I now pronounce...

It's so fun to observe Claire's language skills growing. She can recite almost the entire book "Are You My Mother?" by P.D. Eastman. Her sentences grow longer and more complex every few weeks: "Mommy, Cwaire go up-tairs, take teddy, use my new bwocks, build big house!" (Those Ls are still pretty tricky to say, poor kid.)

I was looking over one of my posts from earlier in the summer (when I was blogging more) and thought it would be fun to show an update. Watch Clairish slowly evolve into English!

1. zebra
deebah (21 mo.); zebwa (26 mo.)
2. butterfly
buckeye (21 mo.); bufwy (26 mo.)
3. squirrel
squeal (21 mo.); squill (26 mo.)
4. bunny rabbit
boggy ragit (21 mo.); bunny rabbit (26 mo.)
5. Christopher Robin
Critfer Rogick (21 mo.); Crissfer Robin (26. mo.)
6. blueberries
boo-boo bays (21 mo.); boo-boo baywies (26. mo.)
7. melon
may-ya-ya-ya-uhn (21 mo.); mewon (26 mo.)
8. noodles
noo-noo (21 mo.); noodos (26 mo.)
9. pretzels
backles (21 mo.); pretzo (26 mo.)
10. Caesar salad dressing
teaser sauce (21 mo.); Seazo dwessing (26 mo.)
11. Sing "Running Over" again
Moe ruck ogre (21 mo.); Sing again, "runnik ober" (26 mo.)
12. clean blanket
key backie (21 mo.); kween bwanket (26 mo.)
13. My hands are dirty
hanks duty (21 mo.); my hans vey duty (26 mo.)
14. city bus
ditty buts (21 mo.); ceety bus (26 mo.)

One of her cutest Clairisms dissappeared very quickly. At around 19 months, she called apple sauce "backel doss." In no time, that became, distinctively "appo zauce." I will be especially sad when she stops calling that silly, willy-nilly, old bear by the name "Wibby Pooh."

Hanging

Well, I've survived over a week without my husband and with my mother. You can probably imagine why Joel is the one of us who's blogging all the time, seeing that I have to keep up with Claire, run our home and somehow be entertaining and willing to sightsee with mom.

We three generations have kept a pretty full calendar, with trips to the zoo and feeding the ducks in Fairmount park, getting to some of my regular stuff like Bible studies, visting with other family and holding a Pampered Chef party.

At the party tonight, I was reminded yet again of what a pain in the neck the dog is when we have company. Nicky barks and howls and barks and howls when people arrive, so much so that no one can carry on a conversation. Gating him in another room seems to make him howl and bark more. Put him outside and he just annoys everyone in the neighborhood. I think my only option when we hold a birthday party for Claire next week is to put him in his crate in our detatched garage before any guests arrive. I think he'll be less likely to be so barky if he can neither see nor hear the guests.

I'd love to hear any other humane suggestions for curbing the noisyness of a half-husky when company comes.

Madison
One of Claire's current favorites among her books is the Madeline anthology. After reading two or three of the stories and putting her to bed, I find myself thinking in Bemelmans-style rhyme. I think it might be fun to someday write a Philly version, sort of a parody. It would start something like this:

In an old house in Philly
covered up with graffitti
lived a plump, kindly mama
who made killer baked ziti.

In her tall, narrow house
lived six little girls
who used straightening irons
to flatten their curls.
With hair in tight buns
they went searching for fun
the bossiest one was Madison.

Mikayla, Mia, Casey and Karly
fell in line when Madison called for a parley
Only her sister Annemarie
was nearly as headstrong as she.

I'm not sure what sorts of Philly-style adventures I'd dream up for these girls. Any ideas? I'd definitely have plently of late-night waking. Miss Clavel always seems to be waking in the middle of the night sensing something is not right.

More bloggers IRL
This past weekend we hosted Rick and Rachel Capezza, who have been working at a camp in New Jersey for the summer. I'm just now realizing that we took no pictures! They had a camera, though probably won't be blogging for a while.

