tonyandkirsten.org

With the weather generally being warmer and more pleasant the last couple weeks (at least before today’s snow storm hit), Madeline and I have been getting out and about more to do new things.

Last week, after discovering that the Minneapolis public library system had several of the books I had been looking at on amazon.com, I decided we would take a trip downtown and visit the Central Library. All of the books I wanted were located there. Since I didn’t have a library card yet I couldn’t get them delivered to a closer branch without stopping at one of those branches first to get a card, and then waiting several days for the books to arrive.

My first plan was for us to take a city bus downtown, but when I noticed that the library had an attached parking ramp with a reasonable rate, I thought I would give that a shot instead. We drove downtown, only to find out that the parking ramp was full, and all the other nearby lots and ramps were more expensive. Since we were in the car at that point anyway, I thought we would just park at a “park-and-ride” lot for the light rail, and take the train downtown. I had looked at a map for the train system on line and it would be the same price as a bus, so it seemed like another good idea. Unfortunately I could only find the smaller of the two park-and-ride lots near the station I was familiar with and it was full too…so it was back to my original plan A — taking the bus.

I thought about giving up at this point, but Madeline was really excited about going to the library and it wasn’t like we had anything better to be doing right then. So, we stopped by our house to look at the bus schedule, left the car parked there, and walked a little over two blocks to a bus stop that would take us right by the library. Other than Madeline having a hard time sitting still on the bus, it was a pretty pleasant 20 minute ride. The central library building is less than a year old and is about as big as the Iowa State library. We enjoyed finding our books, getting a hot chocolate at a nearby coffee shop on our way out, and then managing to catch the bus home before our bus transfer ticket had expired — making for a pretty cheap round trip experience!

That was maybe our biggest “adventure”, but we packed in a lot of other fun stuff this week. On Monday at least two different chains of thrift stores here were having “50% off everything” sales for President’s Day, so Madeline and I visited three different thrift store locations. I was mostly looking for clothes for baby boy, but I found a couple of things for Madeline as well. I want to be all prepared with what we need for the smallest size of baby clothes (figuring that we’ll mainly get larger sizes as gifts later on or can get them at garage sales, and I don’t want to have to scramble to find things right after he is born). $1 sleepers and pants, and $2 sweatshirts and sweaters are definitely the right price!

Wednesday and Thursday we checked out opportunities for Madeline to get out and play with other kids, and for me to meet other moms. In Ames I hardly knew any women outside of church, and while I am meeting lots of women at Urban Refuge, I decided it would be a great time to break out and form new relational circles.

Similar to the indoor play gym for toddlers that Ames does at the city gym, there are indoor play times for young kids at various park-and-rec community centers around Minneapolis. Unlike in Ames, where it’s just at one location every day, each community center does one or two days a week. It’s still possible to go to one (or probably more than one — I was only looking in a reasonable driving distance around our house) on any give day, it just might be in a different place. We have several community centers within a 15 minute or less drive of our house, and on Wednesday Madeline and I went to a indoor play gym time at a center less than a five minute drive away.

I knew this would be a great time for Madeline to burn off energy and run around (and it was — she had a lot of fun), but I wasn’t sure if it would be a good place for me to meet other moms. In Ames I would always find it hard to meet new people at the play gym. Moms would mainly only talk to other moms they already knew from someplace else, or the conversations would be kind of awkward. This play time had a really different feel — A lot of the people there seemed to know each other mainly from coming to this place each week (interestingly, there were both moms and dads there with their kids — I think I only ever saw moms in Ames), and there was lots of friendly conversation while the kids played. I suppose because it is more neighborhood-centered and most people just plan to go at the same time each week at the location closest to their house. There is one other community center with a weekly play time that is even closer, and I am thinking we’ll try and make it a regular habit to go to one or the other each week (well, at least for the next few weeks, and then again after we get adjusted to having baby boy around!). If nothing else Madeline really needs the chance to run around until it gets warm enough to consistently play outside…which is probably May at the rate things usually go around here!

