A little stay-at-home-mom one-upsmanship: "Why I can't make friends"

Someone on the Sonlight forums posted a link to Why I can't make friends (3:15). The deadpan computer-generated voices and unexpressive faces of the two mothers in this video make the interaction all the more hilarious.

If you have ever felt yourself being put down by someone else as a result of their casual comments about how superior their children are, I think you may enjoy it!

Of course, you won't want to miss PT ST OT OMG (Physical Therapy, Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy, OMG; 1:55) as well.

If you've interacted with anyone really into natural childbirth, you'll probably get a kick out of the over-the-top The pool had baby bunnies on it (1:36).

Children's nutrition, cleanliness, and health: The average human swallows 40 spiders in their sleep (1:39).

Toy dangers: It could happen (1:13). Absolutely hilarious.

Helicopter parents? There's an app for that! (1:06).

I wasn't as taken with the other videos. I'm sorry to think the creator may be running out of steam.

Honoring moms and dads . . .

Our son Luke and his wife Brittany stopped by last night. While they were here, Luke said we needed to watch a couple of videos. After watching them, I agree with him: they ought to brighten your day..

First, for moms: A heartfelt, highly melodic, and beautifully harmonized ode by Stanford University student Adam Cole to his mother for the amazing biological heritage she has given him. [As you listen, you may wish you had studied your high school (or was it college?) biology a bit more seriously!]



And then . . . an over-the-top rap video about suburban "Dad Life."

"Get down" [or whatever the modern equivalent phrase may be]!



Feel like adding a little more brightness to your day?

Check out "Jessica's Daily Affirmation Song" . . . as sung by Adam Cole and his bluegrass band Nimbleweed . . .



. . . and, then, maybe, view Jessica's original affirmation from which the song was inspired:



For more Nimbleweed bluegrass music videos, check out Adam's YouTube webpage. Best songs in my opinion?

• Wagon Wheel fiddle solo
   
• Okinawa (one mild expletive buried in the middle)
   
• I Believe in a Thing Called Love

What wonderful feel-good music!

What homeschooling is all about

As I often do, I looked over on the right-hand side of my blog this morning to see "what's new." (If you're reading this post on Facebook, maybe you've never seen my blog. I have a bunch of widgets and links to all kinds of things I find interesting: for example, This Day in History, Today's Birthday (some famous person--contemporary or historical; one never knows!), Article of the Day, Quote of the Day, Unreached People of the Day, and--one of my personal favorites and the subject of this post--Sonlight Moments.

I began my perusal of the Sonlight Moments with The Romans Are Coming!

Cute! Fun.

But then I went to Window on the World/Geography Songs SL [Sonlight] moment.

Whoa! Blow me away! Amazing!

And then, topping that one, in many ways--it's so completely unexpected, I think: Substitutional Atonement for a 6 year old. (Wha-???)

Let me quote a bit from the Window on the World post. (This isn't completely out-of-the-ordinary, as I'll demonstrate in a moment.):

My three kids and I went out with a friend the other day to help her register for her baby shower. While I was looking at some books, a man with a very unusual French sounding accent was helping her finalize her account. He was asking her about her nationality when I walked over. I asked him where he was from and he said "Africa."

Being curious and knowing that my son is a geography nut, I asked, "Where in Africa?" He looked at us like, "I can't believe you even care" but told us "Burkina Faso."

I asked my son if he knew where that was and he said yes. Then I vaguely
remembered hearing that name recently and asked Isaac (my 7yo) if we had learned about any tribes from there. He quietly said, "Lobi." I repeated it and the man about fell over.

He said, "How do you know about the Lobi? I lived 15 miles from them back home."

. . . Sorry. I'm going to force you to read the original to get "the rest of the story." --This family has acquired a new--and very astonished--friend.

******
I said I would demonstrate that this kind of behavior among Sonlight homeschooled kids isn't all that out-of-the-ordinary.

A couple of "old" stories along similar lines. (I have seen many more--and many far more astonishing stories, but for some reason I'm just not finding them this morning!):

We had a prayer group over last night, and I had to leave to pick up the girls from AWANA. When we got home, I introduced them to one of the women there, Lydia, and said to the girls, "Lydia lived in Africa for seven years, in Kenya."