We showed them some of the sights (or is it sites?) in historic Philly, lunched on cheesesteaks and hung out talking a lot. Sunday was a little bit Episcopalian, a little bit low-church Presby. And of course, Claire had to share her Veggie passion with our guests with a showing of "Lyle, the Kindly Viking." She could watch that tape continuously all day if we let her.

Transit trials
I'm mostly back on track after an across-the-state trip last week with another mom and our two preschoolers. Pennsylvania never seemed large until we started planning for this trip to see a mutual friend who lives in New Castle, up in the northwest corner of the state near the Ohio border. I had some serious doubts that we could do the drive from Philly in less than like 10 hours because the kids would perpetually want us to stop.

My friend had a secret weapon. That's right, a portable DVD player. I'll admit that I used to moan every time I'd see an ad on TV for vehicles equipped with this device. "Great," I'd tell Joel, "just the way to guaratee you never have to actually speak to or interact with your children."

Well, I've revised my opinion a bit on that count. For fidgety toddlers on long rides, the technology can be a big blessing. My friend bought the DVD when her mother was dying from ovarian cancer and she needed to make regular 8+ hour drives to North Carolina with her toddler son. It kept her sane and prevented her son's motion sickness (so long as the player was below window level). When we had her son plus Claire in the back seat, they were far more content watching Elmo or Pooh than my attempts at a puppet show. The power struggles over toys also ended when a video played.

We also didn't need to make many stops. We did the 400+ mile trip in about 7 hours total, not too shabby for travel with kids aged 23 months and 3 and a half years. And I even got to do some needlework in transit! 

Pah-tee
My husband has been out of commission for two days with a migraine. We had hurricane-like weather and about 5 inches of rainfall today. And yet, I feel like celebrating. Can you guess why? Claire used the potty successfully tonight!

For months now, I've put her on the potty after her bath because she'd say she needed to go, then would not go. Tonight I set her on, left the room to get something, and came back to discover her success. Guess she's just shy. ;-)

Interpreting tongues

Claire's language skills are growing in leaps and bounds these days. She picks up several new words a day and mostly speaks in full sentences.

While she says some words very clearly, her annunciation on the whole still leaves a lot to be desired. Sometimes I think I need the spiritual gift of interpreting tongues to understand what she's saying.

Try this quiz to see how well you can understand Clairish.
Match the Clairish terms with English

1. deebah
2. buckeye
3. squeal
4. boggy ragit
5. critfer rogick
6. boo-boo bayies
7. may-ya-ya-ya-uhn
8. noo-noo
9. backles
10. teaser sauce
11. Moe ruck ogre
12. key backie
13. hanks duty
14. ditty buts

A. melon
B. Christopher Robin
C. clean blanket
D. squirrel
E. pretzels
F. sing "Running Over" again
G. blueberries
H. my hands are dirty
I. noodles
J. zebra
K. city bus
L. bunny rabbit
M. Ceasar salad dressing
N. butterfly

Vacation
I really needed that vacation from blogging. Sorry to leave you with such a non-shiny-happy-people sort of poem for over a month. Just wasn't motivated to get online much.

The reading contest we started at church has been a great success so far, with 43 kids participating. Obviously, this means a hefty amount of paperwork for me. I have to read and log all of the book reports kids turn in. I set up several spreadsheets to track it all. Each sheet has an individual worksheet for each kid where I record book titles, plus a general tally for the group. It took a while to set up, but it's an easy system to maintain. I'm keeping the paper reports in file folders and will return the reports at the end of the contest. The homeschool kids could probably add these to their portfolios.

Joel set up a pretty nice website for the contest that we can use to post book reviews and stuff in the Fall. To start us off, I might need to solicit some reviews from you, our online friends. Here are some of the titles we added this summer:
On Being Black and Reformed by Anthony Carter
The Lord's Service by Jeffrey Meyers
Sermons that Shaped America by William Barker
The Faith of Jesus Christ by Richard Hays
The Lord's Supper by Jean-Jacques vonAllmen
Luther's Faith: The Cause of the Gospel in the Church by Daniel Olivier
The Victory According to Mark by Mark Horne
With Reverence and Awe: Returning to the Basics of Reformed Worship by D.G. Hart
The Binding of God by Peter Lillback
The Catholicity of the Reformation by Carl Braaten & Robert Jenson
Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible by Jay Adams

That's just a sampling. We had more than 50 books donated from our amazon wish list, largely from one very generous patron. If you have any interest in writing up a short review on any of these titles to be published online, please let me know.

