McDonnell Place

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Just a Few Reasons to Love Beth Moore

"Do I believe in miracles? Are you crazy?! I AM a miracle!"

"Few things are more dangerous than looking back to that from which God has delivered us."

"God either has a lot of grace...or poor taste."

"When somebody's chasing you and you want to be caught, you slow down."

"I love that sound; that must be as sweet as the flutter of angel wings to Him." (On the sound that fills a room when everyone is turning in their Bibles for a verse.)

"God will prey on your worst fears; everything I feared most is now most of what I do."

"A place we think we've randomly happened upon can be a divinely scheduled venue for an awesome encounter with God."

"I have been told many times, 'Beth, I can't change the way I feel.' But we can change the way we think which will lead to a change in the way we feel. That's the essence of the 'renewed mind' (see Rom. 12: 2). As long as we keep thinking the same old thoughts, we'll keep feeling the same old feelings."

"Obedience is not the hardest part of our most trying tests. Keeping the faith can be hardest of all."

"God is not going to exempt His children from life's difficulty. Rather, He highlights those very challenges to prove [to us] that our faith is genuine."

"You and I can be relieved that God is willing to associate His great name with individuals and families that clearly don't have it all together."

"Beloved, God is God--holy, wonderful, and merciful--even if someone who held Him up as an example to us didn't reflect His character. Don't confuse God with man! However, when man has something of God to offer, receive it even when the flesh-and-blood chanel of blessing is imperfect."

"Why would God allow such a profound concept to be illustrated first through the lacking relationships of man? To teach the unknown through the known."

"Man has a dark side, but take heart, Dear One, God most assuredly does not. 'God is light; in Hi there is no darkness at all.' (1 John 1: 5). Just in case you need to hear this, Beloved, you can rest assured that God is emotionally healthy. Never confuse God with man."

"Trying to fill a God-space with a human being will be painful at the very least, and destructive at the very worst."

"...I consider afresh how tangled my heartstrings are in the fabric of my children's lives. Seeing them show their love for one another is an unspeakable joy for me. No wonder Christ's heart cry to His own was 'love one another!' (John 13: 34)."

"Our society has proved we have no trouble beginning love. However, we are tragically deficient on enduring love and ending love well at the close of a lifetime."

"If we're me-centered in our business and personal lives, we'll be me-centered in our serving lives--no matter how hard we try to keep ourselves cloaked in humility."

"I have noticed a pattern in my relationship with God. Many times He told me through His Word and prayer to believe Him for something very specific, over time the outlook on the matter dwindled from good to slim to utterly impossible before He brought it to pass...He wants to make absolutely sure that we know He's the one who fulfills divine promises."

"But try not to think of God's perfection as His confinement--as if to say He can 'only' do what is perfect. Rather, God is free from the confinement of all imperfections. In other words, His perfection does not limit Him. It frees Him."

"Everything in us that cries out in resistance to an end comes from an innate sense that we were meant to be without one."

Monday, February 27, 2006

Your Quicker Picker-Upper

According to Madalyn:

When upside down, The Brawny Man is daddy. But right side up, and upon further reflection, he appears to be "Mutch."

Translation? Mitch. (My step-brother...see below.)

Brawny Man

Mitch

Friday, February 24, 2006

Cinderella

if the shoe fits...

with the grace of a runway model

This is the alphabet written on our window in blueberry muffin. Luuuv-ley.

Yes, that's a purple bow in Evan's hair. He asked for it and now his sister will have this for blackmail one day.

trying on Evan's underwear

In the Still of the Night

Dear Madalyn,

Last night you woke up crying, "ma-ha-MEE! Mommy-mommy, mommy? Da-deeeeee!"

It was around 11:30 and you were thirstier than a seahorse in the Sahara, so daddy whipped you up a tall orange juice cocktail and nestled you into bed with us for a while. Sugar just before midnight, all cozy-warm in "the big bed" between two of your favorite people, what more could a 19-month-old wish for?

Not much. And you knew it, and were precarious in abiding by the night-hour rules of calm and quiet. You made eyes at us through the dark and took turns burying your soft forehead in each of our soft stomachs. But what really demonstrated your understanding of night-time etiquette, was the way you spoke to us in hushed whispers. Softer than a feather. You'd lean right up to daddy's face and wave in it, then say in a barely audible voice, "Hiiiiii," more like an exhale than an actual word. Then you'd whisper an entire sentence just the same, caressing our eardrums with downy softness. I've never heard a child whisper like this.

