Crawling

My baby can crawl now. She was working her way up to it for weeks, often backing herself under furniture and yelling for help to get out. She's more content now that she is mobile enough to reach much of what she wants to touch and/or mouth. I love her wide, toothless smiles. :)

I always put her to bed in her crib, but sometime during the night she cries, and then she often ends up with me in bed for the rest of the night. If I leave my bedroom in the morning before she's awake, I have to keep an ear out for her because if she wakes up and lies on the bed too long without being fetched, she can move herself off the bed. It's not super high off the ground, but it's still best to avoid a fall. If you haven't been around a newly mobile baby recently, there's a distinctive "thump-waughh!!" sound they make whenever they fall.

Slavery unveiled

I'm not normally a fan of either Obama. You can probably guess from reading my blog that I would have voted for the other guy.

BUT I am so pleased with Michelle Obama for not wearing a veil recently in Saudi Arabia. Yes, I know about the importance of local customs and diplomacy, but sometimes a statement needs to be made. Saudi Arabia is a place of modern-day slavery, and its imprisonment of women is one of the most glaring manifestations of that. It is entirely appropriate for someone of Michelle's heritage and past to make a statement that she won't go along with an outward symbol of that slavery.

In the USA, we tend to think of Saudi Arabia as a place full of rich Arab, Muslim men because that's all we ever see on TV or in magazines. (Ironic that they won't show female hair out of some claim to holiness while Saudi males are burning up the internet and their satellite dishes downloading naughty stuff. Remember what they found on Osama bin Laden's computers after his death?) While it's certainly run by such, other people live there, too.

Obviously, there is the entire female population, which is trapped within walking distance of their homes unless a male drives them--and, yes, that includes situations of life and death--and forced to swaddle themselves in the Arabian heat lest they become too worldly. The "religious police" take that dress code so seriously that they forced girls to burn to death in a fire rather than be unveiled in public.

Then there is the enslavement of migrant workers by the Arabs, who are extremely racist. A friend who worked in Kuwait said that the Embassy of the Philippines there had cots in its hallways to take in Filipina migrant workers being raped and/or abused by their Kuwaiti employers, a common problem throughout the region.

Freedom of religion--not remotely, not even for other Muslims. Freedom of movement--only for male Saudi citizens. Equal treatment before the law--what law? Seriously, there is no uniform penal code.

If it weren't for Saudi Arabia's oil, the civilized world would shun it. Despite the newness of fracking as a technology and the understandable hesitancy of environmentalists to embrace it, I am very pleased that it has helped weakened the power of the Arab countries over the USA. Now if only we could get thorium reactors online....

Eating paper & a homeschool morning

Why does my seven-month-old love to chew paper? Is she lacking sufficient cellulose in her diet? She delights in sitting on my lap and pulling papers out of the desk drawer so she can chew on them. Just now, she creeped (mostly backwards, as she hasn't figured out forward motion yet) around my chair and under the low table beside me, where she is happily trilling as she--oops, never mind, she just bumped her head and the happy trills are gone--seeks new paper and plastic toys to stick into her mouth. I have soggy, ragged pieces of paper all around my feet.

Dd2 is playing with her Duplo blocks and zoo animals. Dd5 was just climbing on a bench to get into my "off-limits-to-the-toddler" shelf and came down with a pencil compass, which she announced she will use to make circles. Dd7 is playing with a tricky/magic worm instead of reading about the human body in her Core Knowledge book like she's supposed to be doing. Dd10 is reading from the encyclopedia about the Punic Wars and narrating to me the main idea of each paragraph.

Twins...sort of

Last night I noticed that dd7 had been growing again. In fact, I put her next to dd10--who is not a short girl--and realized that they appear to be the exact same height now.

How did I get "twins" 2.5 years apart? I know children grow at different rates, but isn't it a bit extreme for a seven-year-old to be handing clothing "down" to her ten-year-old sister?

Still, the realization that they share so much DNA yet still are quite different in some ways is a valuable one that ties in with our biology studies for the next few weeks. We will be focusing on genetics.

UPDATE: One of the biology topics we studied today was sexual vs. asexual reproduction. Afterward dd10 did her 1/2 page of Bible reading, which coincidentally was the story of Lot's daughters getting their father drunk and using him to impregnate themselves. She couldn't bring herself to narrate a summary of her reading. What a pity Lot couldn't just clone himself after his wife perished.

Displeased

My baby's fever is now mostly gone, but she has developed a rash. Normally, this wouldn't be a cause for too much alarm. Just rest, fluids, watchfulness, making sure there wasn't too much detergent residue on her onesies, etc. Unfortunately, I also get to worry about the possibility of measles.

While the odds of her having measles seem pretty low, they're a lot higher than they should be because of 1) the trend to refuse vaccinations and 2) the recent measles outbreak that started at Disneyland. While Colorado has only had 1 reported case from the Disneyland outbreak, that was a woman who sought treatment at a hospital near our home. We regularly go to the supermarket closest to that very hospital. My baby is old enough to sit up in grocery cart seats but not old enough to have received the measles vaccination.

Measles was essentially eradicated in the US in 2000 except for imported cases, but now it keeps spreading domestically because not enough Americans get vaccinations for themselves or their children. I disagree with most reasons to refuse the MMR vaccination, especially in light of Wakefield's fraud, and I'm very displeased that there is a chance that my baby could have contracted a preventable disease that is known to kill or seriously injure many.

UPDATE (1/19/2015): No worries about baby. Her rash is disappearing quickly. After consultation with Dr. Internet and experienced siblings, we have concluded that she had roseola.

Fasces

Today my children made a fasces, a bundle of sticks with an axe in it that has been used as a symbol of government power for thousands of years. Here's a picture. (Rubber bands are a very useful invention.)