My five-year-old IMMEDIATELY started singing [a song from the Sonlight 2 curriculum]: "Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, and Tanzania...."

My eight-year-old said, "Oh, were you in Nairobi?"

Lydia blinked at each of them and said that no, she hadn't been in Nairobi, but then said actually, she'd only been two weeks in Kenya, but that she'd lived in Burkina Faso for seven years, on the other side of Africa.

I'd misunderstood two different missions trips that she'd been on.

My eight-year-old said, "Oh, yes, West Africa."

My five-year-old said, "Is that in Mali?"

My eight-year-old said, "It's right under Mali, Meredith. Mali's where Mansa Musa was from. It's the big one, to the north. Burkina Faso's just a little country."

Lydia continued to blink, and they went wandering off again, but at the end of the meeting, they all pored over a world map we have under vinyl on the dining room table, and were talking about the Sahara Desert, and the different geographical factors contributing to the poverty in Burkina Faso....

It's a good thing I wasn't wearing a shirt with buttons, because that would have popped them off.

I say all the time, it's not that my kids are brilliant, it's just the sheer novelty of what they're learning (and having fun with, so that it sticks), so often, that catches people by surprise.

Last night's reaction by our guest was priceless.

From April 2008:

As we were watching the NCAA Final Four last weekend, one of the commentators began talking about a UCLA player who is from Cameroon. So I asked our 8-year-old son (Core 2) "Where's Cameroon?" Without any hesitation, he replied "North Central Africa!" And then he ran to get our globe so he could show us where it is on a map, too.

*******
Anyway.

So then there was that "Substitutional Atonement" post . . . for a 6-year-old(???!!!????)

Since when do 6-year-olds even think about such concepts?

Well . . .

Core K. Egermeier's Bible Story Book. Reading about "Worship at the Tabernacle" from Leviticus 1-9. Just two sentences, but [my 6-year-old daughter] latched onto them - "After Aaron was made high priest he offered a lamb on the altar of burnt offering as a sacrifice for the sins of the people. He did not put any fire on the altar, but God sent fire to burn up the lamb." Then the tears started - killing cute little lambs.

Oh boy, I was so not ready to discuss substitutional atonement with a sensitive six year old, but here I was.

I did my best, then later put a Facebook status update to wryly comment about needing to pre-read in future, after explaining substitutionary atonement to my six year old.

One of my Facebook friends, who I don't think [has any real personal interest in the Bible], said, "Can you explain it to me?"

I think she was joking, but I did anyway!

It sure was a good way to figure out what I knew and believed.

At first, I couldn't figure out why the shedding of blood was required for the forgiveness of sins, but when my husband got home, we tossed a few verses back and forwards until the meaning became clear. Likewise, as I was writing this up for my friend on Facebook, I was a little concerned about God's reputation (yeah, I know, but I'm being honest here!) - and [my husband] reminded me that [God's] justice was good, just like his mercy.

So here is what I explained to my daughter, and then to my Facebook friends ... and it wouldn't have happened without that particular reading and subsequent discussions!

Atonement is covering over sin (I've also seen it explained as at-one-ment - becoming "at one" with God), and substitution is one taking the place of another (perfect animals, then later Jesus) for our sins.

To start with, the shedding of blood is required to cover over sin.

God is life, and if we turn away from God/life by sinning, what we're looking at is death.

The Bible says that the life of a creature is in its blood, so shedding its blood is shedding its life = death.

Rather than require their own blood to cover over their sins, God allowed the Israelites to sacrifice a perfect animal as their substitute.

[My daughter] was pretty upset about all those cute little lambs being killed - as anyone would be. It'd be a pretty strong deterrent against willful sinning!

It can be difficult to not gloss over the justice of God in favour of his mercy - we all want the kind and loving God without seeing that his justice is good, too. It doesn't take too much imagination to see how degenerate a world without justice would become.

I then explained that when Jesus died on the cross, he was being like the lambs that were sacrificed. He didn't do anything wrong, but he chose to accept all of our sins so we could be friends with God. All of the things she's done wrong in the past, and will do in the future, and all of mine, and all of Daddy's, and all of everyone else's. So instead of having to kill a lamb every time we do something wrong, we can just say sorry to God, and he forgives us because perfect Jesus died instead of us for our sins.

