I was bending over to change the CD in the CD player and Ocean points at my tattoo.
"Heart," he says. "Yes, that's right," I replied.
"Flowers! One, two, three!" He exclaimed, pointing at my back. "Yep, three flowers," I said.
He then grabbed my butt, a cheek in each hand, gave a few good squeezes and gleefully shouted, "Squishy!"
If that's not motivation to work out I don't know what is.
3.30.2008
3.26.2008
big brother is watching
I've heard it said that kids are like sponges. Here's proof:
-When Iris cries in the car, I call out, "We're almost home!" Now when she begins to fuss, no matter where we are, Ocean wraps his arms around her and says, "Awwww, come here. Almost home."
-Ocean pauses to pat Iris on the head as he runs busily by, admonishing her with a, "Good girl, Iris."
-We've all come down with colds this week and I've been suctioning Iris's nose quite a bit. She was getting really irritated with me and fussing. Ocean looks over at her and says, "I know, baby."
-This afternoon I was getting ready to nurse Iris. I gave Ocean a glow worm doll and asked if he would like to feed his baby while mommy fed Iris. He gave me a weird look, grabbed his toy basketball and held it up to his chest. Then he held the glow worm up to the basketball... like it was a breast!
I guess I should really start watching my language...
-When Iris cries in the car, I call out, "We're almost home!" Now when she begins to fuss, no matter where we are, Ocean wraps his arms around her and says, "Awwww, come here. Almost home."
-Ocean pauses to pat Iris on the head as he runs busily by, admonishing her with a, "Good girl, Iris."
-We've all come down with colds this week and I've been suctioning Iris's nose quite a bit. She was getting really irritated with me and fussing. Ocean looks over at her and says, "I know, baby."
-This afternoon I was getting ready to nurse Iris. I gave Ocean a glow worm doll and asked if he would like to feed his baby while mommy fed Iris. He gave me a weird look, grabbed his toy basketball and held it up to his chest. Then he held the glow worm up to the basketball... like it was a breast!
I guess I should really start watching my language...
3.20.2008
loaded questions
We were eating dinner and Phil got up to get some water.
He asked: "Do you need anything?"
What I wanted to say:
"I need to pay bills. I need abdominoplasty. I need 5 seconds of peace and quiet. I need a housekeeper. I need sleep. I need to do 8 loads of laundry. I need a haircut. I need to get the kids in bed. I need a good laugh. I need to write thank you notes. I need to stop singing "The Backyardigans" theme song. I need to check my voice mail. I need more hours in my day. I need to respond to Karen's email. I need to buy baking soda. I need more iron in my diet. And I NEED A VACATION."
But it was a long day and I was tired.
What I said: "No."
He asked: "Do you need anything?"
What I wanted to say:
"I need to pay bills. I need abdominoplasty. I need 5 seconds of peace and quiet. I need a housekeeper. I need sleep. I need to do 8 loads of laundry. I need a haircut. I need to get the kids in bed. I need a good laugh. I need to write thank you notes. I need to stop singing "The Backyardigans" theme song. I need to check my voice mail. I need more hours in my day. I need to respond to Karen's email. I need to buy baking soda. I need more iron in my diet. And I NEED A VACATION."
But it was a long day and I was tired.
What I said: "No."
3.15.2008
saturday funnies
-I was changing Ocean's poopy diaper the other day and I said, "Ocean, you had a big poop!" He looks down at the diaper, raises his eyebrow at me and says, "Crazy burger!"
-Earlier in the week I was putting Iris down for a nap. Ocean was playing upstairs and I kept hearing crashing sounds. I realized he was throwing toys downstairs. I headed up the first flight and was about to round the corner when Thomas the Train came flying through the air, slamming against the wall and nearly missing my face. I heard a faint whisper from the top of the stairs: "Almost."
-Earlier in the week I was putting Iris down for a nap. Ocean was playing upstairs and I kept hearing crashing sounds. I realized he was throwing toys downstairs. I headed up the first flight and was about to round the corner when Thomas the Train came flying through the air, slamming against the wall and nearly missing my face. I heard a faint whisper from the top of the stairs: "Almost."
