The 4-year-old was playing “This Little Piggy” with the 1-year-old. This version goes
This little piggy went to Wal-Mart
This little piggy had pudding
This little piggy had none
This little piggy had some roast beef
This little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home.
One show that my son watches every morning is The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That. I have been amazed at what he has learned from it. We were running errands to day and out of the back seat I hear, “Bats use echo location.” I was shocked. He may not understand what echo location is but it’s something that he’ll remember.
On a side note, the Cat is voiced by Martin Short. I thought he was dead!
Yesterday at 2:57pm, after 11 hours of labor, Tammy gave birth to our second child, our second boy. It’s difficult to describe the feelings that I had during the ordeal. W (that’s boy #2), we were told, was posterior and would be difficult. It was.
Tammy is amazing! I’m sure that I would have died. She pushed our son out with sure willpower. It didn’t matter what we did on the outside, he was going to descend posterior. And it didn’t matter who said what, Tammy was going to have that baby the way that she wanted – vaginally and unmedicated. However, by the grace of God, W turned just before exiting and came out the way he should.
Both mama and baby are doing great.
Here is a picture of the brothers:
One of D’s favorite songs is the Happy Birthday song. When a member of the family has a birthday he’ll walk around the house singing happy birthday to them until the next birthday arrives, then he switches to that next person. Tammy and I have been trying to teach D about the meaning of the 4th of July and it must have clicked because today the song changed.
Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday dear America! Happy Birthday to you.
Hopefully the Founders are smiling as much as I am.
During lunch today D started singing “If you’re happy and you know it.” Well, he confused the lyrics with “The wise man and the foolish man.” His new song had these lyrics:
If you’re happy and you know it build a house upon a rock. If you’re happy and you know it build a house upon a rock. If you’re happy and you know it then your face will surely build on a rock. If you’re happy and you know it build a house upon a rock.
The Cooper family has a proud tradition of making up silly songs, or changing the words to existing songs, but I’ve never seen it start this early.
D is 3 years old and he absolutely loves movies, just like his dad. I’m pretty sure if we would let him, he’d just sit and watch movies all day. As we watch various shows, randomly he’ll point to the television and say, “look, it’s dad.” Here are some of the identities that have been attributed to me:
There are others that I can’t remember right now. The question is, how do I interpret this? Mr. Incredible – okay, I get that one. Brigham Young – well, I did have a beard for a while. It wasn’t anything near the size of Brigham’s though. And Darth Vader, really? What have I done to traumatize my son into thinking I’m a Dark Lord of the Sith?
Maybe he sees me as large and powerful. That’s a common theme that can be seen in these three people. I think I’ll interpret it that way.
My wife showed me this and I had to steal it and post it:
Happy Mother’s Day to all of my favorite mothers!
I found an interesting editorial on CNN.com written by Raquel Welch.
…as I’ve grown older over the past five decades — from 1960 to 2010 — and lived through this revolutionary period in female sexuality, I’ve seen how it has altered American society — for better or worse.
…
Seriously, folks, if an aging sex symbol like me starts waving the red flag of caution over how low moral standards have plummeted, you know it’s gotta be pretty bad. In fact, it’s precisely because of the sexy image I’ve had that it’s important for me to speak up and say: Come on girls! Time to pull up our socks! We’re capable of so much better.
Read the rest. I may surprise you.
Okay, so I mentioned yesterday how this weekend blows. Well, it got a little bit worse, and a little more scary, last night. As mentioned, Tammy started not feeling well Saturday morning. She was just exhausted. We canceled D’s birthday party and were upset about that. Well it’s a good thing we did.
At 4pm, Tammy went from exhausted worse. She began spending a lot of time in the bathroom. By 9:30 we decided to call the University Hospital’s nurse-midwife emergency hotline. They recommended that we get Tammy in and get her some fluids.
