Virginia’s Blog

Songs pervade my parenting…we sing to learn, to communicate, to pray…we sing in play, we create songs to illustrate make-believe stories and to relive lived stories. Recent manifestations of this have been the following: 1) Ginna and I pray in song together at night. We take turns leading in lines, and the other repeats the line. This seems to keep her involved in the prayer. At bedtime, I tell a story (sometimes in song), we pray, and then I sing her 3 songs. So bedtime and song go hand in hand. Two nights ago, I was putting her to bed, and she asked to lead in the prayer song. Her first 3 lines were as follows: “Thank you God for this mommy. Thank you God for this singing girl. Thank you God for my windows.” I guess she appreciates the pervasiveness of song! 2) Jamey and I have recently started reliving our day together in song at night. I sing all of the things we did together…snuggling in the morning, going on walks, building with blocks, learning new words, reading books about animals and cars, etc…. On Thursday our song was particularly lively because Ginna had been at preschool that morning and we had some time alone to explore new activities. I remember once when Ginna was close to his age, my mom set up an activity for her to use a small ladle to spoon dried beans into muffins tins. I let him do this, and he loved it! He also drew pictures on the easel that morning. Sometimes when I come to the end of my song, and he will say heartily, “MORE!”

Singing with my kids is a way to add levity and light-hearted instruction to our interactions.

Stan and I ordered a book months ago and it finally came yesterday: Perspectives on Family Ministry; 3 Views. I have been very anxious to read this book, as I’ve spent some time lately thinking about the role of churches in supporting and equipping parents for discipling their children. The book presents three ways churches do family ministry: the family-integrated model, the family-based model (separated contexts), and the family-equipping model. I’m just in the introductory chapters but have a few quotes to share:

There is a quote about churches building structures to support segregation…..churches will “build buildings to support segregation–and they will do it with excellence. They will not build for racial segregation, but to support age segregation…Both the natural appeal of such buildings and the programming centered there will guarantee [that] teenages will only experience church life with people almost precisely their own age. Adults will find no ways to bless children, much less even see them. Young people will be cut off from the richness of almost all adult relationships. And, most importantly, they will not see members of their own families until it is time to meet at their cars to go home.” -Richard Ross

The authors also state that “the ministry models that many ministers have studied in seminaries and inherited in local churches are fundamentally flawed. As a result, well-intended ministers have attempted to pursue tasks in the sole context of the church that God designed to occur first and foremost in another context. That other context is the family.”

I’m sure there will be other things coming on this as I read the book.

It has been quite a while since I have uploaded photos…so here are some!

We went to have Jamey’s cast removed after 3 weeks of it being on….and they decided to leave it on for two more weeks. Thankfully, it has since been removed!! I took these photos in the cast room on the day we thought it was coming off. In the last of these three photos, you see Ginna and Jamey sitting together. This has been a hobby of theirs lately…find little places to sit and squeeze in together. You’ll see other examples below.

Near the end of August, the kids and I took a trip to San Diego to see my college roommate, Rachel. She was there celebrating her 30th birthday. We spent the night with her in the historic US Grant hotel….and Ginna called it the G hotel since there were G’s on the doors and bed pillows. This was exciting for her!

The kids got Rachel into all sorts of crazy games!!

We took them to the science museum…there was a toddler room that they loved.

Ginna filled the grocery carts with food; Jamey filled with blocks.

Together, they devised a system for Jamey to drop food from the black window onto the conveyor belt (you can’t see him, but he is inside the structure), and Ginna would catch it and put it into the cart.

Museums like this are great. There were even reminders on the walls about child development….it can be helpful to remember that young children do not naturally think from the perspective of anyone but themselves (well, neither do many adults). There were tips for encouraging healthy play and interaction.

Here is another photo of them sitting together. Ginna comes up with all kinds of make-believe schemes and gets Jamey involved. They were driving a car last week with their babies sitting in their bike helmets. She told me they were in their car seats.

They love their daddy!

