by

Our Daily Thread 10-29-14

Good Morning!

On this day in 1682 William Penn landed at what is now Chester, PA.

In 1863 the International Committee of the Red Cross was founded. 

In 1929 America’s Great Depression began with the crash of the Wall Street stock market. 

And in 1966 the National Organization for Women was founded.  

______________________________________________

Quote of the Day

“Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?”

Fanny Brice

______________________________________________

 Today is Michael Passon’s birthday.

______________________________________________

Anyone have a QoD?

50 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 10-29-14”

  3. Good morning, Linda.

    Good evening, Jo.

    I wonder where Chas is?

    Becca-boo got up really early today (5:40), so we’ve been snuggling. It’s nice to still have a cuddle-bug.

    Hubby brought home a new car for me yesterday! It’s the first brand new car I’ve owned since my Dad gave me one for high school graduation. We’ve been extremely fortunate in regards to cars as we’ve never had a car payment during our fifteen year marriage. Hubby’s job provides him with a new car every four years and then gives him the car when the four year lease is up. So, I’ve always driven a four year old car, which doesn’t bother me, but Hubby drives in excess of 35,000 miles per year so cars have high mileage when I get them. Anyway, my new car is a Pearl white Ford Expedition. It’s cool to me because it’s got a backup camera and navigation system.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Good morning! We voted today. There was no competition for a voting machine at a local recreation center set up for advance voting. 😦

    Congrats, Annms, on the new vehicle. I know you will enjoy the smell of it as well as the smooth ride. I think there was a crayon in one of those fragranced collections of crayolas that was called New Car. Am I just dreaming that up?

    Husband has to get an extension on his antibiotic. Slowly the infection continues to go away.

    Liked by 4 people

  9. I never heard of that crayon, but if not, there should be one. And you should get the credit for it. I know you can buy the scent.

    Congrats on the new car. That is, indeed, a blessing.

    Like

  10. Internet was out for a while this morning, so I couldn’t get on here at first.

    Of course, I did sleep until 8:30, so a little of the delay was maybe a teensy bit my fault… 😉

    There was a neat moment yesterday that I was privileged to witness, and I just stood back in the shadows and watched for a bit, savoring. My two sons, ages 10 and 24, were sitting at the dining room table, each eating a big plate of food (between meals, but that’s what tall, skinny energetic young men do to keep up their energy 😉 ). That part isn’t unusual.

    But as they ate, they conversed. Back and forth.

    Five years ago, I could have never imagined such a scene. Younger son could barely say whole words. To string them into sentences, to express his own thoughts (instead of copying word for word what someone else said), and especially to listen to what a partner in conversation was saying and respond accordingly, then continue the discussion with a thought directed at the other, was so far beyond his capabilities at that time.

    God has brought him a long way down the road, and has given him an enthusiastic big brother who truly enjoys the pleasure of his company (and the feeling is mutual), and knows just how to encourage him.

    Can it get any better than that, to see the bonds of brotherhood growing stronger all the time?

    Another way God has blessed me.

    Liked by 7 people

  11. Well, busy day ahead. Second Arrow is coming home tonight, staying overnight, then going back tomorrow night. I’ve got lots of cleaning I want to do before she arrives. I’ve also got some last-minute piano business to tend to before my new student and his dad come tomorrow afternoon for the interview I set up. Exciting couple of days coming up here, so I’d better hop to it! Have a great day, all. 🙂

    Like

  13. 6 – so great that you could see that! What a blessing. I’ve sure enjoyed watching my niece develop far beyond what we thought was she was capable of. Second year of university for her this year, driving on her own, friends and great sense of humour! It doesn’t sound like she was as ‘low’ or ‘high’ (not sure which direction is which) on the spectrum as your son, but every new step is great to see.

    I’m having coffee this afternoon with my ‘old’ friend who was our pastor’s (of 7 years) wife and is now a pastor of children’s ministries (her husband is now a funeral director). Looking forward to catching up.

    Like

  14. Here is a link to an article about when the fragranced crayons were removed from the market. It does show “new car” as a fragrance. It was around the years 1994 and 1995 and our son was born in 1989 so the timing is right. I did not know they were taken off the market. It took me this number of years to find out, LOL. 😀

    Liked by 1 person

  16. Husband is off hunting and camping. Today, the fifteen and eight year olds go join them. Should be fun. That just leaves us for the chores but that is okay because the little ones do the chores every day. Son said it rained for all six hours of driving and he is never driving in Spokane again. Apparently, they went from Spokane to Post Falls in rush hour traffic. I told him that was mild compared to some areas but I agree, I don’t drive in cities, or towns. Hamlets are okay.