Tammy’s mom came over and watched D for us. We were checked in by 10:30 and Tammy was running a fever of 100.94 F (38.3 C). Within a few hours she was up to 102 F (38.9 C). Around 2am she was admitted to the emergency short stay and her temp had come back down to 100.94 F (38.3 C). She had received 3 bags of fluids before 3am and would have 4.5 in total before being released at 2pm today.
We’re home now and she’s resting. Her stomach has settled and she’s been able to eat a little bit. We’ll do our best to keep her hydrated. Under normal circumstances this wouldn’t have been so scary but at 28 weeks pregnant, dehydration and a fever can be bad news for baby. Boy #2 seems to be doing well and showed no signs of distress during our 15.5 hour stay at the hospital.
So my three day weekend (Th, F, S) was going to be great. I’d worked 10 of the last 11 days and things had been a little crazy when I left work so I was looking forward to some R&R. Well, Thursday night at about 8:30 D decides to puke all over the kitchen floor. Puking 3 more times and having two really nasty diapers before 4am meant that he was a pretty sick puppy. Friday he seemed to ease up a little, no puking, no nasty diapers. However, I wasn’t feeling well and was spending lots of time in the bathroom.
That brings us to today. D wakes up and seems fine. I’m feeling better, though not 100% (stomach is still a little off) and Tammy is starting to feel sick. We were supposed to have a family birthday party for D at 4 o’clock but we’ve decided to cancel it.
Tomorrow is Mother’s Day and I will have the honor of taking care of my sick wife until I have to go to work at 2pm. Awesome! This weekend officially sucks!!!
Well, my first time giving a haircut, that is. The candidate was D, as he was long past due. It doesn’t look too bad, actually, with the exception of that little cut above his right ear. I’ve always heard that that’s the trickiest part of the head and now I know why….
Thanks for being my guinea pig, D-man!
I saw this article in the Salt Lake Tribune and thought it was a perfect example of A Public Peace Process: Sustained Dialogue to Transform Racial and Ethnic Conflicts and Sitting in the Fire: Large Group Transformation Using Conflict and Diversity.
Gay rights: Oakland LDS Stake tries to heal post-Prop 8 rifts
‘This is the church I know and love’Updated: 02/05/2010 01:39:33 PM MSTTed Fairchild, who is openly gay, has HIV and serves as a part-time LDS missionary in the Bay Area, left the love of his life to return to church activity. Linda Schweidel wondered why her bright, successful returned-missionary husband still was not ready for children after eight years of marriage. That’s when he broke down and told her he was gay.Diane Oviatt held her sobbing gay son in a darkened kitchen as he poured out years of grief at the secret he had been carrying for 18 years and wondered how he would get to heaven without marrying.
These were among the anguished stories several Mormons shared during emotional church services Oakland LDS Stake held last summer to heal rifts caused by the faith’s activism in the Golden State on behalf of traditional marriage.
In June 2008, the LDS First Presidency asked all California Mormons to give their time and money to Proposition 8, a ballot measure striking down gay marriage. Many members did so with gusto, circulating petitions, raising money, sending e-mails to church lists and putting up lawn signs.
That left other Bay Area Mormons, particularly those with gay friends and relatives, feeling embattled and alienated. Some stepped away temporarily from church; others left for good. Those who remained often felt at odds with fellow believers.
Oakland Stake President Dean Criddle, a respected lawyer and gentle leader, sensed the ripples of collective pain and wanted to reunite his flock, says Matt Marostica, bishop of the Berkeley Ward.
So Criddle and his counselors assembled quotes and speeches from LDS general authorities that stressed love and compassion for those with same-sex attraction. They then asked each of the 10 wards in the stake to hold a joint meeting of adult members during church services on either Aug. 30 or Sept. 6 to hand out the quotes and listen to personal stories from area members.
The response in Oviatt’s suburban Moraga, Calif., ward was electric, Oviatt says. “Everyone in the audience was weeping. Men came up to my husband, crying, and hugged him, saying, ‘We love you and we love your son.’ “
A couple of the more ardent ballot supporters apologized to Oviatt for having Prop 8 signs on their lawns, saying, “We never knew.”
