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Our Daily Thread 12-20-14

Good Morning!

5 Days!!!! 🙂

Today’s header photo is from Kare.

*It’s now Sunday the 21st, so I believe someone has a birthday today.

Happy Birthday Linda. 🙂

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On this day in 1790 the first successful cotton mill in the United States began operating at Pawtucket, RI.

In 1860 South Carolina became the first state to secede from the American Union. 

In 1879 Thomas A. Edison privately demonstrated his incandescent light at Menlo Park, NJ. 

And in 1968 author John Steinbeck died at the age of 66.

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Quote of the Day

“Christmas, my child, is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it’s Christmas.”

Dale Evans

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 This one is a request.

And this one is because I like it. From King’s College Choir

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Anyone have a QoD?

7,368 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-20-14”

  7. van returned and now home to the quiet. Special blessing in that the gal who loaned me the van taught preschool in Ukarumpa this year, the class that I will have beginning on July 22nd. She gave me a class picture and shared about each child. Such fun to get to know my class a bit before school begins.

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  13. 6 Arrows posted at 11:13pm, & I posted at 12:00pm. Funny that, with our system of telling time, that doesn’t mean I posted 47 minutes later than she, but rather it was 12 hours & 47 minutes later.

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  15. YES, I have been wondering all day where Mumsee was! How was the wedding?
    Saw my daughter’s wedding pictures this week. I did not enjoy them. Struggled to say something positive. The officiant was a woman and no one else was there but the photographer. That’s enough to say. She did look lovely.

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  22. Baseball season is finally over! They lost tonight. Now I can take Jack and our kayaks to the mountains on Thursday. Katie and her family are there now camping. Family will loan me a vehicle and load the kayaks, too heavy for me. Then Katie and her clan will unload. All for an afternoon of fun that I am looking forward too. It is almost funny that thundershowers are predicted for that day.

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  23. I poured grape juice on myself this morning as I was going outside to eat breakfast. Thirteen year old daughter is having a meltdown and struggling not to and struggling to.

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  24. Silly Mumsee. Grape juice belongs in a glass.

    Seriously, though, it must be so difficult for your poor 13 year old daughter to struggle that way. Praying God will help her.

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  36. home from my daughter’s wedding reception. I took my camera and ended up being the one taking pictures as there was no one else. Fun to bless them that way.
    Then my daughter had brought their computer and I was able to download 1329 photos from my sd card to her computer. Those were taken over the last two years. Yes, I have deleted some, but some were more recent. She got a slice of my life.

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  40. I see you ladies have been busy! Well, now we march on to 2,000. Speaking of that, does anyone else remember all the fuss about the Y2K scare?

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  43. Battle of the Alamo was in 1836.

    Yep, I remember Y2K, or, rather, all the hype leading up to it. Planes might crash, etc. etc., they were warning. I’m glad I didn’t waste any time worrying about all that.

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  44. Remember all the “by the year 2000 . . .”? In 1999 I edited a book with multiple authors that was supposed to come out sometime that fall, September or October 1999. Three different writers wrote, “By the year 2000 . . . ” I contacted them all and said something like, “Listen, sir. This isn’t a magazine article you’re writing. Not only is 2000 so close that if some statistic is going to be true in 2000, it’s pretty much already true. But most of the sales of this book will come in 2000 and afterward, and if we kept this line in the book, the book would be outdated on January 1, 2000. Let’s drop this, or replace it with another statistic.” It didn’t surprise me the first time I saw it in the book–we were so used to using that date as a benchmark. But by the time I saw it the third time, I thought, Really? Are this many people clueless about how book publishing works, that we don’t just sell 50,000 books the day the book comes out, people read their books the same day they buy them, and that’s it?

    I often will have authors talk about up-to-the-moment news stories: “President Obama gave a press conference last week, and he said . . .” and, really, when you read a book that talks about Clinton as though he is still in office, your brain says, “Whoa, old book, old book.” Maybe it shouldn’t be that way, but it is. Don’t write a book as though it will be read within the next two weeks; write it as though people might still be reading it twenty years from now.