In fact, I don't think my brother ever learned how to whisper.

But you were so well-behaved and calm that you charmed me right to the edge of my dreamworld when- WHAP- you fell from the sky in a giant belly-flop and knocking our foreheads with a loud Konk!

"Ouch!" you yelled with spunky smile, breaking the silence like a laugh.

Daddy and I hooted and hollered over your Sumo move, and the way you waited until the maximum-opportunity moment to perform it.

Relishing the laughter, and before we saw it coming, you intentionally whacked your forehead into mine for a second time, with the skill of an FBI agent knocking someone unconscious, following it up with another, "Ouch!"

Yeah. You're on to our senseless humor.

It'll be interesting to see if you become a comedian for a living. You know how to make the most of an opportunity. That's for sure. Normally, a joke's only funny the first time. (Ask your dad or any other male in our family.) But you pulled it off a second with the comic genius of a Stooge.

So I just wanted to say thanks for the laughter. (Even if I did go to bed with a headache.) The magnificent heartache your humor induces is well worth it. I'll go to bed on that any night.

Love,

Mama

Thursday, February 23, 2006

There should be a medal for this sort of thing

When Evan was about 4 months old and Shaun's parents were visiting, he upchucked an enormous bowl of rice cereal and breast milk all down the back of Tim's shirt when he was burping him. It cascaded into a pool at his feet and he had to sit on a towel and drive himself back to the hotel to shower. He had to shower.

This visit, we stood in Crispers with Tim and Peggy, thumbing through paper menus. Tim held Madalyn and baby-talked with her for several minutes while we figured out what we'd order. Right after he handed her off to Shaun, the little thing opened her mouth and let loose a river. She put a whole new meaning behind the term "projectile," and Shaun began to walk outside as it was happening, but eventually he just stood on the patio of Crispers and surrendered. His shirt, pants, and ALL of his shoes were coated with bananas and curdled milk. Not to mention the baby he held, who was coated from nose to toe. Tim and I ineffectively through napkins on the floor and blotted at Shaun's shoes. Evan kept saying, "Mommy, wipe daddy off. Will you please wipe off daddy?" He couldn't stand the sight.

But as for Tim, I know, I KNOW for a fact, that while he pretended to be concerned with the rest of us, internally he was belting out the Hallelujah chorus, praising God that he spared him by only a fraction of a second. I know, because when I urged him to admit it, he laughed a laugh so hardy it etched my speculation into granite. After all, their hotel was in tourist-land, a good 45 minutes away.

Thankfully, that episode wasn't until Monday morning, and even after it, Madalyn was in good spirits. She still "turned it on" in a fashion worthy of Broadway for her doting grandparents, although when they weren't around, she was a little clingy. Those of you who remember her diagnosis from last summer know that every time she gets sick we have to make a trip to the doctor to get catheterized, just to be on the safe side.

So yesterday it was off to see the wizard. We have a new doctor, though, and he was WONDERFUL. Madalyn, although it was her first visit to this new office, immediately found the place about as comforting as the church nursery. As soon as we passed down the hall of exam rooms it was like she went WAIT- Now I remember- now I know what this place is...why have you brought me back to the torture chambers? WHY?! Aren't I cute? Haven't I been charming your socks off? What will it take?

Every time the exam-room door opened, she bawled, crawling up my body with the skill of a tree frog. She cried through her temperature taking, through the weighing, through the stethoscope-exam...she cried because she knew what was yet to come. That it was only a matter of time.

In between nurses she asked me for daddy and Evan. "Go to daddy? Evan? Go to Evan?" And I wish I had a recording of how she says Evan. She gives careful attention to each syllable and it sounds even better a name coming out of her pink lips. And it was so pathetic, with the side of face planted firmly in my chest, like she was trying to leave an imprint of her profile in my skin. And no one else may have seen it, but I can assure you she left one. And it's still there.

At one point I dug through my purse for my cell and called Shaun so she could hear his voice. Evan got on the phone, too, and they had their first phone conversation together. Evan said, "Hi, Madalyn, I love you." And Madalyn said, "Hi, Evan. I wah woo." She sighed and whimpered and hiccupped, but she was comforted to hear her men, and it helped a few minutes pass.

