T-Bone said her first word at 11 months after several weeks of animal sounds (mooo. meow. ruff ruff) and “Wow” “Whoa” and the ever popular and oft needed “uh-oh!”

At 11 months we got “dada.” And the flood gates opened.

We’ve been using a technique for language acquisition we read about in NurtureShock. To introduce a new word we take an item we know is within her grasp (b, w, c, h noises are vogue right now) and hold it up. Then I say, in a sing song voice, “ba-be, ba-be, ba-be.” Then the other person, usually my dad, does the same thing. Apparently children have an almost impossible time learning a novel word hearing just one person say it. We then pass it back in forth and say “baby, baby, baby.”

And get this. It worked. She looks right up at me with those huge blue eyes and says, “baby.”

I was lamenting to my sister-in-law that several times I’ve heard T say a word and never use it again. The words “duck” and “yes” came out of her mouth once but that was it. So we are careful to reinforce with books and objects. It’s been fun to transition from care-taking to actual teaching.

Here’s our list so far: up, out, bye-bye, hi, eye, mommy, daddy, mama, dada, hot, ball, belly, baby, apple

Something about Gordon College attracts a lot of Calvinist/Reformists. As a result, a lot of my friends fall into this theological camp. Well, my sweet friends, I found an ode to you. Here’s to you Carla, Jane and Lisa, just to name a few. I love you all. “I didn’t choose you. You chose me.”

Thanks to Ben for passing this along. I laughed so hard I almost lost bladder control.

For the first time in a long time I am experiencing the suburbs. MOPS is by far the most totalizing example of this new life. Mothers of PreSchoolers is a group for stay-at-home moms (it meets on a weekday morning), and some work from home moms, although our group doesn’t have that many.

I came to MOPS out of desperation, the desperation of living in a new town, staying at home with a wild child, having no friends or support and not connecting to a church. And while my feelings were lukewarm and my trepidation great, it has been a very good experience. The women who are there are going the same things I am. We have a common experience and it is good to share that. Plus, there are very few times when I am away from T and even fewer when she gets to interact with other kids. This serves both ends.

At the same time, I often don’t like the camaraderie of MOPS issues. These are upper/middle class concerns: too many activities, not enough time; how to keep your husband happy; how to “get it all done.” This week was especially revealing. We had someone come in to talk about once a month cooking, which is exactly what it sounds like.

The idea is that cooking and freezing all your dinners will save time and money. Outright let me say that at certain times in life this sounds like it would be a much welcome idea. My friend Mandy does this at her home, a home where she is completing a dissertation with a toddler in the house while her husband is in his first year of a tenure-track teaching job. Whoa nelly. Bring on the once a month meals.

But something that concerns me is the disturbing trend of getting us and our kids further and further from the process that creates meals. We’ve seen this gap widen with every generation, from killing animals and growing food on your farm to local grocers to mega-grocers and finally to Costco where it’s often difficult to discern the identity of food unless it’s carefully marked. Once a month cooking made me feel like we were reaching a new evolutionary point – now your children will never see you cook.

I was also shocked at the number of hands that raised when the speaker asked who hated cooking. Almost every hand shot up. While I wouldn’t call cooking my one joy, and I lament that dinner prep comes at the fussiest hour of the day, I do love to be involved in the process of food, to think about where things are grown, to be the next step in turning things grown in the earth into what will actually become the matter that makes up the people I love. It does feel like a miracle to me.

But I should say that my concern isn’t purely sentimental. I want my kid to know not only how to cook, but how to grow, harvest and nurture her food. I believe that our complete liberation from food comes at a price. To lose our connection to createdness, to the earth God made good for our use, to relegate cooking to a hated chore that we simply have to get through, what is life about if we disregard the thing that guarantees that we can live at all?

Now just in case you think I’m going a little overboard let me repeat that once a month meals aren’t the evil. I like the idea of sticking a few pre-made items in the freezer to take out when there’s serious meltdown, we have just returned from a trip or when someone is sick. What concerns me is how cooking, the one part of the process of the food cycle that still demands that we slow, prepare, make time, give room and respect is being usurped by the freezer.