    That advice was free.

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  45. “By the year 2000…” Yes, I think of that sometimes, how the year 2000 was so far in the future, but now it’s in our past.

    The 2nd Back to the Future movie went into the future, to the year 2015. 🙂

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  47. I’ve sent AJ at least a dozen photos he hasn’t used yet. I have some new, lovely butterfly ones, and want to send them to him, but I’m waiting till he uses at least some of the ones I’ve already sent, since I feel like I’m hogging his inbox. . . .

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  50. And I see that my killdeer photos went up today. Now AJ just has fledgling photos, and butterfly photos, and more butterfly photos (I think I sent some from the wild and know I sent some from a butterfly garden), and some more bird and flower photos too.

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  64. Yes that does. Three of my grandparents were born in the 1890s, and one in 1906, and even those years seem like they’re long, long ago.

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  66. Interesting. I’m a few years old than Cheryl, but my maternal grandfather was born in 1907. I think, & my maternal grandmother was born in 1913. I think my paternal grandfather was born around 1900, & my paternal grandmother sometime after that.

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  67. But Lee’s grandparents would have been born in the 1890s.

    I thought it was kinda funny that my MIL was only eight years younger than my maternal grandmother, & was 16 years older than my mom.

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  68. That can be interesting, age differences like that. I suppose if a person who was one of the youngest in a family married someone who was one of the oldest of another family (or vice versa), there could be a big difference in age between the two sets of parents, even if husband and wife are themselves close in age. And that’s not always the case, either.

    My husband’s sister married a man 13 years older than she is, and he had had children from previous marriages. Those children are grown up and married, with children of their own, including some in their teens. So my sister-in-law, only one year older than I, already has something like 10 grandchildren, and it’s entirely possible she could be a great-grandmother before I ever become a grandmother, even though we graduated from high school the same year!

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  72. My in-laws married young and had children young, so even though my hubby is a few years older than I, my dad would have been about 20 years older than his parents.

    But then, I have a brother who is quite a few years older than his own father-in-law, so go figure. And I know of someone who had one daughter out of wedlock, whom he raised himself, and when his daughter was a teenager he married her best friend, who was (I think) a year older than her, maybe two years. (Not morally wrong . . . but creepy.)

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  78. It isn’t a palindrome if it’s a number, is it? What’s the word for that? And when visually it’s the same backward and forward, too, like looking in a mirror?

    Or am I thinking of inkblots? 🙂

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  82. I wonder if there’s a way to do a backwards B?

    Peter knows how to do an upside-down ! at the beginning of a sentence in Spanish. Maybe there’s a way to do things backwards if one can do things upside down?

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  85. I remember 2000. The port & city of LA joined to put on a celebration and there were supposed to be 2,000 drummers. There were maybe 40, tops. It was such an odd event, the weather was strange (windy), security was extra tight and the whole thing had this eery, surreal feel to it. And there was all that angst about the turn of the century going on.

    But life goes on. And tonight I’m catching flies. Or trying to. Maybe 1-2 times in the summer every year I wind up somehow with flies invading the house and it just drives me crazy. I think it happens when it’s humid.

    So after charging through the house with my trusty fly swatter, flattening a few (I am a good aim and it sort of feels good to land the perfect shot), I’ve put out a dish of apple cider vinegar with a little dish soap & water. We’ll see how many I’ve caught my morning.

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  90. Thanks, I’ll check that out — the strips they used to sell seem to be not recommended anymore for indoor use.

    But I did notice this piece of advice: Praise your dog or cat if it eats flies. Pets can be a useful source of pest control if they’re interested!

    Cowboy’s always snapping his jaws if there’s a fly buzzing round.

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  92. Oh wow. And I’ve just discovered from Amazon The Executioner Fly Swat Wasp Bug Mosquito Swatter Zapper. In the shape of a tennis racket. Awesome. Hours of summer fun.

