Some of these board games reviewed by Matt at Defective Yeti sound like a lot of fun.
Update: Matt’s Games for Kids And Adults. Matt’s Games For Toddlers (scroll down).
bearing blog
bear – ing n 1 the manner in which one comports oneself; 2 the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~]; 4 pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation; 5 the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].
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Wow.
"The Shape of a Mother:" a blog of pictures of women, before, during, and after pregnancy. I have to say I love the banner photo, grotesque as it is.
Probably not safe for work, so you’ve been warned.
The photos of women pregnant with twins are pretty stunning. I’m surprised one can stand up when the belly sticks out that far!
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Coming out of his shell, so to speak.
Oscar, age 5-nearly-6, is at Reptiles and Amphibians Day Camp this week. I have to leave to go pick him up in about half an hour.
It looks like a cool camp. When I arrived early yesterday, the children were standing in a circle with their hands behind their backs, while another child in the middle turned around slowly, solemnly waving at the others a metal antenna as big as himself. Turned out that it was Turtle Day, and they were playing "Turtle Telemetry." One of the kids in the circle, the "turtle," was clutching the transmitter. I guess the nature center must track the movements of some of the local turtles, inspiring this game.
What a milestone! It was not that long ago that he was pretty reluctant to be left anywhere for any reason. We used to call it the "I hate the teacher" syndrome. Ski lessons, swim lessons, nature center classes, it didn’t matter. I don’t want to go. I hate the teacher. A year ago I signed him up for Catholic Vacation Bible School at our parish, from 9 to 12 for five mornings, and the first day I stayed in his classroom to keep him from getting distraught. (There were perhaps three other children in his classroom whose parents had to stay.) After the first day he was fine. And here I am leaving him in the suburbs for five hours in a row! With a brown bag lunch, even! And he’s perfectly happy about it. Amazing.
As opportunities have come up that have required him to separate from us for a half-hour or longer, we’ve tried to gently nudge him ever so slightly outside his comfort level. I do have respect for parents who choose to wait until a child is completely confident before starting lessons or activities or hourly child-care situations. But we’ve tried to be sensitive to Oscar’s anxiousness, and are willing to pull back/cancel/stay in the room/take more time when he needs it, and so we’ve felt pretty comfortable challenging him to step out a little bit. It’s not difficult to back off if necessary.
We tried to start swim lessons when he was four. Initially we thought private lessons, with Dad in the water close by, would be best. The first lesson, he clung to Dad and refused to listen to the teacher, telling us afterward that he didn’t like her. The second lesson wasn’t any better. So — we stopped those and decided to wait. A couple of months later he had his first ski lessons, on a family trip to Utah, and (shockingly to us) he seemed much happier in the group lesson than in a private lesson. So when we got back we signed him up for group swimming lessons. And that went better. He liked having the other kids around him. Maybe it took some of the pressure off.
He came up with a "goodbye ritual" that helped him separate. Two kisses, two hugs, four waves and the "little hand". Woe to the mommy or daddy that got the numbers wrong or put them out of order! It was the difference between a child who dried his tears and ran off to join the other kids, and the child who clung to daddy’s knees and wept for many minutes. We soon learned that if we took the time to be present and visible through the first session of some class or lesson, walked him through it once so to speak, he’d be able to go it alone for subsequent sessions. And also, from watching him through the window at his swimming lessons, learned that for some reason he will say he didn’t like it and doesn’t want to go back, when we can see him laughing and having fun the whole time. (Never did figure that one out. Eventually he began to admit to enjoying himself.)
Every child’s different; who knows what patience Milo and unborn #3 will need from us? But it’s nice to see Oscar grown so confident, asking us to read the brochure to him so he can pick out a camp for next year, maybe something even longer, even farther from home. Time’s fun when you’re having flies, as perhaps he’s learning now, since it’s Frog Day.
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Hey! This’ll be useful!
The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is now online in English.
Together with the comprehensive, searchable CCC available from several sources (here’s one), this’ll be a great resource for anyone who wants to know more about the Church and her teachings. It’s slim enough to treat as a reader rather than a reference book.
