Shark Week

This email I sent to my husband pretty much sums up what our week has been like around here:

We are home from Java. Thanks so much. I had a cheese danish. You know, for protein. Afton and I shared an orange juice. It was nice. I realized on the way there this is pretty much the worst week of my life not including a tragedy. I particularly mean as far as my performance as a wife and mother goes. Culminating in me accidently stepping on Afton's arm and breaking her heart. All I can say is TGIF! I love you soupy!

Count Your Blessings ABC

With the whole thankfulness topic fresh in my mind from yesterday and with me needing a fresh perspective after a tough week I thought it would be fun to play an old game I learned in high school -- listing something I am thankful for every letter of the alphabet. The only rule for this game (and I do realize I am using the word game loosely) is that is has to be the first thing that comes to mind. Sometimes it can be really surprising actually! It is fun at the end to see how much more I have to be thankful for than the tons and tons and tons upon tons of things I already know about. Oh yeah, and Q, Z , and X are freebies! Just in case it doesn't come up in my alphabet soup I want to mention that I am incredibly thankful that Ron's family is coming for a visit today. I actually can't wait until they get here. Well, since as of now we have no clean towels, I guess it is a good thing I have a little time! But I am thankful that they are on their way and that the wait won't be long!

Here goes:

A. How much Afton love applesauce.
B. The Babingtons.
C. Comfy-ness
D. Having my sweet Aunt Debby while growing up.
E. Everything being in God's hands.
F. A few faithful friends.
G. God.
H. My home.
I. How much Ron loves ice cream.
J. Jesus.
K. Kindnesses.
L. Love.
M. The privilege of being a mother.
N. My Nana.
O. Onions.
P. My Papa.
Q. Ron Harvey Babington
R. Ron Harvey Babington
S. September.
T. My brother Tim.
U. Umbrellaless rain walking.
V. Voyages.
W. Western culture.
X. Peace and quiet.
Y. Youth.
Z. Grace.

Whistle While You Work

We are on our third day in a row of intense separation anxiety around here. It is the kind where even the simple act of carrying my coffee cup from the living room to the kitchen sink is met with huge tears and terrified, heartbroken wails of protest. Excusing myself to use the bathroom is, of course, much, much worse. It is also a variety of separation that is not particularly particular. It doesn't seem that separation from me personally is what causes distress (that would be kind of flattering and precious) but separation from people in general. If anyone else is here I am completely dispensable, but when it is just me and Afton here my presence seems to rank in necessity right up there with oxygen. What makes this kind of separation anxiety (aloneness anxiety I think describes it better)so trying for me is that it lasts for most of the day, because for most of the day it is just us around here, and it vanishes as soon as Daddy gets home. He never really gets to see it and so of necessity it is a burden I carry alone.

But this post is not really about that. Another post will be soon. I have a theory that separation anxiety is much like puppy love, and will perhaps elaborate on that when I have more time. This post is to be about music, so let me get to that. This morning my frazzled nerves and I visited a sweet blog that asked its reader's what they were thankful for today. The most honest answer I could come up with at the time was easily summed up in two words. Nap Time. I have tons and tons and tons upon tons of things to be thankful for but today, at least at that moment, nap time was topping the list. I wished I had an answer that would be more profound and heartwarming, but if I was being honest that was what I had to say.

Later on, at the commencement of blessed nap time number two, I looked around at the state of my house, which has become an innocent victim of our aloneness anxiety crisis, and felt I had so very much to do before tomorrow, when all I wanted to do was sit down and soak up some silence. I knew that wasn't the best option, that I would feel much better if I reclaimed my living room from its occupiers (toys, pajamas, old magazines, and yes, more than a couple dirty diapers). Before I tackled this I turned on my iPod, something I usually do while cleaning but have neglected in the past few days of survival mode. As soon as I did that everything changed. Birds started chirping, the sunshine poured through my windows, a tangible peace settled upon my living room. I was going to make it and cleaning was going to be fun!

I am so amazed by and so thankful for the transforming power of music! It does many things, but what I am most thankful for today is its power to make mundane tasks more pleasant. Its power to get you through what you've got to do. God didn't have to bless us with it, but I am so glad he did. So to nap time, I add music as the things I am most aware of being thankful for today.

Christ As A Light

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! To celebrate, oh and I do so love to celebrate every possible holiday, I wanted to post the prayer of Saint Patrick, himself, here on my blog. I only know it as the exquisite song by John Michael Talbot that we played at our wedding. It is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. Do yourself a favor and go to iTunes and purchase his song "Christ As A Light (The Prayer of St. Patrick). I guarantee it will be the best 99 cents you spend all day.