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  98. You know the person who is so sweet she can’t swat a fly? That’s me. Well, actually we had a lot of flies in Phoenix (people across the street had horses), and we always had a well-used fly swatter, and I just learned to find the whole thing disgusting. As an adult, I’ll swat them if I have to (meaning there are several of them and they’re buzzing around noisily, but I’m far more inclined to (1) ignore them and wait for them to live out their couple of days of life expectancy, or (2) catch them and release them outside if I get a chance or (3) shoo them outside, if I get a chance. (Sometimes we leave the back door open, and then they may go to the screen on the inside of the screen door. If they do that, I open the door and shoo them out.)

    Misten snaps at them, but I don’t know if she has ever caught one. Not often, anyway.

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  99. Thanks to the ladies who reminded me to get the 18-75 post before mumsee, but I didn’t see that until this evening. Oh, well. I’ll just settle for 1905, though I don’t know of any significant event back then.

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  100. But 1906 was when my maternal grandmother was born. Grandpa was 1902 and the paternal grandparents were both 1898. That seem like a long time ago. I mean, that was in the last millennium!

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  101. My maternal grandmother was born in 1906, also, and maternal grandfather in 1899. My dad’s parents were born in 1894 and 1895, with my grandmother being 3 months and 10 days old when her future husband was born. 😉

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  102. OK, well now I feel like a meanie. Catch and release?

    One or two, I ignore them too. But I had several buzzing throughout the kitchen last night which made me crazy, can’t stand seeing them landing on the counters. None tonight, interestingly.

    One summer several years ago, on a very humid, hot night, I made the mistake of opening the window above the kitchen sink (which I never open), forgetting it had no screen. A swarm of flies instantly zoomed into the house. They all wound up, weirdly, sitting in en masse on the shower curtain, must have been a dozen or more of them. Looked like a scene out of Amityville Horror.

    So now that the flies are gone, I’m spending tonight trying to get the new TV receiver box up and running, I already had to have the neighbor come over with a wrench I needed but didn’t have (I tried pliers, but they aren’t the same thing I now realize 🙂 ). Now I’m waiting for everything to connect. 41 more minutes, it says. Then I have to figure out what screen resolution settings to enter. ???

    Remember when you just turned on the TV, watched a show, and then turned it off?

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  103. You could set out a plate of rotting meat. That would feed them. And give them a place to lay their eggs. Then you could swat them as they waddle off with full tummies. And wait three days for the grubs to arrive and then go fishing.

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  104. It sounds like Mumsee takes mercy a whole step further than I do . . . at least if the question regards flies in other people’s houses. Somehow I suspect she is far more dastardly in her plans regarding her own.

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  106. are you folks racing for 2000? Fun to see some more bloggers rejoin this thread. We’ve move up in the standings.
    Time to head for the Director’s office to have my passport put in the safe, finance office to get some more cash for market, perhaps the store, and then get to work at school.

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  107. I was thinking the same thing today — that we must be on our way to the 2000-mark. Or, if referring to centuries, as we were earlier, we’ve made it to the 20th century now, we should get along to the 21st one of these times, don’t ya think? 😉

    Nice to have the company of all of you who have been here lately (and for all of you who may be showing up soon). 🙂

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  109. Last time I ordered fish and chips I was (mostly) anticipating the malt vinegar … mmmm …. pucker …. Until I mistakenly grabbed the maple syrup bottle and poured that all over my meal. What a letdown.

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  110. That sounds yucky, Donna. Were you able to scrape off enough to enjoy the fish & chips? As for me, I wouldn’t enjoy the vinegar on them, either.

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  111. Good morning, Mumsee. Or, afternoon. Or evening.

    I like maple syrup. 🙂 Although I haven’t tried it on fish and chips, Donna. 😉

    This is comment 1917 on this thread. The year the U.S. entered World War I. One of the few details I remember from history classes in my youth. (And which has been reinforced in my memory while homeschooling.)

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  113. Well, whoops, I did get 1918, but I was actually waiting for 1917. Oh well. Somehow I never realized he was born the same year we entered the war (maybe because when I learned about WWI in school, his age was still a deep dark secret).