The Compendium is truly something to get excited about, as the material in it is presented very simply and directly, with the tried-and-true Q&A format. It all fits on one page of HTML! But it retains the structure of the Catechism, which is handy for those who want to turn to the appropriate section in the larger work to find out more.
Here’s a sample entry, from the section that’s based on the sentences and phrases of the Creed.
“Jesus Christ descended into hell;
on the third day He rose again from the dead.”125. What is the “hell” into which Jesus descended?
632-637
This “hell” was different from the hell of the damned. It was the state of all those, righteous and evil, who died before Christ. With his soul united to his divine Person Jesus went down to the just in hell who were awaiting their Redeemer so they could enter at last into the vision of God. When he had conquered by his death both death and the devil “who has the power of death” (Hebrews 2:14), he freed the just who looked forward to the Redeemer and opened for them the gates of heaven.
The "632-637" refers to paragraph numbers in the larger Catechism. So if you go to the table of contents with paragraph numbers, it’s easy to find the relevant section where you can learn more.
Paragraph 1. Christ Descended into Hell
632 The frequent New Testament affirmations that Jesus was "raised from the dead" presuppose that the crucified one sojourned in the realm of the dead prior to his resurrection. This was the first meaning given in the apostolic preaching to Christ’s descent into hell: that Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there.
633 Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, "hell" – Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek – because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into "Abraham’s bosom": "It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell." Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.
634 "The gospel was preached even to the dead." The descent into hell brings the Gospel message of salvation to complete fulfilment. This is the last phase of Jesus’ messianic mission, a phase which is condensed in time but vast in its real significance: the spread of Christ’s redemptive work to all men of all times and all places, for all who are saved have been made sharers in the redemption.
635 Christ went down into the depths of death so that "the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live." Jesus, "the Author of life", by dying destroyed "him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and [delivered] all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage." Henceforth the risen Christ holds "the keys of Death and Hades", so that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth." …
636 By the expression "He descended into hell", the Apostles’ Creed confesses that Jesus did really die and through his death for us conquered death and the devil "who has the power of death" (Heb 2:14).
637 In his human soul united to his divine person, the dead Christ went down to the realm of the dead. He opened heaven’s gates for the just who had gone before him.
There’s no search utility on the Compendium online, but it’s preceded by a detailed table of contents. And of course, one could work back from the Catechism, using a search utility to find items of interest and then turning to the corresponding passages in the Compendium for the short-and-sweet explanation.
It’s so easy to find out what Catholic doctrine has to say these days. I wish every religious group (at least those that have a well-defined doctrinal system) would put their stuff up online for everyone to see, study, and compare. I don’t just mean holy books, which are rarely self-evident, but rather developed doctrine.
It’s there for a few. For example, here’re some links to the Book of Common Prayer (Anglicans), which of course includes a catechism. The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod (LCMS) has a very well-organized set of pages that explain their beliefs and practices through documents both new and old. I don’t know of any others.
h/t Amy Welborn.
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Jake Shimabukuro.
Wow. Is that really only one ukulele?
H/t First Things (7/14/06).
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Prematurity.
"One in eight babies now is born prematurely." By that they mean, before the end of the 37th week of gestation.
Personally, I’m curious how many of those are born early because of maltimed unnecessary inductions or scheduled c-sections. The article alludes to that possibility when it suggests one way to combat premature birth:
[The Institute of Medicine recommended that m]ore pregnant women receive a first-trimester ultrasound exam, the only way to be certain of the fetus’ exact age. That’s particularly important if the woman later has labor induced or a Caesarean section before her due date, either elective or because of a possible health problem.
Fair enough, except for that "the only way to be certain" bit. Somebody’s never heard of fertility awareness. Granted, it’s unrealistic from a public-health standpoint to recommend that "more women who may become pregnant track their basal body temperatures," but that’s no excuse for the inaccuracy here. And incidentally, do we really want to go the route where ultrasounds in the first trimester are considered a routine and necessary part of prenatal care? OTOH, it may be a reasonable choice for women who are at risk of preterm labor.