Fasces

Sick baby

My seven month-old baby is ill. I think it's a cold because she's been snotty. But she definitely has a fever. That means lots of holding and nursing. She's still pretty active, so we just keep monitoring her and taking her temperature once in a while. I'm fairly sure she's not too badly off--she just energetically turned towards the TV screen when the opening song of Dr. Who came on.

Belief vs. Faith

In German, the word for "faith" is "Glaube." In German, the word for "belief" is also "Glaube." Somehow in English, we've ended up with two different words for the same concept: the act of believing, or accepting that something is true. So "faith" often gets treated like an inert noun, a bit like "church" or "religion," while "belief" retains more of an apparent connection to the verb "to believe."

I think it is unfortunate that the English word "faith" isn't obviously linked to an action verb. Faith is a choice, a voluntary acceptance of something that isn't proven to everyone to the point of being considered a "fact."

This subject is on my mind because yesterday, some very bad men thought they acted on God's errand when they slaughtered the staff of a satirical magazine in France. They appear to have acted on three main beliefs: 1) Muhammed was a Prophet so holy his face can't be drawn, 2) any disrespect of Muhammed is blasphemy that merits the harshest punishment, and 3) God approves of them forcing adherence to their own beliefs in brutal ways.

Addressing these beliefs in order and attempting to do so within a framework acceptable to faithful Muslims, 1) Muhammed was drawn by good Muslims for centuries. The Quran does not prohibit drawing Muhammed. Only some hadith do, and they, unlike the Quran, are not accepted by all Muslims. If Muhammed was the last prophet, as Islam claims, then who cares if some imams a while back came up with a new restriction on permissible illustrations? Those imams don't speak for anybody but themselves because they are NOT prophets.

2) Disrespect of a cherished individual or object can be emotionally painful to see and hear (I personally never will watch The Book of Mormon musical), but it doesn't justify violence in response. Even if one follows an "eye for an eye" retributive philosophy, disrespect only justifies more disrespect in turn. Disproportionate punishments--such as execution for a mere verbal insult--is something most of the civilized world considers barbaric, and people are not bound by a book--the Quran--that they don't believe in.

Which leads me to my last point. 3) A religious movement, such as the Taliban or ISIS, that violently forces others to submit to it is an abomination in God's eyes because it removes the opportunity to choose to believe. When God--who has not even given us indisputable evidence of his very existence--tells us to believe in him, he is giving us a choice: to accept him or to not accept him. The ability to choose for ourselves is what makes faith meaningful. There is no such thing as forced faith in the same way that rape cannot be termed an amorous encounter. For that reason, I reject and oppose any interpretation of Islam/Christianity/LDS doctrine/etc. that uses violence to force others to follow it. Such violence removes the agency of a person to choose to follow God, thus destroying faith and enslaving others. (And yes, that criticism applies to some followers of the Pearls almost as much as ISIS.) Good Muslims choose to submit to God according to the teachings of Muhammed. Many people do not choose to submit to Muhammed's teachings, but they must be given the opportunity to make that choice without their survival being under threat or else the choice TO submit (i.e., Islam itself) is made meaningless. I hope that faithful Muslims promote religious movements that do not make a mockery of their own beliefs.

Orthodox Christmas

We've been temporary host parents for a Russian-speaking exchange student for the past three weeks. As one might expect for a sixteen year-old girl during the holidays, she has been homesick. Today is Christmas per the Orthodox Church calendar, and I let her skip school to go celebrate Russian Orthodox Christmas at a nearby church. She got to be at an Orthodox worship service, talk to many Russians, and eat Russian food at a potluck lunch. When I picked her up afterward, she looked the happiest I've seen her since we met her.

This afternoon she showed us many pictures of her family and continued be very happy.

It often takes leaving home to realize what we cherish most there.

Musical Drapes

A New Year calls for a fix to our aging draperies. Our house is half a century old, and some of the window hangings appear to be nearly that old. So I bought a couple of panels of new drapes yesterday and since then have been in the midst of swapping curtains around, picking and sewing hems, and getting a head full of dust.

The front living room curtains--custom made from J. C. Penney long ago--are being refurbished. I cut off damaged parts on the ends and sew new edge hems. Hang them up again, and I hopefully get five more years before I have to worry about them again. I'll probably sew new ones then; I like the substantial formal curtains of yesteryear, at least in our formal room.

The old dining room curtains have damaged lining halfway down, so I'm cutting them in half and turning the tops into bathroom curtains. The old bathroom curtains were homemade by the previous owner and are falling apart, so I'll wash that fabric and use it for scrap material for my children.

The new dining room curtains were actually stolen from my husband's den. He didn't realize what nice drapes he was never using anyway. He now has a pair of blue floral curtains (hemmed up greatly because he doesn't care if his drapes skim the floor, which has important papers and computer boxes piled up on it) covering his den window. The blue drapes come from our bedroom, and I've never liked them much. They're not super girly, and they bring out the wheaten color of the den carpet. He might end up using them for decades....

Our bedroom got the new ivory/gold drapes. They could use an ironing job, but I'm waiting to see if taking a shower this afternoon helps them un-wrinkle magically all on their own. Sadly, the gold drapes, though lined, let through more light than the blue floral drapes, so I dug into our material cache and found some very dark blue, thick upholstery fabric that I will turn into a blackout (blue-out?) curtain and hang under the gold drapes.

Finally, I will trash the terrible drapes in our master bathroom. They have awful stains from water condensate that collected on the old aluminum window over the course of many winters. We installed a double-paned, vinyl-framed window in that bathroom this summer, so now I'm going to use a lovely turquoise sarong fabric from Thailand that I've kept safe for 7 years to make a pretty new set of curtains.

(No, our window treatments don't sing. The title of this post is a reference to the game of "Musical Chairs.")