On Thursday we checked out a “playdate” with a Stay-At-Home-Moms “meet-up” group. Meetup.com is a website where people can link up with other people in their area with shared interests — anything from music to politics to stage in life. I found there is a very active stay-at-home mom’s group with members from all over the Twin Cities, most of whom have one or two young kids. Members of the group plan a variety of outings throughout each month, and the 130+ members pick ones that fit their interests, schedule and location. This was just a simple play time at another member’s house who also lives in Minneapolis. I met five other moms and their kids and we had a great time. I’m looking forward to other future outings — besides playdates, things like museum trips, visits to indoor playgrounds and get-togethers at a coffee shop with a kids play area are all regular occurances. I think this is going to be a really fun way to not only meet people but to check out a lot of fun things to do in the area.

Somehow in the midst of all the rest of this stuff this week, we also managed to briefly visit two different neighborhood library branches. After our visit to the Central library last week I had found two more books I was interested in, which I could now easily set to be delivered to a closer library branch. I got the notice on Wednesday that they were in, so we made a quick stop at a branch a little over a mile west of our house. Then on Friday, anticipating the weekend-long blizzard (which really didn’t get started all that much until a couple hours ago), Madeline and I stopped into a library branch a mile or so north of here (that just happens to be right across the street from Aldi, where I needed to go anway) to get a couple of videos to watch while potentially being snowed in. Amazingly, neither of these are actually the library location that will soon be our closest neighborhood library branch. There is a branch about a half-mile from here (near the target, cub and rainbow closest to our house) that is under renovations and will re-open in a week or so!

Spurred by a comment from Tina, I did a little looking into Dinesh’s past.

For the Googlers out there: here is some balance to my recommendation from his Wikipedia page and a critique of him from Campus Progress.

I have no idea if the allegations Tina brings up are true, or if they are whether Dinesh has recanted of his behavior. What I can say, is that if true, the actions she reported are extremely unloving, and I would not approve of them.

I guess as with all things, we must investigate the things we hear as well as the person saying them. Caveat lector!

I’m starting to get settled into a routine here, and man is that refreshing!

Get up, get ready, work, play, dinner, dishes, evening activity, and sleep! The routine is very similar every day.

Amazingly, it seems that there’s a part of my being that really feels relaxed when there is a routine to my life. Many of the decisions are made, I know what I’m supposed to be doing, and I get done the things I need to do. Perhaps even more paradoxical, the regular structure actually allows me to be more flexible with my time!

The structure actually frees me to be creative with my time. Since I know what the typical components are and where they go, it’s really easy to re-arrange those components and still make sure the necessary things get done. Since I have scheduled in an ambiguous “evening activity”, that means I have planned to do something, without necessarily naming that activity until we get there, meaning that there is room for something to just “come-up”.

The structure is really nice since I’m now starting to develop relationships based solely upon reliability of being in the same place at the same time. I am now friends with many people who ride the same bus to and from campus every day. Because we’ve all gotten to know one another, we’ve actually planned events outside of bus riding!

I wanted to share these things in part as just a life update, but also as a thought to share in TJ’s discussion about busy-ness and family culture. So, enjoy!

So, on the way home this weekend, I heard a program on NPR that I hadn’t heard before: Word for Word. The premise is simple; the show plays entire speeches that are relevant and being excerpted for sound bites elsewhere. What caught my attention, however, was not the premise, but the content of this particular speech.

The speaker was Dinesh D’sousa. He is a conservative political scientist. He has a new book out, entitled, “The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and its Responsibility for 9/11.” The speech was from January 23rd, at the Commonwealth Club of California, located in San Francisco. In the speech he gives a very compelling reason to stay in Iraq until it is stabilized — in fact, it’s the most compelling line of reasoning that I’ve heard thus far. Given that he is defending his premise in front of a mostly liberal and intelligent audience, he got grilled at the end of the speech. I have to say, he is sharp, and did a marvelous job of defending his thesis.