Ginna started back to preschool two weeks ago. She is going three mornings a week and loves it.

LOL!!

Jamey lives in the backyard these days. He is usually digging in a designated digging zone. Some mornings, he brings a shovel to me and asks me to come dig with him.

And there is the photo update!

I mentioned over the summer that I am working on a study of Genesis by Tim Keller. I also think I mentioned he makes a number of comments on gender. In the first few lessons, his commentary on the roles of males and females on “subduing the earth” (involvement in society and culture) and on males and females in marriage are so different than other teachings I have heard on these subjects.

Here are a few excerpts:

“Not only do we learn that work itself has great dignity, but we also learn that all kinds of work have dignity. If your world-view does not grasp the goodness of material creation, then ‘manual labor’—labor which is more physical and which involves more contact with the ‘stuff’ of natural world—will be seen as lower and beneath us. Greek philosophy was one source of this view of work, but the current era of global capitalism has given us new resources for despising work like farming or teaching or caring for children. ‘Information’ work now pays far better than manufacturing, etc. Also, although feminism has been rightly seeking to open up the public-work world for women, it has unfortunately demeaned child-rearing and domestic work because it is non-paying.”

“Genesis 1:26 confirms the equal dignity of male and female. Both are said to be created in the image of God from the beginning. Both genders, not just males, are given “dominion” over the earth in Genesis 1:28. [God blessed them and said…, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over….].It means that only as males and females together in full participation can we carry out our mandate to build civilization and culture. This is in contrast to the traditional view that “woman’s place is in the home.”

“Besides this explicit statement of equality, these verses also hint that the sexes are complementary. Immediately after making us male and female (v. 27), God says: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth…” (v. 28).”

(He goes on to say this is something we cannot do alone.)

“Thus, male and female are equal in dignity but different in many traits and functions. We are equal but not inter-changeable or equivalent. There is a tendency for the ‘liberal’ mindset to emphasize the first of these truths and a tendency of the ‘conservative’ mindset to emphasize the second of these truths. But they must be both believed together.”

Another noteworthy point Keller makes is that the word used for “helper” (as in, females were created as helpers (ezer in Hebrew) to males) is used almost every other time in the Bible to describe God Himself. Therefore, it cannot denote inferiority. The Biblical concept of a helper, then, is one who helps out of strength in a supportive way.

Sifting one’s way through modern culture’s views on gender and marriage is challenging. I am thankful for these teachings.

I participated in a webinar today organized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on halting the childhood obesity epidemic. A recent report was mentioned favoring taxing sugar sweetened beverages. You can read the report here: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMhpr0905723

I have been particularly attuned lately to messages about environmental and policy-based efforts to affect the health of Americans (partly because I teach community nutrition and also because I get frustrated with the mentality that we should just tell people what is healthy and they’ll change…..come on, people…. we know apples are better than Big Macs!!). I’m not sure what to think about taxing sodas….I’m certainly not opposed, but I have a hard time thinking it’ll make a big difference.

I also read a string of articles in the NEJM lately about health care reform that emphasized the grave need for changing our current system to one of PREVENTION. One article said we need to find ways to provide incentives for healthy behavior. Another was written from the perspective of a clinician and emphasized ways to cut costs by reducing malpractice awards and simplifying paperwork/coding that must be done for patients…and also to return to a greater reliance on clinical judgment so that unnecessary tests are not performed simply to cover the doctor from being sued.

Anyway, I hold myself responsible for teaching my students to combine traditional health promotion approaches (information transfer) with developing social marketing messages, environmental supports, and policies that support acting out that information. This is a new way of thinking for most students.

Last week, I was lying down with Ginna at nap time. Lately, one of the games we have played is to pretend that she is a baby again, and I give her some pats and sing some songs. On one particular day, she asked if she could be the mommy and I be the baby. Next thing I remember….she was standing at my side trying to wake me up. Apparently, she was quite good at getting the “baby” to sleep and then slipping out of the room!!