2.10.2008
heaven
From an article in TIME magazine. Read it with an open mind; this is fascinating stuff from one of the most well-respected Christian thinkers of our day. If true, this changes everything we thought we knew about life and death...
N.T. "Tom" Wright is one of the most formidable figures in the world of Christian thought. As Bishop of Durham, he is the fourth most senior cleric in the Church of England and a major player in the strife-riven global Anglican Communion; as a much-read theologian and Biblical scholar he has taught at Cambridge and is a hero to conservative Christians worldwide for his 2003 book The Resurrection of the Son of God, which argued forcefully for a literal interpretation of that event.
It therefore comes as a something of a shock that Wright doesn't believe in heaven — at least, not in the way that millions of Christians understand the term. In his new book, Surprised by Hope (HarperOne), Wright quotes a children's book by California first lady Maria Shriver called What's Heaven, which describes it as "a beautiful place where you can sit on soft clouds and talk... If you're good throughout your life, then you get to go [there]... When your life is finished here on earth, God sends angels down to take you heaven to be with him." That, says Wright is a good example of "what not to say." The Biblical truth, he continues, "is very, very different."
Wright, 58, talked by phone with TIME's David Van Biema.
TIME: At one point you call the common view of heaven a "distortion and serious diminution of Christian hope."
Wright: It really is. I've often heard people say, "I'm going to heaven soon, and I won't need this stupid body there, thank goodness.' That's a very damaging distortion, all the more so for being unintentional.
TIME: How so? It seems like a typical sentiment.
Wright: There are several important respects in which it's unsupported by the New Testament. First, the timing. In the Bible we are told that you die, and enter an intermediate state. St. Paul is very clear that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead already, but that nobody else has yet. Secondly, our physical state. The New Testament says that when Christ does return, the dead will experience a whole new life: not just our soul, but our bodies. And finally, the location. At no point do the resurrection narratives in the four Gospels say, "Jesus has been raised, therefore we are all going to heaven." It says that Christ is coming here, to join together the heavens and the Earth in an act of new creation.
TIME: Is there anything more in the Bible about the period between death and the resurrection of the dead?
Wright: We know that we will be with God and with Christ, resting and being refreshed. Paul writes that it will be conscious, but compared with being bodily alive, it will be like being asleep. The Wisdom of Solomon, a Jewish text from about the same time as Jesus, says "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God," and that seems like a poetic way to put the Christian understanding, as well.
TIME: But it's not where the real action is, so to speak?
Wright: No. Our culture is very interested in life after death, but the New Testament is much more interested in what I've called the life after life after death — in the ultimate resurrection into the new heavens and the new Earth. Jesus' resurrection marks the beginning of a restoration that he will complete upon his return. Part of this will be the resurrection of all the dead, who will "awake," be embodied and participate in the renewal. John Polkinghorne, a physicist and a priest, has put it this way: "God will download our software onto his hardware until the time he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves." That gets to two things nicely: that the period after death is a period when we are in God's presence but not active in our own bodies, and also that the more important transformation will be when we are again embodied and administering Christ's kingdom.
TIME: That is rather different from the common understanding. Did some Biblical verse contribute to our confusion?
Wright: There is Luke 23, where Jesus says to the good thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." But in Luke, we know first of all that Christ himself will not be resurrected for three days, so "paradise" cannot be a resurrection. It has to be an intermediate state. And chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation, where there is a vision of worship in heaven that people imagine describes our worship at the end of time. In fact it's describing the worship that's going on right now. If you read the book through, you see that at the end we don't have a description of heaven, but, as I said, of the new heavens and the new earth joined together.
TIME: Why, then, have we misread those verses?
