A Daddy Duet

We have a board book that is the lyrics from The Little Drummer Boy and we got it while I was still pregnant with G. Emrys has been singing this song to her since before she was born. It is a designated Daddy bedtime book, as when I picked it up one night I was told "Gaga pum pum!" and handed a different book. Which I think translated to, "Daddy reads Drummer Boy!"

Tonight, The Little Drummer Boy has advanced to a duet. Emrys' voice carries out the lines of the song and the pause left at the end of each line is followed by a little two year old "PUM! PUM! PUM!"

Big C Adventure

or, Ten Minutes Well Spent.

Gwendolyn and I laid out the bathtime letters on the table to do some alphabet work, only to discover that the "C" was missing. So we spent ten minutes scouring the upstairs looking for the missing yellow C, singing about what we wouldn't be able to do if we didn't have a C.

At last we found it, brought it downstairs with much rejoicing, and made our complete alphabet.

~ emrys

G Turned Two...

...about two weeks ago - I'm a little slow on the blog stuff lately! She is a healthy, tall (35.75 inches) little girl who is talking more every day. She exhibits the independent streak of her mother a normal two year old. She's quite the little helper and mostly, a lot of fun! Here are a few pictures from her birthday celebration. We were visiting my brother and his family. Gwendolyn's cousin Reese and Aunt Lara made the present cake for her and after build your own pizzas and cake, punching balloons brought great entertainment for everyone!

Really?

Just got an email from a friend decrying the makers of the following t-shirt (Old Glory):
My first thought was, "Really? There are people who would make this t-shirt today? Wait--there are people who would buy this t-shirt today?"

My second thought was (and often is), "Ah, this is why I believe in Total Depravity."

The email mentioned something about "First Amendment rights." The imposition of this topic occasioned my third thought, which is that excusing the content of one's words using the First Amendment is a tactic especially reserved for idiots.

Vive les idiots!

~ emrys

Dangerous

is getting even less cool.

When we bought our house, the staircase to the second floor was open on one side. On your way up, you might put your hand on the railing against the left wall, but on your right side was a sheer drop to the kitchen floor. This is all well and good for those of us taller than five feet; by the time we're high enough on the steps to fall off and hurt ourselves, we're high enough to catch ourselves on the overhanging ceiling. No problem.

Except for a toddler. As she learned how to crawl, then toddle up the stairs, Gwendolyn could easily have pitched off the fourth-to-top stair and fallen to her death on the kitchen tile below. So in July of last year, we did something to change that.

With the help of my father-in-law and the hemlock from our property (yes, we're still using this wood), we constructed a railing and spindles in order to make it just a little harder for our daughter to hurt herself.

I failed to take photos of the project in its early stages, so here are the images of the last few steps. In July we had the unfinished railing and spindles in place:

Since that day, of course, its muster has been tested over and over again by the most important user.

It turns out that spindles make good hand-holds for someone shorter than four feet tall.

Instead of the usual polyurethane, which chokes the user indoors and requires thinner to clean, I tried out "polycrylic," a water-based acrylic sealer and protectant. It went on smooth, dried fast, cleaned up easily, and did not yellow the wood as polyurethane does. Awesome.

And since I had more than enough for the railing, I decided to put a protective layer on the table top I made two years ago for GBaby's room.

Now at the top of the stairs, the only way to get to the kitchen floor is down a forty-five degree slope, rather than a vertical drop. (She's taken the forty-five degree route as fast as possible twice now, and come away with nothing broken except her sense of security.)

And four inches between spindles leaves enough room to grab, poke, and tickle but not enough for head or shoulders. Perfect.

Thanks, David, for the help, Sara for the support, Gwendolyn for the inspiration, Yahweh for the wood, and Bobby for the shop!

~ emrys

Die!

Our daughter learns most things by imitating her parents. Sometimes those things we intentionally try to teach her, like brushing her teeth or how to say "blueberry" ("blbzhry"). More often, however, she is learning things without our encouragement. But never without our example.

For instance, Gwendolyn is gradually learning how to discipline our dog Sadie. Mind you, she can't yet say Sadie's name--our dog, and all dogs, are named "Gah" for now--but she can order the mutt around. At the supper table two of the most frequent commands the adults use are "Bed!" (to get her away from the table) and "Stay!"

Gwendolyn, ever interested in efficiency, currently skips the first command and goes right to the second. But her skills of enunciation have not yet developed to the point that she can say "stay" the way the rest of us do. She points a directive finger at the dog and shouts, "Die!"