Several people told Berkeley’s bishop, Marostica, how much they appreciated the meetings, including one woman who said, “I am so glad we did this. This is the church I know and love.”
[s]Till they have faces » The authorities’ statements and church setting provided a comfort level to Mormons who rarely discuss homosexuality openly, except to condemn it as a social trend or satanic tool. By all accounts, though, it was the stories that were transforming.
One man, who outed himself from the pulpit during one of the meetings, talked about a life of being scorned, bullied and accused by other Mormons of bringing on the AIDS pandemic. Still, every week when he takes the sacrament bread and water, God’s voice whispers to him: “You belong here.”
It’s the same voice Fairchild has heard over and over since becoming active in the LDS Church as a 17-year-old in Pullman, Wash., in 1970.
He served a two-year mission in Mexico, earned a degree at Brigham Young University and married a woman because, he says, she was pretty and could play the piano. The couple had two daughters.
But Fairchild always knew he was gay and eventually couldn’t continue the lie. He fell for a man.
“It was the only time,” Fairchild says, “I have ever been physically, emotionally and spiritually in love.”
By 1986, he and his partner were diagnosed with HIV, which at the time was a death sentence. Elder Richard G. Scott — then an LDS Seventy, now an apostle — gave Fairchild a blessing in which he asked God to build a protective wall around his cells. In that moment, Fairchild believed he needed to live by Mormon standards. He broke up with his love and returned to the church.
“Once you’ve experienced the Holy Ghost,” he says, “there’s no other feeling like it.”
More than 20 years later, Fairchild is relatively healthy and at peace with his decision. He believes he was born gay and a child of a loving Heavenly Father, twin qualities that make him a more effective “worker in God’s kingdom.”
Letting go or holding fast » That doesn’t work for Oviatt’s son, Ross Oviatt, who has not been back to church.
He attended BYU for a few semesters, she says, but it was a “toxic environment.” The Prop 8 fallout — which continues in California with the ballot measure now before a judge – proved difficult for Ross as he tried to weather homophobic slurs and keep his secret. He misses his Mormon experience and friends, but the association is too painful.
It hasn’t been easy for the rest of the family, either.
“We had to re-examine our place in the church,” Oviatt says. “We are not leaving, but it’s hard to stay in a religion that does not embrace our child. If we had to choose between the two, we’d choose Ross.”
Some Mormons in the stake see only one choice: following church edicts.
“I am a faithful Latter-day Saint, happily married with children, striving to live up to my temple covenants, fulfill my calling, be a good father and all the other things which active members of the church try to do,” one man wrote to Criddle in between the two joint sessions. “According to your definition of homosexuality, I am also a homosexual. I have had strong attractions to men (and exclusively men) my whole life.”
But homosexuality is not his identity, just a temptation he refuses to act on, the writer said. He thought the stake should have included more emphasis on heterosexual marriage as the core of Mormon teachings.
Criddle shared the letter (without identification) in all the wards.
Coming back » In what she calls, the “dark days of Proposition 8,” Schweidel took a “leave of absence” from the church.
She didn’t know if she could return. But when Criddle and Marostica asked her to tell her story at one of the joint sessions, she readily accepted.
She has been attending and involved ever since.
“The special meeting made me want to be part of a positive change in the church,” she says. “I want to talk to people, to explain why I feel like I do, and help them try to understand.”
That may work in Berkeley, but how about Bountiful?
Schweidel is hopeful. There are two kinds of Mormons, she says, quoting a friend: those who know gay people and those who don’t know they know gay people.
The task, she says, is to move more members from the second to the first category.
“If my mom in Orem had gay neighbors next door, I know she would love them,” Schweidel says. “The Mormons I have spoken to make an effort to understand. They totally get it.”
This gives you an idea of what I was trying to convey in my post Unpacking Things. This is how the process works.