Wright: It has, originally, to do with the translation of Jewish ideas into Greek. The New Testament is deeply, deeply Jewish, and the Jews had for some time been intuiting a final, physical resurrection. They believed that the world of space and time and matter is messed up, but remains basically good, and God will eventually sort it out and put it right again. Belief in that goodness is absolutely essential to Christianity, both theologically and morally. But Greek-speaking Christians influenced by Plato saw our cosmos as shabby and misshapen and full of lies, and the idea was not to make it right, but to escape it and leave behind our material bodies. The church at its best has always come back toward the Hebrew view, but there have been times when the Greek view was very influential.
TIME: Can you give some historical examples?
Wright: Two obvious ones are Dante's great poetry, which sets up a Heaven, Purgatory and Hell immediately after death, and Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine chapel, which portrays heaven and hell as equal and opposite last destinations. Both had enormous influence on Western culture, so much so that many Christians think that is Christianity.
TIME: But it's not.
Wright: Never at any point do the Gospels or Paul say Jesus has been raised, therefore we are we are all going to heaven. They all say, Jesus is raised, therefore the new creation has begun, and we have a job to do.
TIME: That sounds a lot like... work.
Wright: It's more exciting than hanging around listening to nice music. In Revelation and Paul's letters we are told that God's people will actually be running the new world on God's behalf. The idea of our participation in the new creation goes back to Genesis, when humans are supposed to be running the Garden and looking after the animals. If you transpose that all the way through, it's a picture like the one that you get at the end of Revelation.
TIME: And it ties in to what you've written about this all having a moral dimension.
Wright: Both that, and the idea of bodily resurrection that people deny when they talk about their "souls going to Heaven." If people think "my physical body doesn't matter very much," then who cares what I do with it? And if people think that our world, our cosmos, doesn't matter much, who cares what we do with that? Much of "traditional" Christianity gives the impression that God has these rather arbitrary rules about how you have to behave, and if you disobey them you go to hell, rather than to heaven. What the New Testament really says is God wants you to be a renewed human being helping him to renew his creation, and his resurrection was the opening bell. And when he returns to fulfil the plan, you won't be going up there to him, he'll be coming down here.
TIME: That's very different from, say, the vision put out in the Left Behind books.
Wright: Yes. If there's going to be an Armageddon, and we'll all be in heaven already or raptured up just in time, it really doesn't matter if you have acid rain or greenhouse gases prior to that. Or, for that matter, whether you bombed civilians in Iraq. All that really matters is saving souls for that disembodied heaven.
TIME: Has anyone you've talked to expressed disappointment at the loss of the old view?
Wright: Yes, you might get disappointment in the case where somebody has recently gone through the death of somebody they love and they are wanting simply to be with them. And I'd say that's understandable. But the end of Revelation describes a marvelous human participation in God's plan. And in almost all cases, when I've explained this to people, there's a sense of excitement and a sense of, "Why haven't we been told this before?"
N.T. "Tom" Wright is one of the most formidable figures in the world of Christian thought. As Bishop of Durham, he is the fourth most senior cleric in the Church of England and a major player in the strife-riven global Anglican Communion; as a much-read theologian and Biblical scholar he has taught at Cambridge and is a hero to conservative Christians worldwide for his 2003 book The Resurrection of the Son of God, which argued forcefully for a literal interpretation of that event.
It therefore comes as a something of a shock that Wright doesn't believe in heaven — at least, not in the way that millions of Christians understand the term. In his new book, Surprised by Hope (HarperOne), Wright quotes a children's book by California first lady Maria Shriver called What's Heaven, which describes it as "a beautiful place where you can sit on soft clouds and talk... If you're good throughout your life, then you get to go [there]... When your life is finished here on earth, God sends angels down to take you heaven to be with him." That, says Wright is a good example of "what not to say." The Biblical truth, he continues, "is very, very different."
Wright, 58, talked by phone with TIME's David Van Biema.
TIME: At one point you call the common view of heaven a "distortion and serious diminution of Christian hope."
Wright: It really is. I've often heard people say, "I'm going to heaven soon, and I won't need this stupid body there, thank goodness.' That's a very damaging distortion, all the more so for being unintentional.
TIME: How so? It seems like a typical sentiment.
