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Redirect
2008-04-12 23:28:00
I’ve decided to freeze this blog for the time being. It doesn’t mean that I’ll never start it back up, it just means that I maintain two blogs and I’m not doing a very good job of writing for either. So I’d like to invite any of my readers to come over and subscribe to my family blog, where I intend to get back in the blogging swing of things very soon. Thanks for reading!
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MyTurn/YourTurn: Easter Basket
2008-03-23 03:28:00
YourTurn:  If you could have an Easter Basket made for you by anyone living, dead, or fictional… who would it be? Answer in the comment section, or better yet answer in your own blog and just tell us to come visit you.

Preschool Hip
2008-03-19 12:02:00
Want to be down with the latest preschool style? Eli is so cool that he’s even invented his own slang. Now you, too, can be cool like him! fresh adj. 1. satisfied. 2. full 3. satiated Used in context: DAD: Eli, do you want more cereal? ELI: No. I’m fresh. or GRANDMA: Was that a good supper, Eli? ELI: Yeah! I’m fresh!

High Praise From a Five Year Old
2008-03-18 12:00:00
EVA: I love you, Daddy. I love you more than anything in the whole world. Except Barbies.
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My Son: Abusive Spouse In Training
2008-03-17 03:59:00
My son has perfected a new technique that he thinks will get him out of trouble.  When he finds himself in a compromising position, where he knows that he is about to be scolded, put in a time-out, or otherwise reprimanded,  he looks up at me and says in the most heartfelt, earnest way “I love you.” He has variations on the tactic, as well.  Sometimes, he offers “You’re my best friend.”  In other instances, it’s “You’re the best da-da.”  In any case, he is becoming the master of emotional manipulation.  Not bad for someone about to turn three.
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Break
2008-02-22 21:42:00
Hello, everyone! You may have noticed a bit of a decline in the amount of new posts around here. Sorry about that! I just wanted to “officially” say that this blog is going to take a little break.  I hope that you’re a subscriber so that you can pick right up with me when I resume posting here. Nothing’s the matter, it’s just that this is a peak “busy-ness” time for me and something had to give. So that’s why you haven’t seen anything much here lately. In the meantime, you can keep watching for new pingbacks on the St. Francis Project.  Folks are writing some great stuff about that. I hope things are going well for all of you and I look forward to resuming blogging here soon.
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The Eli Chronicles: Part Three
2008-02-08 11:57:00
What toy would you never give away? Ummm…my monkey. George. What do you take to bed at night? My animals. What’s your favorite game? Playing Bob the Builder. What’s your favorite restaurant? Um, Chinese. What would you buy first if you had a million dollars? Elmo. Who’s the smartest person in our family? Ummmm. Eva. What makes you mad? Eva. Is there anything else you’d like to say? (makes plane noises)
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The Eli Chronicles: Part Two
2008-02-06 12:00:00
(as interviewed by my wife, Brooke) How tall is Daddy? Um, big. What is one thing Mommy is always saying to you? “Play Power Rangers.”  How do you know Mommy and Daddy love you? Kiss.  What’s your favorite TV show? Spiderman. (Although at first he said, “Hannah Montana.” I said “Really?” And then he said, “I’m just kiddin’ mommy.”) What do you like best about your pet? She can talk. (”Maisy can talk?” “Yeah.”) And she loves me. What vegetables do you like best? Chips.   What’s your favorite book? Um, George of the Jungle watch out for that tree. What is your favorite candy bar? Um, chocolate. What would you like on your next birthday cake? Spiderman! What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done? Watch Finding Nemo.
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Thanks to my community
2008-02-04 02:01:00
I’d just like to take a moment to thank everyone who contributed to this blog in the month of January. I always love reading your comments, and I hope you feel appreciated!  The sense of community is what I like most about blogging. So thank you for your participation and I hope to hear fromall of you again soon. Links below the fold! (more…)