Found in the files
...Poem written as an undergraduate and heavily revised about six years later

Nothing Worth Mentioning

November house on the road to nowhere
its rusted sign for vacancy
a Northstar to compassless
young people chasing every nightmare
they never bothered mentioning.
Nine volt voices grow static
in the crackle snip snap darkness
while endlessly rehearsing
the first six verses of nothing
new under the sun.

Old people stare out of sightless
eyes at nothing--
well, nothing worth mentioning
in asphalt forests where everything
falls without sound.
Rocking chairs wear ruts
like the Oregon Trail acorss
front porches, in living rooms
with insomniac zombies
drunk on the late, late, late show.

November house on the road to nowhere
beckons with echoed chantings
and captivates fading consciousness
that comprehends
only a sinuous cycle of
death and life a single cry.
Winnowed minds gone amoebic
flinch dark flinch bright
to the shifting light of a mythic lie
and Carl Jung, a macabre-masked face,
dances around the pyre.

Teen reading
We are planning to run a summer reading contest at our church library for kids and teens. We hope to increase use of the library through this event. To really do that, however, we need to have adequate materials for our young patrons to check out.

With the under 12 set, we have a pretty big collection, including some large series like Trailblazers, Sugar Creek Gang, Mandie, Heroes of the Faith. What concerns me is how little fiction we have for teens.

I don't want to fill the shelves with nothing but Christianized romance novels. I know we can reorganzie materials a little and point teens to some of the general fiction, which includes authors like George MacDonald, Stephen Lawhead, Walter Wangerin, Jan Karon, J.R.R. Tolkein and Charles Williams. Is there any other good fiction that's appropriate for 12-16 year olds that would be good to add to our collection?

I've begun compiling a list of books that kids could get from the public library that are not so explicitly Christian but still good. They include selected works from authors like Katherine Paterson and Madeline L'Engle. Suggestions for this list would also be appreciated.

Kimmel
Our free dress rehearsal concert on Monday, May 17 starts at 7 p.m. Doors open at 6:30 and it's general seating, so arrive early for best seats. The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts is at the corner of Broad and Spruce streets in Philadelphia; we will be in Verizon Hall.

Choral life
Choir rehearsals have been much more intense lately. We're gearing up for our church's big 175th anniversary concert at the Kimmel Center on May 18.

One of the pieces we're singing was commissioned from Philadelphia composer Kile Smith, who has a pretty extensive repertoire of sacred music under his belt. Using Psalm 46 as the text, the piece has lots of syncopation and modernist harmonics--reminds me somewhat of Arvo Pärt. It splits into as many as 10 parts in places. Tough stuff to learn, but as we hammer out pitches and rhythms, it's really growing on me.

The concert itself is free, though all of the seats "sold out" months ago. Therefore, our director is opening the dress rehearsal to the public. If anyone is in or near the Philly area, you're welcome to come to Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center to hear us on Monday, May 17. I'll post the time as soon as I find out.

Great tease
Claire's early fascination with the potty--opening and closing the lid, pretend play with seating and wiping her teddy bears--has gone to the next level. Over the weekend she successfully used the potty for the first time. I think it's really just a big tease though. She hasn't shown the signs of being physiologically ready, despite her emotional eagerness to be a big girl.

Now that I think about it, of the nearly 100 kids I've worked with in the church toddler room over the years, only one potty trained before age 2. I really don't expect to be out of diaper land any time soon.

Truncated violin
Last night we watched a video of The Red Violin, which we'd checked out of the library. Unfortunately, in one of the scenes the tape got weird--possibly because of a repaired rip--and we're not entirely sure what happened.

