Caleb loves the toddler bed

This is a bit dated, but here's some video we took the first day we put the toddler bed in Caleb's room. I think he mistook it for a trampoline, but, nevertheless, he was pretty excited.

blah blah Wednesday

I don't suppose I've written much about this, but about two months ago my publisher decided to reorganize itself around SPU's or "spews" if you like: strategic publishing units. Gone is the comfortable fireside glow of the word "imprint" to be replaced by this term only modernity could love. My imprint, W Publishing Group, was split in two, one side becoming practical theology or "practical living" and the other side systematic theology or "spiritual growth." This term spiritual growth is amusing. We publish Hank Hanegraaff, Brian Maclaren, Mike Erre--authors that investigate spiritual themes (some books, lets face it, are really extended sermons), but rather than call us something like "ideas and issues" we get the postmodern-lite spiritual growth. At first it seemed like, aside from some book shuffling, nothing much was changing. A few added responsibilities. Some new skills. But then my boss turned in his resignation, and now the forces of opportunity and chaos have switched into a much higher gear.

L. is continuing her transformation into a successful freelance writer. She just picked up another gig a week or so ago for wcities.com, and she's probably going to pick up more before Summertime. This is what she went to school for, and I'm glad to see her doing it. When we were dating, she wrote editorial pieces for The Elizabethton Star, and shortly after we moved to Massachusetts she wrote for a Christian rag based in the North Shore. Words make you aware of things. You start writing, you start coming aware. Our conversations around the house are made that much more interesting with every new piece she's doing. I like it.

God gave Kara a math brain. She's bringing home tests--yes they test you in first grade now because, you know, life is so urgent for us here in the twenty-first century--of eighty or so math problems and she's doing well on them. The other night for fun I substituted an x for a number in an equation and gave it to her. So, I said, what do you think the x stands for? She barely looked over from her coloring: five. What about this? Two. Her spelling is getting better also. Really, whatever funk Kara was in last year, she seems to be pulling out of it now.

Caleb finally sleeps in the truck

Shhhhh! Caleb is sleeping in his toddler bed for the first time! Don't wake him. L. found him curled up with blankets around his little people airport. She would have taken his photograph, flash and everything, if the batteries hadn't run out. As it was, I took some night-vision Hi8 video of the sleeping lad--who knows if that will ever be converted into something available to the twenty-first century.

But wait . . . did you know about the recent addition of the toddler bed? Have I mentioned it in all of its amazingly adorable fire-engine sweetness? Did I say something about the real working light on top of the plastic cab?

I'm on day three of a neck cramp. I got these a few times in Junior High, and then again when I was writing my thesis, and then suddenly Friday morning I woke up with it. Not a thing you can do, really, just find a place to put your head and wait it out. I have taken a zillion milligrams of Ibuprofen in the last 52 hours, applied that marvelous chemical substance Icy Hot quite liberally to my neck and shoulders, and alternated cold and hot presses. Nothing really works. See, it is exciting things like this that keep you coming back to this blog.

Several large organizational projects have been put into the past tense in recent weeks. We got rid of a lot of stuff. The Pampered Chef stuff has been weeded like tares at the last judgment. Caleb's clothes were picked through, and my bookshelves migrated into the living room. (It is not commonly known, but bookshelves do slowly move around a house in the manner of subject-specific ents.) Besides completing household projects, L is also between writing assignments, though she has picked up a travel-writing gig. We'll blog more on that later. The resulting hiatus means that L is scrapbooking again.

I always like it when she does this. People really love the scrapbooks she has made over the years--we have a whole shelf of them. People love flipping through them, and their thematic quality provides a lot more narrative shape to what they are looking at than if we'd just thrust a pack of four-by-sixes at them. Plus it is always interesting to see the crafty stuff that she adds to it. Like just now she is scrapping our visit to the aquarium in Gatlinburg last summer. Funky scissors and multicolored paper come together and next thing you know she's made all this interesting coral with fish swimming around it as a frame for the lower portion of each page.

Finally, I've been reading the final draft of a new book coming out by Bible Answer Man Hank Hanegraaff (my neck was stuck in a downward position, may as well put that to good use.) It is amazing to me that dispensationalism even exists. Once you expose the silliness that God has a separate soteriological track for Jews and Gentiles--an error patently obvious for anyone even casually reading the New Testament without reference to eisegetical "here's how to think" notes--the whole of its nineteenth century architecture crumbles.