I have not read the book, yet, but hearing his speech made me want to. At any rate, I highly recommend that if you have the time, you listen to his speech. It’s free, and it’s here: Dinesh D’sousa at the Commonwealth Club of California.

I realize that some of you reading this have different politics than Dinesh. That’s fine. That said, it’s well worth hearing a very intelligent viewpoint that’s opposite yours, as doing so is the only way to critically think about your viewpoint.

I hope you enjoy this.

Today will mark a milestone in our new house.  Now that we have been here a little over a month, we are going to have our first dinner guests! Last week at Aldi I found a bargain I couldn’t refuse — an 18lb frozen turkey on clearance for $8! I had been planning anyway to spend $6 for a 3lb bag of chicken breasts, so it was a no-brainer to spend an additional two bucks and get a lot more meat.  So, tonight we’ll have turkey dinner, with a few fixins’ normally eaten in November or December.

My mom came to visit on Friday (we went bassinet shopping and found a cute Pooh bassinet for $35!), and she told me she has a turkey she got for free she wants to bring us the next time she comes to visit…so with the leftovers from cooking both of those birds, we’ll have enough to keep us stocked up for a long time!

Besides cooking a turkey, today Madeline and I are catching up from our busy weekend in Ames — resting, doing laundry, and putting stuff away.  We got back last night around 10:45pm.  We had really hoped it would be earlier, but we hung around talking with people until after 6:30pm and didn’t get out of town until around 7pm.  Though we had looked at a weather forecast for both Ames and the Twin Cities, we hadn’t seen the forecast for everything in between…so we were quite surprised to hit a small snowstorm from northern Iowa through southern Minnesota that really slowed down driving for a while.  I was actually surprised that we didn’t get back later than we did!

It was a great, action-packed weekend and we had so much fun hanging out with everyone.  Madeline clearly had a great time too. We’ve discovered a new passion of hers — “playing” Karaoke Revolution.  After the dinner portion of the Counter Culture team valentines/sister appreciation event on Saturday night, one of the primary activities was a game of Karaoke Revolution.  So, while Tony and I played a game of Settlers of Catan, Madeline sat with the group that was singing. They gave her a microphone that didn’t work, and she pretended to sing along, sometimes while also dancing.  We weren’t really paying too much attention to the time since we’re used to her coming to us crabby and tired when she’s ready to leave a party.  Soon it was getting close to 11pm and we were scooping her up and putting her shoes and coat on her somewhat against her will as she kept saying, “sing more! sing more!” (or something like that).

Time to get to work on that laundry!

Whoo Hooo! Madeline has been accident-free in her pottying for over a week now! It is by far her best record ever, so it seems like things finally “clicked” for her and she has figured out what it takes to stay dry.  We celebrated one week of no accidents by taking Madeline to McDonald’s last night after dinner for a strawberry shake and some time to play in the play land.  I’m still reminding her to use the potty every now and then (when it seems like she might otherwise be getting distracted, or when we’re in a new place). But in general, she is remembering on her own.  Long nap times and overnight are still pull-up times for now…but that seems to be more of a physical maturity issue than anything esle.  I’ve read that most kids can’t stay dry overnight until after they turn three.

This has been quite a journey.  We ceased with diapers in October, but before this I think the longest Madeline had gone without some kind of potty accident was maybe 12 hours, if that.  Had we not moved and had all the stress surrounding that, who knows? She may have gotten it sooner.  Or maybe not! I wasn’t doing anything different to help her when she finally got it.  I think it was just her time to figure it out!

On a completely unrelated note, we had one of those great “cute kid” moments last night when I wish I would have been quicker to grab the camera.  We have a lamp shade still sitting out unattached to its lamp.  Madeline grabed it yesterday while I was cooking dinner, put it on her head, and started walking around saying, “I’m hiding! I’m hiding!”

