A Sunrise Reminder

This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

--Lamentations 3:21-23

Ian's Exploits

Here's what Ian's been doing for the last couple weeks. He says his favorite parts about swim lessons are going underwater and jumping off the diving board. We are proud of the courage he has gained through the experience. Anna's been eagerly practicing blowing bubbles underwater in the frog pool in anticipation of her opportunity to do some intensive swim training next year.

In other Ian news, the boy caught a mole in our yard yesterday . . . with his bare hands! I guess its mouth was too small to bite him. Of course, Ian promptly put his acquisition into his five-gallon bucket for observation until Daddy got home and put an end to its tunneling days.

Intelligent Design Is Definitely an Understatement

We were too hot and tired for tennis tonight, so we abandoned our planned trip to the park in favor of a Moody Science Video on the solar system. It's always good to be reminded of how unfathomable God is--and how graciously condescending are His relations with man. Thoughts along this vein also provide the perfect opportunity to slip in another good quote I've come across recently from the biology field:

Now, when a man sees that his vital operations could not be directed by reason--that they are constant, and far too important to be exposed to all the changes incident to his mind, and that they are given up to the direction of other sources of motion than the will, he acquires a full sense of his dependence . . .

When man thus perceives, that in respect to all these vital operations he is more helpless than the infant, and that his boasted reason can neither give them order nor protection, is not his insensibility to the Giver of these secret endowments worse than ingratitude?

--Sir Charles Bell
19th century Scottish anatomist, surgeon, physiologist for whom Bell's Palsy and several other discoveries were named

Dinner

Dinner tonight was a big deal. It started first thing this morning with boiling three chickens. By mid-day, Anna had asked several times if she could help "peel the chickens". (We'll get the term "deboning" added to Anna's vocabulary some other time.) She and Lewis did a great job of that, after which they scarfed the skins for an afternoon snack--bleh! I proceeded to make a huge pot of chicken and dumplings with some of the resulting meat and broth.

However, the crowning element to our meal is pictured here: Titus's first cucumber! (And I don't mean of the season; I mean of his gardening career.) He's very proud of it, as are all the kids, and we all think it's the best tasting cucumber we've ever had. May all those to follow live up to this precedent. And there are watermelons and cantaloupe in the boat garden, so stay tuned!

Keeping All the Plates Spinning

Our math time today reminded me of a little tidbit I've been learning over the past year or so: a multitude of responsibilities for Mom means greater opportunities for initiative in the kids. It's easy to view the little ones' needs, the kitchen work, the laundry or whatever as an impediment to the older kids' education. However, I find that precisely because I can't sit and hover at their elbow during an entire lesson, they seem more apt to apply themselves and get it done.

Everyone knows the frustration of trying to convey something to a child who is not mentally engaged. Something that's been working for me lately in that situation is putting distance between myself and the stalled-out learner, i.e. moving on to other tasks on my list. Once on their own, the kids suddenly realize they'd better kick it into gear if they ever hope to get their studies completed and move on to other things. If I tell them that they must get a certain amount done before they can come to me with questions or for checking, that seems to help, too.

Of course there are times they need my undivided teacherly attention for a while, but it's good to realize that my need to be about many things is also helping train my children's character and intellect.

More on Work

Now I can't even briefly peruse a random book without coming up with another good quote on work:

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along not by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker . . .

--Helen Keller

quoted in The True Woman by Susan Hunt

Same Old Story

The only difference this time (besides my letting him ham it up for the picture) was that Ian helped Anna with her dental woes right before he took his shower, so he's a drippy dentist in this one.

Sticking with the Poetry Theme

Just finished Screwtape Letters. It is a wonderfully thought-provoking read, and I can't resist posting one final quote:

[A loving Christian household] bears a sickening resemblance to the description one human writer made of Heaven: 'the regions where there is only life and therefore all that is not music is silence.' Music and silence--how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell . . . no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise . . .

--Screwtape, C.S. Lewis's senior devil

A Psalm of Life

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still like muffled drums are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

(from the chapter on Work in Bennett's Book of Virtues)

Potty Training Chic

Noticed that Jocelyn (2), though her picture started this blog off on the right foot, has been a bit lacking in press lately. The above images give you an idea of what she's been up to. She, too, likes the frog pool. She joined the group in the previous pic a bit later. And she's the coolest potty trainer on the block. Can't beat having the shoes on the wrong feet and sporting Lewis's red cookie monster shades.

Learning Bird Songs Link

No wonder I have trouble keeping birds' calls straight! This site shows that a single type of bird can have several different calls. It provides helpful photography for learning to identify birds visually, too. Thanks for the referral, Gayle.

http://www.learnbirdsongs.com/

A Hoppin' Good Time

Lewis used his birthday gift card from Uncle Jeff and Aunt Candi for an inflatable frog pool. (The big frog head with water spraying out isn't quite visible in the picture.) This is actually the very first kiddie pool we've had around here, and I think it's a hit.