As inconvenient as meal prep can be, I want to change my thinking about it. I want cooking to be a joy that involves my whole family. I want to see it as bound to a process that began with God booming “It is GOOD!” And I’m willing to work hard on myself and my schedule to make that happen.

I have a friend (and probably more than one, though I just don’t know it) who feels like parenting methods that aren’t explicitly Christian are suspect, that is parenting methods that don’t rely heavily on the categories of sin and redemption. The thought is that these secular methods miss the point and are interested in ends that Christian parents are not invested in. (Jump in if I’m mistaking you, C.)

Reading Augustine made me think that this isn’t entirely accurate. He wrote the massive City of God after the fall of Rome to the Visigoth invaders. It’s a tome intended to bolster the Christians of his day by reminding them that they are not of this world. Instead, the church belong to the sojourning City of God that is mixed in with the City of Man.

What’s really interesting about City of God is not how different the cities are, but how similar they appear in terms of the goods they seek after. While there are certainly many ways the cities show themselves for what they are, ultimately they both long for a similar good, a really good Good – peace. One of my favorite examples of how this plays out is Augustine’s description of a ferocious lion who will lay down to cuddle with her cubs. At the end of the day, both cities are looking for the same thing.

What’s different about the two is that the City of Man doesn’t long for the higher good. It wants peace as an end in itself, not the peace that passes understanding and points those within that peace in the direction of becoming citizens of “that heavenly city.” This reminded me a lot of the parenting information out there in the world. I don’t know that there is that much difference between what secular parents want and what Christian parents want. For instance, I think it’s vital that Wild One have good self esteem. I would love for her to be smart and healthy and successful. I don’t know of any parents, secular or Christian who want their kids to grow up selfish, hateful, insecure or self-loathing.

In other words, the ends are the same. What I think Christian parenting does is reframe some of the goals of parenting towards the heavenly country. I want my kids to have great self-esteem because it would be sinful not to accept and cherish one made in God’s image. I want T to be successful by using her gifts to build God’s kingdom.

What I find problematic about Christian parenting methods is that they are all interpretations and sometimes getting the Christian stamp of approval can be deceptive. I’m thinking about the Rich Dad, Poor Dad books, dangerous teachings on money that deeply obfuscate the church’s teachings about poverty, which are marketed as Christian reading. I think about Christian parenting methods that emphasize control and humiliation because they define the entirety of the Christian life by sin rather than by sin that has been redeemed.

While there’s a lot of good stuff out there, it all requires interpretation and assessment. Because of the sometimes dangerous tone of authority, Christian parenting methods may require even more attention. Certainly not every parenting book is going to help us raise the kids God wants them to be. But I for one don’t want to be fooled by the superficiality of secular and Christian categories.

I’m just starting to feel like a human being again. While I love going to Iowa to visit the rowdy Florer clan, its the getting there and back that takes its toll. High intensity kids don’t do well in closed spaces where there are restrictions as to when and where you can move. As if I needed any further reminder of how wild my child actually is, this time I had something to compare her to. I had lots of examples on this trip of children who seemed much more in control of their little selves.

Comparison 1: Plane Ride

Child X: 19 months old. Sits in an open seat next to her dad while her mom nurses her infant brother across the row. Her dad WATCHES A MOVIE on his IPhone the ENTIRE FLIGHT. I am not making this up. Child X plays with no toys. She simply sings songs to herself, plays with the tray in front of her and occasionally talks to her dad. Who ignores her. Because he’s WATCHING A MOVIE. Eventually she eats a snack and goes to sleep.

Child Y: Fortunately nurses on the ascent but shoots out of her seat at the ding of the “you may get out of your seat” bell. Walks the length of the plane approximately 20 times. Finds the bathroom. Talks to self in mirror. Pulls out toilet paper. Flushes toilet 10 times. Walks up and down 20 more times. Knocks on bathroom door, now occupied, and cries hysterically when mama says we can’t go in there. Goes through every book. Rips apart the in-flight magazine, handing each piece to the rather large man squeezed into the adjacent seat trying to play Sudoku. Unbuckles mamas seat belt. Tried to unbuckle Large Man’s seat belt. Is angry when prevented from doing this. Eats biscotti. Crumbles biscotti all over mama and Large Man. Now overtired and angry, cries at the top of lungs for the final 20 minutes of the plane ride. Large Man attempts to strangle self with seat belt.