    Like

  17. After completely reading the article, I now understand that it was the fragranced crayons that smelled like foods that were taken off the market and replaced by other fragrances that children would not be tempted to eat. They were afraid that the crayons and drawings that smelled like food would be a choking hazard. So our box of crayons was considered safe. I still remember that “new car” crayon most of all because that was as close as I was going to get to a new car. I don’t remember the fragrance of any of the others. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  18. I wondered about the smell thing. Having a child who eats everything, it does not actually apply here. He would eat it regardless of the smell. But other children might be more inclined if they had fancy smells. The plain wax smell is enough for some.

    Like

  21. Mmmm, plain wax. I think I used to indulge in a little play dough now and again in my early years.

    Remember Silly Putty? How magical it seemed when you could press some down on a comic strip and get it to reprint on the putty. It didn’t take much to amuse some of us.

    Linda, did your cat come home?

    Congrats on the new car, it sounds beautiful. I still consider my Jeep new (it was very slightly used when I bought it, but felt pretty much new). I’ve had it now for 7 years!

    Another long day ahead for me with a 6 p.m. port meeting to cover — it may be a short one. Or not. Hard to tell. But the meeting is close to home so when it ends I’ll be able to dash it out on the laptop fairly fast. I could take it in to the meeting with me, too — maybe I’ll do it that way, we’ll see.

    Like

  22. Welcome (almost) back AJ. Did you miss us?? 😉

    (At first I thought ‘anonymous’ was michelle, but then the comment about missing the cats snapped me out of that misunderstanding.) 🙂

    Like

  23. The other day, I mentioned (as a prayer request) that we thought that Emily might have a budding online romance. Today she told us she has a date with him in a couple weeks. They will be meeting at a museum in New Haven, & then going to a restaurant.

    They “met” through GreenSingles.com, & have been communicating through texts & emails for about a month & a half. Having gone through what she did with R, she has been careful to read not only what A says, but how he says it. Since breaking with R, she has read a lot about the narcissistic personality, & other controlling behaviors, so she is keeping an eye out for any traces of those kinds of behaviors.

    She seems to be approaching this very carefully, but of course, I am still concerned for her heart.

    Liked by 1 person

  24. I am not sure of the wisdom of scented markers, personally. It seems like that might end up with some colored noses, but also: do you really want to encourage children to sniff craft materials? Glue, for example? I like it better when a marker is a marker and you leave the scented stuff for perfumes and items that need to be scented. (Actually, I’m not all that fond of markers anyway. When I’ve taken care of children, I’ve used crayons and colored pencils with them. Markers have no subtlety and very little potential to be artistic, just “loud.”)

    Like

  25. Why put scents in crayons when the fragrance of a new box of crayons is one of my favorite childhood memories. That and ditto paper at school.

    Like

  27. Oh yes, those ditto machines. … 🙂

    Interesting piece on Martin Luther and Halloween and the devil …

    http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/trick-or-treat-its-martin-luther

    “… All of the Christian life is repentance. Turning from sin and trusting in the good news that Jesus saves sinners aren’t merely a one-time inaugural experience but the daily substance of Christianity. The gospel is for every day and every moment. Repentance is to be the Christian’s continual posture. …

    “From first thesis to last words, Luther lived at the foot of the cross, where our rebellious condition meets with the beauty of God’s lavish grace in the gospel of his Son—a gospel deep enough to cover all the little and massive flaws of a beggar like Luther and beggars like us.

    “Because of God’s grace in and through Luther, All Hallows’ Eve is now both an occasion to call to mind Jesus’s triumph over Satan and his minions with a bloody cross and empty tomb, as well as a day to thank God especially for the Scriptures and the blessed reforms launched by imperfect saints like Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and many more nameless visionaries.”

    Like

  28. “My husband’s favorite childhood scent is Play-Doh. He still likes the scent.”

    It’s funny you should mention that, Cheryl. Emily bought Forrest some Play-Doh for his birthday (till now she has made the homemade kind), & I enjoyed squishing it in my hands, & smelling it. 🙂

    Like

  30. My mom told me that she once looked around a room, looking at table legs and I don’t know what all, and realized that she knew what everything in the room tasted like. She says she figured she must have been quite a chewer as a young child!

    Like

  31. Favorite scent from childhood: Scotch tape. I think it was because it was used to hold wrapping paper together, and wrapping paper meant presents and presents meant birthdays or Christmas. My siblings all share the love of the smell – we joke that we are tape sniffers 😛

    Like

  32. My own favorite childhood scent would have to be vanilla. When we’d make cookies, I would sniff the vanilla extract. I tasted it once–it doesn’t taste very good, if anyone wondered. But I had dreams of someday owning a collie kennel, and wandering among all my dogs and somehow brushing vanilla essence into their fur. I don’t think I had priced vanilla extract yet at that point. 🙂 And no, Misten has never gotten that treatment. She’d probably be quite insulted.

