Playtime

Julie is in that squirming on the floor mode. I put her down on a blanket while I was grading. She wiggled and squirmed until she had turned herself 90, then 180, then 270, then 300 degrees, made an adorable little coo (pleased with herself, I guess?), and then instantly fell asleep.

She's asleep on the floor now. Guess I should put her to bed.

Excerpts on infant baptism, 1

Some excerpts from my dissertation reflections, in honor of Juliana's upcoming birth in Christ.

On the litany of saints (this one's for Andrew):

The next appearance of the infant's name is (possibly) in the Litany of the Saints, where it may appear as the name of the child's patron saint. Once again, this acknowledges the particularity of this infant, the concreteness of his or her personal identity, while relativizing it with respect to the Christian community -- no longer limited to the assembly but recognized as "all holy men and women." The name which designates the child in his or her uniqueness is not unique -- it belongs to the child alone only by being given in the context of this community in which it has previously belonged to another. Christian names are second-hand.

I requested that they include Bl. Julian of Norwich and St. Benedict in the litany on Saturday. I hope they do.

Ready for stand-up

Thomas, Kylie, Julie, and I went to dinner on Friday. Thomas was, even for him, in rare form. On the way home we had this humorous conversation, begun when someone cut me off by driving in the wrong lane:

"What are you DOING?"

Thomas: "What you talking about, mama?"

"Oh, somebody's being stupid driving."

"Who is it?"

"It's nobody we know. I hope."

"Why you hope?"

"Well, I don't like to think people I know are stupid. I like to think that the people I know are pretty smart."

(Pause, doubtfully)

"You know Eric, mama?"

I can't make this stuff up.

Seed starter

This time of year I long for a garden -- anything from micro to macro. I always start with seeds.

The first time, it was because Matt and I were getting through the summer on the tail end of one graduate stipend. We needed a vegetable garden to eat the way I like to eat. Seeds were cheaper!

Now, I go and pull out the seed packets and the tiny expanding peat pots by choice. I love seeds because they want to live so bad. When you sprinkle those dry grains onto the squishy soil pods and see tiny white shoots flying out the next morning -- even from those hopeless seeds that fell into the bottom of the tray where there's no soil -- you realize the power of the gospel metaphor.

"Unless a grain of wheat should fall to the ground and die, it will remain a single grain..."

The only thing they need to live is water. I get to provide that -- a privilege indeed.

Pwayer

Thomas was hyper at bedtime tonight.

"I want to pway, mama."

"If you're not tired, you can play with your animals in your bed, but I'm not going to stay in here, because it's time for you to sleep."

He just looks at me like I'm insane.

"I want to pway."

"Thomas, it's not time to play, it's time to sleep."

Stares at me again.

Holds up his bear, the two hands pressed together.

"I just want to pway!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, kiddo, I'll pray with you. I didn't understand you."

I'm a terrible mom!

"You want to pray the Our Father, since we already did a 'Dear Jesus' prayer?"

"Yeah."

Mom: "Our Father, who art in heaven..."
Meanwhile, Thomas: "Rrr Fader, ... heaven. Baby sister nananaygoggoo --" (breaks off suddenly)

"Jesus is holding baby sister."

"He is?"

"Yeah. In his arms. That's why her heart is getting better."

I so don't deserve this kid.

Gee, thanks

Matt and I got a retirement account balance today.

"Expect to be working a long time," he says.

"I'm an academic. I'll never retire!" I respond. "We don't really retire, we just become emeritus."

"Yeah, that's true. You just stop teaching -- or stop teaching well."

"Hey!"

"Just telling you my experience."

Chemist's cookery

Why don't I put recipes on here more often?

When my mom was here I was throwing everything into the pot. "This is measuring, see. If I do it slowly and pay attention while I pour stuff, it's 'measuring,' even if I don't know exactly how much there is, right?"

Matt, behind me, shakes his head. "I thought you were a chemist!"

Kylie says, "That is how chemists cook!"

Yes, listen to Dr. Barker. I am vindicated!

Luckily, my mom wanted a recipe I made, so I wrote down something rather similar to what I made before I forgot it all:



Favorite Vegetable Soup:

3 onions
2 Tbsp olive oil
1.5 Tbsp minced garlic (I used the stuff from the jar)
3 carrots
3 stalks celery
1 c red lentils, washed
1 28-oz can diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp dill
1/4 tsp rosemary
1 Tbsp smoked paprika
salt (1-2 Tbsp?) and pepper (to taste)
1/2-1 c light cream
feta crumbles (optional; can substitute plain yogurt)

Chop onions, carrots, celery into medium-sized pieces. Saute onions in garlic and olive oil until translucent. Add lentils and stir into hot oil for about 1 minute; add carrots and celery and stir. Pour in tomatoes and 7 cups water. Bring to a boil while adding spices. Boil for about 45 minutes. Blend to desired smoothness and still in cream. Garnish with feta crumbles. Makes a very hearty meal soup.

