Our Impossible Adoption Story
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Review: Christmas Worship
Worship leaders everywhere – Your prayers have been heard.
Because we all love traditional Christmas hymns in December, right? And it only seems fitting we should sing them in church, but then … they often don’t feel like praise and/or worship. Right?
Paul Baloche’s first Christmas album (ever) releases today, appropriately titled Christmas Worship. From the PR:
Baloche says, “We all love the content of Christmas carols, but often they don’t facilitate a vertical expression of worship towards the Lord. So the idea of this album was to take classic Christmas carols that we all enjoy singing and combine them with modern worship choruses to encourage worship all throughout the Christmas season.”
Nailed it Read more…
30 New Things
Painfully Honest Moment: Winter is really hard for me.
Especially after Christmas is over
Photo credit: TexasEagle
Everything turns gray, and I feel it in my bones. The sky is gray and distant, and the frozen pavement reflects it. I try to romanticize the first snowfall, but it quickly gets piled up and half-melted and dirty from automobile exhaust. The cold air makes my nose run and my skin bristle, and pushes me inside – inside a warm house, a warm blanket, inside myself.
I read authors who like winter, and I try. I swear I do. I try to enjoy the “crisp” air, and I listen to the snow crunch under my boots. I try to see the sparkles and I try to sit still in the peace, but you know what else is still and peaceful?
Death
I like my peace on a sunny beach, where the ocean keeps a steady pulse.
Every winter I try to accept it, be present in it, fall down and make the occasional snow angel … but then I get back up and I’m cold and wet, and if there’s a way to relish being cold and wet I haven’t figured it out yet.
Every winter I wonder why I live in Chicago.
And I’ve tried, in recent winters, to look for the good bits – photograph them, write about them, appreciate them. It’s never really cured me.
So this winter I’m trying something new. I’m taking some inspiration from my 30th birthday, and setting up a challenge. Read more…
Max Lucado Book Give-Away!
I love books, and I love the slow process of building a library for The Meatball. I love that he likes to sit down and turn pages and point at pictures. There are some classics that we had to start with, but I’m finding great new stuff all the time too.
Someone gave us two Max Lucado board books, both illustrated by Sergio Martinez, that are absolutely beautiful. Crossway Publishing has generously offered to give away two more, to one Spits and Wiggles reader!
Both are stories of Punchinello the Wemmick, who lives in – you guessed it – Wemmicksville. Wemmicks are little wooden people made by Eli, the woodcarver.
In You Are Special, the Wemmicks start dishing out stars and dots – stars to the good Wemmicks, and dots to the bad Wemmicks. Punchinello gets dots, but then he meets a Wemmick who has neither. She suggests Punchinello visit Eli to learn why the stars and dots don’t stick to her.
In You Are Mine, the Wemmicks start getting competitive about who has the most, and the best, boxes and balls. (And I love that the two who seem to start all the trouble are named Nip and Tuck. I see what you did there, Max.) Punchinello gets caught up in the competition too, until he accidentally stumbles into Eli’s wood-shop.
Great stories, and beautiful illustrations. A lot of kids’ books, especially little kids’ board books, have super-simple illustrations with really basic colors. Those are great too, but I like having some variety, and something a little more artistic. Read more…
The Poo Ball
(There are no pictures on this post. You’re welcome.)
Usually, our morning routine takes us right up to walk-out-the-door time, but yesterday, events conspired to put us a little ahead of schedule. So I walked through the house packing bags and picking up and getting myself ready to go, with The Meatball right at my heels – probably waving something around as he toddled, because that’s his new favorite.
The pat pat pat of his fat feet suddenly stopped, though, half-way through the kitchen.
When I turned to look, he was bearing down ever so slightly, red in the face, right eye slightly closed.
“Workin’ on a poo, there, buddy?”
He grunted. Twice. And then he straightened up and kept on like nothing had happened.
I suspended him from his armpits, grabbed a bib as I walked by, reminded him how cool Velcro is, and laid him on the changing table.
He was occupied with the bib Velcro until I started unwrapping his diaper and I swear I saw the revelation flit across his face:
It was time to play in poo. Read more…
Mama Said
Today is my mom’s birthday. I think she’s 30. Which is weird ’cause I just turned 30, but … (trails off incoherently)
If you haven’t met my mom, you’re missing out and I feel sorry for you. She’s pretty awesome sauce.
(Before Husband and I got married, he told me that he’d never heard anyone talk about their mom as much as I talk about mine. I think it started to creep him out how often I referred to her as, “cute.”)
So for you poor fools who don’t know my mom, I’m passing along five things my mama taught me.
1 – How to bake
Listen, cookies just taste better when they’re make with a plastic bowl and a wooden spoon. I have the same red, plastic bowl that we used to make cookies in together. (Which is a total coincidence, Mom, if you find your red, plastic bowl missing …)
I still pack brown sugar with my fingers. I still scrape the top of measuring cups with the long end of the spoon so that each cup or half-cup is perfect. (Which I thought was totally normal until a friend of mine laughed – actually laughed – when she saw me do it.) I still stir it by hand, even though I have a super swanky Kitchen Aid mixer above my fridge. I still don’t use a timer. I still lick the spoon, and my cookies are delicious because all of that is the baking equivalent of pure love.
2 – Superwoman is real
My mom worked full-time, and then came home and cooked and cleaned. Every day. Pretty sure she still does. Every day.
When I got married and worked full-time … and lived in the smallest apartment in America and didn’t have kids, I would have my freak-out moments about how anyone can work all day and then come home and work more.
And then I’d remember my mother. Read more…
Spits and Wiggles 