Kate's Musical Debut

Today I (Matt) attended my first school musical program as a parent. Like literally every single adult there, I had my camera in hand and went nuts when my child was in front of the crowd. There were even a few parents dressed up like they were going to the opera! They made me feel strange sitting there in my jeans and sandals!

Kate started the morning having "Muffins with Mommy", a pre-Mother's Day gathering so moms could hang out with each other and the kids and teachers. Next month there will be a "Doughnuts with Daddy" (for the purposes of alliteration, and because dads eat less healthy in general) gathering for the pater familiai.

The program, entitled "The Giving Tree is Growing" began with all the age-level classes processing in. The Infant class came in seated in cribs with wheels on them, reminding us all of the Circus-train cars on the little boxes of animal crackers we used to have in our lunch. Anyone else remember those?

Here's the one-year-old "Ladybugs" class doing their first number, "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider". While it looks like Kate is actually doing the moves, she was just chewing on her fingers. To be fair, though, the only ones actually doing the motions were the teachers. It was pretty darn impressive that they got a bunch of toddlers to stand in one place for that long!

The Ladybugs class does their second number, "If You're Happy and You Know It". Several of them did, in fact, clap their hands. Once again, nice work, teachers!

Every great performance has an epic after-party, and this one was no exception. Jammies were all the rage and the breast-milk flowed like wine (just like in a little place called "Aspen"). Kate was kind enough to give me an exclusive interview.

Big thanks go out to red-carpet hostess extraordinaire Zoe Hewitt for giving me pointers on how to interview big stars and not be intimated by them.

Why I Like Contemporary Worship

I know the so-called "worship wars" are so 1990s, and I'm not even sure how they turned out. (Maybe the emergent church threw a wrench in all of it as a surprise third-party candidate?) In any case, I often say how I enjoy both extremes of worship music--give me rock and roll praise music OR grand, reverent, high-church classical hymnody--anything but the humdrum, ho-hum middle, in which people plod half-heartedly through late-19th century hymns with barely a discernable melody.

I still hold to that "either extreme" position as far as my personal tastes, and I can definitely feel genuinely worshipful through a majestic rendition of "Holy, Holy, Holy" in four-part harmony as well as when belting out the names of God in "You Are Holy," but I recently realized something that I think gives contemporary worship a slight edge, theologically.

Contemporary worship (and yes, I know "contemporary" is a loaded and imprecise term, since that style began in the 1970s, but you know what I mean) is driven by the premise that church should reflect the styles and technology of the day. If microphones, amplifiers, guitars, etc. have been invented and are in widespread use outside the church, then there is no reason not to use them in church.

Why do I think this has theological significance? Because intentionally avoiding something just because it is modern or secular while preserving a decades-old way of doing things sends the message that the church is supposed to be behind the times--that church is just a feel-good way of escaping modernity and recapturing the "good old days"--or that worship services are supposed to be totally different and separate from the rest of life as we know it.

Everyone is entitled to their own musical preferences, and some people just prefer quieter, more contempletive music in church. That's fine, and I'm not saying loud, upbeat praise choruses are inherently better. It's just a matter of taste. As far as the theology reflected in lyrics, one could deconstruct the theology in both old-timey hymns like "There's a Fountain Filled with Blood" and in praise songs like "Come, Now is the Time to Worship" (I have issues with the "still the greatest treasure remains" line).

My point is about the mindset that guides the choice of worship style: is church about preserving the past, or about helping people in every age connect with God? Traditional worship is valuable for its continuity with the historic faith and for its meaningful symbolism and liturgy, but I think it can also inadvertantly suggest that there is something about our current culture that is incompatible with holiness. That to be righteous or close to God, we must keep our religion distinct from culture. Contemporary worship, on the other hand, wants to seem familiar, so that the experience of God can blend seamlessly with other areas of one's life, integrating faith with everyday reality.

Jobs I Couldn't Do

The Red Cross came to my workplace today for a blood drive. I chatted with the phlebotomist as she rubbed betadine on my arm. She asked what I do there, and I told her I am an editor.

"There's no way I could do that job," she said. "Too much reading and writing."
"Well, I don't think I could do your job," I told her. "Inserting needles in just the right place at the right angle..."

We paused our chitchat as she pierced my skin and I cringed and looked away until she'd covered the spot with gauze. I proceeded to tell her about another job I know I couldn't do: school crossing guard.

I've thought about this a lot lately. Every day, whether I'm taking Kate to school in one direction or heading directly to the interstate in the opposite direction, I pass not one but two schools, and if I get there during a certain time window, I get slowed down by the school traffic, rolling along at 15 mph and stopping until the nice lady in the orange vest tells me I can go. So, I have a lot of time sitting there, observing these brave and often spirited individuals, bopping along to the rhythm in their heads (or the earbud in their ears) as they expertly direct traffic coming from four directions, turning lanes, school buses, pedestrians in the crosswalk--and I have horrible visions of what would happen if I were the one donning that orange vest.

