splish splash

another Caleb video: for most of us (pc); for grandma and others (mac)

hold on

Michelle has a knack for coming up with every-day metaphors that have something poignant to teach us about our spiritual lives. there was a point in my life where I would find such pictures rather cheesy, but thankfully I got over that a while ago, and now I love them, and I love that she kind find encouraging things in even the mundane.

last night I stumbled upon one myself. here's the background: we were talking about how it's hard to live faithfully every moment of every day, especially for a stay-at-home mom who deals with chronic pain and fatigue. it's too easy to get caught up in trying to measure up to these lofty ideals, and to look at all you havent done that day, or what you've done wrong, or could have done better. but we remembered that God loves us for who we ARE (which is his children in Jesus), not for what we DO, and we need to respond to that love in faithfulness. of course faithfulness can look like many things during the day: it could just as easily be a nap as a visit to a friend in need. so we need discernment, and that discernment can only come from God's Spirit, to whom we need to pray, without ceasing.

so as we were considering these things, I was reminded of Caleb. we're trying to teach him to walk, and so far he's loving it. he holds our fingers and zooms around the house, or sometimes he'll cruise around with a chair or his walker thingy. but he doesnt want to do it by himself yet, being a generally cautious kid so far. I try to get him to hold on to me with just one hand, but he'll always stop, reach back, look back, and refuse to go forward unless he's holding on with both hands.

and I realized that's what we need to be like: refusing to walk through our days unless we have both our hands holding onto our Lord and Savior, who will faithfully guide us in His ways.

six

yesterday was our 6th anniversary! check out the wedding pictures here. we're so thankful for the love we've been given and how far we've been taken on this journey together. six years ago we chose 1 John 4:19 as the verse we wanted to focus on, and it holds true more and more: We love because He first loved us.

Michelle has a good rundown of our mellow festivities here. I'll add that Caleb gave us a very nice anniversary present yesterday: he napped for almost 4 hours! so we got a good nap in, and got to spend some good time awake together too. oh and for the 2nd year in a row, KatieK helped me with my present for Michelle. last year was the family necklace, this year was some of her art cards to adorn her new sitting corner. we'll need to get them framed and on the wall soon. speaking of Katie's art, apparently it's in a local gallery, so we gotta go check that out soon.

so we're very thankful for another year and a nice weekend together. I love Michelle so much, and I love loving her.

iTunes is silly

so I bought a song on iTunes (my 2nd one ever), one that we might play for church someday. I really like the iTunes library, but I dont use it as my music player, nor do I have an iPod, so I have little use for the format that the song came in. I just want an MP3, but it doesnt let me do it on "protected" songs.

but it will let me burn it to a CD, which of course I can rip to MP3. very silly. or am I missing something? at least I had a CD-RW stashed in my desk drawer.

nanci dance

it's a lot cooler in person, but at grandma's request, mama managed to capture a little video of Caleb dancing to the music. and as a bonus, you can see also him playing with his favorite toy, which is a stack of junk mail. finally, a use for all those papers.

update: here's a better video of his swaying, arm-waving dancing. and as a bonus, he does the "so big" game too. oh and while I'm experimenting with the video software, here's a Windows Media version, which seems to compress much nicer. but grandma is on a Mac, so perhaps the point is moot...

new baby, new toy

we got a new digital camera when Caleb was on the way, so it only seemed fair to get something for baby girl's arrival. not that we have the cash lying around for new electronics, but there's always the "early Christmas present" trick. so, after consulting the deal master, we got a new Canon ZR200 for a mere $234 (using two dell coupons and a rebate). but we're not allowed to play with our new toy till the baby girl arrives (around Thanksgiving).

so thanks Jacob for the deal-wheeling, and thanks to all the grandparents for funding the early present. I guess underneath the Christmas tree will be a little bare, but we'll be too busy making movies of the kids to notice. and if I figure out an easy enough way to get videos online, this may just turn into a video blog too.

non-annoying kids music?

we love music, but until recently we've neglected to demonstrate this to our son. maybe that's not true, as I like to play guitar and mando and xylophone and such for and with him, but we really havent played him many CDs yet. we're not looking to push him to be a musical prodigy (actually I think I'd rather not deal with the baggage that seems to come with a "child genius"), but we do hope to pass on our love for it, especially as a means to relate to and serve others.

so when he started to dance and laugh at the stupid electronic music on one of his toys, I figured it was time to fire up the CD player in his room. the first step was to move it up on a high shelf. he loves to push buttons and open doors, so it didnt take him long to bring the music to a halt when it was down low. I didnt want to bring him to tears over not messing with the player, so up it went. shoulda done that a long time ago.