We’ve finally made it to the stage of settling in that we are working on decorating.  That means that while we had made great progress in getting our living room and dining room cleared out, it is now a big mess again! There are picture frames, candles and other decorating items strewn about the floor.   We got to a reasonable stopping point last night with our fireplace mantle.  We’ve never had one of these before, so we’ve spent a lot of decorating energy trying to figure out what to do with it. We need a couple of things to finish it up, but it looks okay for now. We’re also hanging up some of our wedding pictures for the first time.  Yes, it’s odd..in four and a half years we’ve never had our framed wedding pics on the wall before now. There’s still pictures of Madeline to hang in the bedroom, and we’re hoping to get a few more family pictures framed and put up at some point as well.

Once the decorating stuff is cleaned up (that’s my next task this afternoon during Madeline’s nap time — pick up all the stuff so at least it’s not in our way!) we have basically all of our unpacking done.  The main thing left to do is to find places to put away a lot of little random things that are sitting around without a permanent home.

We’ve also now made our church decision, having given it about a month of checking things out and praying.  Our decision  is to get involved with Urban Refuge.  It was definitely a hard thing to pick between two really good options, and there weren’t any lightening bolts from God telling us clearly what to do.  For me the big factor in wanting to pick Urban Refuge was that I was forming relationships there a lot faster.  I’m sure given enough time I would have formed equally as many quality relationships at the Rock, but with less than two months before baby boy makes his debut, I was excited to have a good start on making friends before that happens and life will get even more complicated!

This may sound a little funny, but I also like the change of pace of being some of the “younger” people instead being some of the “old timers” like we were in the Rock in Ames. Most people at Urban Refuge are in their 30s or so, with a few being younger than us.  At the Rock here in MN we would have been closer to the top end of the age spectrum with only a few people older than us.  Especially with the strong possiblity that we might end up going on a church plant in a couple of years with a lot of people around our age or younger from Ames, I see this next couple of years as a great time to learn from those older and more seasoned at the Urban Refuge.

I’m also really excited about the connection between Ames and the Urban Refuge with Mission to the City trips in the summer.  So, it’s an added bonus of going on one of these trips this summer that you’ll get to see us too!   We’re not exactly sure what our serving involvement in the Urban Refuge will look like just yet, but we’re going to start figuring that out and jump in where ever we’re needed.  And, even though we’re plugging in with Urban Refuge, we’re definitely planning on keeping up friendships with some people we do know from the Rock.

In case you haven’t heard, we’ll be in Ames this weekend!  I’ll be at the women’s retreat on Friday night and Saturday morning/early afternoon.   So, Tony  (and Madeline) will have some time free on Saturday if you want to see them.  All three of us should have some time free on Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning before church and possibly Sunday lunch if you want to schedule anything with us. Just email or call to let us know. You can also see us at the “Blue Party” that Holly is throwing for us on Sunday afternoon from 2-5pm at Wendy Rehm’s house.  This is an open house/party to celebrate the upcoming birth of our baby boy, and both guys and girls are welcome.  (You can bring a gift for the baby if you want, but no obligation — we’re really just excited to hang out with everyone!).  Chances are this is the last time we’ll be in Ames until sometime after baby boy is born.  But if you want to come visit us up here, just let us know! Now that we are getting settled in, we’d love to have guests!

Within the first week or so of living here, we decided to replace the regular drain plug set-up in our bathtub with a simple rubber stopper.  The original drain plugging set-up came out really easily but did not go back in with much ease at all…so the best solution seemed to be to just not use it.  I bought one drain stopper (the largest bathtub-style drain stopper they had at Menard’s), but it was still just a little too small.

We just lived with this somewhat-leaky drain stopper for a few weeks until Tony had a chance to go to another hardware store and buy the next size larger drain plug. So then a couple days ago when Tony was helping Madeline with her bath, he showed her the new drain stopper and told her the old one was too small.

She thought about this for a second and asks, “For the baby?”  She’s seen a number of small things lately that are for baby boy, so I’m sure this made complete sense to her!