Daddy love?

Being a dad is awesome, but sometimes things can get a little frustrating.  Perrin is great, don't get me wrong, but  he always seems to want his mom.  I'm not complaining, really, because when he's sleepy and hungry and cranky and ferociously clingy, it's his mom he can't stand being more than approximately three quarters of an inch from.  Beyond that, he tends to lean more towards being the spawn of a banshee (don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about).

Jayna and I have started putting Perrin to bed together so that we can pray for him, then hug and smooch him goodnight.  It never fails that when I'm holding Perrin, he'll turn and reach for his mom, abandoning me so that all I can do is pat him on the back while he snuggles into Jayna's shoulder.  It sort of makes me sad when he jumps ship like that.  Jayna keeps trying to make me feel better by telling me that--usually--kids just want to be around their primary caregiver more for the first year and a half to two years, then will want to be around the working parent more.  I understand that it's really just part of Perrin's development, and that eventually he'll want to be around me more, but for now, well, it's not the most endearing of his qualities.

Gasp! New Post!

Ok, so I haven't really kept up with my blogging as well as I'd hoped.  I was imagining that I'd have a wonderfully witty and/or incredibly meaningful blog post on a semi-weekly (or at least a semi-regularly) basis.  Here it is, almost a month since my last post and I'm just now getting around to posting about how I haven't been posting much--at all--lately.  I have good excuses, what with being the dad of a 1-year old and all.  "I just haven't had time," or "I've just been so tired that I haven't been able to blah blah blah..." They're excuses all the same.  The point is that I should have been posting.  Not that I'm getting paid for it, and not that I have slavering masses beating down the door, demanding new posts.  Enough with ranting about myself and the issues I have with committing to my blog.

There really hasn't been a whole lot going on lately.  The boy is not quite 13 months old now, and the shoes with squeakers in them that we bought (the tale of the search for said shoes is something of an epic--check the wife's blog out for the full scoop) have done nothing in the way of encouraging him to walk.  They drive the dog crazy though--she loves to eat squeaky toys but can't seem to put it all together that it's the boy's feet that are doing the squeaking.  We bring out the shoes and as soon as the boy has them on and gets to cruising around the living room, the dog gets antsy and wanders all over the place looking for the squeakily offending dog toy that must be inevitably (and surprisingly efficiently) disemboweled.

The boy is starting to take after his old man and act like a little class clown.  Just the other day, while he was crawling around the living room under my supervision (wifey was in the kitchen), we were having our normal, mostly one-sided conversation (me talking to him, asking questions, etc. and him responding with raspberries or baby-babble) and he just stopped, looked up at me, squinted his eyes and cheesed at me.  I hadn't thought I'd said anything funny or done anything particularly stupid enough to earn a funny look, so I had to assume that he did it to try to make me laugh (worked like a charm, too...).

He also has his evil genius laugh down pat.  Randomly and without any real reason (that I've discovered), we'll hear a very deliberate "ha ha ha," coming from wherever he's wandered off to.  Usually, it's the pantry where he spends his time 'helping' his mom by rearranging the foodstuffs he can reach--baby food on the middle shelf, canned goods down below and a toy truck next to the tuna.  That's not so sinister sounding, but perhaps to a 1-year old, it's downright devious.

I'll try to keep you, my loyal readers, better and more regularly updated on my little super-villain is developing in the future.

Yes, all 7 of you.

philosophy (or something like it)

This post may be a little off from my normal posts, but it's something I've thought about off and on for a very long time.  If you're looking for my usual sharp wit and devilish charm, then maybe you'll be surprised by what you get instead.

I've had something of an epiphany.  It occurs to me--as it may already have for you, some time ago even--that maybe there's something to that old saying that "God loves you and has a plan for your life."  I understand that, and I suppose that I've always assumed that God's plan for my life was something that maybe I'd end up doing one day: some pivotal event that would change the course of humanity (maybe I imagine my life to be more important than it is?).  I guess I thought that up until that one defining moment, my life would fade into the background, and then go back to join that hum-drum background noise after my pivotal role in the existence of mankind had been played.  I was--as I have many times--wondering what exactly my role in life was, what God's plan for me was, since He has one for me.  The realization came to me--or perhaps was given to me--that God's plan for my life isn't just one moment or one decision.  God's plan for my life is my life.

Our lives are about experience.  I believe that our God is a sovereign God who orchestrates every experience of all our lives.  Everything we see, hear, say and do; every person that comes into or leaves our lives; all the things that happen to us or for us or even around us;  all these things shape who we are and who we will become on our final day on this earth.  I believe that is God's plan for us.  Who we are in life leaves a legacy for those who follow.  The wisdom imparted to us from past generations lays a foundation for the things we learn in our lives.  God has our lives planned as networks of experience:  whether we're affecting someone's life, or ours is the life affected, God knows--has known since before time--the who, what, where, when, why and how of every moment.

Maybe my life won't mean much in the grander scheme of things, maybe I won't be instrumental in shaping the existence of mankind in the future, and maybe I won't be in history books.  The impression that I leave, however, will be just as important to my children.  Most importantly, I want to know that the life I live is the life that God intended for me.  That's why I pray for God to bring to me what he will so that I become the man He created me to be.

Review of the book. AKA: Book Review.

Ok, I'm finally using my blog to post a book review!  I know what you're thinking, "Well, isn't that why you started the thing anyway?" But that's only part of the reason I started blogging.  After re-reading my review, I'm thinking maybe it sounds a little meaner that I'd originally intended for it to sound, because it really is a pretty ok book.  (You can just feel the meh, can't you?)