When the time came for the catheter, the nurses were so sweet, asking her to show us her nose and hair and such. She tried so hard to comply between frightened whimpers, was so clearly trying to put on a brave face for everybody. I died a thousand slow deaths during that catheter exam. I suppressed a hundred bad looks when the nurse didn't move at record speed getting her things prepared. And when the going got rough, Madalyn kept asking, "All done?" Then answered herself hopefully, "All done!"

"Almost, almost..." we all three cooed to her in sympathetic harmony. And then finally, it was All done! All four of us chanted it as though we were entering the pearly white gates. And do you know what that she did? Do you know what that little pink and white angel did before we could even get her diaper back on? She clapped. She clapped and clapped, a nervous and spastic clap, for herself and for relief. Like my great-grandmother, Ga-ga used to do, like I did after they finally pulled Evan out.

Then she asked if we could now go see daddy and Evan.

"Yes, of course! Do you want to go see Evan and daddy? Would you like that?"

"I do!!"

(That's her new thing. Every question that should be answered with "I do" or "I am" is met with an enthusiastic and deeply southern I dew, like she's readily accepting a marriage proposal.) She always does it with a wrinkled nose, and I have no doubt her real proposal will be accepted in this very fashion. The church nursery workers have even commented on this. (It's just one of many ways she works her charm.)

And after she was showered with nearly a dozen stickers and praised as the best patient the nurses had ever seen, we got negative results with not even a trace of white blood cells. So chances are her overnight culture will be fine, too. Just a bug. When we walked in the door and Evan ran up to enthusiastically greet her, I said, "Can you give Evan one of your stickers?" But she was so delighted to see him she shoved all of her stickers into his hands, then ran around to perform a magnificent tribal dance on our living room carpet. God bless her.

Evan and Shaun have the same looks on their faces. The best part about this picture, though? I remember Evan resting his hand on my arm like that. Security.

I can't believe we went swimming in February, right along with the rest of the yankee-tourists. The pool was "heated." (RIIIIIII-GHT.)

motherhood. where will I put the third one? on my back? I need a pouch.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

I Hate Molasses

When Shaun and I were engaged we had an "incident" (which is a nicer word for "fight") before going to a Wednesday night worship service at Willow Creek.

Look, we had many "incidents" the year we were engaged, so why would the fact that we were church-bound stop us? Of course this one did revolve around cough syrup, which is probably telling.

Here's what happened:

I was sick. (I was also sick a lot the year we were engaged, and come to think of it, between the fighting and that, it's a miracle we ever went through with our vows by the time June rolled around.) This particular sickness was a cold and Shaun bought cough syrup and was insisting that I take some before church. I think he was really just at the end of his rope with hearing me coughing all the time, which, let's face it, can get annoying after a while...

So there we were; in the dormitory parking lot, sitting in the good ole' green Explorer, him in the driver's seat, me in the passenger seat. A shot of red cough syrup sat on the console between us...

"We're not going until you drink it," he threatened.

"It's just cough syrup. It doesn't even help that much. Why are you making such a big deal of this? I don't like it."

"Why are you making such a big deal of this?"

"You're really getting mad at me because I won't drink this?"

"Yes."

"Fine. I'll drink it. But now I'm mad at you."

I threw the nasty stuff down my throat and (apparently) tossed the plastic shot glass as far from my body as was humanly possible. Apparently. Because the next thing I remember is watching the color of mad rise up Shaun's neck, into his ears, and fill his face like a hot air balloon. He did one of his disgusted exhales and shook his head in angry silence.

"What are you so mad about? I drank it!"

"You flung cough syrup ALL over me, what do you mean what am I so mad about? You're acting like such a baby."

I admit I didn't know much then, but I knew enough to hold off from asking him whether or not he sold his sense of humor to purchase my engagement ring. And I don't remember how the "incident" ended, but we still got married, despite our loss of all senses, and am I ever glad cough syrup didn't make or break us.

Anyway, this brings me to molasses.

My midwife has recently been finding that I'm increasingly anemic with each visit, and has instructed me to take a tablespoon of molasses a day, and wouldn't it be great if I could even get down two? She has no idea that one is pushing it. Shaun placed an immediate bet that I'd do it for a day, maybe two, and that would be the end of it. He knows me. He also knows to disappear when it comes time to gag it down.

