Velocipotamus Update - 4 Months

My little dude isn't exactly little.

Luke turned 4 months on Friday and today he went in for his checkup.  As expected, he scored 90th percentile and up on all his stats.  He's 16lbs 11oz, 26.25 inches. Ummmm. That's bigger than K was at that age and I called her a giant.

 I'm really glad I made myself blog updates for K at different stages. It helps me realize that things sucked when she was 4 months old, too. Last night I was up with Luke at 3:30 thinking, "What the heck made me think I could manage two of these? I was doing good to manage one. I'm not going to survive this..." Today, after going back and reading the post about K at 4 months I have to say I feel better about things. I don't think it's any worse this time around, and I survived it before, and she turned out pretty funny, so... Maybe there's hope!

That said, Luke's becoming quite a bit more alert. He's taken an interest in things around him, especially people. He hasn't shown an aversion to any grandparents yet, so I'm counting that as a positive. He demands attention now and at times will only be happy if you sit and talk to him so he can talk back. He likes his new saucer although he's a bit suspicious of some of the animals on it. He is less suspicious and more enamored of his feet. Well, his right foot anyway. It's fascinating. And he's pretty convinced he can eat a bottle and suck his thumb at the same time. I'm not entirely sure he can't. Another favorite past time is playing peekaboo, which means he can pull anything over his eyes and then fling it off. He thinks that's pretty darn funny.

He's a pretty big fan of his sister and the feeling is mutual. Kaycie still loves to help with Luke. She wants to check on him and if he's mad she wants to tell you how to fix it. She also likes to force feed him his paci. She also likes to share... well, she likes to share her illnesses anyway. They've both been sick for the past 3 weeks. Today we're buying a nebulizer, because there's no point in renting one. My poor kiddos will never outgrow the nasty allergies that plague us here in MS. 

I blame his ickies for the fact that he hasn't been sleeping well, but the reality is that he has never really made a habit of sleeping well. The blissful weeks of K sleeping through the night early were clearly a fluke. Luke's not having it. My MIL likes to say that Greg didn't sleep through the night until he was like 9 (okay, usually it's more like 2 but still) and I fear Luke may be following that path. Heaven help me, I may not survive after all.

Sure I will. Eventually they'll be teenagers and sleep all the time, right?

Mash Up - Mother's Day Edition

* I'd like to start with a big ole high five to my hubby for an awesome Mother's Day yesterday. Last week he took K to the store and let her pick out a flower for me - a beautiful yellow mini rose bush that we planted in the front flower bed.  The only mini rose I've ever had was a pink one I got for my 18th  birthday. It's still living in the same flower bed. Then Sunday morning he got up with the kids - starting at 2:45am (because my kids have decided to be freaking nocturnal...) and let me sleep until nearly noon. Then I got an awesome gift - a set of 3 specialty lenses that fit my iPhone camera! What? Yup. I've played with the macro a little bit but can't wait to get outside and see what I can do with the wide angle and fisheye. Oh, and the best parts - he unloaded the dishwasher, provided me with food, and entertained my little ones. It's good to be me.

* Today's lunch time conversation with K -

Me: You want pasta or couscous?

 K: Couscous! No... RED BEANS!!!

Me: What???

 K: Red beans! Red beans!

Me: Really?? 

So yes, I made my kid red beans and rice for lunch today. Again. We had the same thing on Friday. Such a weird one.

*I made bread pudding with my mom on Saturday. I want to make more. On a related note, I've put on 20lbs since Luke was born.

