Yes, It’s Daylights time again. After spending a couple hours at Panera Bread with a red pen and a stack of articles I feel ready to rant about grammar. I don’t mind correcting the writers’ grammer — I get paid pretty well to do it. But it does make me wonder what is going through their minds when half of an article is not in complete sentences or when the word “Umm” actually appears in print.
…Or when one the writers uses the word “Funner.” Yes, that word your third grade Language Arts teacher probably told you is not really a word appeared in an article written by one of the Daylights authors.
I got home and realized I wasn’t sure exactly why “funner” is not considered correct useage. While I do have an English degree and do some semi-professional editing, I’ve actually not taken many classes on grammar and I have a hard time remembering what term belongs to what error. I usually just know what sounds right or wrong, and what to do to fix commom mistakes…and which reference books to use when I’m not sure how to resolve a sticky punctuation or capitalization question.
So, I googled for “funner” and found a couple of interesting articles. Apparently the problem is that “fun” was originally only a noun, but has gradually morphed into an adjective as well. Many language experts are unhappy about this, hence “funner” and “funnest” are not meant to be used in formal English. The writer of the latter article believes this change in the English language is a part of it’s natural development, and some day “funner” will take it’s place with other, once improper phrases in the English language. Perhaps by the time Madeline is writing devotional articles, it will be an okay thing to write…or it may languish in the murky water where “hopefully” (used in the context of “I hope”) now resides — almost correct but not quite acceptable in formal writing.
Either way, here’s hoping for a funner day tomorrow as I hopefully finish the Winter Daylights issue. 
As if there weren’t enough things for me to read on the web during the day while I am feeding Madeline or at night after she goes to bed…I found a way to actually remember to read other blogs besides the ones collected on PlanetRock. Matt Hereema introduced me to BlogLines, a web-based aggregating service that collects the links and summaries to new items at sites you choose to monitor. It even has a little notifier that can tell you when you have new items to read. Great…more things to read…so will I spend less time writing or just have more to blog about?
On the side of having more to blog about…here is something funny that I found, courtesy of BlogLines. A particular page of the BlogLines site collects new site feeds that have been linked to that day. While browsing a little bit of that list yesterday, this site stuck out and called for me to click on it. If you can get a good laugh out of the oddities of the Christian sub-culture, you might enjoy this blog entitled, “They will know us by our T-Shirts.” It’s the adventures of a seminary student in Minneapolis who works at a Christian Bookstore. The first entry I read talked about some non-prescription glasses called “Spiritual Eyes Reading Glasses.” Wow, the stuff they come up with to make a buck off the “Christian” label is amazing!
So, we took Madeline to the doctor today for her 4 month checkup. She is now a whopping 13 lbs, 10 ounces and 25 inches long. She’s gained a little over 2lbs since her last checkup, and grew about 2.5 inches. She had four shots again this time, and has slept most of the day since our appointment. Wow, shots must be tiring!
Yesterday, which was Madeline’s four month birthday, we observed our daughter rolling from one end of her crib to the other! She learned a few days earlier to roll from back to front, but has had a hard time getting back to her back after rolling over. We actually haven’t seen her repeat the feat of rolling all the way around but I am sure she will be rolling all over the place soon. Watch out world! Or at least watch out me, since I can’t leave her on our bed and leave the room safely any more.
With this new rolling over ability came a little bit of parental worry on my part. Doctors make a REALLY big deal these day about babies sleeping on their backs to reduce the risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). It is such a widespread idea that when you buy any type of crib bedding, the package usually has some kind of “warning label” telling you to always put babies to sleep on their backs. At first, I thought I would have nothing to fear since up to this point Madeline has not liked being on her tummy much at all. But, sure enough, as soon as she learned to roll from back to tummy, I would come into her room and find her sleeping on her front side. Even if I flipped her back over, inevitably she would get back to her tummy by the next time I came in the room. So, I asked the Doctor about it today at her appointment. Luckily, he said there is little risk of SIDS once babies can roll over on their own. One fear aleviated, but I’m sure there are more right around the corner.
I know her life and her future are in God’s hands, and it’s a good opportunity to trust Him, right? Definitely easier said than done when motherly instinct is at work!
As if we haven’t had enough excitement in our little blogging community with Leah and Jason getting engaged, I have some other exciting news: You no longer have to remember a long url to find PlanetRock — just type planet.rockisu.com and you’ll be directed to the planetRock site.
Okay, so that’s not as exciting as an engagement, but if I wouldn’t have heard about that today, I definitely would have said that the new, shorter URL for planetRock was the highlight of my day so far. Maybe that means I need more excitement in my life?
Later today, we take Madeline to the doctor for her 4 month check up…so we’ll get to find out how long she is and how much she weighs…and I’m pretty excited about that.
Who can guess what that number means?
I was just thinking about how much has happened in the last seven days. So much has happened I don’t think I can really process all of it — a death in our church family, a friend we rarely see telling us about some serious junk going on in her life, a sister in Christ having to move home for a while to deal with things she’s going through, various other people going through trials ranging from financial to relational…and in the same week experiencing the joy finding out about someone who recommitted her life to Christ, hearing about awesome relationships being built in the dorms, going to a really amazing Rock on Friday night, and having the pleasure of seeing two friends who trusted God to give them His best get married on Saturday.