The scholastic doctrine of the revival of sacraments has me picturing the Holy Spirit as crouched outside, ready to spring into our hearts as soon as we leave the door ajar.

Anecdotes of parenting

I asked Thomas the other day what he wanted to do when he grew up.

"Cook! I'm-a cook soup like mama."

Seems pretty safe. I wonder if he wants to do laundry too?

***

I had to take Juliana to Thomas's daycare for the first time on Monday when I picked him up. His face lit up. "Baby sister is here!"

All the little kids lined up on their knees in nice neat rows to peer into her carseat. "Don't touch the baby," his teachers warned.

"I get to touch her," Thomas objected, looking at me.

"Yes, you do," I agreed, "because she's your sister. But your friends are just going to look."

Julie loved looking at all the kids faces, one by one.

"She looks just like Thomas!" one of the older girls said.

"She looks like me," one of the boys said. (This is the same boy that calls me "mom" and Matt "dad". We have no idea whether he does this with everyone's parents.)

***

On the way home from school today, "Message in a Bottle" came on the radio.

"This sounds like Rock Band!" Thomas yelled.

Triduum

One of the things I love about the great liturgical feasts is that they are the one time, as western Catholics, that we allow ourselves to screw it up.

I don't mean, of course, that the liturgies aren't beautiful -- nor that we should stop trying to make them beautiful. But the Triduum is one time that we are all doing things we're not accustomed to doing, and so we tend to do them like we would do them at home. We bump the chairs. We spill things. The altar servers aren't sure who's supposed to go get the candle or where it should be. By the end of the Vigil homily, even the priests are tired.

Thomas came with us to the Holy Thursday mass, and wanted to see the footwashing. We told him we could go home anytime, since it started at bedtime, but he'd been asking for the "When Jesus walked on earth and we could see him" (my "New Testament story" opener) stories all week and the foot washing was his favorite. He cruised through the bilingual liturgy of the word (not so good at the Vigil, but who can blame him there?) and, as soon as the guys started bringing the chairs, was riveted, too fascinated to even answer my "Do you like it?"

They bumped the chairs out onto the dais and had to mess around a little to get them all lined up properly. Then the people came out and fiddled their shoes and socks off. Our priest came out with his basin and the server brought the ewer. The deacon handed each person a towel. The water ran out about half way through the line and the server went to bring a new basin and ewer, then staggered under the full one until the seminarian hurried over to take it out of his hands. Father Paul continued to progress down the line and Thomas continued to hang his chin just over the edge of the frontmost pew on his tiptoes. People began to pull their shoes and socks on, and eventually Father Paul stood up and the parishioners went back to their pews. The ushers came forward to take the chairs away, and suddenly Thomas began to protest.

"Lots of people left! He needs to do ALL the people!"

Whispering wasn't correcting this misapprehension, and Thomas was exhausted, so I offered to take him home and explain what was going on. I had a burst of inspiration.

"Thomas, all the people need their feet washed, but Father Paul is done. Now it's your turn." Gee, aren't I cute, I think. A two-year-old's homily. But I had more effect than I expected.

When we got home, "Daddy! Daddy! I wanna wash your feet!" Matt, who was home with Juliana, blinked at us. "I wanna wash your feet!"

Thomas runs out of the room with a water bottle, filling it at the sink before running back to the kitchen. He reemerged dragging a dining chair -- boy, he really was paying attention! -- and had to be persuaded that the chair Matt was already sitting in would work fine.

He came in with his water bottle and his little dishpan and started to wash Matt's feet. Too bad he only put cold water in the bottle. Very cold water.

Sometimes the rituals are better if we allow ourselves to do them a little bit wrong. After all, this is the season when God broke into the world, through a great gash of wrong, to save it.

I didn't get one!

Yesterday a day came that I've been dreading for at least three years.

It started out so well: we went to Palm Sunday mass, and Thomas was paying very good attention (for a two-year-old, that is). We talked about the entry to Jerusalem ahead of time, and although he was disappointed to hear that there wouldn't be any donkeys at church, he was interested in the palm leaves. He paid good attention through the procession and even followed along with a good bit of the Passion reading. (I was pointing the pictures out in his picture Bible and whispering the important words.) Despite the length of the Palm Sunday mass, and the fact that it started right before naptime, by the communion rite he was still gamely hanging in there, sitting in the aisle so he could see what the priest was doing and murmuring to himself.

