Bedtime Questions (Updated)

It’s as if they conspire together to avoid the inevitable “lights out”: one wants a drink of water, one needs a Motrin, one’s too hot, one wants a story, one wants to inquire about tomorrow’s weather…and I have one child (I’ll let you guess which) who comes up with some really random questions when I’m trying to get out of the room.  Here are a few examples:

1. Mom, do you understand the Book of Revelation? You know, the seven trumpets and the seven plagues and that stuff? ‘Cause I don’t get it.
2. Mom, what is it about a woman getting married that makes her pregnant?
3. Mom, is “buttocks” long for “butt”?
4. Mom, how does a baby get out of the mama?
5. Mom, why are the bald guys in wrestling always so much stronger than the ones with hair?

There are some questions that I just can’t answer. Like about the bald guys–who knew?

UPDATE:

To Grandma: Grandma, where do babies come from? Because Kendall and I came from North Carolina and I’m not sure if they all come from there.

To Daddy: Daddy, why are some men obsessed with women in bathing suits?

No Swearing in the House

At breakfast on Sunday, we were discussing the difference between real laws and “Mama’s laws” (I objected to how this was stated, because my laws are real).

So Tim asked Evan to recite one of Mama’s laws.

He thought for a moment. “You may not swear in the house, unless you’re a parent.” Then he started giggling.

Tim was, rightly, giving me the “what goes on when I’m not here” look. I just didn’t know what to say. I swear I never codified that law.

Status Update

Lisa is…

Sending Evan to soccer camp every day this week. Kendall decided not to play anymore, so I don’t have the week to myself. She and I are spending the week making a Herculean effort to finish her fifth grade schoolwork.

Planning a vacation. We’ll be enjoying the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland again, seeing The Music Man and Much Ado About Nothing. The kids will be going along this year and they are busily reading kid versions of Much Ado to get ready. After that, we’re looking forward to some “down time” (what’s that?), spending several days on the southern Oregon coast.

Reading Pleasing People by Lou Priolo and China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power by Rob Gifford.

Thinking about balance. In everything.

Way behind on…well, the list would be shorter if I gave you the things I wasn’t way behind on.

Wishing I could blog more, really not entirely sure why I can’t.

Sorry that our spring ladies’ Bible study is over. Good stuff.

Thankful for wise friends who encourage and challenge me.

Considering painting the kitchen while the kids stay with their grandparents for a couple weeks later in the summer. Colors are chosen—just need to buy the paint and talk Tim into painting the ceiling.

Listening daily to nonstop facts about Bionicle, X-Men, Spiderman, Star Wars, Fantastic Four, Indiana Jones…at least soccer camp gives me a bit of a reprieve.

Not wanting to open the credit card bill, but as it’s sitting here staring at me, I imagine I will have to face the inevitable.

Astonished that my 10-year-old is just shy of five foot tall. We need to work on that one-pound-per-inch thing she’s got going on.

Thinking about giving up yoga after I saw a blurb in a magazine about a fitness club that has a class called PowerNap+, which combines stretching, meditation, and a 15-minute nap. Sounds like my kind of exercise.

Snippets: Portrait of a Disciple

“The beatitudes paint a comprehensive portrait of a Christian disciple. We see him first alone on his knees before God, acknowledging his spiritual poverty and mourning over it. This makes him meek or gentle in all his relationships, since honesty compels him to allow others to think of him what before God he confesses himself to be. Yet he is far from acquiescing in his sinfulness, for he hungers and thirsts after righteousness, longing to grow in grace and in goodness.

We see him next with others, out in the human community. His relationship with God does not cause him to withdraw from society, nor is he insulated from the world’s pain. On the contrary, he is in the thick of it, showing mercy to those battered by adversity and sin. He is transparently sincere in all his dealings and seeks to play a constructive role as a peacemaker. Yet he is not thanked for his efforts, but rather opposed, slandered, insulted and persecuted on account of the righteousness for which he stands and the Christ with whom he is identified.

Such is the man or woman who is ‘blessed’…”

~John Stott, in The Message of the Sermon on the Mount

Gift Coupons

Last year for Mother’s Day, the kids chose a card for me that had a sheet of coupons in it. They were for funny stuff, like “five animal noises” or “one joke” or “one bear hug”. I tacked the sheet to my bulletin board in my office and have never redeemed them.

