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].

Diaper-free babies in the NYT.

Here’s the article.

About 2,000 people across the country have joined Internet groups and e-mail lists to learn more about the techniques of encouraging a baby – too young to walk or talk – to go in a toilet, a sink or a pot. Through a nonprofit group, Diaper Free Baby (www.diaperfreebaby.org), 77 local groups have formed in 35 states to encourage the practice. One author’s how-to books on the subject have sold about 50,000 copies.

Nice to see this getting some mainstream attention.

Soon after my second son Milo was born, I taught him to pee in the sink or potty, or wherever I wanted him to, in response to a "cue" noise (a low, glottal growl). It worked like a charm; he would "hold it," he would squirm to let me know he needed to pee, and he would pee when I held him in position.

I wasn’t consistent with it, though. We used diapers too, first just as a backup or in the car,and gradually we got lazy and "lost" the cueing. By the time he was a year old he was back in diapers whenever we left the house. At home, though, we kept the potties out, and he would still use them if he happened to be butt-naked. Just a couple of months ago, he refused to wear diapers anymore, and that was it. Definitely an easy toilet training. I wonder if his early experiences as an "EC’ed" baby (where EC stands for "elimination communication," a common term among those in the know) helped him toilet train as a toddler.

A couple of our little friends were/are being raised diaper free. I can vouch for it — the method works beautifully, if your lifestyle allows for it.

For families who practice the technique, the advantages are many: savings in the cost of diapers, which can reach $3,000 a child; less guilt about contributing to the 22 billion disposable diapers that end up in landfills every year; no diaper rash, and a nursery that doesn’t reek of diaper pail. They also note that age 2, a common age for toilet training, is a time of notorious willfulness and a terrible age to start teaching any child anything.

Misconceptions abound:

"It doesn’t sound like anything I would ever even attempt to try," said Erinn Marchetti, who has two preschool-age children and was shopping recently at Toys "R" Us in Times Square. "It’s hard enough when they’re 2 and 3."

Sounds like she assumes it would be harder to train a baby. It’s not. I’ve done both and the baby was easier. My first son, I tried to train starting at age 2. We didn’t finish until he was 3 years, 7 months.

And get a load of this one. I wonder how many Toys R Us shoppers the reporter had to interview before hearing this one.

Another mother in Toys "R" Us, who offered her opinion but wanted to remain anonymous, was aghast at the notion. "Have you read Freud?" she asked, worrying about the method’s long-term effects. "I imagine it’s going to come out in sexual ways."

An "expert" weighs in:

"Even if you’re getting them to go in a pot as a young infant, I don’t know if it will have any long-term impact for all the effort you have to go through," said Dr. Mark Wolraich, author of the academy’s "Guide to Toilet Training" (Bantam Books, 2003). "The risk is, if it’s not working and the parents are frustrated, they’re creating more negative interactions with their child."

Seems to me that "if it’s not working and the parents are frustrated," they’ll… buy diapers.

Anyway, I was glad to see it in the news.

Oct 8, 2005

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“Narnia: Deep magic.”

What a relief. Barbara Nicolosi’s seen the new Narnia film, and she says it’s great.

The movie is lovely. The print we saw had some special effects still in stages, but it didn’t detract from the stunning vision the movie radiates off the screen. England is musty and dreary. Narnia is a wonderland. Tke kids are going to love it. They are going to want to walk through that wardrobe with Lucy time after time.

But best of all, contrary to Peter Jackson’s agenda-aversion manhandling of Tolkien’s classic, here, the tone of LW&W is as close to the book as probably could have been achieved. All the lines the Christians are worrying about are in there. All the scenes you want to see are here and lovingly rendered. So everybody can relax and get ready to enjoy, and we can all take the Wonderful World of Disney back into our hearts — and save the studio for 2005! Truly, our forgiveness is completely saving…

I truly cannot wait. H/t Amy Welborn.

Oct 8, 2005

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They should get a better machine.