When it was time for communion I showed him how to hold his arms across his chest, and we went forward. By the time we got back to the pew, he was in tears.

"Why didn't he give me one? Why didn't he give me one? I didn't get one!"

This is the one question about the liturgy my time at Notre Dame hasn't prepared me to answer. I'm just left here in my own pain, saying, "Why doesn't he get one?" And I fear that by the time five more years have passed, he'll be left with an indelible impression of his exclusion from the Lord's meal.

The eucharistic celebration shouldn't leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth.

Ada Lovelace day

This post is dedicated to my daughter, who is named after Ada Lovelace. May she do whatever she chooses with all the power and grace of the many women I know in technology.

Last week I was driving Juliana to the hospital when suddenly I thought to myself, "I miss dancing the mergesort."

Now, this may not make a whole lot of sense to some of you. Merge sort is a computer algorithm that efficiently sorts items. Matt could tell you how efficiently it works, but he's never danced it. I have.

My friend Tanya, as well as having her Ph.D. in CS, is one of the most creative people I know and really devoted to teaching. (It's a good combination for a computer science prof, don't you think?) One day, deciding she could "make algorithms fun" for elementary school students, she choreographed a dance to illustrate how mergesort works. But she didn't stop there (like I would have, if I'd been lucky enough to have such a cool idea myself): her passion was such that she managed to inspire eight normal, introverted, busy grad students to get together once a week to learn and practice this dance and then to perform it!

Occasionally, when I'm struggling to put a class together in a way that doesn't bore even me, I'll think about this experience. So far, I've never had the creativity or the guts to dance my theology course, but it's definitely made me think about how teaching methods are only as limited as my passion and my imagination. So thanks Tanya, and happy Ada Lovelace Day.

 

Hard to add anything to that.

She's beautiful and doing well!

25 things about me

I've been tagged on facebook twice, and this seems like the kind of post I might actually be able to complete right now.

1. I start things and never finish them. I started with this in the hope that admitting it outright might mean I actually post it even if I can't think of all 25. I am trying to work on this personality ... quirk.

2. I am a "messy house person," and most of my closest friendships have been with other messy house people. I sometimes wonder if this is significant.

3. I got certified to scuba dive when I was 12. The weekend I certified it was in the 40s. Back then, I thought that was cold.

4. At one point in high school I wanted to be a journalist. One of my friends from school newspaper now writes for the Chicago Trib's Red Eye. Later I decided I'd do chemistry instead. One of my friends from that class is now finishing her Ph.D. in chemistry at Northwestern.

5. I didn't decide to go into theology until I was 4 credits short of my chemistry degree. I had no idea what I would do if I didn't get into the ND theology program.

6. I'm lucky enough to live with my two best friends. One of them is about to turn 30, the other's not yet 3, but they're both thoughtful and fantastic companions.

7. My dog's pretty great too. Her full name, according to Dave, is "Nuestra Senora de Paciencia Jose Maria Conception Immaculata." Or something like that. I always forget the details.

8. My son wants to name his sister Paci, after the dog. This too is Dave's fault.

9. My dissertation director knows the day and month I got married (which was before I met him). Once he was introducing me to some well-known theology prof friend of his and he mentioned the day.

10. Contrary to my expectations, having a child with a serious and chronic health condition has made me less, not more, of a worrywart. I don't understand this.

11. When I'm bored, especially when I'm walking somewhere and I wish I was already there, I count. Sometimes I count in eights. Sometimes I just see how high I get. Surprisingly, this has turned out to be a useful parenting technique. Thomas could be mesmerized by my counting to him on the changing table by the time he was eight months old.

12. My mother-in-law taught me a little about decorating cakes when I was engaged. I now know just enough to be dangerous.

13. This is pretty typical of my approach to hobbies.

14. I know almost every line of every Jane Austen book ever published (except Northanger Abbey, which I like least and therefore have never owned).

15. Not only do I read the books, I also read literary criticism about Jane Austen and a few other favorite authors for fun.

16. I dislike most TV and am slightly hostile to movies. I've always been ashamed of this, but have never overcome it.

17. I told one of my dissertation committee members that Julian of Norwich was my favorite theologian. He was a lot less shocked than I expected.

18. I wish I got to make more jokes about theology, but I'm rarely around people who would find them funny.

19. When I got pregnant the first time I was terrified that I would have a girl and very relieved to find out it was a boy. This time I was thrilled to find out the baby was a girl. This shows how much better I've gotten over the past three years.