But the other day, before I came up with the syringe-method, back when I was still trying to swallow the whole tablespoon out of a deep measuring spoon, Shaun entered the room in the midst of the ordeal. He threw my concentrating on not concentrating (like they do on Fear Factor,) and I felt it between all of my however-many teeth and drizzling from the roof of my mouth and the cracks of my lips down into the aluminum sink, and that was it. That was when the gagging came. A lot of it. Shaun froze in his steps to watch the show (figuring he was a safe distance) and when I was done and some of the water had evaporated from my eyes, we broke into a fit of laughter.

I know what you're thinking. We've come a long way. But I have this sneaking suspicion that God's paying me back.

To keep you current, (and because I know how my intake of molasses is soooo fascinating to you,) I've started shooting it down the back of my throat with a syringe like we do to the kids. The only down-side is there's no way to do it without warning; I always know when it's coming. I can only shoot a tsp at a time. This means I do three "shots" (hey, coming from a syringe, that's kind of funny,) and each shot takes 3 gulps to swallow. It's that thick. And it better work for boosting my iron after all this turmoil.

When I first got the bad news of this prescription, I wondered if maybe I could just eat molasses cookies. Then I realized I would have to eat a batch a day. So that was sadly out.

And now I wonder if I'll ever eat them again. They used to be my fav.

Here's the recipe in the hopes that someone will continue enjoying them:

Ginger Cookies

2 cups flour
1 t baking soda
1 t ground cinnamon
1 t ground ginger
1/2 t cloves
1/2 t salt
3/4 c. butter
1 c. sugar
2 T molasses
1 egg

Combine flour, b. soda, spices, and salt. Beat on med. speed 30 seconds. Add butter and sugar and beat till fluffy. Add molasses and egg and beat till combined. Shape into 1 1/2 in. balls and roll in a bowl of sugar. Arrange 3 in. apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for about 12 minutes or so, until raised and cracked.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

As for Me and My Self...

This is Molly. Molly is Shaun's adopted little sister, Evan and Madalyn's aunt, but their senior by a mere 3-5 years. Shaun's parents are in town visiting and his mother just told me a great story about Molly. I love it.

I love it, I love it, I love it...

It occurred the other night when Peggy walked into Molly's room to see what clothes she'd set out for church the next morning, and found jeans and a lot of purple and sparkling accessories to match lying on her bed. The conversation between them follows:

"Don't you think that's a little casual to wear to church?"

"But jeans are cool, and I want to look cool for Spencer."

(Molly is 6. Spencer is like 9 or 12.)

"Well, the reason we dress up on Sunday is to honor God."

"Well- you can dress for God, but I'm dressing for Spencer."

Or as Peggy summarized the telling of it, "You can dress for God, but as for me and my self, we're dressing for Spencer."

Friday, February 17, 2006

The Sixth Sense

The house shower addict requested a shower this morning and so I stumbled out of bed in my sleep, without glasses, to turn it on for him. PJs off, shower warm and ready, he wouldn't get in.

"Somebody's in there," he said.

"What?"

"Somebody's in the shower," he said again, pointing at air.

The next several seconds were spent wondering whether or not all of my relentless ridicule of that creepy actor-kid on the movie, and of the overplayed clip I see dead people was now coming back to give me a haunting bite in the butt. Fortunately, I was too tired to care.

"Can you get him out," he asked.

"Get who out?"

It was about then that I noticed a small grey blur (remember, no glasses,) in the bottom of the shower, and leaning closer I spotted him.

Turns out somebody was just a small silverfish, happily perched on the moisture-dotted grout where the shower wall met the floor, and the only sixth sense Evan has is for discerning the presence of household pests, inherited, undoubtedly, from his mother.

After I rose to the task of doing the dirty work, killing and flushing, and you know, generally restoring peace to the universe, Evan deemed it safe to once again enter the foam-lettered alphabet sauna that is his tiled heaven.

When his daddy joined him minutes later (and conveniently after the clean-up,) he told him,

"Daddy, I want to be really great friends."

Well, a daddy will do much nicer than a silverfish on any day, don't you agree!

(And for my friends up North, yes, our ants really do bite, but if you're now a little freaked by the idea that we often wake up to find small fish in our Florida showers, this is the silverfish I'm speaking of.)

Thursday, February 16, 2006

The Half-way Mark

Two Sundays ago, 19 weeks along

I'm now 20.3 weeks along in pregnancy. The half-way mark. This is the part I almost find myself enjoying. The sickness gone, the discomfort still in the distance, (if even near-distance.) No heart burn or waddling, but lots of movement underway.

