Still working on it . . .

Okay, so my Proclamation series is sort of at a standstill at the moment. I wanted to talk about fatherhood, but then I couldn't organize my thoughts about that the way I wanted to. I wanted to talk about motherhood, but I've had so many thoughts on that recently that it's all still a mess. And I wanted to talk about those before I talked about equality and stuff, so that's on the back burner too.

Wow. Writing is hard. Especially with a baby. And a messy house.

So instead of a proclamation post today or yesterday (or maybe even tomorrow), I'm going to share two quick, great things with you.

First, this.

Second, while Kevin was in the kitchen making breadsticks (talk about equality, right!), I called out to him, "Hey, I just read an article that said that too much microwave popcorn can cause lung disease!"

"Really?" he asked.

"Yeah, because of the diacetyl in it," I replied. He seemed sort of confused but just let it be.

Then ten minutes later, he called out to me for clarification,

"So popcorn really causes lyme disease?"

bahaha. This is a lesson about miscommunication in marriage. Which is sort of related to the Proclamation. Yeah.

Children of the Most High

Note: for the next few days, I'm going to be doing a series on the Family Proclamation. This is the first post in the series.

ALL HUMAN BEINGS—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny

-Family Proclamation, 2nd paragraph

I'll be honest -- sometimes I got tired of hearing that we were "children of God." Every week in Young Women's, we would recite "We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us, and we love Him" in a singsong voice. And sometimes it would become trite. People would talk about how much they loved the song "I am a Child of God" and I just didn't get it. (For whatever reason, I didn't like the picture associated with it in the Children's Songbook.) Why did we make such a big deal about this? Why did it matter so much to Mormons? I had a friend joke that the reason drivers in Utah were so aggressive was because that we knew that "dangit, I'm a child of God, so I deserve to get where I want to get as fast as possible." Was that all our divine heritage was good for -- a sense of entitlement?

Then the other day, I realized something while reading a C. S. Lewis anthology which contained his "signature classics." (While devouring it, I came to a sad conclusion. Much like pizza-flavored Goldfish or tortilla chips with hint of lime, a little C. S. Lewis is good, but you just get sick of the taste if you have too much.) In Mere Christianity while talking about the Lord's Prayer, Lewis says,

"Its very first words are Our Father. Do you now see what those words mean? They mean quite frankly, that you are putting yourself in the place of a son of God. To put it bluntly, you are dressing up as Christ. If you like, you are pretending. Because, of course, the moment you realise what the words mean, you realise that you are not a son of God."

This hit me like a ton of bricks, though he had been saying things in a similar vein for several chapters. I understand what he was saying -- that we are nothing like Jesus Christ with our fallen, imperfect natures. We are not perfect like He is and has always been. And in a sense, I believe that praying is sort of like "dressing up as Christ" (that's why we end our prayers with "in the name of Jesus Christ, amen"). But we are still children of God, "children of the most High" (Psalms 82:6). That is, God is the father of our spirits, the part of us that lived before our bodies were formed and will live when our bodies die. In some small, embryonic way that I can't comprehend, we are of the same race of God the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ.

Now, thinking about that for more than a minute makes me feel very, very small. (And it doesn't make me feel inclined to speed when I drive.) I can somewhat understand what Moses was feeling when he had talked to God (in this case, the Son of God, speaking for God the Father through divine investiture), been called "my son" several times (v. 4, 6, 7 and later 40 in Moses 1), and seen God's mighty creations. He said quite plainly, "Now, for this cause, I know that man is nothing, which thing I had never supposed" (Moses 1:10). And yet, at the same time, it fills me with such a sense of belonging, such a sense of hope.

So what does all of this have to do with the Proclamation on the Family? Well, if we're literal offspring of God, then that means we're all part of the same family! That's why families are so important to Him. It's not just a matter of families being the fundamental unit of society, not just a matter of family dinners leading to lower crime rates, not just a matter of socioeconomic solutions. The family is the fundamental unit of heaven. If we understand and truly believe that God is our Father, then we can better see the patterns He sets forth in the scriptures of how to be a righteous parent. We can achieve greater happiness in this life and the next.