Has anyone who has seen this film remember what happens near the end of the segment with the 19th century virtuoso Frederick Pope? At one moment, his author girlfriend is returning from a research trip to Russia, the next thing we see, she pulls a gun on Pope, fires a shot and the violin flies up in the air. Then a voiceover of Pope says he plans to commit suicide and leave his estate to the girlfriend.

Can someone explain what's missing and why the girlfriend pulled out the gun? I'm sure it's important to understanding the plot. Thanks!

Junior chefs
It's occasionally worth making a special trip to the ritzy Main Line just to hit the thrift shops where the well-heeled dump their "junk." Some of these places' "thrift store prices" seem like delusions of grandeur, but I've occassionally scored some serious bargains.

Over the weekend I found a big Fisher Price play kitchen for a mere $5. It's not in mint condition, but I can live with no microwave door for such a great price. A similar used toy was on eBay for $30. Play kitchens sell for $40 to $120 new.

Seeing Claire enjoy the new toy got me thinking about my childhood play kitchen. Aside from a plastic and a ceramic tea set and some baking pans that were new, all of it was handed-down stuff. Some of the furniture and utensils came from my much-older sister (1950s toys), others were frankly "extreme hand-me-downs" from my mother. I played with Mom's 1930s all-metal stove, and iron that at one point could actually be used to press doll clothes, and a well-constructed dish hutch with an enameled steel countertop.

When I got a Holly Hobby Easy Bake oven for my 8th birthday, I didn't like it nearly as well as Mom's old toy stove. For all its attempt at charm, the plastic 1970's faux potbellied stove just wasn't as cute or imaginatively functional. Mom's stove was made from tin, had curvy legs, two little burners and an oven door that opened and closed. When Mom was little she could plug in the stove and, I suppose, bake tiny cakes in it. Someone had removed the cord at some point in the 40 years before it became mine.

Today's toys are safer. No one today would think of giving a child a working iron as a toy, for example. I really don't think they're very well made, however. Plastic cleans well, but wood, steel and tin can last for generations.

Despite being made from cheaper materials, today's toys are so expensive because they come with so many bells and whistles that seem to discourage imagination rather than encourage it. I read a number of reviews on the amazon-toys R us site in which parents complained about toy kitchens being "bossy" and telling the child how to play. Many said they removed the batteries so their kids would actually enjoy the toy. Imagine paying $120 for something, then disabling the most expensive component. That's not my idea of intelligent design.

In the name of the Telly, and the Ernie...
Teaching catechism to the under-two set does present some unique challenges. Toddlers' short attention span and tendency to fixate on a favorite thing, for example, can frustrate many a well-intentioned parent.

Here's how a session went at our house:

Joel: Claire, who made you?

Claire: Elmo

Seriously, though, we are planning to use the PCUSA catechism "Belonging to God" rather than the "Catechism for Young Children" that the PCA uses. This is largely because it uses more concrete language and does a good job of explaining salvation history in a straightforward way. We also like the way it personalizes the material, placing the child in the story of salvation and the church, rather than stating fairly abstract theological ideas.

Sprouts
The lettuce and peas have germinated! Cool. If nothing else, I can have pea salad this summer.

Time to sow
I've just started my seedlings for what I hope to be a more bountiful garden than last year. I know logically that the seeds will take over a week to germinate, but I can't seem to resist peeking at them every day.

I remember some of my earliest gardening endeavors working with my mom. She kept an enormous vegetable garden, as well as an herb garden and a big, scary raspberry patch. I knew that winter was nearly over when mom planned an outing to the agriculture center. There she picked up envelopes of seeds--some lumpy with promise, others suspiciously lightweight. I loved exploring the store and discovering that Purina made not only Cat Chow, like I fed our tangle of barncats, but also Rabbit Chow and Goat Chow.

It was always a thrill to watch the first signs of life from those hard seeds--one leaf, then two, poking up from the soil. How tender the tiny new plants were. I hated the scary week or so that the plants sat in the cold frame adjusting to the outdoors and "hardening off." Many wouldn't survive the ordeal. But those that did were soon lined up like soldiers in their new soil homes under mom's watchful eye.

