Joseph's New Sisters Pets Dinner

Last Friday I made an impulse buy and came home with 5 baby chicks. Fortunately for all of us, Aaron and I were already planning on getting chicks. (That's why I was already at the store - buying supplies ahead of time.) And I did talk to Aaron while I was at the store to see if it was okay. So I suppose it was only an impulse compared to most of the purchases we make.

They're pullets, which means they're all girls and will lay eggs when they're about 5 months old. They're ready to eat in about 4. I hope Aaron lets some of them live. I wasn't having an issue with attachment until I began seeing them as future egg-producers and long-term residents of our home.

My favorite is Red. She's a Rhode Island Red. The other two will be white (what breed?), and there are two grayish/blackish ones. Right now they're in our living room in front of a south-facing window, under a heat lamp. This is officially Aaron's thing, and how attentive he is! I tried to get him involved in the garden, and he just couldn't muster enthusiasm. He thought livestock was more his thing. This was our experiment. I think he was right. If they weren't chickens (and if he didn't insist we should look at them as dinner), I would say he "dotes" on them. But, of course, he's just "tending" to them.

Anyhow, Joseph thinks they're fascinating, too. Especially when they're moving and making sounds at the same time. It's almost better than a tv. :) I have to admit, though, he shows more interest in the heat lamp. Hey, it's aluminum and large. What else is there?

It'll be interesting to see how these next few weeks and months go, as Joseph's motor skills develop right along with those of the chickens. I hope they can be friends.

(Nearly) 7 months

It's fascinating the way babies will grow, whether you help them or not. It's dawned on me that he's 7 months old and he's not learning to drink from a sippy cup, doesn't know any Baby Einstein Flashcards, and can't sign one word. I always thought I'd be the type of person to over-estimate what a baby can do; but my baby still seems to be the newborn in August. Aaron reminds me he's not.

This doesn't mean, though, that I have to be doing those things. Because I'm not. I do other things, like hold him, talk to him, show him our baby chickens, read to him, explain to him covenantal theology and perseverance of the saints - you know, your normal, everyday, reformed baby things.

Despite my own busyness, and my ignorance of certain things, he seems to be doing well. He crawled today! Really crawled. I'm talking up on his hands and knees, scooting said knees alternately forward toward an object. He maxed out at three knee moves. I'm so proud.

He also has two new consonant sounds that he discovered just since Sunday: "d" and "n". This makes Aaron particularly happy - especially the "d" one. ;)

I have a love/hate relationship with the Holidays and, now, Sundays as well. They're wonderful for the Church, but bad for babies. I'm seriously considering whether it's worth it or not to go to a church just because the service time is 3 pm. And with the traveling and strange schedules of the Holidays, Joseph has missed quite a bit of church, and nearly all of his training time. This past Sunday he was pretty rotten had a rough time. I need to get back on track here. So, today, around 11:20, I announced "listening time". Joseph didn't seem to understand. He lasted 5 minutes. Friends, that is 5 minutes! And most of that he was whiny. We have serious work to do. I'm glad God provides grace for change in all things.

If you notice in the first picture above, Joseph's discovered that he can hold and play with two things at once. He's discovered he can shake or bang one item to make "music". I'm looking for those alphabet wood blocks. I would love to see him discover stacking soon. I don't know why, but this fascinates me the most.

Joseph's diet is still looking like Mama, for the most part. Which is fine with me. He'll eat yogurt and avocado occasionally, and we're gaining more courage to let him taste new (stranger) things. He's teething (I think). But still no teeth. We pray for teeth around here.