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The Eva Chronicles: Part Two
2008-01-23 15:25:00
What will you wish for on your next birthday? That people from far, far away that love me will come to my birthday party. What is your favorite treat? Going to the movies and getting popcorn and a Sprite. What’s your favorite game to play? ZINGO. How tall do you want to be when you grow up? Let’s see. (Demonstrates against the wall.) I’m this tall. (Measures, then stretches her arm all the way up.) I want to be THAT tall! I want to actually be as tall as Mommy. No wait. I actually want to be taller than Daddy. Hmmm. I want to be Eleven size. What job do you want to have when you grow up? Hard to decide. A ballet teacher and a scrapbooker. If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be? Mashed potatoes and gravy!!! If you could choose a different name for yourself, what would it be? Princess Genevieve. What rule in our house would you get rid of if you could? Cleaning the whole entire house. It would would be better if there was a C...
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A Worthwhile Project
2008-01-21 15:57:00
I came across a very worthy project that I wanted to share: Life is beautiful! The author, Ingmar Weber, is trying to learn the phrase “life is beautiful” in as many languages as possible.  He is sharing the results of his project with us on his blog.  He’s also collecting recordings in different languages and dialects. I wonder if Missouri Bootheel counts as a valid dialect?
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The Eva Chronicles: Part One
2008-01-21 05:22:00
What makes our family special? We have our own house with Maisy. Who in the world do you look like the most? That would be Kit. Name something you’re really good at. Reading. What is your favorite color? Pink and orange and blue and yellow. Rainbow. Name something you wish you were better at. Running. Sometimes I’m a slowpoke. Who is the smartest person you know? Mrs. Scott.  (Her kindergarten teacher) She is older than me. Who is the funniest person you know? Kyle. He makes funny jokes. One time, we were picking up his crayons because he dropped them. And he got up and bumped his knee and he said “there goes the knee.” He’s a really funny guy. You should meet him. Who is your best friend in the whole world? Everybody. It’s hard to choose from one person in the whole wide world.
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Famous
2008-01-20 05:35:00
I’ve never really wanted to be famous. (Well except maybe for that brief period of time when I wanted to be a pro wrestling manager for the WWF.) Even though I love being on stage and involved with theatre, I never had any plans to “make it big.” In fact, fame really bothers me. I don’t understand why regular people get obsessed with fame and support the “celebrity gossip industry.” Why can’t I watch a news broadcast without the mentions of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, or Lindsay Lohan? Whatever they’re up to, it’s never any good. There are millions of people making destructive choices like theirs every day, so why do we need to somehow glorify them? It’s ghoulish and represents the worst of our society. This is not to say that I don’t want to be known. I enjoy living in a smallish town and knowing quite a bit of people just due to the fact that I’m a teacher. I probably like this because I’ve a...
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The Ties That Bind
2008-01-09 15:00:00
When my daughter Eva was born, I remember being so amazed at how quickly I could love her so completely. From the first time I saw her and touched her sticky newborn skin, I knew that my life would never be the same. I was reminded of The Grinch and felt that my “heart grew three sizes that day!” I was worried in the days leading up to Eli’s birth that things might be different.  What if I didn’t immediately bond with him the way I had with Eva?  What if my life was already “full enough” and I wouldn’t be able to make room for him?  Luckily for him, the process repeated itself.  I loved him from the start, which made it a little bit easier to deal with his crankypants attitude in his early months of life. Who knew that the same thing could happen with a dog?  We recently adopted Maisy, this beautiful three year old Sheltie mix.  A friend at church said something interesting before we adopted her, that having “outside dogs&rdq...