    Like

  33. Oh, wait. Orange blossoms have got to be “up there” in terms of favorite childhood scents, too. My husband finds that a pretty enticing scent, as well, but he didn’t go through his childhood smelling it annually, as I did.

    Like

  34. Koolade and Hawaiian Punch are favorites I remember.

    I also liked the smell of creosote which was the smell under the bridge by the railroad track where we played. I know it is a strong and pretty awful smell, but it was associated with fun and adventurous times in our neighborhood.

    Like

  35. The last two days I have spent some time reading Michael and Debi Pearl’s To Train up a Child. While they definitely have some good points, for example telling stories of people who’d tell their child one thing (“You can’t go to the store with me unless you sit in your carseat”) and then would then give in. The importance of consistency can hardly be overstated.

    But there is so much that is troublesome about the book. Quick summary: (1) Theologically it is foundationally flawed. For example, he doesn’t see humans as having “original sin,” and he sees children as not being accountable for their actions until a bit later in life (generally five or older, depending on the child); before that their selfishness is a God-given trait that needs to be molded, but not sin. (2) His comparisons of training children to training dogs or horses, and multiple assurances that if you train the child correctly he will always obey immediately and with a good attitude, are false. Humans are not programmable robots. (3) Although he tries heartily to convince parents not to rely on punishment instead of proper training (and says that the properly trained child will only rarely need discipline), some of his discipline examples are pretty heavy handed, and I can see why (esp. paired with the guarantee of success) they might be dangerous in the wrong hands. At least two passages are quite strong that with an older child, you need to spank until they surrender; and a few parents of children adopted later in life have found that fatal results might follow too much stubbornness at such an attempt. (4) They seem to be quite set against any sort of formal education at all–public school and private schools are both wrong, but so is any sort of set curriculum. Children should begin schooling when they are ready (which is likely to be seven or eight) and any set instruction of boys should cease by twelve or thirteen; after that they should be working with their hands full-time with their father. That’s great if your child wants to be a farmer or a carpenter. But what if he wants to be a philosopher or a theologian–or even a concert violinist? (5) Several of his family’s choices are things that might work for their family but are morally neutral, and one gets the sense that he thinks everyone must do things their way. For example, they tell how to potty train a young infant (and yes, my parents saw it work for parents in Africa, and apparently all of us were potty trained well under a year old, so I know it can be done), and show Debi asking a mother of a two-month-old, “Why aren’t you potty training this child?” Um . . . it seems acceptable to tell another mother, “Did you know it’s possible to potty train a child this young? Are you interested in learning how?” But “Why aren’t you . . .?” suggests that she is failing as a mother . . . and that’s downright silly. (Now, I admit I can’t stand seeing normal healthy four-year-olds in diapers. But not everyone is interested in potty training a newborn infant, and that’s OK.)

    Anyway, overall my sense is that there’s a lot of danger in this, and I’d rather see the good points that are present come from a healthier source. (For example, in Parent Babble: How Parents Can Recover from Fifty Years of Bad Expert Advice, John Rosemond has a lot of the same concept that children shouldn’t get away with nonsense, and even some ideas on potty training young–though not nearly that young–but without the bad theology or the feeling at times of cruelty.)

    Like

  37. We just had seven deer (does and half-grown fawns) cross the back field, this side of the tree line. The herding dog didn’t notice, just as she didn’t notice a few days ago when a groundhog crossed inside our yard, a few yards from her, as she slept near the garage. But it was quite picturesque to see those lithe animals, sometimes walking and sometimes running, in front of the autumn-tinted trees. I was taking photos, but my husband was counting, and I did get all seven in a few shots.

    Like

  38. Cheryl, my family came into contact with the Pearls in my late teens. Would you believe it – they actually helped us start rejecting some of the teachings of Bill Gothard?! Michael Pearl did a series in their magazine speaking about children ‘Jumping Ship’ and condemning the patriarchal movement. We found ourselves nodding in agreement, as we saw the scenarios he censored playing out in the ATI families we knew. However, I became very uncomfortable with his theology as I learned more of it – he believes it is possible to loose your salvation (and never regain it) and holds that there are seven different spiritual kingdoms, among other strange things. Debi Pearl’s advice to wives started to ring hollow as I saw the challenges my siblings and peers faced in their marriages – Debi seems to have a fairy-tale view of how marriage should go, if you just do it right. So, all in all, I would agree with your review and conclusion.