Comparison 2: h1N1 clinic

Child X: Over the course of 3 hours wait, Child X sits in her stroller for TWO HOURS. She looks at books but mostly looks around and eats her snack. Eventually she gets out and walks around. She then falls asleep on her dad’s shoulder, gets her shot and goes home.

Child Y: Walks through mud puddles and in and out of line looking at all the kids. Dad goes to get stroller and walks baby around for half an hour. Baby pulls out all of her books. Takes books from Baby X. Eats snack. Attempts to eat Baby X’s snack. Walks around. Runs around. Is spun in a circle by dad. Walks outside. Refuses dad’s attempt to get her to sleep. Pushes around her stroller. Attempts to push Baby X’s stroller (Baby X is wondering, “who is this crazy person?”). Massively defecates in her diaper which results in mama to leaving her cell phone in the bathroom. Gets shot and exhausted family goes home.

Welcome to my life.

….we’ve just been in Iowa.

I’m thankful to bro-in-law Tommy for nicely summing up our haps since I’m so exhausted I don’t even know my name.

This is the end of one of those weeks where I just have to take a deep breath.

T-Rex was sick with over a 100 degree fever this week. I was kept inside by wet cold weather with a listless, angry, unwell child. I was so tired by the time Friday rolled around that it was hard to believe the big day, circled in red, for the GRE had arrived. Not exactly how I intended to prepare for a major test, but this is my life.

I’m not a whiz at standardized tests but I was determined to not let this one get the best of me. My fatalism is usually the killer. I rationalize, what are the chances that of the millions of words in the English language that I will know the secondary definition to get these random 30 questions right? So what’s the point? Not this time. I worked hard, memorized maybe a thousand new words, took 5 practice tests. Wept. Prayed. Hoped.

I wanted the result to be great, flawless. But the reality is that, even after 9 months of studying, I’m not in control. My goal for the GRE was 700 on the verbal section, a score that would make me competitive with others with my academic pedigree in the range of doctoral programs to which I’d like to apply. I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere near the expected 700 quant but that’s a fact I’ve lived with since math testing began in kindergarten.

I knew all but two words of the hundred or so that make up the antonym and analogy sections of the GRE. I smoked sentence completion and the writing section. But reading comprehension, in particular a very complicated section on Constitutional law, longer than any section I’d practiced, brought me low. It’s possible I got all the 6 related questions wrong. It’s also possible I got every other question correct. So the final score was a 610. I’d say that this makes me neutral in the eyes of programs, although I’ve heard that in some programs this would actually eliminate me.

Now I’m trying to decide if I want to add the financial burden of another $150 test to my family.  I’m trying to decide if I can bear to pick myself up and start studying again, knowing I’ll have to take the test in Nov to get in under the application deadline. I have to decide if it’s even possible I could do better.

One thing I have decided is that I won’t let this be the end of the world. If there’s one thing I know about graduate programs it’s that the stress doesn’t end with admission. I don’t have a choice to let my life be rocked by the results of a test. I have a family to be present to, I have a child to be whole for. If I let this disappointment wreck me, what will I do when I don’t get in? Or when my dissertation proposal is denied the first time? Or when there simply is no time to read because T-Bop needs mommy time? Or because I’m tired from being pregnant? I keep reminding myself that if I’m going to do doctoral work at all, I need to do at as the person whom God wants me to be: someone’s mother, someone’s wife, someone who lives without fear, someone who expects God’s provision, and someone who can accept God’s “no,” and will pick up and wait for his “yes.”

Holly Taylor Coolman, a fellow Dukie who now teaches at Providence College has reactivated her blog much to my delight. Holly has three children who came to the family via adoption. I love reading things about her family and hope that she’ll continue to write about adoption. Adoption is hard and I know without the stories and courage of people like the CoolPeople it would seem impossible. Knowing a couple went through PhDs (at the same time) and still managed to find the finances, energy, and openness to say “yes” is greatly encouraging to me.

This is a part of her latest post:

One of the things that folks sometimes do when they are trying to sort things out is to call the kids that people have adopted “adopted kids.” When parents give birth, though, they say that they have one of “their own.” As in, “Yes, they adopted a boy from Russia last year. And they already had two of their own.”