And before she could go too far down *that* track, I told her how wonderful it was that because Jesus didn't do anything wrong, God didn't let him stay dead; he brought him back to life again! So he's still alive, and he's still our friend, and we don't ever have to kill lambs when we do something wrong! Isn't he wonderful? We're so thankful to him for being our special friend.

I read this story--and the one before--and realized, This is what homeschooling (or, certainly, homeschooling with Sonlight) is all about. --It's about spending time with your kids and engaging in significant conversations about significant things . . . whether it has to do with people living on the other side of the world or "how things work." . . . And it has to do, too, with us parents learning!

As "mumtograce," the Australian woman who wrote the last story I quoted, wrote:

I was certainly blessed through this [interaction with my daughter] as, to start with, I knew the statement of "there is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood", but didn't know why, so it encouraged me to dig deeper to find out.

And likewise, when I was being concerned about God's reputation among my non-believing friends with requiring blood and sacrifice of cute little lambs, he showed me the goodness of his justice. So I learned a lot through this, too! . . .

I'm glad that my daughter is taking enough in to ask the questions, even if they do really put me on the spot trying to think of an appropriate answer!! And I can tell she's thinking it over, as she asks questions all the time, and mostly to do with the Bible readings.

But now that she's got the "kill a lamb to say sorry and God will forgive you" patois sorted, she can't understand why there are other consequences, eg the Israelites aged 20+ not being permitted to enter the Promised Land after trusting the faithless report of the 10 spies rather than the faith-full report of Caleb and Joshua. So on we go . . . to hard-heartedness, and the many examples of the Israelites grumbling and not trusting God. He knew that even if they said sorry with their mouths and by killing a lamb, they still didn't trust him in their hearts, and they needed to trust him if they were to move into the Promised Land.

She's certainly challenging me and it's great!

Just heard Dave Loggins' "Please Come to Boston" . . .

. . . and I'm feeling blue. . . . Or something.

Every time I hear that song (you can catch a snippet here; click on "Play Sample"), it seems to tear my heart out.

I get this sense of nostalgia. An overwhelming sense of . . . sadness. Loss. . . . But it's not my loss. I know it's not mine. I think it's my sense of loss for my parents. . . . I think a lot of it may have to do with my parents and their relationship.

Please come to Boston
For the springtime.
I'm stayin' here with some friends
And they've got lots of room.
You can sell your paintings on the sidewalk
By a cafe where I hope to be workin' soon.
Please come to Boston.
She said, "No. Would you come home to me?"

[Chorus:]
And she said, "Hey, ramblin' boy,
Now won't you settle down.
Boston ain't your kind of town.
There ain't no gold
And there ain't nobody like me.
I'm the number one fan
Of the man from Tennessee.

My dad wasn't quite the "ramblin' boy" the way Loggins' song speaks of. But he met my Mom in "Boston." At least close enough. She was from Quincy--an almost-suburb of Boston. And I think we always spoke of Mom as being more-or-less from Boston. When we'd go back to visit her mom or her brother, I don't think we referred to Quincy. I think we spoke of Boston.

I think, too, there was always some kind of wistfulness in my parents' relationship. Maybe I'm projecting that onto them. There has certainly always been a wistfulness in my mind toward my parents' relationship! . . . I had always wished they had been more "whole" in the way they treated each other.

I think, too, there was more of a longing on the part of my Mom toward my Dad than the other way around. As I said, Dad wasn't quite a drifter/rambler the way Loggins' character was. (Though we sure moved around a lot as I was growing up!) But/and, though he says he never actually consummated a relationship with another woman while they were married, I think Dad had a bit of a wandering heart . . . always wishing for "something more."

But I'm not sure he sought it in his relationship with Mom. Or, maybe, that is/was part of his character.

I never realized it until the last few years. Dad has always been a hopeless romantic: a pie-in-the-sky dreamer, I think. (I had always figured he was the ultimate rationalist. Partially because he was an electrical engineer. Partially because he seemed so emotionally dense around the rest of us: always, it seemed, causing so much pain, but never, it seemed, being able to recognize how he could have caused any of it.)