Wright: There are several important respects in which it's unsupported by the New Testament. First, the timing. In the Bible we are told that you die, and enter an intermediate state. St. Paul is very clear that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead already, but that nobody else has yet. Secondly, our physical state. The New Testament says that when Christ does return, the dead will experience a whole new life: not just our soul, but our bodies. And finally, the location. At no point do the resurrection narratives in the four Gospels say, "Jesus has been raised, therefore we are all going to heaven." It says that Christ is coming here, to join together the heavens and the Earth in an act of new creation.
TIME: Is there anything more in the Bible about the period between death and the resurrection of the dead?
Wright: We know that we will be with God and with Christ, resting and being refreshed. Paul writes that it will be conscious, but compared with being bodily alive, it will be like being asleep. The Wisdom of Solomon, a Jewish text from about the same time as Jesus, says "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God," and that seems like a poetic way to put the Christian understanding, as well.
TIME: But it's not where the real action is, so to speak?
Wright: No. Our culture is very interested in life after death, but the New Testament is much more interested in what I've called the life after life after death — in the ultimate resurrection into the new heavens and the new Earth. Jesus' resurrection marks the beginning of a restoration that he will complete upon his return. Part of this will be the resurrection of all the dead, who will "awake," be embodied and participate in the renewal. John Polkinghorne, a physicist and a priest, has put it this way: "God will download our software onto his hardware until the time he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves." That gets to two things nicely: that the period after death is a period when we are in God's presence but not active in our own bodies, and also that the more important transformation will be when we are again embodied and administering Christ's kingdom.
TIME: That is rather different from the common understanding. Did some Biblical verse contribute to our confusion?
Wright: There is Luke 23, where Jesus says to the good thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." But in Luke, we know first of all that Christ himself will not be resurrected for three days, so "paradise" cannot be a resurrection. It has to be an intermediate state. And chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation, where there is a vision of worship in heaven that people imagine describes our worship at the end of time. In fact it's describing the worship that's going on right now. If you read the book through, you see that at the end we don't have a description of heaven, but, as I said, of the new heavens and the new earth joined together.
TIME: Why, then, have we misread those verses?
Wright: It has, originally, to do with the translation of Jewish ideas into Greek. The New Testament is deeply, deeply Jewish, and the Jews had for some time been intuiting a final, physical resurrection. They believed that the world of space and time and matter is messed up, but remains basically good, and God will eventually sort it out and put it right again. Belief in that goodness is absolutely essential to Christianity, both theologically and morally. But Greek-speaking Christians influenced by Plato saw our cosmos as shabby and misshapen and full of lies, and the idea was not to make it right, but to escape it and leave behind our material bodies. The church at its best has always come back toward the Hebrew view, but there have been times when the Greek view was very influential.
TIME: Can you give some historical examples?
Wright: Two obvious ones are Dante's great poetry, which sets up a Heaven, Purgatory and Hell immediately after death, and Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine chapel, which portrays heaven and hell as equal and opposite last destinations. Both had enormous influence on Western culture, so much so that many Christians think that is Christianity.
TIME: But it's not.
Wright: Never at any point do the Gospels or Paul say Jesus has been raised, therefore we are we are all going to heaven. They all say, Jesus is raised, therefore the new creation has begun, and we have a job to do.
TIME: That sounds a lot like... work.
Wright: It's more exciting than hanging around listening to nice music. In Revelation and Paul's letters we are told that God's people will actually be running the new world on God's behalf. The idea of our participation in the new creation goes back to Genesis, when humans are supposed to be running the Garden and looking after the animals. If you transpose that all the way through, it's a picture like the one that you get at the end of Revelation.
TIME: And it ties in to what you've written about this all having a moral dimension.
Wright: Both that, and the idea of bodily resurrection that people deny when they talk about their "souls going to Heaven." If people think "my physical body doesn't matter very much," then who cares what I do with it? And if people think that our world, our cosmos, doesn't matter much, who cares what we do with that? Much of "traditional" Christianity gives the impression that God has these rather arbitrary rules about how you have to behave, and if you disobey them you go to hell, rather than to heaven. What the New Testament really says is God wants you to be a renewed human being helping him to renew his creation, and his resurrection was the opening bell. And when he returns to fulfil the plan, you won't be going up there to him, he'll be coming down here.