We're doing Lent. We gave up red meat and treats (except Sundays). As a first-timer, though, I completely forgot and had a beef taco (twice), two peanut butter cookies (and brought some home for Aaron), and ordered him a steak Chalupa (since I know he loves steak!) - all on the first day. After that I told Aaron that I needed some daily focus. :)

The Payne clan is doing well. We're busy busy with our new baby chicks and the garden! Top that with a furniture-making class two evenings a week for Aaron and starting a new part-time job from home for me, and we're learning how little discipline we have but how much we need. Grace, grace, God's grace! We trust He is more than sufficient for all our needs. :)

Joseph's Literary Future, Part III

For a child to know that there is sin, sadness, evil, disappointment, deception, consequences for sin, fleeting happiness in sin, poverty, selfishness, and greed in this world makes them shrewd - not polluted. Knowledge with a proper persepctive and guidance will lead them to more fully undesrtanding the world, its temptations and who they are in Christ. But knowledge without the proper perspective or guidance will lead children to take up worldly ideas of life.

Now, where it gets sticky for me is in actually discerning which books/music/art/movies are "reflectional" and which are actually "sensational". What I have gathered is that it is not true that Christian = Reflectional and Secular = Sensational. As I said before, I have read "Christian" novels that are sensational in that they encourage young women to lose themselves in a silly love story that only makes them discontent with their own life, or encourages them to lust after some boy like so-and-so did in the book. I have heard "Christian" songs that have an awful lot to say about themselves and not much about Jesus; or that lack skill or beauty. Or even Christian movies (say, "The Omega Code") that don't have a point. What about that movie will lead me to reflection that changes my heart?

Aaron and I both listen to "secular" music quite a bit. We love their willingness to disucss life - its beauties, attractions, pleasures, but also its disappointments, hardships and surprises. Nonchristians know about life, that's for sure. And there are many lessons to be learned from the author of a song who has messed up his entire life by pursuing vainly all the pleasures of this world, and is still hopeless by the end of the song. It makes me think about my own life and what I'm pursuing, and it makes me praise God for redeeming me and giving me peace and true life. Or the movie "Braveheart". It is exceptionally graphic (and is a "borderline" movie in my opinion), but William Wallace inspires us to think about what is truly important, what we're willing to die for, and what we truly live for.

Charlotte says that one key thing is that if you're not reflecting on whatever you're reading/watching/listening to, then you won't glean anything anyway. It doesn't matter if it's a "great" book or an "awesome" song. If you don't think about it and study it, it might as well be a "sensational" book. It's produced the same shallow results.

I am most willing to acknowledge that the line is fuzzy for me. What is okay and what isn't? What is too graphic? What focuses too much on sin or its pleasures? What is age appropriate? Is there a different tolerance level for boys and girls, and each individual? Does the moral always have to be obvious?

Aaron and I have much to figure out, but we are working through these principles. Aaron put it this way: "When children are very young, they need fairy tales and storybooks to help them develop emotionally and morally; and when they're older but still young, fiction is the step between childhood and adulthood. They're not ready to enter the world and face its reality. Fiction helps them with that."

My husband is a genius. :)

Promised Pics

Problem: Get both laundry basket and baby into bedroom efficiently.

SOLUTION!

Joseph's first bath in the sink. He discovered "splashing" and thinks it's great. :)

Joseph's Literary Future, Part II

But Charlotte is right (no matter why, which is another question), a young person will seek out knowledge of "life". Men like Arthur Pendennis (see previous post) and women like myself often find this worldly knowledge in those who most obviously possess it (like the popular cheerleaders and confident, rich businessmen). Oftentimes these youth are disappointed and hurt by the results of first-hand knowledge of the world, and are grieved by the world's betrayal or rejection of them. "What can be done to fortify these against the special temptations that belong to their time of life?", Charlotte asks.

She suggests novels. An odd idea, I know. Yet, think about what a novel offers a young person: "Here is the very knowledge of life the young person craves; the personages of the novel play their parts before him, and he is admitted to greater intimacy with them than we often arrive at with our fellows...If the novelist moralise a little here and there, it is but to relieve his own feelings. He is not preaching to the young reader, to whom the lessons of life come home with illustrations never to be forgotten."