Aw, shucks!
2008-01-07 15:00:00
If a blog could blush, this would one would be! Recently, two of my favorite bloggers were kind enough to pass along some cool awards to me. This was quite a surprise and a pleasant random act of blogging kindness. First, my long time blog buddy Sam presented me with the “Thinking Blogger Award.” Here it is, in all of its awardness: Sam even had some nice things to say: My first reaction to some of the blog’s positivity is “No. You’re wrong. (Insert argument here.)” But I can’t say that. Because even if I’m right — as my ego tells me I so often am — I would be wrong to say so. Hmph. It’s a catch-22! And since I can’t express my initial thoughts, I ended up thinking about it, until, sometimes, I concede that I might not have been completely right, anyway. I’m happy to know that the things written here provoke some thought. And again, I don’t want everyone to get the idea that I’m trying to present my life as perfect or that my at...

Wonderful
2008-01-07 04:12:00
Please read A Father’s New Year’s Resolution. It’s one of the most touching posts I’ve come across in the blogosphere.  I hope that you’ll leave a comment as I did, and encourage this man to follow his beautiful resolution.
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Easy Morning
2008-01-06 18:41:00
MyTurn:  I love a relaxing morning. I should have cherished them more on my pre-parenthood days.  In fact, if I could give one piece of advice to those expecting their first child, it would be:  sleep in and take it easy while you still can.  With my kids staying overnight with my parents, my wife and I have been able to enjoy a leisurely morning.  I’m set up with my laptop here in the living room, sprawled on the recliner watching political pundits predict New Hampshire and analyze Iowa.  I enjoyed a tasty breakfast of granola cereal, sexed up with some M&M’s.  Life is good.  I’m in my PJ’s and it’s almost noon.  Folks, I am a happy man. YourTurn:  Describe how you should spend an ideal, relaxing couple of hours. 
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Surround yourself with positive people
2008-01-03 03:07:00
This is a guest post from my wife, Brooke.  We had a conversation about this and I encouraged her to write about it for this blog. Thanks, honey!  This does not mean to surround yourself with people who don’t have any problems. For example, on New Year’s Eve, I was at a party with a friend who recently lost her father. I hadn’t seen her since she had traveled to the funeral. When she talked about it, she teared up. I hugged her. There was that moment where I didn’t know what to say, but it passed. We started laughing about good times she had with her dad and then just laughing about funny stuff that was happening at the party. Another friend was there, whose in-laws recently moved closer because of a health crisis. She has added a lot of shuttling to and from the doctor’s office and the nursing home to her already full plate. We talked about her new concerns, but mostly we talked about our kids…and got cracked up a lot. Then, today, I was at Target, picking up the stra...
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Comfort and Joy
2007-12-16 05:30:00
MyTurn:  A few months Eli went through a phase where he was having trouble sleeping. He didn’t want to be left alone in his room and would cry for what seemed like forever until one of us would go back in to him.  Since we didn’t want to establish any bad habits or new routines that we couldn’t follow through on, we didn’t let him come to sleep with us and I also didn’t want to keep rocking him back to sleep every time he cried.  We’ve had to try a modified “cry it out” method with both kids at least once in their little lifetimes. It’s heartbreaking, but has led to two kids that pretty consistently have no problems getting to bed and staying there all night long. (I am frantically knocking on wood as I type this!) To prep him for the fact that I was going to leave him, I started saying, “OK, I’m going to give you one more hug, one more kiss, and one more pat on the back and then I’m going to go.”  I&r...
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Always My Bubby
2007-12-13 04:34:00
Last night, while I was driving my kids around, Eva was in the back seat sort of “monologuing” as she does sometimes. She got on the topic of having a brother: “Everybody should have a brother or sister. It’s nice.  If they don’t have a brother or sister, they don’t know how fun it is. I love my little brother.” At this, Eli and his mature two-year-old sensibilities piped up. ELI:  (indignant) My not little! My getting bigger! My grow up some day! EVA:  But you’ll still by my little brother. ELI:  My not little! My big! EVA: Noooo. You’ll always be my Bubby . She so rarely calls him “Bubby.” It was one of those precious moments that I just had to take a little mental snapshot of.

Bumper Sticker “Wisdom”
2007-12-12 04:30:00
No, you read it right the first time.  I saw this bumper sticker on a car as I drove Eva to dance class tonight. I just couldn’t believe it! Somebody has got to help me find the humor here.   I understand that its message is probably “stop complaining.”  Obviously, that’s a sentiment I support. But even so, I have so much trouble with saying that God would somehow “make” us live longer as punishment for complaining.  Even if it’s meant in jest, it’s not funny to me at all.   This is probably due to my trouble with what I’ve come to think of as the “SimGod” theory.  I believe that God is all-powerful and there’s nothing He can’t do.  But I don’t believe that He is sitting around hitting little “Live” and “Die” buttons based on any kind of formula. I blogged previously about the tragedy that hit our community.  There are some people saying that it was in “G...
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MyTurn/YourTurn: Grown-Up Christmas List
2007-12-09 16:46:00
MyTurn:  My community was hit with a tragedy this week.  In a murder/suicide, a man shot his wife, two daughters, and stepson before shooting himself.  While mourning this loss, so many people have been wondering how this type of thing ever happens.  What happens in a life to get someone so twisted from what’s normal that he would kill his own family and himself? It’s impossible to know the answer. Since one of the dead is a student of mine, I’ve been trying to help my students and myself deal with the loss.  I told my students that I felt the best way for us to respond to this was to try to do good things.  If we could learn anything, maybe it is that we should try even harder to love those around us and focus on doing good.  I paraphrased something that I read online about how there is no such thing as darkness, only the absence of light.  No such thing as cold, only the absence of heat. Maybe there’s no such thing as evil.  Maybe there’s jus...
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Halls: Decked
2007-12-08 05:54:00
Each year I think “I’m never going to climb up the ladder again… it’s so high… it’s so cold… blah blah… bah humbug, etc.”  But then we get it all done and I’m always so darn tickled by how it looks.  This year, we even have the addition of Snoopy Santa that we got on clearance after Christmas last year.   How about you?  Christmas decorations up yet?  Inside? Outside? Both?