I decided to Google myself — the blog, actually — and Google’s black box chewed up "bearing blog" and spit out this link for No.2:

Nicolas Chaunu, carrying the project Emob, "the effective, dynamic elearning and deeply humanized", informs us of the creation of a bearing blog on the elearning.

The corner of the e-learning was launched one month ago. The other part of the blog relates to the creation of a company which will be born next October and which will be specialized in the creation of contents of multi-media formation on line.

Good corner to exchange with the actors of the field and to make known themselves on the Fabric.

Huh? Oh, I get it, it’s a machine translation from the original French. The term "the creation of a bearing blog on the elearning" is really supposed to be "the creation of a blog bearing on the subject of e-learning."

By this post I hope to make known myself on the Fabric (Toile). Does that mean the Web, or the Net?

Oct 8, 2005

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You know who you are.

The name of this blog made me think of some friends of mine.

Oct 8, 2005

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Ann Althouse commenters rock. And do show tunes.

Ann Althouse, she who was quoted in the New York Times saying blogging is fun, throws her commenters a puzzle (I said such-and-such, can you guess the context?) and they run with it. (Wait, can you run with a puzzle?)

Some of them seem to have forgotten the original post:

Scalia!
I just read a judge named Scalia,
Despite what I have found,
my land may not belong to me!

Scalia! I just read a judge named Scalia,
His arguments were sound,
But still they may take away my property!

I had to cover my mouth to keep from embarrassing myself in the coffee shop. Read the whole thing.

Oct 8, 2005

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“Home-schooling is sort of like a college student’s virginity…”

"…People figure it’s a mark of religiosity, but nearly as often it’s just personal taste, or a lack of better options."

From OpinionJournal, in an article subtitled "Home-schoolers of all stripes find common ground in some good, old-fashioned books."

One thing that his most popular books had in common, Mr. [Pat] Farenga[, who used to run a home-schooler’s bookstore,] says, is that they tended to be "about kids . . . figuring things out for themselves. Not like ‘Sesame Street,’ with adults showing children how to do things." Mr. Farenga cites the popularity among home-schoolers of C.S. Lewis’s "Chronicles of Narnia," both a seminal epic by a great Christian apologist and an adventure tale of self-sufficient children, with their parents conspicuously absent.

Read it, it’s good. Via Auntie Suzanne, who, by the way, likes our cooking.

Oct 8, 2005

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I’m a cheater.

Exchange between Mark and me, last night:

Me: Hey, you’re reading my book.

Mark: So?

Me: That’s the reason I keep accumulating piles of books on my table. You take them.

Mark: Oh, that’s the reason, is it?

Me: Um, yes, something like that, anyway.

Mark: You know what the real reason is? You cheat on your books, that’s why.

Serial monography, maybe?

Oct 8, 2005

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Glass chalices and sex abuse.

Domenico at Bettnet, along with the National Catholic Reporter, makes a good point:

While the matter of what chalices are made of or what pronouns to use are objectively important in their place, if we can’t stop priests from molesting kids and bishops from protecting those priests, why bother?

It’s a matter of perspective, says Domenico:

…arguing over those questions should take a back seat to the very real problem of the scandal of priestly and episcopal malfeasance. When measured against each other it can seem like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Good point. I haven’t commented very much on the abuse scandal, and I should probably try to — that is, when I have something to add to the conversation. Nonetheless, these words from the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:21) are trustworthy:

…His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’

Context? The parable is found immediately after the parable of the ten virgins (five foolish, five wise — the foolish ones fail to prepare and get locked out of the wedding, the wise ones prepare and are welcomed) and immediately before what C. S. Lewis called "the frightening parable of the sheep and the goats" (in which one’s salvation depends entirely on corporal works of mercy). The message of this chapter moves from the self outward: Prepare yourself wisely. Serve your master faithfully. Serve the world generously.

The thing that bothers me about the chalices and other small matters is, precisely, their smallness.