I never have and never will like the weeding and mosquitos of midsummer, but I'm still captivated by spring's small magic waiting in a little pack of seeds.

Super puzzler
Okay, I really need some help with this one. We have a lovely knife set crafted from an unpronounceable metal. Anyone wager a guess on how to pronounce Molybdenum?

Puzzles
Dear readers, I'm ashamed that I've had so little to blog about. So it's time to crack out some of the lint that has been gathering in my brain.

Questions that puzzle me:

* Whatever happened to Michael Dukakis?

* Why do the media talk about "sex abuse" and "terror attacks" instead of "sexual abuse" and "terrorist attacks"?

* What were the parents of famous cellist Mr. Ma thinking when they named their son "Yo Yo"?

* Why isn't lamb more readily available in American supermarkets?

* Why does the crew that replaced our water mains spend only two hours a day repairing the street they tore up?

* Is low-carb ice cream really as disgusting as it sounds?

More mysterious toddler behavior deciphered
Last night Claire had a huge meltdown when we tried to feed her dinner. A dinner guest was due to arrive and we figured our little one wouldn't want to postpone eating until the guest came. I sat her at the kitchen counter and started doling out food. She instantly became insensed, screaming and hurling food at us. She was freaking out so bad I thought she was going to vomit.

I pulled her out of the high chair and took her to the dining room to give her more space to have her tantrum. The screaming and gagging continued for several minutes. I tried holding her and that calmed her down. Finally, we moved to the living room and I read her a book as her post-crying hiccups abated.

She played until our guest arrived, then showed interest in eating in the dining room with us. Eventually she ate happily in her booster seat, the guest none the wiser about her previous outburst.

Tonight she again threw a fit over dinner. When Joel and I sat down to eat, I put Claire in her booster seat in the dining room, attached the tray and put a bowl of food in front of her. Again, she angrily threw food, cried, screamed and gagged.

We let her down, figuring she wasn't ready to eat yet. After a prolonged jag of kicking and crying, she calmed down and showed interest in eating. I put her in the booster seat, no problem. Then I attached the tray. More screaming and food throwing, then she kicked off the tray. I looked at Joel in exasperation. A look of sudden inspiration flashed across his face.

"Honey, do you want to sit close to the table with Mommy and Daddy?" he asked, pulling her booster seat up to the table.

The tears instantly stopped. I pulled a placemat out and put it under her bowl. She very happily ate, proudly practicing with her toddler fork.

All she really wanted was to eat at the table like she'd seen her little friend Ezra do at our playdate Wednesday morning. The fact that she'd pointed to the booster seat on Wednesday evening and said "Ezra" (okay, she calls him "Yeah-ruh") didn't mean much to me at the time. Now I realize she was trying to tell me she wanted to emulate how he eats.

Joel says it was the tray kicking that finally cued him in. He figured these tantrums were caused by simple frustration. She wanted something and couldn't get us to understand what that desire was.

I think we'd better brace ourselves for a whole lot of "I do it myself" in the coming months.

A new voice
As the pediatrician predicted earlier this week, Claire began the odyssey into sentences. As a parent, you always dream that your child's first sentence will be something charming and sweet like "I love you" or "me hug mommy."

Yesterday, we learned that the tyrrany of desire is what really takes precedence in learning to communicate. Not much enjoying what was on offer for dinner, Claire angrily yelled "I WANT NANNY [banana]!"

Sigh. Someday I'll rate higher than fruit.

Rogue patrons, beware...
Putting the final touches on our annual report for the church library with our co-librarians, Joel and I started brainstorming ideas to deal with the perennial problem of overdues. The idea of advertising an "amnesty month" seemed appealing. We don't charge fines, so that's not really the issue. It's more that patrons are ashamed of having held onto something that belongs to the church for ages.

So it's getting late as we talk about this, and Joel is becoming more punchy by the minute. "Forget amnesty, we're too soft on these booksnatchers," he says. "You want the library books back? This is what we announce." [with appologies to Pres. Bush's Iraqi Freedom speechwriters]

NO MORE FRIKKIN LIBRARY AMNESTY
My fellow Tenth members, at this hour, diaconal forces are in the early stages of library operations to retrieve overdue books, to free them their borrowers and to defend us from this grave danger.