I love the movement. Definitely my favorite part of pregnancy. That's when you start to feel maternal with that first one, I think; when you feel life stirring inside.

Evan continually asks me questions about his little brother: Will he cry when he comes out? Why will he cry? Does he cry in your tummy? When the baby gets here we will go to the new house and I will be so excited! (He's a little confused on that one. I keep trying to tell him we don't yet HAVE a house to go to.) I think he's going to expect us to drop by and pick him up after the baby gets here and head to the "new house." And if we get to the house before the baby he's going to ask Okay, where's the kid you keep promising?

When we were in the store the other day he saw a small baby in an infant seat and asked me, Is that what our baby will be like? And it's amazing to find that he really does "get" it. He tells us where it is, that it has to get bigger first, what its gender is, what his name is...it will be so fun to watch it all unfold in front of his eyes, and with his memory, there'll be no forgetting any of it either...no matter how many years from now.

How badly I want them to all be the best of friends! Lord, let it be so!

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Note To Self

If you want to get a kid excited about Valentine's Day, don't tell him it's about love. Don't even bother explaining about all the pink and red, or the hearts or the pretty cards. These things won't so much as raise an eyebrow.

Instead, tell him it's about candy. C-A-N-D-Y. Period.

After all, you yourselves remember class parties and Valentine's Day as a child. For the first decade or so of his life, this is the truth; the only obviously logical reason for creating another holiday. Makes me think on the way C.S. Lewis related understanding chocolate at one age and sex at another to our vague grasp on Heaven. Yes, you heard me: Chocolate. Sex. Heaven.

See for yourselves:

I think our present outlook might be like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time. On receiving the answer 'No', he might regard absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality. In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their carnal raptures don't bother about chocolates is that they have something better to think of. The boy knows chocolate: he does not know the positive thing that excludes it. We are in the same position. We know the sexual life; we do not know, except in glimpses, the other thing which, in Heaven, will leave no room for it.

And isn't it funny that we've combined the highest pre-adult bodily pleasure with the highest adult bodily pleasure and made a holiday out of it? It's like a holiday for the senses cleverly disguised as a holiday for the heart. Just one Endorphin-packed flesh fest, filled with all kinds of sensuous pleasures.

I know my husband well enough to know that if I shared this last sentence aloud with him, I would get one of his perfected one-word responses that says it all: sweet!
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I love you, Shaun!

Happy Valentine's Day, all!

Monday, February 13, 2006

Allow Me to Clarify

Okay, a few of you told me you were confused on this the first go-round, and I just can't have you missing the comical extent of the situation, so I've clarified it in hopes it will make more sense...and less...(you'll see, keeping reading...)

Background info: Shaun bought me a fancy Gillette razor months ago that I would've never bought for myself, but he did because, well, we need to do our part in supporting our stocks, gosh darnit! That understood, the following conversation unfolded the other morning:

Shaun: Are you really cleaning your razor with Tilex?

Me: It has mold growing on it. Would you have me throw it away?

Shaun: No, but you need to be careful because that could really burn your face.

MANY seconds of blank staring at each other followed.

Shaun finally asks with slight irritation: What?

Hence, my husband perfectly illustrated the true definition of empathy.

(Well, it's either that, or he actually thinks I shave away my five o'clock shadow with the best of them...)

Friday, February 10, 2006

Pieces of Personality

We have a holly tree just outside our front door. Evan has quite the romance going with it. He waited all Fall for its berries to turn red and checked out his bedroom window every morning, sometimes more than once a day. When they finally turned red, which did happen overnight, he had to call Honey and report the big news. Ever since they've turned red he picks one and takes it in the car with him whenever we leave the house. The other day he was sitting in his carseat, happily holding his berry, when, for the 500th time this month, he dropped it on the floor and asked me to please get it for him.

"I'm driving right now, but when I get out of the car, I'll get it."

"Okay, but I'm so tired of this!"

Umm....ME TOO.

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Shaun came home early to work from our house the other day, so since Madalyn was napping, I left with Evan for a quick run to the store. His animal cracker radar went off and he started begging for some as soon as we neared the aisle.

"Not this time."

"No, I need some."

"Not this time."

"Okay, mommy...animal crackers or nothing."

"Ummm....NOTHING! (How'd that work out for you?)"

A slow smile creeps on his face, "You're funny, mommy!"

"No, you're funny!"

"No, you're funny."

"No, you are- you're silly."

"Well... you're bossy!"