Not just any novel would offer us these kinds of "lessons of life" and knowledge that helps. Charlotte distinguishes between "sensational novels" (of which I've read my share: they evoked a blush from me much more than a contemplative "hmm") and "reflectional novels". "The reflectional novel is one which, like this of Pendennis, awakens reflection with every page we read; offers in every character and in every situation a criterion by which to try our random thoughts or our careless conduct. If we bear in mind that the obvious reflection proposed to us is as vicious in its way as the sensation suggested, we shall find that this test––the property of arousing reflection––eliminates all flimsy work, and confines us to the books of our great novelists. "

Novels, if properly chosen, can bring about in our children (and ourselves!) a kind of reflection that leads to evaluation, and then change. Of course, reflection without a standard by which to judge it would be useless. And I think Charlotte assumes that. If your children read about a slothful boy who becomes desolate and poor, you want them to be hard workers after reading that book. Making sure their minds are filled with "he who does not work does not eat" and "work in all things as unto the Lord" will help, I think.

All this is why I want Joseph to be exposed to the best literature we can find. I want him to meet all sorts of people who inspire him, educate him, enlighten him. Characters who will show him all the sorts of goodness in this world, and the evil. But there are objections to this method of education. Even in the 19th century, mothers were still saying, "'I have striven to bring up my family in innocence, and wish to keep them still from that very knowledge of life which novels offer'" (374). This is a particularly popular view in mainstream churches. Mothers (and fathers, too, I suppose) don't want their children exposed to "secular" anything because they fear that knowledge of the world will rob them of their innocence.

It's a fair objection to pose. Yet "we must remember that ignorance is not innocence, and also that ignorance is the parent of insatiable curiosity" (375). It's one thing to pollute yourself with the world by drinking deeply of its knowledge, for "it is shameful to even mention what the evil do in secret" (Ephesians 5: 12). We should not discuss/describe/ponder all the details of sin. Examples of this (I think), are sex education in public schools. Or the "sensational" novels that have breathy descriptions of being in rapturous love (even in some "Christian" romance novels) that tempt us to want to feel as the characters do. Or the graphic descriptions of the lives of drug addicts. If all a novel does is portray sin in a way that appeals to your emotions, tickles your ears, or encourage morbid fascination, then of what value is it?

Joseph's Literary Future, Part I

The following is a "thought" post. I should have known this would happen sometime, and so should you. Don't worry, this blog is still about Joseph. And will still include pictures. :)

Have you ever heard of Charlotte Mason? She was a Christian, British woman who lived from 1842-1923 and was aboslutely dedicated to truly educating students and to education itself.

Charlotte Mason wrote a series of discussions of education and I've been reading a selection of one today. In it, she discusses the book Pendennis, by William M. Thackeray (most famous for his book Vanity Fair). Arthur Pendennis is the hero, a young man raised to think himself far superior in ability and rank than he really is. This Arthur comes of age and begins to surround himself with men who are successful, based on shallow (read, worldly) standards, which encompasses money, good taste and snobby manners.

Why do young people often seem to fall for this? Even today? Charlotte says that "there is no art than that...about which boys are more anxious to have an air of knowingness" (CM Series p. 372). As children, they adore and worship their parents. "We elders are hardly aware of the ingenuousness of the young mind, of the ignorance and simplicity of youth; and, at the same time, we fail to realise the reverence in which young people hold us just for our experience' sake" (371).

But, "the young folk will have a knowledge of what they call 'life.' If we offer them our scraps of, perhaps, secondhand experience, they generalise and conclude that we are not really the worthy and perhaps rather saintly persons they had taken us for...Here we perceive the cause of the incomprehensible attractiveness of bad companions––they know life" (372).

How true that is! I remember feeling this very thing as a 13-year-old girl. Sitting in a classroom before the teacher arrived, I listened to other students talk and was enamored with this girl or that one because she knew so much more than I did. She had experienced more than I (be it going to the movies alone, wearing make-up, a dramatic fight with her best friend, or having a boyfriend), and she was my hero for that. It's interesting that what was impressive was actually silly, unimportant, and even harmful - things that don't matter if what matters is family, love and faithfulness. But they matter to the world: popularity, power, sex, influence, independence.