we have one kids music CD (and book) with Old MacDonald and such on it, so we'll play that for him and sing along. he loves to "dance" to it: swaying back and forth (to the beat? I'm not sure yet) and waving his arms and sometimes clapping. super cute and clearly a whole lotta fun.

the nice thing is that it's surprisingly well done. the arrangements are interesting, the musicians are skilled, and (I think this is the key) the vocals are done by adults. adults with fun voices, not kids with grating, overly-high, out-of-tune voices. no electronic cheesiness either.

so does anyone know of any Bible songs CDs that would meet these standards? I dont mind if it's kids singing, as long as they sound like regular kids, and not a boy's choir. I think I've found a couple that seem OK, which I found by surfing around:

the Praise Baby line sounds pretty good (tho I get a chuckle out of the name...arent we supposed to praise God?). there are kids singing, but it's led by an adult and the kids are in the background. I tend to favor old hymns (although with slightly contemporary settings), but we do like a lot of these praise songs too.

then there's the Cedarmont Kids label, which is more the fun kids songs kinda thing, like "Rise and Shine." I'm currently partial to this genre, as I play the guitar for Sunday School opening ceremonies every week. I think they do this pretty well, as the arrangements are fun, and there are kids singing, but they sound pretty normal (not too much screeching). and cant beat the price ($4).

and then there's always VeggieTales, which is somewhat of a genre unto itself. even tho it's a blatant attempt to cash in on the recent wave (or is it a parody? either way it's definitely VT), we'd probably like O Veggie, Where Art Thou?

of course we also play him "our" CDs, but there's something different about the kids stuff that gets him moving. we're sorely lacking in the classical department, although I did pick up Carnival of the Animals after Jeannette mentioned it. where's Auntie Sarah when we need her? I dont know much about it, but I've always enjoyed the Brandenburg Concertos.

so anyone have any "good" aka "not annoying" kids music ideas? or are we doomed to squeaking kids CDs?

shipping error

what do you do when a certain client that's an excellent commercial carpet company happens to accidentally ship you a small stack of modular carpet samples? even though when you were testing the system you put "TEST" and "DO NOT SHIP" everywhere? well, realizing from past experience they're not interested in getting them back, you stick them together to form a very nice play-area rug, that's what. yes, the job has many perks indeed.

easy cheap diy board book

the birds board book is finally done. it didnt take long at all to make, and I'm pretty happy with the results. hopefully the kid(s) will like it too, and it also helped me learn better methods, which I will soon use for the catechism book that got all this started.

for the images for this book, I found various bird pictures via google image search. the advanced search esepecially helped, as I could get the hi-res full-color jpgs I was looking for. I was going to try to take the pics myself, but our little point-n-shoot wouldnt get very nice results. plus it took me less than an hour to find the ones I wanted online. so once I had the pics, I started up photoshop and did a 4"x6" psd, using a color from the bird as the background. besides putting the name of the bird on the top, I ad-libbed a description of some sort for each one.

then I saved the psds as jpgs and uploaded them to sams for printing. at only 11 cents a print, it cant be beat. I've heard that they're getting antsy about copyright stuff, so I had it shipped to the house instead of in-store, figuring the shipped method is automated. I'm not sure if they would have given me trouble at the store or not? I figure this project is a "fair use" of the images people were giving away (since they were on the web after all). but a drawback of that decision is that they came back glossy, although this wasnt unexpected. apparently they do matte in the stores, and that ends up looking nicer in the final product.

so the pictures arrived, and I trimmed off an inch on each side, as the book I was using is a 5"x5" square (and only $1 from barebooks.com). then I glued them in the pages (with non-toxic gluestick) and put contact paper over top. this last step is where I learned some lessons. with the dog book I did for Caleb's birthday, there was more white space than colored, so little mistakes with the contact paper werent as noticable. but now with solid colors, little bubbles show up. so I learned to take it slower with the contact paper, going from one corner up. and I think the matte finish (on 2 of the prints I forgot to upload and had them done in-store) handles the contact paper better too.

so here are the results of my easy-and-cheap do-it-yourself board book. if anyone would like jpgs of the pages, I've included links here. 10 of the 12 would apply for just about anywhere (the cover references Chattanooga, and the House Finch page refers to our favorite visitors by name). if you have photoshop and would like the psds, or if you just want the bird jpgs, just let me know.