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  114. Seeing 1,919 at the top of this page for the current comment count reminds me of drinking 1919 root beer. I rarely drink soft drinks anymore, but I do enjoy some root beer brands.

    So your dad must have been around 50 or so when you were born, Cheryl?

    I remember how surprised I was to find out the age of the father of one of my former piano students. She is around 30 years old now, and her dad was born in 1925! So he was around 60 when she was born!

    His first wife had died many years before, and he married a much younger woman the second time, and they went on to have two children together, the youngest of whom was my student.

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  116. Yep, that’s what men do. 🙂 My editor, who is separated, is now seeing a co-workers who’s significantly younger than he is.

    I’m HOME and have a week off, what a great feeling. Filed my last two stories today.

    It’s shaping up to be a busy stay-cation but that’s OK. I’ve actually capped out on my vacation time which means I may be taking as many as 3 more weeks off before the end of the year.

    And yes, Karen, I scraped what I could off, mostly the chips had to be sacrificed … Didn’t need the calories anyway, what was left (had to eat it plain, they had no vinegar) was more than filling.

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  127. 6 Arrows, I’ve probably told both of these stories before on here. When I was in seventh grade, my science teacher was straight out of college. Well, one day he was talking to the class, and he said, “Your parents . . . what are they, about 50?” One of the boys laughed a bit of a mocking laugh, and said, “About 50?! No, about 40.” The teacher snickered a bit self-consciously, and said, “Oh yeah. I said that because my dad is 50.” I didn’t yet know precisely how old my father was, but I knew he’d be retiring in the next two years (and yes, he retired at the full age of 65). Now it isn’t terribly uncommon for couples to be having children in their 40s and 50s, but when I was a child it wasn’t done, and my mom was extremely self-conscious about it (which was why we didn’t find out their ages until they considered us old enough to keep it a secret). Though she always looked younger than she was, she was commonly thought to be our grandmother (and Dad was several years older than her, and for sure he looked old enough to be our grandfather, and was easily old enough, so I’m guessing that’s mostly why people thought her old enough, too).

    The other story. In Chicago I knew a woman who had seven children, her youngest quite a bit younger than the other six. In addition, her father remarried very late in life to be having children, maybe sixty, so this friend had a very young half-sister. I’m going to be guessing on the ages, but that part of their family tree looked something like this.

    Generation 1–Father–75–oldest daughter (my friend) 55; youngest daughter 12
    Generation 2–My Friend 55; oldest daughter 35, youngest daughter 13
    Generation 3–Oldest daughter 35, her oldest daughter 15

    Before I knew her or her family, I was sitting at a table with her at a church dinner, and someone else came by and asked, “So, are these all your grandchildren?” and she said, “No, this one is my daughter (name), this one is my granddaughter (name), and this one is actually my sister (name).” I noticed at the time that all three girls were within a short distance age-wise, but it wasn’t till she got custody of that half-sister a couple years later and I knew her better that I realized that those three girls were all “upside-down” in age based on which generation she was in. That is, I’ve met nieces who are older than their uncle and that sort of thing, but in this case it was three generations that were topsy-turvy, enough to make for an extremely complicated family tree!

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  129. Cheryl, I read your post late last night, and thought, Whoa, that sounds incredible, but it’s too late for me to process it in a way that I’m sure I just read it correctly! And now it’s Monday morning, and I’m still thinking…what?!

    I’ll wait for you to come along and answer Karen’s question. 🙂

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  133. Yep, my friend’s father had a daughter, a granddaughter, and a great-granddaughter all within just a few years, four years apart at the most, and in reverse generational order, so the great-grand was the oldest, then his granddaughter, then his daughter. There were many, many other family members in those generations, too, and I don’t know how old any of the parents were when their youngest or oldest was born, except that the man had his youngest when he was past 60.