Goldilocks as a bear and The Giant
2007-11-14 03:43:00
Tonight, my bathtub was full of characters.  For some reason, Eva decided that she was a bear.  While she bathed, she did this little National Geographic-style narration: “Bear s like to take baths in water that is nice and warm. They don’t like cold water.  They use these special bear toothbrushes and this toothpaste that is made only for bears. People can’t use this toothpaste or it will hurt them. They brush their teeth like this.” When I would ask her a question, she would growl enthusiastically and then say, “That’s how bears say ‘yes.’” Eli was doing his own thing, as usual: “My not a bear! My a giant! My a giant giant! Fee fi fo fumby! Bumby bumby bumby!” Some nights, a plain old bath just won’t do.  I love those two.
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“I wish every day was like Saturday.”
2007-11-11 20:25:00
I love it when we get to enjoy a relaxing weekend at home.  Yesterday, we were sitting around the kitchen table eating toast and cereal, while taking a break from watching “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.”  We were all still in our PJ’s and had no major items on our agenda for the day. My daughter, who’d slept in after a particularly exhausting week, sighed happily. “I wish every day was like Saturday .” While we probably wouldn’t get much done if that were the case, it was a nice observation.  It’s so important to have a break from the “busy-ness.”  One of the things that I am grateful for in our family is that we haven’t over-scheduled ourselves as much as some of our peers have.  My daughter has dance one night a week, but that’s our only “extra-curricular” activity.  (Can we call it that for kindergartners and pre-schoolers?)  It’s amazing how much I hear people complain about having to take ...

MyTurn/YourTurn: Toys
2007-11-11 01:00:00
With Christmas coming up, we’re starting to have conversations at our house about what the kids want for Christmas.  My daughter really surprised us by telling us about something that my wife and I had never heard of.  She’d seen commercials for it, and recited all of the reasons why it was such a cool toy.  Sadly, it was the Aqua Dots Super Studio.  We won’t be putting that on the Christmas list, but it is fun to try to think of the perfect gift that will bring the kids hours of fun. YourTurn: 1.  What is the toy that you remember bringing you the most joy as a kid? 2.  What’s something that you dreamed and dreamed about getting? Did it live up to your expectations when you finally got it?  
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State of the Blog
2007-11-10 03:46:00
Well, it’s time for me to answer my own questions!  Thanks to everyone who participated this week. I really appreciate it. 1. What motivated or inspired you to start blogging and how long have you been doing it? My wife and I started blogging because it seemed like a better option than sending out mass emails every so often to folks that we thought might want to know what was new in our lives.  The family blog was intended to keep family and friends up to date.  Our first blog post was May 31, 2005. 2. What are your goals, purposes, or reasons for blogging? I started this blog because I realized that blogging was becoming my main hobby.  I enjoyed the process, the interaction, meeting new people, and I love writing.  I decided to launch my own blog, and even bought a domain and everything.  everyeveryminute.com  lasted for a couple of weeks before I lost the battle with “pro” Wordpress. I was spending more time trying to “fix” the blog than I w...
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Keep Peace in Your Soul
2007-10-29 13:36:00
We are entering our last few days of the Desiderata Project. It has been a wonderful experience. Today we welcome Priscilla Palmer as today’s guest writer. Before I begin I’d like to say that I refer to God in this article, if you do not believe in God please feel free to substitute your own theory (The Universe, outside forces, or whatever else fits your beliefs.) Please enjoy. “And whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, Keep peace in your soul.” -Max Ehrmann (in Desiderata) As we pursue the development of ourselves, we realize that each of us has certain and unique aspirations in life; and these desires all stem from a place within our souls where we dare to be great. Where there is no fear, no second guessing - You see, from this place in our soul no one can tell us no. No one can tell us we can’t do that because, it’s inside of us, and it’s individual to us. It is born of the deepest part of ourselves. If you ha...
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On Being Alone
2007-10-28 05:25:00
MyTurn: Reading At Home in the Universe over at cheerfulmonk.com reminded me that there are times when I feel alone in a crowd. Jean asks the question: Have you ever felt you looked at things differently from other people…that a part of you was alone in the universe? For the vast majority of my life, I have had an abundance of friends. In high school, college, and graduate school I was always able to fill my spare time with a colorful cast of characters who would always provide endless amusement. When we moved here and I began my career, though, I found that I wasn’t replenishing my roster of friends. There was no one at work who I really “clicked” with. We made lots of great acquaintances through church, but never got to that “next level” with anyone. There’s nobody that I call up to hang out with. Of course I have my wife, who is also conveniently my best friend. I don’t want to gloss over that fact. I am content with the beauti...

Knowing God
2007-10-27 21:02:00
 Today, I get to make my own contribution to the Desiderata Project.  I got to reserve my favorite section for myself. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. I’m a Baptist married to a Catholic. I’m cool with both methods of worship.  Automatically, that puts me in a bit of a different category than most people of faith.  So many people that I’ve encountered believe that there is only one way to know God. Only one version of God… and they are the only one who can truly tell you about Him.  They are the only one who knows the special trick you have to do in order to have access to God.  Listen to me, they say, and I will introduce you to God. My image of God is influenced by the fact that I spent my formative years in a Baptist church.  My parents and grandparents were sort of “charter members” of a church that formed in my hometown, and I spent a lot of time there.  The soundtrack of my preschool years is made u...
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