Bishops looking the other way while priests abused children and adolescents: a big problem of disobedience, with a huge amount of inertia — it takes a big, big push for multiple bishops to turn around, submit to obedience, surely the first steps in solving the problem. (I do not mean holding committees to draft working documents of reconciliation. The first step that will really move us in the right direction is confession, repentance, penance, restitution: from the bishops themselves, every one who knowingly let this happen and every one who remained willfully ignorant. Maybe they’ve all, already, done so; I hope so.)

Bishops shuffling glass chalices around on the altar: a small matter of disobedience (and disobedience it is). But so easily turned around! So easy to return to obedience, quietly and without public comment. All it takes is to wake up one morning and say to oneself: By gum, I’m going to dust off the metal chalices in the back of the sacristy cupboard and use those when I say Mass today! Goodness, let’s not even worry just yet about, say, reminding the pastors of the parishes in the diocese that glass isn’t allowed, let alone enforcing it. I mean simply doing it yourself, when you say Mass. We old-fashioned types call that "setting an example."

Perspective — the very same perspective that Dom et al. ask for — demands that we note that becoming faithful in small matters is much more easily done than becoming faithful in large matters. The opportunity to repent of a small thing and to become faithful in a small thing is truly a great one, a generous gift of an opportunity, a chance to "take Heaven by a trick of love," to paraphrase Ste. Therese.

What a gift! If God gives us such an easy way to be faithful and we don’t take it and use it wisely, what will He say to us? The moral of the parable of the talents is For to everyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. Maybe it would be better to look to a related parable, the parable of the faithful steward (Luke 12:42-48): Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.

We have no guarantees that a person who is faithful in small matters will execute larger responsibilities well. (The logical corollary to this truth is called, ironically, the Peter Principle.) But it’s those persons who are entrusted with large matters, for the simple reason that the other people have proven themselves faithless in small matters, and why on earth would we want to keep on trusting them?

Small matters, matter.

Oct 8, 2005

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Cinnamon buns.

I like cinnamon buns. They are my favorite pastry. But I do not eat them often, nor feed them to my children, despite the fact that my husband, for a living, compels robots to make them, or something like that. He WILL NOT BRING THEM HOME to us, though. He brings chocolate chips aplenty. I do not like chocolate chips.

On that note, here’s something I read in the breed ’em and weep archives that rang true, not just because of the cinnamon buns, but because I routinely say completely illogical things like this.

“IF YOU CAN’T BEHAVE AFTER A CINNAMON BUN,” I heard myself say, “THEN YOU WILL NEVER, EVER, EVER HAVE ANOTHER CINNAMON BUN AGAIN, AS LONG AS YOU LIVE.”

…“Why?” she asked, suddenly worried.

“Because you can’t handle them,” I said. …

“Because a cinnamon bun has too much SUGAR and when you have too much SUGAR, you stop behaving, and THEN you start twirling, and THEN you start falling in front of SPEEDING CARS, and then you get RUN OVER, and they KILL YOU and you’re DEAD. You will DIE if you have another cinnamon bun, and as a family, we can’t afford that. No more cinnamon buns, EVER. Do you understand me?”

Maybe this is why I am not allowed to have cinnamon buns.

Oct 7, 2005

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Legion.

Every time I click a link that sends me to Waiterrant, I’m impressed. Here’s yet another.

H/T Fructus Ventris.

Oct 7, 2005

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Jesus, Mary, and the rest of us: Four quotes from the Gospel of John.
OK, so bear with me in this one assumption: When in the Gospels, Jesus interacts with an unnamed someone, that person is a sort of "universal" who represents us. That is, Jesus interacts with — speaks with — teaches — us Christians throughout history, through that person.

Now. Four exchanges that have a certain symmetry:

The mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine."

His mother said to the servers, "Do whatever he tells you."

[H]e said to his mother, "Woman, behold your son."

[H]e said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother."

That’s John 2:3, John 2:5, John 19:26, and John 19:27, respectively.