The best thing I learned in my prenatal class

Okay, before I begin my proclamation posts, I want to share this story in the hopes that it may save some frazzled parents some night.

Last night, Joseph was screaming. And screaming. And screaming. And screaming. He acted like he wanted to nurse, but he would pop off. So we would burp him, but that didn't calm him down. Sing. Bounce. Rock. Diaper change. Pacifier. Restrain. All the normal stuff we would try when he was overtired. No luck. We even just let him scream for a few minutes. Nope. If we played the games with him that usually make him laugh, he would laugh . . . and cry or scream at the same time.

So I sat on the rocking chair and held him as I sang, hoping that this time would calm him down unlike the other times that night. (They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, right?)

As I rocked, I looked at his sleeper. He had been staring at the footie part of his pajamas earlier that evening. They had little dogs on them, and Kevin and I thought he was looking at them because he was wondering where his toes had gone. (He has a fixation with his feet right now, and it's adorable.)

Then I felt his feet. They were kind of squished.

And suddenly, my mind was back in Provo at my prenatal class. Dani the nurse had gone off on a tangent and was talking about how her little boy wouldn't stop crying one night because his sleeper was too small around his feet.

It's worth a try, I thought, and I whipped his sleeper off and threw a blanket over Joseph for him to play with. Just like that, he stopped crying and started to grin.

Kevin came in to investigate the silence. "Is this all he wanted?" he asked, looking at Joseph's eyes sparkle as he tried to eat his blanket.

"Yup. Just wanted out of that sleeper." And the blanket didn't hurt either, since he loves to wrestle with blankets these days.

And that was that. We replaced the blanket with a footie-free sleeper and he fell asleep like normal (which means it still took another 15 minutes, but at least he wasn't screaming).

So if your baby ever screams and screams, check the feet. The sooner the better.

Joining the Celebration

When the Proclamation on the Family first came out, I was 5, and I thought it was boring.

I don't remember the night it came out, but I do remember all the adults talking about it at church over the next few weeks. The next thing I knew, we had a framed copy in our family room.

And I didn't get the big deal. I would stare at it, but it simply wasn't at the level of the American Girl books I liked to read so I comprehended very little. Even when I understood the words a few years later, I didn't understand the implications of the words.

Well, I've both read and lived a lot longer now, and I know that the Proclamation says a lot of true, important things. I really feel like it was written for my generation -- written then so we could grow up with it and let it help shape our views on the family.

Because I think it's so great, I've decided to dedicate the next few posts to the Proclamation. I noticed that throughout  the Mormon bloggosphere , a celebration on the Proclamation is going on this week. While I am by no means one of "those" bloggers, I figured I might as well join in the fun!

So you can look forward to insights about our divine heritage, fatherhood, motherhood, children, and any other ideas which happen to be floating past my cerebrum these days.

Enjoy!

Tau Beta Pepsi

So ever since the Church clarified that caffeine wasn't proscribed by the Word of Wisdom, my newsfeed has lit up with petitions, statuses, pages, and links all about putting caffeinated drinks on BYU campus.

I don't really care one way or the other. We all know that caffeinated drinks aren't good for us, and neither are soft drinks of any kind. And neither are fruit juices, at least, not as good as they pretend to be (they're pretty sugary). So I try to limit my consumption of all three and have limited my consumption of caffeinated beverages to the point that I've never actually had any. But I don't really think you're a bad Mormon if you do drink caffeine. I mean, I still eat chocolate.

Anyway, I guess there are a lot of vocal people who want caffeine on campus. Fine. But just because a few people are vocal doesn't mean they reflect the majority. And the people who are answering the polls are usually the ones that are passionate. So I don't believe the polls.