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  135. I once had Thanksgiving with that particular family (including the father, my friend, most or all of her seven children, many of her grandchildren and possibly a few great-grands–I don’t remember whether she had any yet, though I’m sort of thinking she did not) . . . I was the only white person in a family setting of about 30 black people and one adopted child whose race I never knew. But I knew nearly all of them, some of them pretty well, and felt completely at home. That day is still one of my most treasured memories: helping her cook, chatting with her daughters, eating with the family, playing games and chatting afterward, engaging with children I taught in my church’s club program, and all the while mingling and getting to know people better. And with not one single moment of any sense of anyone wondering “What’s she doing here with us?”

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  136. I do, by the way, have two brothers who do not yet have children but would like to (one is not married yet, one is married and still trying to get his wife into the country). If either of them has a child in 2018, that would be 150 years from the birth of that child’s great-grandfather, 101 years from the birth of his grandfather (on the other side), and 60 or 48 years from the birth of his father. These are nowhere near record numbers, but they are obviously very long generations nonetheless.

    From my dad’s side, if my younger brother were to be the one who married and had a child in ’18, it would be 1871-1917-1970-2018 in the male line.

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  137. My husband was 48 (and a half) when our youngest was born. I don’t know of anyone in his family or mine who was older than that when a child was born to him/her.

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  138. Dad had the last three of us after his 50th birthday. (He was 50 and 2 months when I was born.) But my mom’s dad was 60 when his youngest (Mom’s little brother) was born. One of my older brothers seems likely to do the father-at-60 thing, but Dad was quite a bit younger when he was born (early 40s), so that the generations are all above average, but not as long as they could be.

    My sister was once in a women’s event where they asked who was the oldest at the birth of their last child. She said 40 1/2, thinking that she might need that “half,” but I guess she was the oldest by a couple of years. But I know someone who was due to have her first (and of course only) baby at about her 44th birthday, and ended up having him two or three days later. She was hoping he would be born on her birthday, both because it would be her best birthday present ever and because he would have been born on 10/10/10. But he missed it by a couple of days. She didn’t marry till she was about 40 and didn’t know if she would be able to have a child. I know someone else who adopted a couple of children by her first husband, and after he died she remarried. To her surprise, she got pregnant (though she miscarried); I believe she was in her forties, and of course she simply didn’t know she was fertile. And I have a first cousin who was married 11 years, had adopted two children and was in the process of adopting a third when she got pregnant and had a baby at 39.

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  139. My sixth arrow was born 12 days after I turned 45, and was the only one of my children born before the due date (only a day or two before). Fifth Arrow was also born in my 40s, and I had two miscarriages in my 40s, one just before 5th Arrow, and one between 5th and 6th Arrows. So I had as many pregnancies in my 40s (four of them) as I did in my 20s and 30s combined (1 + 3, respectively). Only one pregnancy in my 20s, even though I married at 23 and had no problems whatsoever with fertility. I just didn’t want children right away, or close together once I started having them. Selfish reasoning, really.

    When the Lord turned our hearts to receive children in His timing, I was almost 38, and though I got pregnant soon after we made our decision to stop using birth control, and had a normal pregnancy, I was nearing 40, and our later children were almost as far apart as the earlier ones because I started having miscarriages after the birth of 4th Arrow.

    So we’ve been married 29 years, and have children currently ages 25, 22, 18, 14, 11 and 7 1/2.

    I always wonder what our family would have looked like had we embraced the gift of children from early on.

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  140. And I do believe I would have had more children after 6th Arrow if we had not started using birth control again. She weaned at 25 months, when I was 47, and my fertility signals were still very strong until at least the age of 48, maybe 49.

    Life got so hard with 5th Arrow and his autism spectrum disorder and developmental delays that my husband thought it best to avoid having any more children. His early years were very hard for all of us, and it was all I could do to nurture him and all the rest of the children.

    Fifth Arrow has come a long ways, by God’s grace, and those early, dark years seem like a distant memory now. My husband was open to having more children again a couple years ago, but I was 50 by then and my fertility was seriously waning by that time.

    Next month will be one year since my cycles ended, so I am through menopause now (most I’ve heard say you’re official at 12 months, but my doctor says 6). I don’t expect I’ll ever ovulate again (I turn 53 in two months), so I can say with nearly 100% assurance I won’t ever conceive again.