Anyway:



Jonathan Rogers' novel, *The Charlatan's Boy* was a decent read.  Rogers definitely knows how to tell a story.  The novel is the coming-of-age story of an orphan boy named Grady.  As an infant, Grady was taken in by the 'showman' Floyd.  Grady's relationship with Floyd is as Floyd's assistant and main attraction.  The story of *The Charlatan's Boy* follows Floyd and Grady as they try to overcome the waning of their livelihood, an audience growing skeptical.

The story itself is decent enough, location and era mix well enough to keep it entertaining.  I have two main issues with the book, though:  the way the story is told, and the way the book ends.

The story is narrated by the main character, Grady.  The location and era in which the boy lives would grant the understanding that he's not well educated, so the grammar and voice of the narration is that of an uneducated frontiersman--a hillbilly.  I see reading as a way, especially for the younger audience this book targets, to broaden one's understanding of the written and spoken word.  As such, I this book is not the best example of a well written novel from that standpoint.  It works well, though, as a literary device for the telling of the story, as it allows us a deeper look into Grady's character.

The ending of *The Charlatan's Boy* almost seems like an afterthought, like Rogers sort of ran out of story and said, "Hmm, wouldn't it be nice if..." then filled in the gap.  (The end is a bit of a twist, so I'm not going to give anything away.)

All in all, as I said before, *The Charlatan's Boy* is a decent read, and I'd recommend it if you don't mind a meandering plot.

[This review appears on Amazon.com and my blog. I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.]


So there it is.  I'm sure my reviews will get better with time, right?

Fantastic: Another Pizza Analogy

For those of you actually keeping up with my blogging, I sincerely apologize for the lack of updates.  My excuse, such that it is, is that I decided not to make another post until I finished reading and reviewing the book that BloggingforBooks.com sent me.  Rather than the desired effect of me finishing the book and quickly posting another spellbinding blog, the decision resulted in a wonderful delaying tactic.  And I still don't have a review to post.

Now past the over-baked crust and on to the meat, cheese, sauce and grease of this pizza pie of a post.  (I don't name these things the way I do for no reason)

My son has been sick lately.  If any of you are friends of mine on facebook, you might have seen a post regarding this phenomenon.  He was sick again today, and ended up going to bed much earlier than normal, just because he was feeling yucky.  I thought of making rather a snide comment on facebook--to the effect of 'Pukey the wonder-baby strikes again,' but that would be me trying to earn a couple of insensitive chuckles at the expense of my ill child.  Not cool.

I got to thinking about my son's lingering feelings of 'yucky' and that got me worried about the little guy.  You hear horror stores (or maybe I'm just blowing my worry for my son way out of proportion) of little ones getting sick and never recovering, much to their parents' unending sorrow.  This granted me an epiphany.  I realized that I'm far more worried about my little boy being sick and not waking up in the morning (over-dramatic, I know) than I am about my own well-being.  I'd rather take the proverbial bullet for my son than him even so much as scrape a knee.  Now, stop me if you've heard this one before, but I'd do just about anything to make my little dude feel better.

Does this mean I'm a real parent now?

p.s.:  that book review is on its way...

Exactly how real is our food?

Jayna has been doing a lot of research on the food we eat and what goes into it, and from what she's told me, it's pretty scary/nasty/toxic/evil.  It's really weird how much the food we eat (and the chemicals therein) can affect us.  It's not even just the issue of gaining weight--bad foods can cause digestive issues, hormone imbalances and even so far as causing depression and affecting our moods in other ways (please don't tell me that my issues with my temper are caused by my delicious red meat!)  We can't really even go so far as to say that certain food groups are to blame, or that we're taking in too much cholesterol or eating too many donuts.  Well, maybe eating too many donuts is a problem, but that's a blog entry for another day.  It's the chemicals that are used in the foods we eat--the preservatives, the vitamin 'fortifications,' the artificial sweeteners, and even the vegetable-y oils used.  So, we're trying to go on a 'real food' diet.  This means that we're trying to rid our home of artificial ingredients and over processed food products.  It also means we'll be doing a lot more cooking.  And label reading.  And food experimenting.

A lot of the resources Jayna's been reading with regards to the real food diets talk a lot about fermentation.  This isn't the moonshine variety of fermentation, though--although the thought has crossed my mind--this is the kind of fermentation that takes ordinary-sounding foods and makes them healthier.  Kombucha, for example:  it's fermented tea.  We still use the same tea bags that my iced tea machine uses, but we use a different process that adds a whole bunch of things that are good for digestion.  All the beneficial little buggers in yogurt are now in an easily drinkable form, so we don't actually have to eat loads of yogurt--it gets tiresome after a while--to get all the active cultures and probiotics to replenish the bacteria in our stomachs.  I'm not so sure about the other types of fermentation (lacto-fermentation in particular) by which we could make our own condiments, though, because it just kind of weirds me out.

We're also looking into farm co-ops for fresh fruits and veggies, as well as meat, milk and eggs.  I know it sounds a little hippie for us to pay a farm for free range, grass-fed pork, beef, chicken, milk and eggs, but there's a lot of research that shows eating the stuff from the grocery store is more than incredibly unhealthy. Most of the packaged meat purchased from your every day--walmart/kroger--grocery store comes from farms where the animals are regularly injected with growth hormones and antibiotics, whether they need the antibiotics or not.  The hormones, obviously, are to make the animals grow as big as possible in order to yield a higher quantity of marketable meat, but those hormones stay in the meat all the way to your dinner plate.  The same goes for the stuff in what is actually fed to the animals--and who even knows what they're fed!

While I'm a bit reluctant to eat some of the stuff we're starting to eat, I'm trying to keep an open mind about it all and be adventurous, especially since all of it is really good for me.  One of the first steps we took was to start reading the ingredients on food packages--if I can't pronounce it, I'm not buying it.  Words to live by, if ever I've heard any.