Front cover (Nuthatch)
Cardinal
Chickadee
Goldfinch
Mourning Dove
House Sparrow
Carolina Wren
Titmouse
Woodpecker
Mockingbird
House Finch
Hummingbird

spikenard

there was a time when I was somewhat obsessed with the mandolin. we used to play folksy/bluegrassy songs with our friends, and even attempted to form a little band, briefly calling ourselves "The Railway Children." our biggest splash was doing the music for our award-winning claymation, I'll Fly Away.

but health and schedules and such took priority, so we never got very far. yet I still continued to noodle, thanks mostly to having the instruments close at hand on the string swings.

then not too long ago, Joe invited me to accompany him while playing the "preparatory music" for church (which is the transition between announcements and the worship service). thankfully it was well-received, so we worked on some songs from the RUF Hymnbook (which I learned from listening to Indelible Grace). we'd play maybe once a month, and somewhere along the way Mark joined us too. or maybe it was me who joined Joe and Mark? I don't remember.

when Tom came back into town and joined us things really started coming together. he's excellent at the lead vocals (both Joe and I prefer singing backup, and Mark abstains) and got the nifty finger-picking stuff going on. and recently we've been joined by Jim on bass too, which I find especially cool, since the bass is my first musical love.

of course not everyone can make it to every "gig," so we're a loose federation, but we do enjoy making music together, and helping to lead our church family in worship. I'm thinking of recruiting a certain accordian player to join us. we shall see. anyone else who may care to join in, please let me know.

the music guy at church was wondering what to call us (as the other regular group was called "the quartet"). a few of us were at a Bible study together, and we read John 12, where Mary annoints Jesus with spikenard. someone mentioned in passing that that sounds like a pretty cool name for band. so, with tounges somewhat in cheek, that's what we call ourselves. I could get into the potential symbolism and such, but that might be a bit much.

this week we're going to get a little old-timey, doing "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" with a bit of "When the Roll..." thrown in for good measure. I'm always a little nervous when I'm doing the lead vocals, but being backed by Joe and Jim always makes it sound pretty good. it's a struggle to battle the "look at me" thoughts when I'm up there, but I hope the songs we do help the church and those with us see Jesus a bit more.

moo juice

Caleb has hit a milestone that I've been looking forward to for a very long time: he's off formula and now drinking good old fashioned whole milk.

faithful readers will know we wanted so badly to have him breastfeed, but alas, it wasnt to be. so he was on formula, and it turned out the best stuff for him was the soy. and that stuff aint cheap. thankfully, our doctor's office would give us a case of liquid concentrate whenever we asked for it, and mama was never shy (always looking out for the bargains). so we were well taken care of. for a long time he was gassy with the powdered stuff, so every day-and-a-half, I would heat the water and use the blender and all that fun stuff (which I dubbed "the chemistry set"). all for the cause of less gas.

but, if all continues to go well, we're done with all that. he's still not good at feeding it to himself (a product of us long using a toy to distract him long enough to eat enough to sleep enough...yes, sleep or lack thereof affects us in many ways). but, ahh, the ease of just opening the fridge and there it is all ready to go. and it's less than 1/2 the price of generic formula (a word to any parents-to-be who end up using formula: get generic. really. it's the same stuff). and being much more fatty, it fills him up faster too. so far no ill-effects in his tummy or elsewhere, for which we are very thankful.

so hooray for cows. ask Caleb what a cow says, and he'll srunch up his face and go "mmmmm." he's still working on the "ooo" part.

need indoor date-nite ideas

our 6th anniversary is coming up soon (woohoo!), so we were trying to think of a good place to have a date-nite here in or near Chattanooga. a few stipulations for this particular occasion:

our very own hungry caterpillar

every kid should have a copy of The Very Hungry Catepillar, and I have a suspicion that just about every kid does. it's gotta be almost as popular as "Goodnight Moon." Caleb loves it. he can even point out the catepillar on the pages when I ask him to, and he has fun with the holes in the pages, and always has a big smile at the end as we flap the butterfly wings for him. a kids classic, no doubt.

so I havent been tending the garden very well lately. actually that's an exaggeration. I havent done jack in the garden, besides bringing in a few tomatoes right before they're completely rotten. it's just too dang hot out for me these days. but the garden is in view from the back door, so I at least look out at it often enough. and tonight we spotted our very own very hungry caterpillar! merrily munching away at one of my lovely cherry tomatoes. if it was early in the season, he'd be toast, but since things are winding down, I figured we should enjoy him.

