Caleb Does Battle with Ultrasound

So, here we are again, at an ultrasound. Yesterday (Monday), Lynn-nore (and I) went to the paranatologist. There’s Caleb, sleeping soundly, that is until the wand-weilding, chatty assitant wakes him up, in which case he does what anyone else would do. He rolls around a little bit, tries to get away from the annoying sensation, and scratches himself. In comes the paranatolgist himself, a young, dark-headed man in a clean, blue shirt and snazzy red tie. He has a breezy way about him, and a frantic, headlong manner of manipulating the ultrasound as if we’d just sent a bee in there to take photos. “Everything looks great,” he says; and, truly, for Lynn-nore and I both, seeing Caleb fussing around under the prying eyes of that sonogram, he became a little baby boy. That’s him, that’s our new baby!

As for today, (Wednesday), Lynn-nore has come down ill, Kara has decided she wants to play the flute, and I’m just working. I was too "stretched" to work on the review last night, and am feeling a little guilty about that this morning. The weather reports are saying, “Snow!” but it doesn’t feel like snow outside. Actually, Spring continued to make herself known in the category of ‘more’ as in more birds, more life in the trees and plants, more of a change in the air, oh, and more leftover sand everywhere. One year, Lynn-nore and I were doing spring cleaning and swept up a good half-cup of sand from the floors. It is painful to get into the cars, knowing that I’m just tracking more sand everywhere. Kara, speaking of sand, is so ready for summer. She asked Lynn-nore the other day if she could “wear her ‘flops to the beach.”

Lynn-nore and I attended a monthly parent-training session at Beacon. It isn’t affiliated with Beacon but is, rather, an extension of a ministry called “Peace in the Home” run by some good people, Robert and Melissa Partington. The theme this week was on identifying values: What values do you want to instill in your children? And, not only what, but how. The Partington’s detailed two ways that values are instilled, by modeling and by what they called “releasing”, which is basically giving your children a chance to try their “value” skills. Interestingly enough, totally independent of each other, the first value that popped into our heads was: truthfulness. The Partington’s recommended that values be identified and even written out where everyone can see them. It reminded me of the new CEO of Tyco who said they had their corporate values etched into the glass of their conference room. The Partington’s goal in every parenting session is to urge us to bring what is habitual out into the intentional.