kids

Several of my friends from college are about to have their first kiddos. Trey and I have been attending a Sunday School class on childrearing based off the book Loving Obedience in the hopes of one day having our first (and second and third and fourth and, heck, maybe fifth and sixth!).

So I have been thinking about childrearing a bit more than usual. And just now I was thinking about public displays of nastiness, as I know must happen. I am going to have a huge struggle learning to discipline my kids for reasons other than my embarrassment. I don't want to teach them that "you can't do that because it embarrasses Mommy." I want them to learn to honor God, not make Mommy feel good about herself (because that will ultimately end in failure, and I don't want to set my kids up for that kind of failure). How does one do that when one is in a public place and Child #3 is making a spectacle of himself? I hope that I am able to sacrifice my own comfort and "reputation" to do what is best for my child's growth in grace (ha! you can tell that I haven't had to deal with kids much, can't you? I know I am very idealistic, but my God is a powerful, awesome, and gracious God; and He sanctifies me!). Does it mean you drop everything and deal with the issue? Does it mean you remove yourself and child (and possibly all the other kids, too), leaving your errand or meal or whatever unfinished, to deal with the issue?

Maybe further classes in Sunday school will deal with stuff like this. So far, we have been learning about feeding love-hunger in kids, and learning to identify and verbally appreciate things our kids do right (rather than just pointing out what they do wrong). Trey and I have been practicing on each other for the meantime. It really is wonderful to learn to notice what is good rather than dwelling so much on the things that are bad. There is so much good out there in the middle of the wickedness (because! God is a powerful, awesome, and gracious God; and He blesses us!).

Anyway, that's what I was thinking about at work today.

sick

Trey was sick all week, and I've been sick all weekend.

We don't know what we have, but it's our first "married" illness. Despite being miserable, we've been silly enough to enjoy the experience---on some level. Unfortunately for Trey, it took this experience for us to both learn that I can become emotionally unstable during times of high fever. We both made it through my explosions of tears relatively unscathed, though. Trey is a good nurse for his wifey.

Today my fever is lower, and I'm hoping it will be all gone by the end of the day so I can go to work tomorrow. It's the first time I've had a real fever in years.

That's all.

Words!

Meemaw and Grandma Noni gave Trey and me some Christmas money that we have happily spent up rather quickly. One of my splurges is the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (I think I recall Daniel telling me years ago that I should get this, which I wasn't able to do because of financial constraints. It isn't as pricey as the full-blown OED, but it's not cheap.) The OED is the definitive work on etymology and usage, current and historical, comprising twenty volumes for a price around $1200. The SOED is something that won't take up an entire bookshelf, for which I am sacrificing numerous entries. I probably will never read through all of the two volumes, but I'm sure I'll enjoy what I do read.

Anyway, it's supposed to arrive today! I got it on Amazon much cheaper than at Borders, in case any of you are tempted to splurge, too.

change what?

Occasionally, when I am unable to repress the thought, I wonder about what people in the workforce did before they had our modern technology. And I don't just mean word processors. We have email and telephone, not to mention the (mostly) reliable postal service. We can draft documents, circulate them to three different people for review, have a telephone conference, make further revisions, circulate again, correct a few typos, insert the correct amount, and finally send the document out for final execution (except even there we can often accept pdfs of signatured pages).

How did people do all this paperwork before? I wonder if people made fewer mistakes or if they just didn't correct as many typos. I wonder if the average time to complete and file a deed was more like six months instead of a week. If you mailed a document for someone to review, how long would you wait to hear back from them? Would you send another letter and wait two more weeks if you didn't?

I wonder.

Moving on

Trey did take down the tree. But it's still lying out next to the trash can. I don't think the trash people want it. I wonder how we're going to get rid of it.

Trey's in class this week. I'm munching on some M&M's from Kelley.

The Christmas colors had to go.

Work is piled up on my desk. I'm glad there's plenty to do.

I'm also glad that we are not in a living situation conducive to getting a cute kitty. Because I really want one right now. Maybe if I ever do get a cat, I can teach it how to use the people potty. I remember reading about cats doing that. But I wonder if you can really teach them how to flush. Ew.

I've started using my mixers. Bread, cookies, waffles, muffins. Mmm.

Trey has a chest of drawers for his mountains of clothes! I just cleaned it the other day. It looks nice. Thanks, Dad.

The end.