20. I really admire my dad. He never gives advice, but there are a few observations he's dropped about life (literally only a handful... about 5) that I think about all the time and that have made a huge impact on how I think and make decisions.

21. When I was little I used to look down from the high diving board and tell myself, "It'll be fun when I hit the bottom." I'm surprised how many times since then life has made me think of that.

22. When I was in high school I worked as a telemarketer for eight days. I hated it, wrote an essay about the experience, and won a $500 scholarship. This means that overall I got paid over $20 an hour for that job and developed a lasting phobia about making phone calls to people I don't see often. I'm not sure it was worth it. Matt is tired of ordering the pizza.

23. The one thing I've always dreamed of doing with my life is writing novels -- not just novels that sell (in fact I don't care about that) but ones that change how people think about life. Books have always been shaping how I think about life, and I want to participate in that.

24. This is the one dream I've never tried to convert into a career. I was too afraid to do it -- and now I've found another love.

25. My middle name is Hope.

Prayers please

I don't like being every doctor's most interesting medical case.

Note to hiring committees...

..."we do whatever the law requires" is not a selling point.

Due to a shocking combination of grace, coincidence, the good word of my mentors, and hard work (always the most shocking component), I ended the job search season with two offers. I was surprised and (very) pleased and was able to take a job I'm extremely enthusiastic about.

There was one part of the job search process that amused, annoyed, and, eventually, infuriated me, however. That was exploring the maternity, family, and emergency leave policies where I interviewed. This was interesting to me for a lot of reasons. A couple of my friends have done research on family-friendly institutional policies and their effect on women's academic careers. I went to both my on-campus interviews visibly and unmistakeably pregnant, and I was upfront with everyone about having a 2 year old. Most importantly, however, I'm a parent of a kid with a potentially serious chronic health condition, who was hospitalized and endangered as an infant. I know exactly how much a family medical emergency can impede academic work -- I estimate I was set back at least 9 months by mine.

At the first place I interviewed, I explained this experience and asked about their family leave policies. The chair responded, "We do everything the law requires." His tone implied that this was something to be proud of and that I should be fully reassured by his response. Not terribly impressed, I asked about tenure freezes. "That's covered under the law." No, it's not, I said. "Oh, it definitely is." Eventually I was told that the university was "very family-friendly" and then breezily assured, "Anyway, you don't seem like the type that would need to take time off for maternity leave!"

With the implication being, I suppose, that if I did seem like that type they wouldn't be interested? In the context of my having explained taking time off to care for my sick newborn, this hit me with frustration and unease. To make matters worse, the assistant provost didn't know any more than the chair about the university's policies. No one seems to care.

The next institution was very different. One of the people on the hiring committee met me at the airport and visibly noticed my condition. I volunteered my due date, etc. and she cheerfully told me a lot about their policies in the car on the way to the university. The provost and one of the other women in the department repeated and elaborated the next day. There was no feeling of stigma -- in fact their paid leave for maternity is exactly equivalent to the partial research grant they offer periodically, which makes it seem more sanctioned. The policies were adequate (not European but much better than most American jobs), but the sensation was much better.

This didn't make the decision for me -- far from it -- but I have to say, "we fulfill the law" isn't much of a selling point.

No (new) paper Christmas wrap

Due to a combination of environmentalism, thriftiness, laziness, and creativity, I set myself a challenge this year: no unused wrapping paper for presents of giftees over the age of 10. The one exception is a gift of Matt's I wrapped before I made this resolution. The result of this challenge has been, interestingly enough, not only a lot of unusual Christmas wraps, but also a lot of fun Christmas art project time for Thomas. I did a lot of fairly obvious things (reuse bags and paper, etc), but these are my favorite projects so far:

• I used a glue stick to glue together extra handouts, printouts of talks, and miscellaneous interview material for this year. Then I put the white side up on Thomas art table before we painted the Christmas ornaments we made. The parts that weren't then covered with paint and glitter I drew simple Christmas shapes on, and Thomas scribbled them with marker. He was really excited about making gift wrap, and then wanted to wrap the presents. I think only my dad will be interested in my handouts, but office paper makes surprisingly neat packages.


• Last summer Thomas and I dyed a bunch of silk scarves with food coloring. They came out with an interesting marbled look (probably because I made a mistake: my favorite arts are the ones where mistakes turn out pretty). I tied a green one around my mom's photo book. She's a grandma, so this counts as an extra present (toddler art!). Then I used some leftover undyed ones to wrap my step-brother and step-mom's gifts, and attached a tag with the dyeing instructions. They were so much fun I might intentionally make some extra scarves this summer to use as gift wrap next year.