But now I'm wondering if his real "problem" had more to do with what I'm beginning to see as no strong drive, on his own, to get wherever he wanted to go. (One minor piece of evidence: He wrote a paragraph recently about his relationship with Mom and it was totally in the passive voice; whatever happened had to be her doing; he took no responsibility. . . . But the pie-in-the-sky dreamer thing, too: I don't think he had outlandish dreams (though I don't recall him ever really talking about them); but his dreams, I expect, were "just out of reach." And so, I think, he lived a kind of tragic life. --I think of his mother's phrase. "Poor Ernest!" I'm told she always said about him. My uncles, meanwhile--younger and making far less money than he did, lived well. . . . But Dad was "poor." Our family was "poor." At least, that's the way we kids were always taught when we were growing up: "We can't afford that" (whatever it was).)

Anyway. Back to Dave Loggins and "Please Come to Boston."

I think there is and always has been something very romantic in Dad's mind about Boston--Boston in the springtime, especially. Maybe, again, I have projected that thought onto him because of my recollections of Robert McCloskey's Make Way for Ducklings. --Dad always made sure we knew the pond in that book was real. The swan boats were real. Everything in McCloskey's book was real. Mom and Dad once took a ride on a swan boat. How romantic! . . .

But there was, I'm sure more to it than hopeless romanticism. Dad and Mom courted near Boston. Dad was a student at MIT at the time--in Cambridge, just across the Charles River from Boston proper. Mom would "come up" on the weekends from Framingham Teacher's College. . . .

Well, the feelings keep coming related to this song. . . .

Please come to Denver
With the snowfall.
We'll move up into the mountains
So far that we can't be found
And throw I-love-you echoes
Down the canyons--
And then lie awake at night
'Til they come back around.
Please come to Denver.
She said, "No. Boy, would you come home to me?"

And she said, "Hey, ramblin' boy,
Why don't you settle down?
Denver ain't your kind of town.
There ain't no gold
And there ain't nobody like me.
'Cause I'm the number one fan
Of the man from Tennessee.

Uh. Yeah. John Denver. "Rocky Mountain High in Colorado. . . . I've seen it raining fire in the sky. . . ."

And we live there. . . . Uh. Here.

It's not quite as "rocky cathedraled" as John Denver wanted to make it out to be. But there is something we love about the Rocky Mountains. . . . Could the love of a woman--"the number one fan of the man from [wherever]"--make up for someone struck with wanderlust?

Now this drifter's world
Goes round and round
And I doubt if it's ever gonna stop.
But of all the dreams
I've lost or found
And all that I ain't got:
I still need to lean to
Somebody I can sing to.

Please come to L.A.
To live forever.
A California life alone
Is just too hard to build.
I live in a house that
Looks out over the ocean
And there's some stars
That fell from the sky
Livin' up on the hill.
Please come to L.A.
She just said no.
"Boy, won't you come home to me?"

Been there, too. Lived in the LA area for almost 10 years.

There are no stars--certainly none that fell from the sky!--living up on the hill.

Somehow, I just find this whole way of life--living with a never-satisfied yearning for something that is never to be . . . --it drives me nuts!

I think back to the beginning of the song:

You can sell your paintings on the sidewalk
By a cafe where I hope to be workin' soon.

--Yeah. Right! He hopes to be workin' there, soon! --Another empty "dream" . . . with no commitment to follow through and make it happen.

And so what does his number-one fan really see in him? Did she--does she--finally give up on him? Or does she eventually join him in his gypsy ways?

******

Our family moved . . . a lot . . . while I was growing up: Berkeley, San Jose, Syracuse, Palo Alto/Stanford, Schenectady. . . . And as I think about it, I think my Dad always had nostalgia for "someplace else": always regrets. "Oh, if only!" "If only I had not sold our house in San Jose!" "If only . . . !"

I don't want to live with regrets. I want to live purposefully and decide, if there was a better choice I could have taken ("if only I had known"): "Too bad!" --Too bad for the person who wants to bemoan the fact; not too bad for me! I didn't know. And I couldn't have made a better choice considering what information I had in hand at the time. . . . So no use "crying over spilt milk." It's time to figure out how to move ahead into the future. . . .