    Like

  41. I don[‘t remember a scent from childhood. The one I notice every time I encounter it, is the smell of hot asphalt. I spent the summer of 1953 testing asphalt when they were building Charleston AFB. Then I worked in the SC Highway Dept. testing lab part time for four years until I graduated. I will always remember the smell. It isn’t an unpleasant smell, But you don’t want to use it for perfume.

    Like

  42. Cheryl &/or Roscuro – How do you potty train a baby? Is the baby truly trained, or is the parent trained to get the baby to the potty?

    Forrest became interested in being potty trained of his own accord, although Emily had introduced him to the process. He was pretty easy, because he wanted to go potty on his own. Of course, he had plenty of accidents, but was mostly trained before he was two. (Except for at night.)

    Like

  43. Karen, re potty training a baby: what my mom commented on was that mothers would carry naked babies on their backs, and periodically a mother would put the baby on her feet (with space between her feet) and the baby would go. The mother would know the feel of the baby’s full bladder, and the baby would soon associate sitting on feet as time to go.

    I don’t know how Mom trained us; I never asked her. What this book recommends is putting the newborn baby in a cloth diaper lying on his mother’s tummy for several days after he is born (or in a sling on her later in life, I think). As soon as the diaper starts getting warm, you use some word (sss or “pee-pee” or whatever you want to use) and then, when you’ve done that for some time, you begin to know when your baby needs to go. You then put the baby on the potty and say the word. The combination of full bladder or bowels, the word, and the cold potty are enough for the baby to go. Or you can hold the baby on your lap on the toilet. They say that after a few weeks you can tell by the baby’s face that he needs to go, and you basically put him on the potty every couple of hours.

    John Rosemond is talking about older babies, crawling to about 18 months old (before the child gets old enough to be entering the terrible twos). As I recall, he has you have the baby run around the house practically naked for a couple of days, limited to rooms with tiled floors and a potty in the room. You put thin underwear on a boy, and maybe a dress but no underwear on a girl. When they go, they feel uncomfortable (because it’s running down their leg, not soaking into a diaper) and they’ll cry out and look uncomfortable. You can then whisk the child to the potty, or remind him of the potty, I don’t remember the details. Within a couple of days, the child is taking himself. He has several reasons that younger is better (and faster) for potty training, and indeed it does seem that if a mother waits till past three, she’s going to have months and months before she sees success–the child is simply used to doing it his way, and isn’t in the right age to be told differently.

    Like

  44. But nobody claims that a child will be potty trained for overnight hours that young. I have heard that paper diapers make potty training harder, and paper training pants are really a silly idea–the child simply never knows he is wet. So I know some mothers who use paper diapers and then transition to cloth training pants. The child discovers for the first time that it isn’t really that comfortable to relieve himself in his pants, and he is ready to be trained. You can then use the thin underwear or let him go naked from the waist down. So, such training is probably best done in the summer!

    Like

  45. Kare, that’s so encouraging about your niece! Good for her! 🙂

    Donna @ 11:32, looks like you got your start in the newspaper business back in childhood, pressing the cartoons into silly putty. 😉

    I’ve always loved the smell of a lilac bush. And new crayons. And ditto paper. I’d always hold a fresh copy up to my nose when I received one at school.

    Chewing on strange things: one of my farthest-back memories is of sitting in my desk in the one-room country school I went to through 3rd grade, eating little bits of those almost translucent brown erasers (pencil erasers).

    Third Arrow was my wood-chewer. Not long after she learned to stand supported, she’d hang onto one leg of the piano and chew the wood on the underside and front side of the keyboard, bottom teeth underneath and top teeth on the vertical part. She’s tall enough now to reach the top of the upright… 😉

    And to look me in the eye and glare at me if she were to read that sentence and what it may have implied. 😛

    Actually, she would LOL. She’s a good kid. And now she plays the piano instead of chews on it. 😉

    OK, and “She’s a good kid” should read “child.” Child, Mumsee. 🙂

    Like

  47. Michelle is exhausted but heading home tomorrow, after spending the afternoon with a friend along the way.

    Monterey has been absolutely gorgeous and the retreat a success.

    She has not missed her cat at all, but will be happy to see her husband and any adorable grandchildren or their parents. 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

  50. Cheryl: I read the Pearls’ book. It freaked me out. They seemed quite extreme. My girls weren’t potty trained until almost three, and they are no worse because of it. They were ready and we had an easy go of it with both of them. One of them couldn’t stay dry at night until age five, so we let her wear pull-ups (I tired of changing bed linens at 2:00am). Of course, I did get my master’s in social work at UT, which is an extremely liberal program of study, in 1997. My first child was born in 1999, so I’m sure my parenting philosophies were impacted by it. Still, the Pearls’ philosophy scared me, for many of the reasons you mentioned.

    Like

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.