Anyway, like I said I wanted to post the prayer of Saint Patrick today and I figured it would be more proper to post his actual prayer than to simply post the song lyrics I love so much. My Google search for the actual words, however, came up with many, many different versions. Being neither Irish, nor Catholic, I had no idea which version was the real prayer of Saint Patrick! So I am posting JMT's lyrics, which I am more than happy to do. These words were the prayer of my heart on my wedding day three and a half years ago, and continue to perfectly capture my longing that Christ, Himself, would both surround and pervade all of me, and that my service as a wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend would be nothing less than service to Him.

Also because this song always happily reminds me of my wedding I am going to throw in a little wedding picture for free. One of the three snapshots I still have after my hard drive crashed last December. (It's not as bad as it sounds. I still have all the photographer's pictures and I know our parents have tons of snapshots too.)

The Prayer of Saint Patrick
According to John Michael Talbot

Christ as a Light illumine and guide me.
Christ as a Shield overshadow me.
Christ under me.
Christ over me.
Christ beside me on my left and my right.

This day be within and without me.
Lowly and meek, yet all-powerful.
Be in the heart of each to whom I speak,
In the mouth of each who speak unto me.

Comma Confession.

I don't know where commas belong and where they do not belong anymore. I used to think I had a pretty good understanding of the proper usage of the English language. Not so much anymore. Lately, I am stumped by commas. I just can't remember all the rules. I wish there was a class at the library or something that I could take to help me remember. I think the fact that email doesn't require punctuation may be the reason I can't punctuate correctly anymore. I just realized that until I started this blog the only writing I have done since college has be in the form of an email. So there is my confession. I have no idea where commas belong in a sentence. I want to know though, so if you have any tips please send them my way. I just needed to get that off of my chest.

Triumph Of The Old-fashioned Cup

You are looking at the cup that has done what none of the fancy cups I have purchased in the past several weeks could do. It allowed Afton to drink without soaking herself! I am so atonished because this is the exact kind of cup I used to drink out of when I was a toddler over twenty-five years ago!

When my mom sent me this kit a few weeks ago, I immediately dismissed the cups for the time being, thinking if Afton can't drink out of the state of the art cups they are making now, there is no way she can drink out of these old school cups that are the same design as my mom used to give me! Much to my surprise, about a week later when I gave her these dishes to play with, she picked the cup up and put it right to her mouth like she was drinking. Her form was perfect, better than with any of the other cups I had tried.

Very interesting I thought. I popped her in her high chair, filled the cup with water, recapped it and gave it to her......and she drank it! Perfectly! It was amazing. The cup was small and easy for her to hold. It was shallow, so it didn't require lots of tipping. It worked like a charm for her! Who would of thought the same cup I drank out of when I was a little girl was the cup that would do the trick for mine!

Happy Leap Day!

For some reason I love the idea of Leap Day! It seems so fun and exciting to have an extra day in the year. I know no one treats it that way. Everyone just goes on as if it were just another day. Even so, an extra day is exactly what it is. Last year we had 365 days, this year we have 366, a whole extra day.

I always want to celebrate Leap Day, but am never sure how. The only people I know who do so are people who were lucky (or as some think unlucky) enough to be born on a Leap Day. One fun way I thought of celebrating it would be for me and Afton to walk over to the hospital (the one where she was born is just across the parking lot from our building) and see if there were any babies born today and smile and wave at them through the nursery window. I thought better of it, deciding that may be a little weird. Still, it is fun to look at newborns in the hospital. Everybody knows that!

The best celebration of the day I have had so far was reading up on its history this morning in The Christian Almanac. Ron started reading it to us each morning this fall and I was very excited today that in our first February of reading we got to read the entry for the 29th. As I told Ron this morning, we could have very easily gone four years with out getting to read it! Here is what Grant and Wilbur had to say about Leap Year:


"The leap year system was adopted by Julius Caesar to keep the calendar from getting out of whack and was adjusted in 1582 by Pope Gregory XII. An extra day is added every four years, except for years ending in 00 -- unless the year is divisible by 400. Thus 2000 was a leap year, and so was 1600, but 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not."

I, for one, had no idea there were any rules about years ending in 00. I guess that is because 2000 was the only year with double zeroes during which I was alive. Apart from some pretty rad medical advances and/or the special intervention of God himself, I probably won't get to see a 00 year that is not a leap year. That is okay with me, though. I am glad I was here for one of the few that were leap years.

I have spent the day deciding what I will do with this extra day. I couldn't do anything but the usual today, but I have a fun plan that I am rain checking for myself and my family. Now, I also realize that what I would do with an extra day is probably not exactly what Ron would do, so I am going to encourage him to decide what he wants to do with his extra day this year and take a rain check on it himself. They will have to be different days, of course, because he is a big part of my extra day plans.

I think this is going to become my new way of celebrating Leap Year. Decide what I would do if I had more time and then take a day that year and do it! I am pretty excited about it! I will let you know when I have my day, what I decide to do, and how it goes!

I would love to hear what any of you would do if you were a give an extra day this year. After all, let's face it, you were.