TIME: That's very different from, say, the vision put out in the Left Behind books.
Wright: Yes. If there's going to be an Armageddon, and we'll all be in heaven already or raptured up just in time, it really doesn't matter if you have acid rain or greenhouse gases prior to that. Or, for that matter, whether you bombed civilians in Iraq. All that really matters is saving souls for that disembodied heaven.
TIME: Has anyone you've talked to expressed disappointment at the loss of the old view?
Wright: Yes, you might get disappointment in the case where somebody has recently gone through the death of somebody they love and they are wanting simply to be with them. And I'd say that's understandable. But the end of Revelation describes a marvelous human participation in God's plan. And in almost all cases, when I've explained this to people, there's a sense of excitement and a sense of, "Why haven't we been told this before?"
2.07.2008
what happened to the village?
I have met quite a few mommies lately who are struggling to keep it together. We all want to be supermoms but some days my biggest accomplishment is just getting my kids in bed at the end of the day. The more I experience the frustration of feeling like I'm going it alone the more I realize that I can't be the only one who feels this way.
It's more complicated than just getting together with friends, though... logistically, it's hard to meet up with people when we all have kids who nap, and usually at different times. And then there are some of us who work outside the home, and some who work at home only. There's also the issue of distance... a lot of the people I want to hang out with live at least 15 minutes away from me, and that doesn't include the time (and extreme effort) that it takes to get everyone bundled up and in the car. I mean, this morning it took me and the kids 45 minutes from the time we started packing up until we were all actually in the car. By that time *I* was ready for a nap! It's so much easier to stay home... and therefore, to remain isolated.
Last night we had our awesome friends over for dinner and I realized how starved I have been for good company and solid friends (who live in the same state!). I wish I could be around good people all day long; it totally recharges my batteries and provides a great buffer for when I'm struggling with my kids. I mean, that's why people used to have such big families, right? Because family members lived close by and everyone pitched in. Now we stop at 2.5 kids because we can't possibly handle more than that on our own.
I have no problem admitting that I need help with my kids, even just day-to-day. How awesome would it be if our neighbors actually became a community of support for one another? That might be enough to make me consider having another kiddo... one day...
It's more complicated than just getting together with friends, though... logistically, it's hard to meet up with people when we all have kids who nap, and usually at different times. And then there are some of us who work outside the home, and some who work at home only. There's also the issue of distance... a lot of the people I want to hang out with live at least 15 minutes away from me, and that doesn't include the time (and extreme effort) that it takes to get everyone bundled up and in the car. I mean, this morning it took me and the kids 45 minutes from the time we started packing up until we were all actually in the car. By that time *I* was ready for a nap! It's so much easier to stay home... and therefore, to remain isolated.
Last night we had our awesome friends over for dinner and I realized how starved I have been for good company and solid friends (who live in the same state!). I wish I could be around good people all day long; it totally recharges my batteries and provides a great buffer for when I'm struggling with my kids. I mean, that's why people used to have such big families, right? Because family members lived close by and everyone pitched in. Now we stop at 2.5 kids because we can't possibly handle more than that on our own.
I have no problem admitting that I need help with my kids, even just day-to-day. How awesome would it be if our neighbors actually became a community of support for one another? That might be enough to make me consider having another kiddo... one day...
12.31.2007
spirited
Unless you have a child who is "more"... more energetic, more boisterous, more emotional, more easily disrupted, etc... you cannot possibly understand the ways of parents who have such a child.