I would tell one lane to go but forget the turning lane or the lane going the opposite direction, and they would honk at me. I would zone out watching a squirrel and let eastbound traffic roll on for five minutes. I would step out of the way of the school bus and back into oncoming traffic, rolling over the hood like some movie character hit by a New York City cab (or rolling over the hood as much as one can at 15 mph).

It would not go well. I am sure of this.

I also know that I could not be a public defender (how do you defend someone who is clearly guilty?), an accountant (numbers seriously baffle me), or a politician (public speaking makes me have a panic attack and I have a low tolerance for B.S.).

What jobs could you not do?

Toddler-Art Mother's Day Cards

This post features Mother's Day cards for Kate's grandmothers and great-grandmothers, so grandmas, don't read this post too closely! (I would wait til next week to post it, but I want to put this idea out there for the borrowing!)

Kate has finally gotten into coloring. I put Tadoodles (little marker-balls made for toddlers) in her Christmas stocking, and while she had some interest in putting them in her mouth, putting ink to paper was apparently beyond her ken. When she moved up to the one-year-old room at day care, they colored a lot, but Kate's "drawings" came home mostly blank. She got crayons for Easter, though, and while she mainly taps them on the paper, making lots of dots (maybe she's a pointillist?) she's finally gotten the hang of making longer strokes of color. Yay!

I wanted to have Kate decorate some cards for Mother's Day, but felt kind of bored by the idea of just folding the construction paper in half, writing "Happy Mother's Day," and letting her scribble on it. So, I let Kate take the lead by coloring as she wished, and then creating the card around her "art."

The first sheet, she colored mainly with black and yellow, so I pasted it on yellow paper and made a little bumble-bee embellishment. After that, I took away the black crayon (try not to read anything psychologically into that about me or her!) and she made more colorful drawings that I embellished with flowers and fruit.

I hope these will make special keepsakes for the grandmothers, showcasing Kate's art while setting it apart from the countless other scribbles that will doubtlessly grace our refrigerators in the coming years. I need to be making a mental (or actual!) file of kid gift ideas to use over the next decade, but on the fly, this works for me!

What do you have your kids give their grandparents for holidays?

Project Life (Apr. 26-May 2)

Monday 4/26: Kate is learning to use utensils. She likes feeding herself yogurt with a spoon. It gets messy, but in my opinion, that's the only way to learn!

Tuesday 4/27: The plastic "CDs" that go with Kate's Fisher-Price CD player toy went missing within a month of getting the toy for her birthday (that was during Kate's phase of throwing things in the garbage can, so I have only one guess where they went.) I am almost ashamed to admit this, but I decided to use our friends' wedding invitation to make replacement CDs! The cardstock was super-heavy, and it worked well. C & AR, if you're reading this, I'm sorry, but we'll think of you every time Kate puts one of the disks in the slot and the smiley stereo says "Let's jam!!"

Wednesday 4/28: I would have loved to have gone to the benefit concert for which I designed that poster a few weeks ago, but I got a great surprise when the coordinators returned from Atlanta--a copy of the poster I'd designed, autographed by the artists who had performed! I'm especially excited about Emily Saliers' autograph, since I'm a fan of the Indigo Girls.

Thursday 4/29: I had coffee with my awesome friend Maria. We get together almost every week for girl talk. This week, we went to Fido, the hipster-hangout coffeeshop that figures in the intro to Matthew Paul Turner's recent book Hear No Evil (Fido is scene of that bizarre conversation he has with the aspiring Christian punk-rocker, so it comes to mind whenever I go there now.) 

Friday 4/30: Kate had her 15-month checkup. We usually have fun looking in the mirror in the exam room, but this time, Kate was very clingy and refused to sit on the exam table herself. She just wanted to be held the entire time. I reported her stats here, but the summary was: totally average, except her head circumfrence in the 95th percentile!

Saturday 5/1: The first Saturday in May, for us native Louisvillians, will always be Derby Day, no matter where we live. So, I wanted to host a Derby party this year--mint juleps, Derby pie, etc. It ended up being a more low-key event than I'd envisioned, thanks to the weather. We'd planned on a nice cookout, where the kids could all run around in the backyard, but The Flood decided to come, so we were inside, and some of our guests even got stranded and couldn't make it when the water rose over their driveway! Those who made it had a good time, though :0)

Sunday 5/2: I had been annoyed when weather coverage preempted most of the Derby coverage on Saturday, but it turned out the torrential rains were "a big deal," as many areas of middle Tennessee are dealing with severe flooding. We were glued to the television, watching as interstates turned into rivers and soccer fields into lakes. Nashville has declared a state of emergency, and many neighborhoods are underwater.