You must imagine the glee of the adults when, at the supper table with her aunt and cousins, Gwendolyn spotted Sadie across the room, raised a disciplining finger and with all the confident presence of a two-year-old yelled, "Die!"

We're grateful that Sadie didn't obey.

~emrys

The Incognito Stay-Puff

Gwendolyn had one of her first sledding adventures today. It's good that Emrys is a big kid because I'm not the biggest fan of cold or climbing up hills. G is already heeding advice regarding eye protection and snow after Emrys' experience with sunburned eyeballs. Those stylin' shades didn't come off the whole time we were out, or for the ride home in the dark either.

Family Gift

Two years ago my brother- and sister-in-law gave us a gift of two frames with leaves designed to hold the names of four generations of family members. In the last month I finally finished them, reattached leaves that didn't stick properly, and hung them in our living room:


On the right side is the tree of Tylers, starting with my brother and I at the bottom:

On the left are the Wheats, with Sara and her brothers at the bottom:

What a great way to take all my family research and make it an attractive addition to our home. Thanks, Adam and Lara!

~ emrys

A Wrinkle in Time

I received as a Christmas gift the Loeb Classical Library translation of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Marcus was a Roman emperor from the second century whose meditations (written in Greek) have survived. As I cracked the spine of this little gem, I anticipated having to strain my grey cells in order to find the parallels and analogies between the writings of a second-century philosopher-general and twenty-first-century America. Then in Book I, part 12 I read this, in the midst of Marcus' list of virtues learned from various persons in his life:

"[I learned] from Alexander the Platonist, not to say to anyone often or without necessity, nor write in a letter, I am too busy, nor in this fashion constantly plead urgent affairs as an excuse for evading the obligations entailed upon us by our relations towards those around us."

This from an emperor of the second century, read now in a time when the most popular response to "How are you?" is "Busy!" and when Veggie-Tales' recasting of the parable of the good Samaritan makes busy-ness the excuse for not helping a stranger. I look no further for relevance, and rest assured that there is no significant gap between the humanity of Marcus Aurelius and that of our world today.

~emrys

Sacred Writing

When we arrived in Pasadena and I stepped into the classrooms of Fuller Theological Seminary, I was reading from a copy of the Jerusalem Bible, a Roman Catholic translation, given to me by a friend some years before. I was told early in my Fuller studies that the faculty encouraged the uniform use of the New Revised Standard Version for coursework. Thus in the spring of 2003 I purchased my first NRSV (with Apocrypha). It went with me everywhere, almost every day, during my three years of study. By the end of seminary, it had been pulled out of and stuffed into my bag so many times that the plastic laminate had peeled off more than a quarter of the cover's surface.

But the tome carries more than scars of overuse. Unlike some whom I have met, who believe that only the printer's ink may shadow the pages of the bible, lest the punishments of Revelation 22:18 come upon them, I write often in my bibles. (I even cross out English words, though never Hebrew or Greek.)

And stuff which I consider worthy of memory finds its way onto the flyleaves of my bibles. Here is the front leaf of this artifact:

The top paragraph reads: "The Bible is not like a bookcase of oils, ointments, and pills, to be drawn on when crisis occurs and in uniform fashion. Rather, it is like a personal trainer and dietician--it shows us what techniques to mix and try, always affording accountability and discipline, in pursuit of a final goal which is higher than we are now."

Below that is a (inaccurate?) quote from the Dave Matthews Band song, A Christmas Song, "Father, with all this hatred, why do you fill me up with love, love, love . . .?"

Then the three locations of the Shema (Deu6.4-10; Num15.37-41; Deu11.13-21).

Then a yellow post-it note with phrases in Armenian, learned from Sara's boss in Pasadena: how to say "Good-bye" (manak parov), "How are you?" (inch bess ess), and "Well" (lavem).

I wrote in the table of contents where each of our canonical books is found in the Hebrew bible (Torah, Neviim, Ketuvim), and my own abbreviations for the books (because for some reason I thought three-letter abbreviations took too long to type?).

As I studied the scriptures in seminary, I marked up my NRSV, always looking for patterns, main ideas, and the nooks and crannies where the Spirit whispered.

Now, five years after graduating seminary, it's time to retire this old faithful. I have been using a new copy of the NRSV that Sara gave me four years ago (perhaps she took the hint from the curling laminate); and when I preach in Nineveh I use the New International Version because that's what's in the pews. Sara's NRSV is already more full of scribblings than this old one, and it would take me longer to figure out what these old notes mean than it would to find again their inspiration.

A Dieu, old friend. Your words have not been lost.

~ emrys