Ocean will be 2 years old in February and he is the cheese to my cracker. I love that kid with every fiber of my being. Being his mother for the last 22 months has taught me how to be creative in the way that I guide, discipline and encourage him because he is one of those "more" children... he is spirited. If you spend more than 5 minutes with my little guy you will understand what I mean; as a baby he was what Dr. Sears calls "high need". There are those who become overwhelmed at his enthusiasm (and volume) and result to calling him names or speaking poorly of him (and this from adults... shameful). They look at me as though I'm crazy for negotiating with him, and roll their eyes when I'm inflexible about his nap and bedtimes. I have felt the glares of other mothers during storytime at the library when their babies were sitting quietly, listening... and my son was shrieking with delight, racing to the front to play with the puppets that the storyteller was using. I have seen the incredulous looks as I, 9 months pregnant, chased my son through the mall just because he saw a balloon in a store and would stop at nothing to get a closer look.
I have to admit my own ignorance as well, because before Ocean came along I would see other children like him and think, "That child is out of control." or "Doesn't that parent discipline their child?" How incredibly judgmental of me. I never realized the sensitivity it takes to mother a child with such an intense experience of the world. I didn't understand how much these children need to feel independent and free to explore their environment, or how they feel as though they will burst if they have no outlet for the current of energy that is always coursing through their little bodies (as evidenced by the tiny foot that is always tapping, even when he's sitting still).
Ocean is a challenging child to parent, because I am now having to think outside the box. The parenting books, magazines and advice columns don't work for us. We have to come up with our own solutions. And often times those solutions are inconvenient, time consuming and unconventional. But I came to a weighty realization last week which has given me fresh energy: I am Ocean's mom for a reason. I have to believe part of that reason is because of my willingness to be his advocate when most of the world doesn't understand. I love the creativity it takes to be his mommy; to come up with strategies that will allow him to express himself while helping him learn that there are boundaries and consequences. And of course I have to believe I'm best suited for the job of guiding him into adulthood... a daunting but exhilarating task.
I can't wait to see the spirited adult that my "more" child will become, and while he's being shaped and molded into his own little entity I'm certain I'm in for a transformation of my own.
On this New Year's Eve, Cheers to all the mothers out there, especially the mothers of the Spirited.
Ocean will be 2 years old in February and he is the cheese to my cracker. I love that kid with every fiber of my being. Being his mother for the last 22 months has taught me how to be creative in the way that I guide, discipline and encourage him because he is one of those "more" children... he is spirited. If you spend more than 5 minutes with my little guy you will understand what I mean; as a baby he was what Dr. Sears calls "high need". There are those who become overwhelmed at his enthusiasm (and volume) and result to calling him names or speaking poorly of him (and this from adults... shameful). They look at me as though I'm crazy for negotiating with him, and roll their eyes when I'm inflexible about his nap and bedtimes. I have felt the glares of other mothers during storytime at the library when their babies were sitting quietly, listening... and my son was shrieking with delight, racing to the front to play with the puppets that the storyteller was using. I have seen the incredulous looks as I, 9 months pregnant, chased my son through the mall just because he saw a balloon in a store and would stop at nothing to get a closer look.
I have to admit my own ignorance as well, because before Ocean came along I would see other children like him and think, "That child is out of control." or "Doesn't that parent discipline their child?" How incredibly judgmental of me. I never realized the sensitivity it takes to mother a child with such an intense experience of the world. I didn't understand how much these children need to feel independent and free to explore their environment, or how they feel as though they will burst if they have no outlet for the current of energy that is always coursing through their little bodies (as evidenced by the tiny foot that is always tapping, even when he's sitting still).
Ocean is a challenging child to parent, because I am now having to think outside the box. The parenting books, magazines and advice columns don't work for us. We have to come up with our own solutions. And often times those solutions are inconvenient, time consuming and unconventional. But I came to a weighty realization last week which has given me fresh energy: I am Ocean's mom for a reason. I have to believe part of that reason is because of my willingness to be his advocate when most of the world doesn't understand. I love the creativity it takes to be his mommy; to come up with strategies that will allow him to express himself while helping him learn that there are boundaries and consequences. And of course I have to believe I'm best suited for the job of guiding him into adulthood... a daunting but exhilarating task.
I can't wait to see the spirited adult that my "more" child will become, and while he's being shaped and molded into his own little entity I'm certain I'm in for a transformation of my own.
On this New Year's Eve, Cheers to all the mothers out there, especially the mothers of the Spirited.
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