Apparently, the fact that those coupons have gone unused has bothered my daughter. She gave me a homemade Mother’s Day card today complete with a sheet of coupons for one breakfast, one lunch, one drawing, one bracelet, and one necklace (she loves to help in the kitchen, draw, and make beaded jewelry).

The difference between these coupons and the ones from last year? These have expiration dates! Hmmm. Maybe she’s noticed my tendency to procrastinate and figured she’d up the ante.

The Big 4-0

Yep, it’s today.

::sigh::

Some notes from this notable birthday:

• I woke up this morning to find that my daughter had sent me a birthday email—from her computer upstairs. I found that humorous.

• We went out for dinner last night at McCormick’s Fish House. It was the day before my birthday, but when you get to be my age, you don’t like to fight those weekend crowds, you know? Razor clams are in season—I was SO happy!

• My in-laws are visiting this week so my birthday dinner tonight was a delicious spread of Chinese food: eggrolls, roast pork, noodles with pork and baby bok choy (you HAVE to have noodles on your birthday), beef with asparagus and oyster sauce, and sticky rice with mushrooms and Chinese sausage. Yummy!

• I appreciate all the calls, emails, Facebook wishes and gifts from my wonderful friends and family!

I expected to be pretty depressed today, but I think I’m just too overtired this week to really give aging much thought. I went to the grocery store this afternoon by myself and, in some rare moments of uninterrupted contemplation, my thoughts kept returning, not to how old I am or how little I have accomplished, but to God’s overwhelming mercy that has been continuously extended to me. And so I’ll leave you with the words of one of my favorite songs (sung by Sandra McCracken on The Builder and the Architect), in the hope that you are able to rejoice in them as well.

Thy mercy, my God, is the theme of my song,
The joy of my heart and the boast of my tongue;
Thy free grace alone, from the first to the last,
Has won my affections, and bound my soul fast.

Without Thy sweet mercy I could not live here;
Sin would reduce me to utter despair;
But, through Thy free goodness, my spirits revive,
And He that first made me still keeps me alive.

Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart,
Which wonders to feel its own hardness depart;
Dissolved by Thy goodness, I fall to the ground,
And weep for the praise of the mercy I’ve found.

Great Father of mercies, Thy goodness I own,
And the covenant love of Thy crucified Son;
All praise to the Spirit, Whose whisper divine
Seals mercy, and pardon, and righteousness mine.
©2001 Same Old Dress Music (ASCAP).

Wondering…

…why laundry loses momentum and that last load never seems to make it out of the dryer until people start missing specific items of clothing.

…how scientists who test the effects of B vitamins on mice with dementia could possibly know that the mice have dementia. Really. I’m puzzled.

…where scientists find mice with dementia for their testing. Ad in the newspaper?

…if other people imagine what they’ll say to someone they need to have a conversation with then can’t remember whether they really had that conversation or not—or is that just me?

…what it will take for my children to convince me to get another cat.

…how I used my time in the years before the internet.

…why I can’t keep my desk clean (I do believe it’s hereditary).

…whether there is some common thread in my daughter’s favorite words: demolish, noble, aquamarine, kerfuffle and palace.

…why my children often crab-walk around the house.

…why, since we don’t allow food out of the kitchen, there is a trail of crumbs going up the stairs. Hmmm. I guess I’ll have to suggest that the messy eater brush himself off before he leaves the room.

…if other people who were moved professionally still have the little moving stickers on their furniture, like we do (our last move was six years ago—you’d think we might have gotten around to taking them off by now).

…why my kids ask, “Who’s coming over?” when I start cleaning the house.

Funny Conversations: Itchy Armpits

Kendall:  [reading the box of cold medicine] Temporarily relieves runny nose, sneezing, itchy nose or throat, itchy, watery eyes…

Evan: Kendall, does it say anything about “itchy armpits”?

Snippets: Taste and See

“There is a difference between believing that God is holy and gracious, and having a new sense on the heart of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. The difference between believing that God is gracious and tasting that God is gracious is as different as having a rational belief that honey is sweet and having the actual sense of its sweetness.”

~Jonathan Edwards, in his famous sermon “A Divine and Supernatural Light”

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! ~Psalm 34:8a

Aliens have kidnapped my picky eater…

…and replaced him with a child who loves mushrooms. I told him I would order the four-topping pizza that has mushrooms on it and he could pick them off. Instead, he insisted that he would only eat the pizza if the sole topping was mushrooms, since he loves them.

Perhaps I’ve hit my head and will soon wake up and find that this was a dream.