While Tony and I were visiting my family in Minnesota, we watched on DVD the movie “Love, Actually” with my mom. I don’t necessarily reccommend the movie, as there are some scenes that may not fit the viewing standards many of you may have, but it was a relatively enjoyable movie with a warm fuzzy ending. The early part of the movie flashes from scene to scene of life experiences various people are having all in the same day — a wedding, a funeral, going to work, a new prime minister (it’s a British film) moving into his residence, etc. It seemed jarring when I was watching the movie, but it’s almost how my life has felt this week.
Instead of watching fictional characters woven together with a common theme of love, I’m watching friends and brothers and sisters in Christ live out a series of stories that can’t be tied up neatly in a two hour film. There may or may not be warm fuzzy endings to some of these stories. I know in my head there is a common theme of God working in all these lives, but it’s not always obvious or easy to see. I’m just praying that I can be Spirit-filled enough to see what part God wants me to play.
Lots of new pictures…not just of Madeline (though there are plenty of those of course):
The Rock in the Great Hall this past Friday
The Rock on the Terrace on September 3rd
Our Labor Day weekend trip to Minnesota
Most recent pictures of Madeline
Happy Viewing!
I finially finished reading “Sacred Parenting” by Gary Thomas last night. I think I started it over a month ago. I guess that’s just how things go when there’s a baby in the picture. A passage I read a week or so ago still sticks in my mind. The context is the author talking about being successful:
“I sensed God telling me I had a choice to make. I could devote myself to becoming a strong and attractive tree that others would admire — “Look at those roots!” “Wow, look at all that fruit!” — Or I could focus on planting a forest (that is, investing in others). God made it very clear to me what He would have me choose. And so I spend my days planting a forest. It feels very freeing to accept your insignficance…In God’s delightful irony, embracing your temporal insignificance leads to the greatest eternal significance.”
I really like that analogy of planting a forest. Whether it’s investing my time in raising and discipling Madeline and other children God may bless us with in the future, or spending time with women in the Rock, or pouring hours into administrative projects that hopefully make things run more smoothly for the Rock as a whole, I like thinking of it as a forest that can spread beyond where I can reach and that can outlast me and reach a new generation. While I think pride would push almost all of us in our flesh to want to be that one big, beautiful tree…a whole forest can produce so much more wood or shade or fruit.
There’s lots of good stuff in this book. I would highly reccommend it to anyone who has kids or anyone who is thinking about having them. Like “Sacred Marriage,” it’s a lot more about how God can use children to make you more mature than it is about how to be a good parent. But if you are at all prone to crying, don’t read chapter 13 in a public place like I did last night. I really had to fight back the tears as I read that chapter (entitled “leaving”) while sitting in Stomping Grounds.
I read one of my favorite verses in the One-Year Bible today (It’s actually yesterday’s reading, but since I didn’t read in the one-year yesterday I thought I would read both sections): “God is our refuge and our strength, and ever present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46:1). Amen to that! I need to meditate on that verse more often.
Do you ever get stuck on something…getting a certain course of action fixed in your mind for no apparent reason? About two weeks ago, on August 19th, I decided the next thing I would blog about would be the new pictures I was going to post of the RCA BBQ. Then I realized I should also take pictures of the Rock’s gig at Destination ISU, and I should wait until I could post pictures of that as well. Then I took more pictures of Madeline, and thought I should just wait to blog about it until I got those up as well. Meanwhile, I thought of other topics to blog about as well, but I thought to myself, “no, the next thing I was going to write about is those pictures.”
Then I thought we were going to change photo gallery software, so I was going to wait until we did that to post the pictures. I decided we could keep coppermine, but then it was taking a lot longer to upload the pictures because I can only do five at a time and it doesn’t take zip files. And I took more pictures of Madeline, and pictures of our booth at Welcomefest. Finally, last night I finished putting up all those pictures but I was too tired to blog about it.
So, here’s the headlines of what you missed while I was thinking too much about pictures to blog about anything else.
- We had a great kick-off weekend with the RCA Fellowship team, including a BBQ and a party at Doug’s house
- I read some awesome stuff in the book “Sacred Parenting”
- Trying to go to the dorms with a baby is challening, but it’s a great way to meet people
- I’ve been swamped with administrative stuff, from phone lists to lifegroup leader manuals to follow-up reports, but I think I’m past the worst of it
- I had a total freak-out at the Rock last Friday night, and Tony helped me realize that I REALLY need to be connecting with God more
- We went to West Des Moines last Saturday and saw the new mall. Then we tried to enjoy Indian food while Madeline screamed the whole time
- Madeline is learning fun new stuff, like how to “stand” by leaning against a chair arm of the right height, how to play with toys using her feet and how to throw things off the exersaucer
Any of those could have been awesome posts, and maybe I will still write about some of those items. But for now, you can go look at all our fun pictures. A picture is worth a thousand words anyway, right?