Here's my experience that makes me hesitate to believe that people really want caffeine. In April, I went to a Tau Beta Pi barbecue. The drink options were Sprite, root beer, and Diet Coke. And guess what? Maybe 2 people touched the Diet Coke. That's all. In fact, since they ran out of Sprite and root beer so fast, Kevin and I just had to share a can of Sprite. And we weren't the only couple who did that.

So if BYU does put caffeinated beverages on campus, I'd say, don't bother putting them in the engineering building.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

Restrooms

I guess I was spoiled at BYU. All the bathrooms I regularly used had couches in them. Granted, I didn't have Joseph til I was done with classes, but it was still nice to have a couch to nap on. And then once I had Joseph and went up to campus occasionally, it was nice to have a couch to nurse on (unless someone was napping on it . . .). But as we traveled across the country, I found no couches in bathrooms. None. I've been so disillusioned.

It reminds me of when I was 4 or 5 and was at a restaurant with my family. I was tired, and I told my parents I wanted to lie down and rest.

My grandma just heard the last word. "You want to use the restroom?"

A rest-room! What a wonderful idea! I conjured up an image of a rest-room in my mind. It had beds and couches, and probably even a table with cupcakes on it. I eagerly agreed to go see the rest-room.

She and my mom took me there, and what did I find when we opened the door?

Toilets. And a sink. What was this madness? Why had they brought me to a bathroom?

"There's a rug on the floor. You could rest on that," my mom said.

"No, I wanted a place to lie down, like a couch!" I said.

"Oh, you wanted an American restroom!" they said. Even all these years later, I'm pretty sure that's what they said. I have no idea why an American restroom would have couches, because I've seen a lot of American restrooms and they do not have couches.  Maybe they meant a BYU restroom.

Anyway, I don't remember if I ever got my nap or if I just ate my food at the restaurant. But I've been disillusioned about restrooms ever since. More so since I actually use the couch for the intended purpose now.

Oh well.

Joseph top to bottom

Oh goodness. There is so much I want to say. Not just about him, but just thoughts I've had lately, stories to share, and adventures we've had. But I guess I ought to start somewhere, so let's start with Joseph. As a warning, I'm kind of obsessed with him these days, so if you get a hint of proud mama, that's why. (Doesn't help that I misplaced his baby book the other day so I feel like I have to record it somewhere. Might as well record it online!)

So from top to bottom, ready, set, Joseph!

Hair: If you look from the top, he still has a lot of hair. But he is going a little bit bald on the sides. That's probably because he keeps rubbing his hair off. And how does he rub it off? Well, here's one way he does it:

Yeah, it looks like he likes the hardwood. (It is growing on me . . . it's just weird not ever wanting to sit on the floor anymore.) We noticed that he was able to rotate beginning about the middle of July, when we put him on a blanket to sleep at my parents' house. He would wake up facing a different direction. But over the past month and a half he's refined this skill to get . . . a lot of places. It's fun.

Face: Moving down his face, he has very expressive eyebrows:

and some funny faces.

Mouth: He can be quite vocal, and has learned how to scream like a little girl. But most of the time he's just content to jabber away in a more pleasant range:

Neck: He can basically hold his head up now. I was surprised by how much easier not having to worry about supporting his neck so much made things.

Hands: He likes to use his hands to touch and scratch things: the side of the crib, the couch, books, and basically anything he can get his hands on. It's so fun to see his motor skills improving. He still can't reach out and grab things (other than my hair), but he's getting closer every day. He also has discovered how to put his hands in his mouth. He's not so much of a thumb-sucker yet; more of a pointer finger-sucker or multiple finger-sucker. It's good for his immune system, right?

Torso: I love to watch him stretch/try to roll over. It kind of makes him look like a contortionist.

Legs and feet: He has very strong legs. And very cute feet. He likes to raise them high in the air.

He also loves to look at himself in the mirror, which is why I propped him up like this

There's a part of me that could go on and on and on about how awesome he is, but I think I'll just call that good for now.

Except . . . one more video. Just because.