Those are my toes!

Screwtape, the "wise" old devil, says:

You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption "my time is my own." . . . And all the time the joke is that the word "mine" in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything. . . . The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels.

--C. S. Lewis

Deja Vu All Over Again

With the rate at which further installments to Anna's tooth extraction saga are coming, I'm beginning to wonder if she's suffering from some vitamin deficiency that results in tooth loss. Ian performed the services again, so this time we got a picture of the two of them together. I wonder if Ian realizes the business potential he has here with all the teeth in need of removal that are coming behind him. So far his services are pro bono.

Clive Staples on Pleasure

I finished enjoying To Kill a Mockingbird for Book Club last week and so found myself in need of some more nursing reading. Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis seemed just the thing for the occasion. I would have read it before now, but my dear husband has been carrying it around in his briefcase for the past three years. Anyhow, here's one of the many gems I've come across thus far. (Don't forget it's spoken from a diabolical perspective, so God is "the Enemy"):

"I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula."

Big Girl

Eva has been standing up without assistance for a week or so now. We are all very excited at her accomplishment, and she's figured out it's a big deal too. More often than not, she'll clap for herself after she stands up.

Not in Vain

"They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of the LORD, and their offspring with them."

Isaiah 65:23

Another Blog-Book Option

Here's another possibility for converting a blog from electronic to hard-copy. I'm looking forward to trying something after I get a bit more blogging behind me. So many fun options!

www.blurb.com

No Time Like the Present

We shall do much in the years to come,
But what have we done today?
We shall give our gold in a princely sum,
But what did we give today?
We shall lift the heart and dry the tear,
We shall plant a hope in the place of fear,
We shall speak the words of love and cheer,
But what did we speak today?

We shall be so kind in the after while,
But have we been today?
We shall bring to each lonely life a smile,
But what have we brought today?
We shall give to truth a grander birth,
And to steadfast faith a deeper worth,
We shall feed the hungering souls of earth,
But whom have we fed today?

We shall reap such joys in the by and by,
But what have we sown today?
We shall build us mansions in the sky,
But what have we built today?
'Tis sweet in the idle dreams to bask;
But here an now, do we our task?
Yet, this is the thing our souls must ask,
What have we done today?

--Nixon Waterman
from the Book of Virtues

An Absolutely Bigger Hole

That one lonely front tooth didn't stick around for long! And unlike when Ian was in a similar dental position a few months ago, Anna actually whistles through that big hole sometimes when she talks. Very cute.

Ian helped his sister with the extraction of this one right before a toothbrushing session. After all, what are brothers for?

Scrap-blogging

A friend mentioned this site for converting a blog into an actual physical scrapbook. Sounds like the best of both worlds to me! I can envision doing some sort of family yearbook this way. If anyone has (or gets) any experience with this sort of thing before I get around to trying it, please impart your wisdom and insight.

www.scrapbookblogger.com

A Memorable Monday

Me at the sewing machine for more than necessary mending is a rare enough event in itself. Me at the sewing machine completing a project is something well nigh miraculous. So of course it must receive a post complete with pictoral documentation.

The four oldest children celebrated Memorial Day (including the nights on either side) with my parents last Monday, so I spent the ENTIRE day putting together a quilt (term used loosely--it's one top piece and one coordinating bottom piece with batting in the middle) that folds into a pillow for Lewis. I'd made one of these curiosities about fifteen years ago in my home-economics class. Looking back, how that teacher managed to help ten or fifteen of us make those things at one time is beyond me. Anyhow, that relic had been bequeathed to Ian, who seemed to be enjoying it, so I bought material to make one for Lewis . . . a couple years ago.

And not only did I get the joy that comes with finishing a major project, but it was done in time to give to Lewis on his fourth birthday two days later. Couldn't have planned it better if I'd tried! If only I could always be so relaxed about trusting God's timing for things.

"There Are No Menial Jobs, Only Menial Attitudes."

I try to avoid lengthy quotes, but William Bennett's introduction to his chapter on work in The Book of Virtues seems so apropo, it would be a shame to leave out too much of it:

"The opposite of work is not leisure or play or having fun but idleness---not investing ourselves in anything. Even sleeping can be a form of investment if it is done for the sake of future activity. But sleep, like amusement, can also be a form of escape--oblivion sought for its own sake rather than for the sake of renewal. It can be a waste of time. Leisure activity or play or having fun, on the other hand, can involve genuine investment of the self and not be a waste of time at all."

"Happiness, as Aristotle long ago pointed out, resides in activity, both physical and mental. It resides in doing things that one can take pride in doing well, and hence that once can enjoy doing. It is a great mistake to identify enjoyment with mere amusement or relaxing or being entertained. Life's greatest joys are not what one does apart from the work of one's life, but with the work of one's life."

"Parents show their children how to enjoy doing the things that have to be done by working with them, by encouraging and appreciating their efforts, and by the witness of their own cheerful and conscientious example." (emphasis Bennett's)