On my orders, diaconal forces have begun striking selected targets of library importance to undermine overdue borrower’s ability to retain books. These are opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign. More than 35 ministries are giving crucial support -- from the use of office space, to help with intelligence and logistics, to the deployment of diaconal units. Every ministry in this coalition has chosen to bear the duty and share the honor of serving in our common library defense.

To all the men and women of the diaconate now in people’s homes, the peace of a troubled library and the hopes of an oppressed congregation now depend on you. That trust is well placed.

The enemies you confront will come to know your skill and bravery. The books you liberate will witness the honorable and decent spirit of the Tenth diaconate. In this conflict, Tenth faces an enemy who has no regard for conventions of book-borrowing or rules of book-return.

I want the members of Tenth and all the world to know that diaconal forces will make every effort to spare innocent civilians from harm.

Our church enters this conflict reluctantly -- yet, our purpose is sure. The people of Tenth and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of outlaw library patrons that threaten the peace with wanton disregard for our return policy.

Now that conflict has come, the only way to limit its duration is to apply decisive force. And I assure you, this will not be a campaign of half measures, and we will accept no outcome but victory.

My fellow Tenth members, the dangers to our library and our church will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our collection. We will bring freedom to our books and we will prevail.

May God bless our library and all who defend her.

Stargazing
I was a little disappointed that only some of the cast of Return of the King attended the Oscars. I would have liked to see David Wenham again. And Bernard Hill.

I think on screen, David Wenham is better looking than Sean Bean, or at least looks far better in a wig. Sean Bean is perhaps better looking in real life. He's kind of old though.

Okay, here's my true confession. I have Faramir wallpaper on my computer. Really, it's the character that I like, largely as portrayed in the books. When I boot up, I do this little chant-- "Fair-a-mir! Fair-a-mir!"--and Joel glowers at me.

LOL, I can hear the lectures now about what a bad wife I am....

Springy
What a wonderful gift to get a little sip of spring today. Our dog Nicky (or as Claire says, "Gicky") and I took a nice long stroll in the woods this afternoon, squishing in mud from a final melt and enjoying the sunny low-60s weather. Odd how 60s weather felt so cold in Florida a few weeks ago, while here it feels like a heat wave.

It did my heart good to see a patch of wild snowdrops while letting Nicky take a big slurpy drink from a little spring-fed rivulet that feeds into the creek.

It's nearly time to start seedlings inside. Mmm seed shopping...Peas, zucchini, bell peppers, and if I'm really brave, tomatoes.

Is there some sort of secret, all you green thumbs, to starting tomatoes from seed? My two prior attempts were total failures.

Tripping
Yesterday morning, I let Claire watch a little kids' programming on PBS while I organized laundry. When I returned to the room, she was sitting on the couch completely mesmerized by this very, very strange program called "Boohbah."

Boohbah makes Teletubbies look like Shakespeare. I really think you need to be under age 2 or a drug user to fully appreciate it. Almost no talking occurs during the program. For a good portion of the show, a glowing ball with a rainbow trail bounces around while children's voices say "Booh-bah" repeatedly and giggle.

The ball eventually lands and these five freaky creatures come out. They have turtle-like retractable kewpie-doll heads--but no mouth or nose--and bulbous bodies in rainbow shades. These creatures would have been the stuff of nightmares for me as a kid. They never, ever talk. They just roll their eyes from side to side with a clicking sound. Creepy. They do occasionally squeak and sing five-note chords. And they dance a lot. In fact, about all they do is dance. How children are supposed to learn anything from watching these singing rainbow freaks gyrate and sway is a total mystery to me.

One segment of the show has normal humans who do stuff--with minimal talking. The episode I saw, Grandpapa and dog Fido race back and forth between two armchairs. Fido always gets to sit while Grandpapa is repeatedly perplexed. Long, boring and stupid.