Pray for those affected by the floods in Tennessee, and for Project Life Tuesday's hostess Jessica Turner, who is in the Dominican Republic this week with World Vision.

Tennessee Floods

Tennessee is experiencing some major flooding right now. If you don't live in Tennessee or the surrounding states, you may still have heard about this on the national news. It's crazy to turn on national news and see the same stuff that is being reported locally (albeit in a 3-minute segment, not constant, 24-hour, preempt-the-Derby weather coverage). I actually did switch over to CNN from the local channels just to check if this was as big of a deal as we thought it was, and indeed it is (it seems to be #3 in the newsrank, after the gulf oil spill and the car bomb in Times Square). The rainfall and subsequent flooding are at historic highs. By May 2, we had topped the monthly rainfall record. Eleven people have died so far in the flooding.

Our house is on a hill, so we aren't too concerned about being personally affected, but of course have watched the news intently, seeing how the floodwaters were affecting areas where church members, Matt's parents, and other friends live. Though some interstates had been (and are still, I believe) covered in 5-10 feet of water, my route to work seemed clear, so I carried on as usual this morning. I arrived safely, and while I have not experienced any of the devastation up close, I did see signs of trouble:

A spot near our house where the road dips down pretty far often gets water right up to the road even in "normal" bad rain, so that little valley was full of water and the road was closed. I took this picture while waiting at the stop light. After turning left here, I could see down into the valley, and there was a red pickup truck out in the middle, with water up to its windows. (Between the first and second cones in this picture, you can see people on the other side of the dip watching/helping.) I soon saw a state trooper pickup hauling a trailer with a motorboat driving that way with its sirens on.

I didn't have any trouble getting to work, but the water was freakily closer to the road than usual when passing over bridges. Once at work, I examined the view from my office. The huge hole being dug for the new convention center across the street looked like a reservoir:

and the river had crept all the way up to 5th street, in front of the Country Music Hall of Fame:

The Schermerhorn Symphony Center (sort of left-center in the above pic) got a lot of water, as did most of the businesses on first and second street. Not to mention all the homes destroyed out in the suburbs. Thousands of people are staying in evacuation shelters and hotels. Cleanup could take months. There was talk today about opening various dams to move some of the water around, but I'm not sure what actually happened--rumors seem to fly and it's hard to find a definitive source of information. (The TDOT Smartmap is the best thing I've found regarding road closures, but I have no idea how up to date they're keeping it.)

The famous Opryland Hotel (near and dear to me as the site of Matt and my first date) is flooded as well and may be closed for months. This pic of Cascades (one of the hotel's big conservatories) borrowed from twitpic:

There have also been several house fires, presumably caused by gas leaks or electrical issues. A family we know lost a good chunk of their home to fire after the house next door exploded (yes, exploded) and caught the adjacent houses on fire.

Today is an absolutely gorgeous day, so it feels like things should be getting better, but as dams and pumps and electrical issues bring new problems, in addition to the long road many people will have getting things "back to normal" after losing so much.

Twin Baby Shower Pics!

Today, I'm buzzing around getting ready for our Derby party this afternoon. (being from Louisville, I LOVE to celebrate Derby, no matter where I live). But before this party is in full swing, I want to share more pics from last week's party--the baby shower my MIL and I threw for our cousin in Chicago!

Matt's cousin Christopher and his wife Viktoria are having twins--a boy and a girl--and we are all so excited for them.  My MIL ordered this gorgeous cake to match the napkins (see the plates and napkins in the corner?) and she decorated these adorable cookies in the shapes of onesies, bibs, duckies, etc. They were so cute. My diaper cake was on display, alongside the champagne (I'd always worried it was insensitive to an abstaining mom-to-be to have alcohol at the shower, but her hubby bought it, so wahoo!)

My SIL Alexis flew in from Princeton for the event, so that was awesome. She and I are both only children, so it is fun to have a sister. We even share a sister-brain, it seems, since we dressed in perfect coordination (of course, that's partially because we both love Ann Taylor LOFT and this shade of purple was a featured color for them several months ago).

We played a couple games--unscramble the letters to form baby gear words (e.g.: IBB=BIB and FRIPECIA=PACIFIER), and a baby trivia game with questions like "How much does two years worth of diapers cost per baby?" (answer: $7300) and "What were the most popular boys names in the 2000s?" (answer: Jacob, Joshua, and Michael).

The guys didn't feel compelled to participate :0)

Then, the parents-to-be opened their gifts--two of everything, in pink and blue!

Congratulations, Christopher and Viktoria! We can't wait to welcome your little double-bundles of joy!