What do all of these utterances have in common? Well, all of them involve Jesus, Mary, and unnamed other individuals.
- MARY speaks to JESUS concerning INDIVIDUALS (the wedding party).
- MARY speaks to INDIVIDUALS (servers) concerning JESUS.
- JESUS speaks to MARY concerning an INDIVIDUAL (the unnamed — even though we say it is John — disciple).
- JESUS speaks to AN INDIVIDUAL (the same disciple) concerning MARY.
If you accept my assumption, then these utterances represent
- MARY speaking to JESUS concerning US.
- MARY speaking to US concerning JESUS.
- JESUS speaking to MARY concerning US.
- JESUS speaking to US concerning MARY.
The utterances occur during two events that bracket Jesus’s public life: the first miracle, and the Crucifixion (the latter conversation happens, literally, between Him on the Cross and the others standing on earth). So what are these utterances?
- She tells Him of our plight, more obvious to her than to us: They have no wine.
- She tells us: "Do whatever He tells you."
- He tells her: Behold, your children.
- He tells us: Behold, your mother.
Herein is the whole story of our relationship with the Mother of God.

At Cana: She, perceptive, asks her son to notice us. Isn’t it likely that He, too, had noticed the wine was almost out? Maybe the They have no wine is more than a simple declaration, implying pointedly: Aren’t you going to do something about it? Given His response to her in John 2:4, which is a bit more than, "Gosh, you’re right, Mom," it certainly seems that He took it that way. So even though He knows of our plight, as well as (or more likely, better than) His mother does, still she tells Him: They have no wine. They have need of You.

She tells us: Do whatever he tells you. She points unfailingly to Him. When we look to her, she points to Him: He, you servants of another, is the one you must obey.

Of course, there’s more to that story. It has a happy ending: The servants obey, the water becomes wine, and the bridegroom is unexpectedly pleased.

From the Cross, Jesus commands Mary: Behold, your son. If the disciple is taken to be standing there for us, He is telling his mother, Take all my disciples as your own children. Adopt them into your heart.

And from the Cross, Jesus commands the disciple, and through the disciple, us: Behold, your mother. I give her to you as your own. Honor her, love her, obey her, become her child. This, of course, brings us full circle, in a way, because to obey Mary — remember what she told us at Cana? — is nothing more than to obey Jesus. In everything she does, says, is, Mary tells us to look to her Son.

This story has a happy ending as well — even before the Ending to end all endings, that is. I mean, the part that goes, "And from that hour the disciple took her into his home." The disciple did obey. And having Mary in his home, at his hearth, in his heart, as his own mother, he had always a voice telling him, "Do whatever he tells you."

Right after that, the Gospel says, Jesus was "aware that everything was now finished."

I know that a lot of people think that Catholic devotion to Mary obscures or replaces the devotion due to Christ. Maybe — maybe — it’s possible to be so devoted to Mary that one fails to honor Christ.

But is it? That is like being so devoted to the command to love one another that one fails to honor Christ, or like being so devoted to the command to go and sin no more that one fails to honor Christ. As long as we honor her exactly as Christ taught us to — as our mother — we cannot go wrong. Indeed, that is how the Catholic Church teaches us to honor her. Combine that mode of honoring with our belief that she is Blessed, a living mother who can hear us and who can pray to God for us, and there is the reason behind all our devotions to her, plain and simply laid out.

This alone doesn’t contain the rationale for everything we say about her — sinlessness, assumpted-into-heaven, perpetual virginity and the like — but it does go a long way toward encouraging the kind of attitude we have toward her, which many Christians are missing out on through no fault of their own.
Oct 7, 2005

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A good gimmick.

CIC Bookstore, an online purveyor of Catholic books and religious articles, has a helpful resource for all of us: the Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan.

…an outstanding guide to a lifetime of great Catholic reading.

Pope John Paul II has encouraged us to rediscover the riches of our Catholic faith and to share the message of the Gospel with all we meet. We Catholics can do this principally by living a life of holiness in the ordinary circumstances of our daily lives — holiness inspired and informed by good spiritual reading.

The 106 books are all available for purchase (natch). Seriously, though, I took a look at the list and it’s pretty good. I’d pare it down somewhat, myself.

Oct 7, 2005

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