Facts, Figures and Wisdom
Madeline went in for her six month check-up today and survived three more shots. She now weighs 16lbs and is 25.75 inches long…right at the 50th percentile in both areas! Amazingly they had not yet run out of flu shot for young kids (6-24 mos. are considered higher risk for getting a serious case of flu), so she got one. She is at an advantage for not getting flu by not being around other young kids very much…but with her frequent exposure to college students she probably needs the extra protection! College students living in the dorms are not exactly the most germ-free bunch of people. 
Besides the doctor visit, Madeline also had the excitement of trying her first vegetable today. She wrinkled her nose a little bit at her first taste of peas, but seemed to like it after a couple of bites.
I had the priviledge of hanging out with Cindy Sokoll all day on Monday. What a treat! Tony wanted to spend the day working with Pat on their new house, so Madeline and I made the trip to Solon too. It was great to catch up with her on what had been going on with their family the last few months and fill her in on happenings in Ames.
Of course we also talked a lot about babies and about parenting in general. I’ve always found their strong convictions about various life and parenting issues to be very striking, so I asked Cindy about the process of how they came to hold their convictions. Her primary answer to this was that Pat wanted to begin with the end goal in mind and work back from there. If the end goal is producing disciples of Christ who themselves will be making disciples, what decisions and practices along the way will further that goal?
While most of our parenting decisions right now probably have little ramification on Madeline’s future spiritual life, it won’t be long before our decisions will be laying the groundwork for her character development. It is kind of an obvious piece of advice, but it is so wise. I’m sure as we are going through life it will be much easier to just make whatever decision feels right or is easy at the moment. It is very challenging to consider thinking ahead to how we hope Madeline will turn out as an adult as we make decisions on how to train her in good character as a toddler, child and teenager.