the light wasnt all that good, so I didnt get very good pictures, but it was wicked cool, as Bear might say. and I was so concerned about getting a decent picture that I forgot to point it out to Caleb. he was on my hip the whole time, but getting rather sleepy, so I doubt he noticed it. I've got to remeber to point out cool creepy crawly things like that to him, although this thing looked fierce and beautiful enough to keep me from wanting him to touch it, especially considering the treatment he gave a poor grasshopper not long ago.

after googling for a bit, I figured out that this guy is a tomato hornworm, which turns into a moth. and while we're on the subject, check out Eric Carle's site, as well as the picture book museum he's got in MA. hopefully we'll get to visit it next time we're up north.

tall

as mama reports, Caleb had his 1 year checkup today, and he is way off the charts in height. that's our boy!

and congrats to the Crabbs, who now have a cute chart-topper of their own. Caleb says welcome to the OT Bible Heroes Club, Adam.

party

amidst all the other activities this weekend, we managed to squeeze in a birthday party for Caleb. thanks to all who came and made it a great time. Caleb wasnt a big fan of the excellent cake, but I'm sure he'll aquire a taste for it soon enough. it was fun to see some of his little and big friends all gathered to celebrate the year of life he's been given.

the passage

we took Caleb to "the passage" for his birthday. if you havent heard, this is the coolest part of the new waterfront stuff, as it's a big staircase with water coming down. it's hard to describe, but very, very cool. it's perfect for kids to splash and have fun, and for a certain age, it's also educational and whatnot, as it's something of a sculpture and tribute to the Cherokee.

Caleb absolutely loved it. he was splashing and having a grand time, and then figured out he could crawl around, reach up the stairs, and go up and down some of them too. I think he would have stayed in all day if we let him, but he was tiring out, starting to stumble on the stairs a bit. he also enjoyed watching the big kids run up and down.

so if you've got kids (or even if you dont), do go check it out. it's right next to the new aquarium, and I think it's a little more parent-friendly than the Coolidge fountains, as it didnt require us to get soaked. anyone care to meet us there for a "play date"?

happy birthday Caleb!

we love you with all of our hearts. this past year has been one blessing after the next, and we can hardly believe that your little sister will be here very soon. we pray that God will bless you and keep you, and that you will love Him forever.

birthday book

after starting 3 different homemade board books, we finally finished one, just in time for Caleb's birthday. we wanted to get him a book with lots of dog pictures in it, since he really loves dogs. but our local huge bookstore didnt have what we wanted, so I took matters into my own hands.

the bookstore did have an inexpensive dog breed book, with nice pictures of all the popular breeds. so I bought that and cut out a bunch of the pictures, glued them on (with non-toxic glue stick) one of our blank board books (which was only $1.25 at barebooks.com). then mama helped me put clear contact paper (only $5 for a whole roll) over all the pages. and it turned out great! I even have enough pictures left for later volumes if needed.

I decided to leave it very simple for expediency, and I like the way it looks too. so it's just pictures of dogs, no words or anything extra. maybe in future editions we'll add names of the breeds or descriptions, but meanwhile it will be fun to point to the picture of the lab and tell him about his "cousin" dog.

the best part is that he seems to really like it. he opened it this morning and started pointing and making the "oof, oof" sound, and requested that we look at it many times. hopefully it will hold up to all the attention it seems it will get. and now that this method seems to work, hopefully I'll finish the bird and catechism books soon.

the eye book

not that Dr. Seuss really needs much reviewing, but since it's a family favorite, I figured I would write about The Eye Book for DaddyTypes Baby Book Review Contest (go on over and enter one too). so here goes:

I've been blessed with only one eye, so when I saw The Eye Book at the store, I just couldnt resist (having never shied from joking about my cyclopsness). And much to my delight, it turned out to be our boy's first favorite book. At 10 months or so, he would toss aside the vast array of inferior books, and hand it to one of us with a "dee?" (that I interpret as "please daddy, read me this one.")

It's not just the pictures and words I like, but also the format of the "Bright and Early Board Book" series. Dont tell grandma, but I'm not a big fan of the huge boards that occupy 4 square feet. These are a perfect size for little hands and will stash away in just about any pocket. And they're not annoyingly tiny either. A very satisfying size.