* A little over a week ago we got the news that our former minister, Ross, had passed away. I was deeply saddened by the news. He was one of my favorite people on the planet. He was the one who helped me reconcile a God that I believed in with a church that I didn't trust. He was the reason I was baptized at age 28 at Galloway. He believed very strongly in the New Testament promises about loving your neighbor and being good people to the best of our abilities without judgment or scorn for others. This is a lesson too many Christians need to hear. I have friends who are atheists who act more like Christians than some Christians I know because they genuinely care more about other people than about punishing others for sins they think are bigger than their own. I wish my atheist friends could have heard Ross preach. I think they would have liked him. He had a way of reaching people that I've never seen before. The Sunday after he died a letter from his wife was read during the church service. She told us all that he had been battling severe depression since December and took his own life. I've had a post open on my desktop for a week wanting to say a dozen things about that, but I find that I can't. So instead I'm going to leave it at that and link up to an archive of posts I wrote that mentioned Ross.  And here's a quote from one of those posts that I've been dwelling on the past week:

The real meat of this sermon had to do with the presence of Evil, how it works in the Bible and how it works in our lives today. He talked about how if everything is perfect in your life, you're probably praying to the wrong god. If you're focused on God, you're probably attracting negative attention from Satan, who likes to create hardships for God's people. He told a story about how if you're already spiritually dead, Satan has no reason to attack you, and you can go on with your life thinking all is good because you have everything you want, not realizing you don't have everything you NEED.

What I'm (Re)Reading

This isn't my usual "What I'm Reading" post because to be honest, the vast majority of what I've read lately has been pure fluffy garbage. My brain can't handle much else these days. But after watching a video of the 25th anniversary performance of Phantom of the Opera a few weeks ago I decided to download my favorite book to my Kindle. I've read the original Gaston LeRoux novel, and I've watched just about every adaptation on television, but my favorite version of this classic story is Phantom by Susan Kay. It tells the history of the the Opera Ghost, from his birth, and provides motivation and reason for his psychotic behavior. It's a fabulous book and I've worn out my paperback, reading it at least eight times. For the record, I wish I'd kept reading the paperback because the Kindle version is so full of typos it's embarrassing. It's like they scanned it with really bad OCR software and didn't bother to proof it afterwards. Awful. But that's not my point.

It's a long book and every time I read it I find something new that gets my attention. This time around it's been a quote that I posted on FB a few minutes ago:

"...men whose moral integrity I respected even as I pitied their religous misguidance. They had no hope of heaven, but here, on this earth, I saw no reason to deny them civility or friendship. I could not hate with the indiscriminating simplicity of my servant."

I posted that portion of it knowing it would be a bit misleading. The full quote I highlighted actually reads, "I shared his (the servant) beliefs, but not his contempt. I knew there was no God but Allah; I accepted that no infidel would ever be admitted to paradise - and yet I had made many friends in the Catholic missions in Persia, men whose moral integrity I respected even as I pitied their religous misguidance. They had no hope of heaven, but here, on this earth, I saw no reason to deny them civility or friendship. I could not hate with the indiscriminating simplicity of my servant."

I should point out that each section of the book is written from a different POV. This section is in the voice of a security chief in Persia covering the years 1850-1853. The quote is from Nadir's trip to Russia in search of the great magician (Erik)to bring home to entertain the royal family. He and his servant are watching Christians in front of the churches on the road and making an observation that speaks more to Nadir's character than to any religious theme in the story.

Two things struck me about this quote. First, the irony that it's showing the disdain of Muslims for
Christians where here we tend to see the disdain of Christians for Muslims. Second, how often do we deny civility or friendship to people because we believe they have no hope of heaven? Is that our call? Too often we hate with indiscriminating simplicity. On this earth, we should offer that civility to everyone.

There and Back Again

Just to catch up -

Saturday Greg left for California.

Thirty seconds later I left for my parents' house. A sanity saving move, to be sure.

Last night we came home so that K could go to school today.

Tonight we'll pick Greg up at the airport (God willing. If he's delayed you'll find me whimpering under my bed).

The trip Greg is on is the same conference he goes to this time most years. Last year I went with him (the Tampa trip) but this year with the velocipotamus being so little (relatively speaking) and the cross country flight (expensive) we decided I'd skip San Jose and maybe go for Austin next year. Let me just say thank God for grandparents. Last night in the few hours we were home I nearly lost it. Sleep did not come easily last night. And I am counting down them minutes until Greg gets home.

As for our adventures in Philly... I took a lot of pictures of things that aren't my children. And some that were my children. But that'll be largely covered on the photo blog and possibly a future post here. Right now I gotta get everybody dressed t get K to school. We are soooo not going to be late for that...