The Boohbahs dance again for a while, then climb back into the ball. The ball bounces along with its rainbow trail, then hits the ground and creates a rainbow puddle when a child's voice calls "Look what I can do." Next we get to watch a child do some repetitive motion (e.g. touching elbows to knees) for like three minutes straight while standing on the rainbow puddle. And then a group for another three minutes, then another lone kid for yet another three minutes. Mesmerizingly dull.

Please, PBS, bring back "The Electric Company" and ditch this British bad trip.

Ahhh
The banquet last Friday was a big success. Around 130 ladies attended. The food was better than I've had at many wedding receptions, for a fraction of the cost. Nothing but raves from these women church leaders during and after. The ladies loved our theme of "You are a treasure." I was a little worried that naming the tables after gemstones might seem a little hokey, but it actually did work out to be kind of nice. The centerpieces were gold-painted boxes with rose arrangements and jewelry spilling out. In candlelight, the effect was quite lovely.

Saturday I was pretty wasted and napped away the entire afternoon. Sunday and Monday, the fog of fatigue gradually lifted.

I have my life back again.

Now what do I have to look forward to?

I need another project.

Nuts in the family tree
Part of the reason I'd wanted to go the Ringling Museum last week was to find information about my great grandfather. Like the old cliche, he actually did run off and join the circus.

Well, technically he started in a Wild West show. Mom has very little information because he was something of a verboten topic when she was growing up. You see, my great grandad left my nana in 1903 with a three-year-old (my grandmother) and an infant (Great Uncle Bob). Though he had primarily worked as a tailor, great grandad was a horse enthusiast and loved training animals. He initially ran off to work as a horse trainer in a Vaudeville-era Wild West show.

What happened with his career over the next 20+ years is something of a mystery. We know that after divorcing my nana, he married a trick rider. She apparently kept up a correspondence with Great Uncle Bob's family. In one postcard, dated 1929, this second wife mentions having dinner with the Ringlings at their mansion in Sarasota and being glad they joined Ringling Bros. Circus in 1928.

The only thing Mom and I found at the circus museum was a 1929 series of headshots of all the circus employees. We spend about a half hour poring over the somewhat grainy shots and narrowed it down to one man who looked most like the photos we had of great grandad.

Mom had chatted with an archivist from the museum before I went down and did get a little more information about his life before Ringling Bros. The archivist uncovered a mid-1920's playbill from a smaller family-owned circus that listed great grandad and his second wife. Surprisingly, she was not merely a bareback rider, but also a trainer of "liberty horses" (riderless animals that perform to whip cues). Great grandad had an act called "football horses." I'm hoping to discover more from the links provided by the nice Ringling Museum archivist.

For now, I know for sure that I have horses in the blood! :-)

Banquet
Banquet details are falling into place for our event next weekend. The caterer has been very, very chatty on the phone, but aside from talking my ear off, he has been no problem at all to work with. My decorating ideas finally gelled and I started purchasing what I need.

The only big concern now is the fact that over 100 invitees have not sent back their RSVP postcard. Responses are due by Friday, so I hope we hear from these folks!

Out of place
My mom and I drove up to Sarasota for Thursday and Friday to visit my former piano teacher and see the Ringling Museum.

We took Donna out to a restaurant she recommended, Dutch Heritage. To my surprise, the place was run by Mennonites, and nearly half of the clientele was Mennonite. It seemed really incongruous to see men in black suspenders and mustache-less beards with wives in cape dresses and starched bonnets walking among the palm trees. They seem more "right" back in Pennsylvania living in rich farmland and rolling hills.

I never would have guessed that Sarasota, home to winter quarters for the circus, would have a substantial community of conservative Mennonites. You try to get away, and home comes to you!

Migration
Tomorrow I hope to banish my blahs by flying to see my mom in Florida. You'd think with a trip south to look forward to, I wouldn't have been so mopey the past month.

The best part of this trip--and simultaneously one of the harder aspects--is that I get to go BY MYSELF. Yup. You heard me right. My wonderful husband said that I deserve a real vacation and that we should be able to find babysitting for a few days.