As far as the story goes, it's one of the few I dont mind reading multiple times, as the pictures are engaging and cute, and the lilting rhymes never seem to grow old. I especially like how it builds in the end to an all-out celebration of sight. I'm sure that as our kids start to read that they'll appreciate this one even more.

one year ago

one year ago today: in the morning we went for a checkup, in the evening went to the hospital ready to have the baby (again), at night came back home (again) and at midnight went to the hospital for the last time (finally!).

one year ago all we wanted was to hold our little boy in our arms, and now here he is, zooming around the house, snuggling with his mama, laughing at the dog, and playing under his crib.

one year ago today was the last day I wasnt a dad. I like life better now.

goodbye, friend

yesterday we said goodbye to Sarah, who is off to get her master's degree.

I first met her at freshman orientation 10 years ago, when a group from her hall and a group from our hall decided to hang out together (I think it was Myriam and Andy who got all that started?). somehow I ended up being the mascot of her hall for a while, and along the way we became good friends. I even had my eye on her for a while, but thankfully she knew better and let me down easy. now we can laugh about all those times, when she was caught in the middle of most of the rest of my crazy relationships. if nothing else, she proved herself a good friend by remaining a friend through all that weirdness.

anyway, along the way she became best friends with Michelle. it really started with a road trip they took together our senior year, and it solidified when they lived and worked together at Esperanza. many years later, their friendship is indeed rare, as they can dig through the most serious things at one time, and the next be laughing with such silliness that they're crying. the years and closeness allow them to be completely themselves with eachother. she's stood with us in some of the hardest times of our life together and been there for the joys too.

since I never had a younger sibling of my own, I always enjoyed taking care of her like a brother, so I loved packing her spacious moving truck for her (besides the fact that it was the easiest move ever). and perhaps we tried a little too hard to set her up with a good guy, but then again, perhaps not.

so I will miss her, but I know Michelle will miss her all the more. I hope to fill some of the gaps that she has left, but I know that despite my best efforts and intentions, there's just no replacing a true friend.

so if you can, hurry back, friend. we pray that God will bring you back home in good time, and if He chooses not to, that our friendship will remain strong.

---

update: Michelle has added her memories and goodbyes on her blog, along with lots of pictures.

changes

so the wife, who is experiencing something of a blogging renaissance, has mentioned more than once that I need more color in this space. so I'm working on it. I hope you like the pics at the top. more changes to come soonish. for the geeks out there, I'm old-school, so I'm doing tables instead of divs. I hope this doesnt offend your sensibilites, but it certainly makes me happier. oh and do go check out the latest cuteness from the boy. he LOVES getting into drawers and such these days.

baby catechism book progress, need help

I've finished with the first drafts of the pages for the baby catechism book, as seen below. but I need help with question nine, as I'm having a hard time coming up with a visual. maybe I should leave it without a picture? for question 8, I broke with the photos theme, which I'm fine with as long as it's simple and not clip-arty. here's what we got so far:

any thoughts?

fine art, fine price

KatieK is selling art cards of her original paintings. I've always admired her art, but have never had the budget for it, so we're excited to get some of these framed and hung in mama's new sitting area. being suckers for pastoralish scenes, we especially like The Season. do go check it out, and buy a bunch. heck, buy an original while you're at it.

kick

I felt the baby girl kick this morning! very, very cool. she's at 24 weeks as of tomorrow, and according to the charts, she's about a foot long and just over 1 pound, and mama says she likes to move. I'm sure Thanksgiving (her due date) will be here before we know it.

dogs and birds

as I've mentioned before, Caleb loves dogs, and he especially loves our dog Katie, but she doesnt play with him too much yet. she's quite an expert at avoiding him. but now and then we'll get her to play with him, so here's a little video of their antics.

Caleb's been imitating Katie's yap for a long time now, but now he'll associate the "oof, oof" sound with all dogs. when he sees one in a book or video, he'll get all excited. the other day he and mama went down the dog food aisle, and he went nuts with the excitement of seeing all the doggies all around him.

he's also into birds. we have a couple feeders around the house, and he loves to watch and point to them. we've taught him that birdies say "tweet, tweet," and he'll do his best impression, not quite getting the "tw" sound, but definitely doing a "tweet" in his mind. we'll sit and watch them together on the couch, and he'll jump around with excitement.

so seeing his newfound interest, I thought I'd do another custom board book, so I've started a "birds in our yard" book. I borrowed some images from the internet (via Google Images), and I have all the pages already done and sent as 4x6s for printing. we'll see how it comes together, and I'm sure I'll use the lessons learned with this one for the catechism book. here are 2 of the pages I did:

so many thanks to the neighbors this weekend, who for whatever reason left their bird feeders empty, thus giving us lots of feathered friends to admire.