    I’ve come to grips with that. God knows what He is doing, and I can rest in Him.

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  144. I came to this page at 1,948 and thought, I should save 1949 for Jo because that’s her year. When I saw you had just gotten 1947 and 1948, I knew what I’d see when I refreshed the page. Congrats! 🙂

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  145. 6 Arrows, I had to come to grips with never being able to conceive my own children. I had gone from wanting four children (I might, had I married younger, have wanted more than four, but four always seemed at least the minimum and possibly the ideal) to thinking OK, if I am able to have two that would be good. (One or two always seemed too few–but one decidedly too few, so I came to grips with “even two would be a blessing.”)

    A couple of months after the point when it was obviously impossible (medically) for me to have children, and I was still single, I was in a store waiting to check out when three women who worked there were chatting behind the counter. I have no idea whether any of them were married or the family life they had, but two of them had one child each and one of them two, and the one with two was telling the others to be happy with their one since two was too many, and they were readily agreeing. And I stood there wanting to tell them what blessings they were rejecting, and how much I could wish to have what they were seeing as of no account, but I said not a word.

    But then a year later God brought me not only the husband, but the two children. (And I’d always wanted four with at least two of them being girls . . . and I think the circumstances would have been far more complicated if my stepchildren were boys . . . and so it is good.)

    6 Arrows, my mom married in her late twenties (27) and had one child right away (he was supposed to be twins, and she had him 9 1/2 months after marriage, exactly) and then a miscarriage and then the next one at 30 . . . so in her twenties she had two miscarriages (including my oldest brother’s twin) and one live birth. Then she had two more children later into her thirties, and I know she had another miscarriage somewhere, so probably she had three children and one miscarriage in her thirties. They chose not to have any more for a while, and then thought if they wanted any more they’d better get to it, and then three of us were born in 38 months in her forties, the oldest at 45 and 3 1/2 months. As far as I know, none of the miscarriages were in her forties, though I really don’t know when the last one was (it was between me and the brother ahead of me, I think, but nearer to him than to me, I think). So she had 1:2, 3:1, 3:0, twenties, thirties, forties. And she told me that she seemed to be still fertile for several more years after my youngest brother, but that was enough. Which is why my sister kind of assumed she could have children as long as she wanted to, but she had more miscarriages than live births, especially in the later years.

    I’ve heard that each baby extends a woman’s fertility about a year, and obviously it wouldn’t always be true, but it makes sense and it seems to fit patterns I’ve seen.

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  146. When I look back on my mom’s last pregnancy, I wonder how she did it. She was nine months pregnant in August in Phoenix, age 45, with a child nearly two and another one barely three, and four older children (almost 10 up to 17) in a three-bedroom house and a husband who worked nights.

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  147. I can’t imagine Phoenix in August, much less being pregnant there and then. I liked being pregnant over the winter, because I was always so much warmer those winters than the winters I wasn’t expecting.

    Most of my babies were born in the spring (the first four), and the fifth in February, so I was in my first trimester in the summer with those children, and my blood volume hadn’t increased that much yet at that stage to make me feel warmer than in summers I wasn’t pregnant.

    Sixth Arrow was born in September, so she was the only one with whom I was in the late stages of pregnancy over the summer. We have central air conditioning, though, so it wasn’t bad. I just avoided the outdoors on the really hot days.

    Cheryl, your post at 11:57 — that’s surprising your mom had more miscarriages earlier, and fewer later. Usually, like with your sister, it’s the other way around.

    My two miscarriages, as I pointed out above, were in my forties, which is common, but sometimes I wonder if I would have had more miscarriages earlier if we had not been using birth control (or practicing NFP) in the early years. On the one hand, because I’ve always gotten pregnant easily, I sometimes think I would have had lots and lots of children (many more than the six I have) if we’d let the Lord determine the timing of children without any intervention on our part. But on the other hand, the two times I miscarried happened while I was still nursing. If I conceived after I had already weaned the previous child, then I never had a problem with miscarriages, and if I did conceive while nursing, I always miscarried.