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Overheard during mealtime:

1) "You're acting horrible, Madalyn!" (Slams fist on table at 'horrible.')

2) "If you squeeze a brownie you get chocolate pudding."

3) "It's a beautiful day, Madalyn!"

4) Madalyn: Again, again, again!

Evan: No, I'm tired.

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Other frequent one-liners include Madalyn frequently telling us, "I'm happy," (probably because her daddy frequently asks her this when she's in a merry mood, and so she's started telling us before we ask,) and then Evan telling us in anticipation of this event or that, "And I am so excited."

Not-so-frequent one-liners would include Madalyn running in our room and saying to me, "do you know what happened?" I looked at Shaun and asked if he heard her, so she ran over to him and said it again. We were laughing in disbelief at how clear she was saying it, how confident, so she proudly came and asked me again. Finally I said, "what happened?" She smiled blankly, like 'after all this showing off I totally forgot what I was going to tell you.' Then ran out of the room. Another one-liner floated out to us from the bathroom, where the kids were playing (always a great place to let the kids play,) and that was the voice of Evan saying, "No, don't brush your hair. You're too little."

The other recent pleasure we've had is listening to Madalyn sing. She invents songs that make little to no sense, but man, are they beautiful! After Shaun left this morning she began to sing about him, with lots of daddy's and lots of babble in between.

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So there are all the wonderful things that have piled up in my heart this week. Now in writing. Never to be forgotten or fade away; a thought I just can't bear.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

The God of Special Revelation

I'd heard this magnificent tidbit of history once before when Ravi Zacharias spoke at the University of Florida some 7 or 8 years ago, but somehow I'd forgotten the power of it. When I read it again in Beth Moore's Patriarchs study, it impacted me as profoundly as it had the first time. You may already be familiar with it yourself, but at the chance that you're not, it's too great a treasure not to share. The following telling of it is what Beth quoted, and was taken from L.E. Goodman's preface to God of Abraham:

Late Monday night, November 23, 1654, Blaise Pascal, mathematician, naturalist, skeptic, and bon vivant, underwent a religious experience that profoundly changed his life. On a piece of parchment, later found sewn into his clothing, he wrote: "From about half past ten in the evening until half past midnight. Fire. 'God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,' not of the philosophers and scholars. Certainty, certainty, heartfelt joy, peace."

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Tucking Evan in Tonight

Will you lie with me so I won't be scared?

Oh, you don't need to be scared! Why don't you need to be scared? Who's always with you?

Jesus. He's in my heart. Is He in your heart?

Yes. He is, (trying not to sob with joy.)

Is He a baby in your heart?

You've Got a Friend in Me

(If maybe a controlling one...)

Do you remember what it was like to be so caught up in what you were playing with your friends when you were little, that it was better than if it had been reality? I remember making our own summer camp program with neighborhood kids beneath the tall shrubs in our side-yard, sitting in Magnolia branches and taking notes like Harriet the Spy about suspicious cars passing by, and making Double Dare courses on our playset with toothpaste, flour, soap, and eggs- (I'm sure that was my mother's favorite one.) And that's just the beginning...

But I'm just starting to glimpse that sort of excitement about play in Evan. The other night, Shaun and I were sitting in our room when we heard him engaging Madalyn to play with him in her room, like he so often attempts to do. (He used to shut the door as an attempt to lock her in, but I worried about fingers with all the door-slamming. So when that was banned, he resorted to lining things up to block her in; buckets, baskets, his blue "anywhere chair," books- anything.) But back to this particular night, when he wanted to pretend that they shared a room and it was bedtime, and he had them eating slices of pink plastic cake in the beds he made for them on her floor. When every so often he would run in our room, out of breath from his own excitement, and proclaim, We're eating in the crib, aren't we?!! Then he was gone as quick as he'd appeared. The other frequently overheard sound, which didn't require attentive listening, was a blood-curdling scream at an octave so high it should be outlawed, occurring whenever he thought she was going to leave the room and stop playing with him; n-OOOOOOOOO! Madalyn, n-OOOOOO!

If witnessed by a casting crew, the child would be an instant pick for a horror film with lungs and emotions like these. Makes me think on that Father of the Bride line when Steve Martin says to the son-in-law-to-be something like "the good news is that the over-reacting seems to decrease with each generation, so there's a good chance your children will be normal." I hope so.

Because this pattern went on for a half hour or more. The pattern that went like