This always makes me nervous.

Now, you might be guessing that I am recoiling at the suggestion that my children are not my own. That I want to remind people that these are my kids, and I love them just as much as if I had, in fact, given birth to them. That my children might not have grown “under” my heart, but they grew “inside” it. Nope. (Actually, I find that last image a little unnerving.)

Despite the occasional evidence suggesting that they are about to drive me completely batty and that I am about to banish them to a far planet, I do, in fact, love my kids. But I am actually worried about something else. I suspect that when people talk about parents’ “own kids,” they may mean something like this: if you give birth to people, they will be like you. You will pretty much be able to get a handle on them. You know will what you’re getting.

Some parents maintain this illusion until the baby is born, and some unexpected diagnosis turns their categories inside out. For some people, it is a radically headstrong toddler or a seventeen-year-old whose gift for soccer or viola or souffle-making creates new clarity. Some parents remain permanently convinced that they know what they have gotten. But they are wrong.

The older my kids get, the more I see the very real possibility that parents will miss their kids completely, will miss who their kids actually are. Parents are constantly tempted to see kids as their younger selves, as people who imitate and ignore and recombine the parents’ lives in various ways. Whereas, the kids are, in reality, off on a completely new adventure called themselves.

Adoptive parents have just a little bit of a leg up here. We at least get small reminders of this truth all the time. And we sometimes wonder if we should tell the others what we know: we parents love our kids, and hope for them, and try to tell them what to do, but in the last analysis, none of them are really, finally “our own.”

Thanks for writing again, Holly!

If you are a member of my family, I kindly ask that you stop reading now. If you are not a member of my family, welcome to the crafty deficient’s guide to DIYing your way to a cheaper, more wholesome holiday of fun.

I’m not crafty. I think I must have some kind of spacial reasoning deficit that makes things like constructing something from nothing very difficult, with usually frightening results. But I was convinced to move on and found some projects that even I think will make useful and presentable Christmas presents.

Who wouldn’t enjoy, for instance, a herd of tiny pigs? My husband says, no one. I think that’s crazy talk. Follow the pattern and you can’t go wrong. Sewing is required.

Or what about those cute half-marble magnets? Turns out their not that hard to make.

Perhaps top of my list are the frequently over priced bath bombs. I can so do this project.

I also came across a good idea in the latest Real Simple. “Cards for all occasions.” Take a recipe storage box and divide it with tabs labeled “Birthday,” “Get Well,” “Thank You,” “Happy Anniversary,” “Just Because.” Make 5 cards for each event and stick them in the right spot. $40 from some company? Peshaw. You can do this for around $20, I have no doubt.

I’m also starting a post-GRE celebratory pottery class on Tuesday so I hope to lavish my unsuspecting family members with many wonderful ashtrays. Er, I mean pots.

Another thought, don’t underestimate the power of apple butter. If you can can, then this is a great gift to give to family members. Apple season is here so get cracking!

Last year I made my sister a seasonal cookbook with my favorites from Simply in Season, frequently used Food Network recipes, stuff from the NYTimes and other things I’ve collected along the way. I arranged them according to seasonal availability and included a table I found from the Durham farmers market saying produce would be available when. My lack of vision got the better of me and it didn’t look as good as I’d hoped, but I think she appreciated the effort.

For T-Bop I have a couple irons in the fire. One is a toddler apron with places to hold all the mini cooking tools I bought her when we were in Bird-in-the-Hand. I haven’t found the perfect pattern quite yet, but I bet I could come up with something on my own.

I’m also buying plain wood letters, painting them, and attaching magnets to the back. All the wood letters I’ve found so far have magnets that can be ingested if they fall apart, so I’m going to make my own. I’m also loving the idea of picking up a few on-sale American Apparel onesies and using this kit to add an applique. One pattern = used for a lifetime.

The big thing to keep in mind is that all of this takes time. If you’re serious about getting your craft on, better start now!

I posted this last night but took it down after realizing that it’s possible some of the thoughts expressed could be extrapolated to a general condemnation of IVF. While that’s an important conversation, that’s not what this post is about. For those who are considering IVF, I hope you will add this to the canon of information you use to make this important decision. Sorry for those whose comments were deleted as a result.