So Claire will be spending time with her grammy and two of my girlfriends the three days Joel is teaching and I'm away (all free! how cool is that?). He'll get to experience single parenting over the weekend. I did it for two weeks when my father got sick, so I know it won't be the easiest time for him. Fortunately, he gets to be single parent in his own home, rather than away from home.

Now I just need to figure out where I stored my swimsuit for the winter....

Blahs
Anyone else out there feeling it? You know, the winter blahs? It keeps me from blogging. Really. I'm reading a couple of great books right now, but I feel too blah to blog about them. And Claire is being so cute, but do I write that? Nah.

January is one of those months when I most doubt that I have anything worthwhile to post. So how do I get unstuck?

AWOL
I think I have been AWOL far more often than online the past month. This is mostly because I began a new project at church.

Our women's ministry is holding a banquet for women ministry leaders in February. When I'd agreed to chair the banquet committee back in September, I had no idea how much had to be hammered out behind the scenes for me to even get started. It has been a real learning experience for everyone involved.

Making a guest list for such an event was frankly a scary process. I was initially given a list of 300 guests, which would be approximately half of all women who attend or are members of the church. We have neither the seating capacity or budget to feed such a large group, so we had to start removing names. I just pray our decisions were wise and won't end up fostering a lot of bad feelings in the church.

It was a lot of fun to do graphic design work again. I think the invitations I created turned out quite nice and happily came in under budget. While I normally would have preferred starting the project months ago, I am now thankful that I didn't have this on my plate right after my father's death. The time pressure helped us avoid dawdling on decisons like paper color and the like.

Next I have to nail down details with the caterer. I'd appreciate prayers about this aspect because this person has a reputation of being tricky to work with. I have some absolutely delightful women on my committee who are happy to go to bat for me if I feel at all frustrated with the caterer, so that gives me hope for an overall good experience.

Sickly holidays
I've been pretty busy since we returned from our trip to visit family last week. It was nice to see my siblings, though under less than ideal conditions. Claire started running a fever on our drive down. After fighting through some pretty nasty traffic around Washington DC, Joel began to feel run down too.

When we arrived at my brother's house, both of them were feeling lousy. We began Claire on a 2-hour rotation between Tylenol and Motrin. A little Simply Cough helped her get to sleep. When Joel hit the hay for the night, he had the chills so bad I piled three quilts on him and he was still shivering. Claire woke every three hours throughout the night burning up with fever and screaming for "mommy, mommy, mommy."

Sunday morning my sister-in-law called around and found us an urgent care center that had Sunday hours. I had to do some hoop jumping with the insurance company to get approval for the visits. The urgent care center was fortunately not too busy. A nurse practitioner diagnosed Claire with an ear infection and Joel with a viral respiratory infection. We got prescriptions for both.

Within about 24 hours of starting antibiotics, Claire's fever finally broke and she became much more her usual self. Joel improved with lots of rest, which disappointed my nephew greatly (he wanted Uncle Joel to play soccer in the yard).

How I managed to escape illness is frankly a miracle. I'm asthmatic and very susceptible to respiratory infections. Perhaps my long illness in December gave me immunity.

Tuesday we continued south to visit another of my brothers in North Carolina. Two of my oldest nieces were there and it was fun to visit with them. Both are in their 20s and closer to me in age than most of my siblings.

They threw a New Year's party with 30 or so guests, most in their 50s. My sister-in-law warned beforehand that no one would stay until midnight. How well she knows her friends! Several asked if we could "call midnight at eleven." LOL! So, we toasted "Newfie New Year" at Newfoundland midnight. The guests promptly departed and we had all evidence of the party cleaned up before EST midnight, giving us time for a quieter family toast.

The drive home was clear sailing. If you ever have to take nasty Route 95 around Washington, New Year's Day (and Christmas Day as well) is a good time to do it. We made it from Wilson, NC to Philly in just 6 hours and 20 minutes!

Webcast
The webcast of our Christmas eve lessons and carols service is available online. Scroll down to the archived music events and select 12/24/03 - Christmas Eve. The prelude was performed by the Westminster Brass and the Tenth Chamber Players. Both groups accompanied the choir on several pieces later in the service.