And then there’s the artificial conception connection:
Specialists should strengthen guidelines that reduce the number of multiple births as a result of infertility treatment. During in-vitro fertilization, doctors often implant several embryos at once into a woman’s womb. That number has been dropping thanks to guidelines from the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, issued in 1999 and tightened in 2004 — and triplet-and-higher multiple births have dropped, too.
I’m glad for those guidelines, especially if it means that fewer embryos will be created and tossed in the haz-waste bin. Doesn’t make it right, but reduces the harm by a small bit. I wish people would stop calling this "infertility treatment" though.
But it won’t be easy to follow the example of some European countries that implant just one embryo at a time, said Dr. William Gibbons, president of the Society of Assisted Reproductive Technology. Those countries also pay for women to undergo multiple IVF attempts, while very few American women have insurance coverage for a procedure that can cost more than $15,000 per try, he noted.
"If we want to buy into this, society needs to buy into it," said Gibbons — who added that parts of Europe also found they saved money on treating preemies even after paying for repeated single-embryo IVF attempts.
Bleah. They’d probably save more money if they didn’t pay for any IVF attempts. I’m sure the folks at the SART would love to have the taxpayers and insurance customers foot the bill for IVF. Fifteen thousand bucks for an elective procedure that doesn’t relieve any condition?
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Grail.
Matthew at the Shrine has a fascinating article on legends of the Holy Grail.
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Comments lost.
Typepad had a systemwide glitch on Wednesday, June 12. If you posted a comment yesterday it may have been lost. I only know of two lost comments — one by me and one by James — and as far as I know they can’t be recovered. Sorry.
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Good writing (reposted after Typepad glitch).
Two posts by Jimmy Akin on Wednesday that exemplify clear explication of Church teaching in specific circumstances. Both are responses to questions sent in by readers.
In one post, Jimmy lays out the rules for choosing godparents. I like it because with the last four short paragraphs he sums up the different possibilities concisely and accurately.
In the other post, Jimmy begins with a question about whether failure to take heart medication counts as "suicide," explains the significance of intention in coloring self-destructive acts and non-acts, and deftly goes on to explain how, as medical technology has evolved, the ethical test of which medical treatments may be refused has itself evolved from "ordinary or extraordinary means?" to "proportionate or disproportionate means?" Along the way he pauses to define "proportionalism" and to show how considering proportionality is not the same thing as falling into that moral error.
I just think they’re great examples of question-answering. See for yourself.
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Math discussion at the dinner table, via the 5-year-old.
"If two plus two were six, counting by twos would be different."
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The generation before.
Rod Dreher asks a good question at the Crunchy Con blog.
I’m 39 years old, and the sort of person to resort quickly to anger at the previous generation for so thoroughly trashing our heritage, especially within the Catholic Church. But as is often remarked, things wouldn’t have collapsed so suddenly within 1960s Catholicism in the US and Europe if everything had been okay in the 1950s. I guess I’m not really interested in wasting any more energy deploring the revolutionaries, and instead want to understand what made them revolutionaries so that those of us whose task it is to rebuild from the ruins they left us don’t make mistakes that could lead our children and grandchildren to such a suicidal backlash.
Any ideas? Was the 1960s-1970s upheaval in the U. S. Church just part of the general, whole-culture zeitgeist, or was there something sinister lurking in 1940s and 1950s style Catholicism specifically? Something that the 60s-70s people were trying to correct, and wound up overcorrecting?
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Yes, I do all my own stunts.
This morning about ten-thirty I buckled my five-year-old and two-year-0ld into their car seats and started off to Melissa’s house via a fairly busy north-south surface route. As I approached an intersection I saw a brown car pull partway out from the right, stop, pull a little farther, stop again. It caught my eye and as I drew closer I saw there was a young woman, barefoot, her hair unkempt, kneeling on the hood of the car. I couldn’t make out what she was doing but she looked like she was shouting at the driver.
