take them a pail of watermelon.

He was quiet for a while. Then, a special grin – one eyebrow raised, mouth on the edge of a giggle. “Mommy?”

“Yes?”

“What do rubber duckies eat?”

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My boy turns 3 in just a few days. Three years! And of course it fits the old paradox: eternity and no time at all, rolled into one.