• An extra tote bag from my Germany conference for the gift purchased in Germany, a Chicago map tote bag for my mom's gift, and some extra stockings.

Save handmade toys from indiscriminate regulation

This year I picked up a few sets of these adorable felt-board-ready story-telling images from crafter DJ, of Nodin's Nest on etsy.com. I'm really looking forward to giving them to Thomas and watching his imagination run wild with them.

These are the Pirate and Food sets; I also have a Tea Party set floating around in the Christmas box somewhere. Besides these, DJ sells Christmas ornaments, soft stuffed toys which are whimsical and delightful (there are stuffed tea sets!), and some other unusual things. Go check them out and buy something, because starting in February, DJ's home-based business may be illegal. That's when a new law goes into effect which requires that all toys be batch-labeled and independently tested:

The United States Congress rightly recognized that the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) lacked the authority and staffing to prevent dangerous toys from being imported into the US. So, they passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) in August, 2008. Among other things, the CPSIA bans lead and phthalates in toys, mandates third-party testing and certification for all toys and requires toy makers to permanently label each toy with a date and batch number.

All of these changes will be fairly easy for large, multinational toy manufacturers to comply with. Large manufacturers who make thousands of units of each toy have very little incremental cost to pay for testing and update their molds to include batch labels.

For small American, Canadian, and European toymakers, however, the costs of mandatory testing will likely drive them out of business. [From the Handmade Toy Alliance website]

Thinking about this law in the context of DJ's lovely sets reveals how incredibly idiotic it is. These things are paper; what's great about her work is the fun images she's found, the bright colored cardstock they're on, and the fact that they come in collections that have variety and continuity. They can't be batch tested; each piece is unique. So they'll be impossible to sell once the new law goes into effect -- even though they contain no more dangerous chemicals than Thomas's books or Wild Animal Baby magazine.

This blog is entirely devoted to photos of more unique toys that will be unsellable in the US after the new law goes into effect, and this page tells you some things you can do to help make sure the law is revised to exempt small, safe toy manufacturers. So go follow a link or two.

Rosary making

 
I decided it is time for Thomas to receive his first rosary. He can say (or mumble) most of the Our Father, is interested in the Nicene Creed (he gets the last word of most lines if he hasn't totally lost it by that point of the mass), and has liked hearing me sing the Hail Mary for him at bedtime. He loves beautiful things and is particularly excited about a Thomas Aquinas medal I had put on a beaded chain in honor of his birth (I wore it to the hospital).

When we were in Germany I thought about buying him a rosary, but I never saw one I really liked. I've made rosaries before, but this is my first classic-style, metal-component rosary. You can see I'm almost done with the third decade. You can also see my messy, messy desk. What you can't see is the Christmas music (some 12 days or more of it, on shuffle) that's playing in the background.

Despite my liturgically incorrect love for Christmas music during Advent (hey, O Come O Come Emmanuel is on there somewhere!), I'm finding rosary making to be an exquisitely appropriate task for the season. It might be contemplative action. It's slow, tangible, rhythmic. You have to keep your mind, and your eyes, on what your fingers are doing. It's a delicate task: I get better at closing the rings as I work at it; but close works, and each ring is slightly different. It's a physical manifestation, a realization, of my faith and my desire to share that faith with my son. It's also a sign of my faith in my child: in his ability to make this mystery his own.

Growing up, I believed in Santa Claus, who played a huge role in how Christmas was ritually arranged (how presents were chosen, bought, stored, and given; the plan and timescale of Christmas eve and Christmas day; the music and the stories). I also believed in Jesus Christ, who, in my household, played a lesser role. Despite the gap between these two mythic narratives, I always sensed the superior power of the nativity story. It had a great hold over my imagination, implanted, as far as I can remember, by a little exposure to the Bible and a great love for traditional carols. I really felt, I think, the great glory and beauty of the God of Creation becoming a tiny child because of his love for humanity, all because of those generations of people who, inspired by the story, composed and wrote and played and sang it.

Now, I can contemplate that mystery in a much more well-informed, but probably no more profound way, as I feel and see an artifact, pointing to that mystery, taking shape in my hands. It happens gradually, a few beads at a sitting. I can't yet see the finished piece, but I'm working towards it anyway.

Perhaps Mary felt this way, creeping towards Bethlehem, as she felt the new life stirring in her body and wondered Who He, who Is Who He Is, would be.

Busy

The theme for the week is, minimize, minimize, minimize, and put things off until it's too late to worry about it.