Rather than drive across the car’s path, I hit my brakes. What the — ? My hand reached into my bag and fumbled for my cell phone, but didn’t find it before the car pulled out in front of me, tires squealing, turning left across me, the woman still clinging to the hood of the car, turning her head this way and that as if it see where he was driving. My windows were open. I didn’t even think about it. I shouted out the window at the woman, "Hey! Are you okay?"
The car screeched to a stop, facing the opposite way. The woman came down off the hood, or maybe she fell when the car stopped, and opened the passenger door. She looked up at me for an instant; I repeated my question; she nodded and got in. Then the driver’s side door opened, and the man who was driving put a foot out and turned towards me and began to yell abusive words at me, started to get out of the car. I whipped my head around and put the pedal to the floor. Behind me in the rear view mirror I saw the car making a three-point turn, and I realized he was going to follow me. I had no idea what he planned to do if he caught up with me. I didn’t want to find out. My two kids were in the back seat. I’m eight months pregnant.
I sped down the street — no one was in front of me really — and turned right at the next intersection, taking me into a residential neighborhood. Vaguely I remembered reading somewhere that, if someone’s tailing you, you should make a series of quick successive right-hand turns. I never really thought about it, but now that I’ve done it, it makes a lot of sense. For one thing, a couple of consecutive right turns rules out the possibility that it’s only a coincidence that the same car is following you. And that’s what happened — fast. Two right turns and in the rear view mirrow the car was still behind me, tires squealing around the corner. It was hard to turn the wheel as fast as I wanted, because even with the seat as far back as it goes and the wheel tilted up, the bottom of the wheel digs into my pregnant belly.
I slowed just enough to make a third right turn without losing control of the car, blowing through a stop sign and stomping the accelerator all the way down to the floor, passing houses and trees, and hoping that no pedestrians stepped into my path. (That’s another good reason to make right turns. If you’re going to careen illegally through an intersection, it’s the move least likely to cross another’s path.) The car was still behind me, and could see me, when I made the fourth turn, back onto the busy street I started on and heading the same direction. I thought there was a chance that the guy was far enough behind me that I could make another turn while I was still out of sight, and at that moment a left turn opened up.
There were people in that intersection, which had a coffee shop or something like that on the corner, but they were all on their way out of it and I thought I had a clear path. I leaned on the steering wheel and shot through that intersection. Didn’t hit anyone. Bystanders on the sidewalk turned and shouted angrily at me. I wish I could go back and apologize. Couldn’t, just then. I didn’t know if he’d seen me or not. I had a few more turns to make.
I blew through three or four more stop signs, this time making random turns, glancing fearfully up at the rearview mirror, but he didn’t appear again. I made my way to another neighborhood, finally slowing down for the stop signs, and eventually I was sure I had lost him.
I drove the rest of the way to Melissa’s house in a near stupor. When I pulled into her driveway and reached for the ignition, I was surprised to find the radio was on. I didn’t remember the sound of the radio. I was unable to calm down for the rest of the day. Kept wondering if it was possible that the guy got my license plate number and could track me down, find my house. I know it’s not likely but the fact that it’s not entirely impossible kept nagging at me.
It’s no wonder, really, that people don’t get involved when they see a bad situation unfolding in front of them. I assume that what I stumbled upon was some kind of domestic-violence incident. The way the driver of the car started and stopped it in jerks. The blank look she gave me, nodding I’m okay, as she got into the car. When I saw her there on the roof of a car with its tires squealing as it rounded a turn, all I saw was She’s in trouble. I didn’t really stop to think, Somebody in that car is causing her a lot of trouble, and he could cause me trouble too. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t have shouted. Who knows if it did more harm than good, even to her situation, whatever it was?
Anyway, it’s over, we survived, my beat-up ’93 Oldsmobile cornered better than his beat-up whenever whatever, and no, officer, I didn’t get the licence plate number, I was too busy getting myself and my kids the hell out of there. Just wanted to let you know in case something else happens later, so you know if there’s a pattern. But I’m still shaken, I will be for a few days at least, and I don’t know if I’ll stop the next time something happens in front of me like that.
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