    I know many don’t have a problem staying pregnant while nursing, but I’m wondering whether for me, pregnancy and lactation was just too much. Hormonally, my fertility was a little “iffy”, for lack of a better term, during nursing. High enough that I could get pregnant, but perhaps not enough to maintain a pregnancy.

    We did see on ultrasound that in my first miscarried pregnancy, the placenta hadn’t developed normally, and the baby lived only about seven weeks. My second miscarriage happened so early, I hardly even knew I was pregnant. That one occurred around 4 or 5 weeks. I never even felt pregnant, other than being really tired. (I did have two weeks of morning sickness with my first miscarried baby, then it suddenly stopped, right at the time it would have normally increased dramatically, as it did with my live births. In retrospect, I learned that the sudden stopping of the sickness occurred right around the time the baby died)

    So, in some ways, things started out going normally, but didn’t continue that way with those two children. I don’t know if similar things would have happened throughout my 20s and 30s if I had conceived multiple times during nursing, or not. Doesn’t matter — God knows. And I know I will see those babies in heaven some day.

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  148. Regarding your story about the employees behind the counter, Cheryl:

    It is sad to see how short-sighted many are (and I will admit I was one of them at one time) regarding the blessing of children when in the thick of things raising them.

    I remember thinking when 2nd Arrow was an infant (and 1st Arrow three years old) how challenging it was having two children. Not so much that having two, in and of itself, was hard (I had been a school teacher, after all, and two seemed like hardly anything!), but that MY TWO made for a tough situation for me because of their very individual differences.

    My son (firstborn) was very high-needs during the day — temperamental, strong-willed, often difficult to deal with. But boy was he a great sleeper! Slept through the night from an early age, etc. When he was my only one, we had challenging days (although I taught school until he was three, so a lot of the challenges fell on the shoulders of his daycare providers), but I had a wonderful respite at night every night when he was sleeping — long and soundly.

    Three years and three weeks after he was born, along comes 2nd Arrow — docile, low-maintenance during the day, and a HORRIBLE sleeper at night! Nurse, wake up, nurse a tiny bit more, fall asleep, wake up…etc. etc. Night after night after night, I’d be up with her repeatedly. For YEARS.

    Did I mention I resigned from teaching when she was an infant? So there I was, a stay-at-home mom for the first time in my life, with one high-needs daytime child, and another high-needs nighttime child!

    You can bet I let people hear about that! (And still do, ha!) 🙂

    But it’s unfortunate that our culture promotes the idea that short-term challenges justify taking long-term measures to prevent discomfort as much as possible. We don’t see the value of children, and we make it all about us, and what we think we deserve or don’t deserve. If having children (or having more children) is a hassle, or inconvenient, or whatever, then don’t have any (more), the culture screams.

    God can certainly turn hearts around, and does. I was blessed to meet new friends after I left my teaching career who embraced the blessing of children wholeheartedly. They had a wonderful influence on my husband and me, and our lives are richer by the Lord’s orchestrating our meeting.

    And now, after two long posts, it is time for me to go invest some time in those blessings I have right here this morning. 🙂

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  149. BTW, Cheryl, regarding what you’ve heard about a woman’s fertility being extended further for each baby she’s had, I’ve heard that women are born with all their eggs, so it would make sense that women who have more pregnancies (during which time, of course, eggs are not released monthly) would take longer to get to the end of their fertility — the end of their supply of eggs. (Although that may be a simplistic way of looking at it, now that I think about it — maybe some eggs are not released by ovulation, but resorb in time, or fail to release for other reasons? I guess I don’t know as much about that as I could.)

    Anyway, considering the fertility history of my mom, myself, and the one sister of mine who has gone through menopause, my mom, with five children (compared to my six and my sister’s one) had a much longer period of fertility than my sister and I did.

    Mom started periods shortly before her 10th birthday, she said, and didn’t have her last one until age 54! (Although that one was 12 months after her 2nd-to-last one, so kind of an anomaly.) Still, though, approximately 44 years of fertility! And all five of her children were born in her 20s, then she got her tubes tied, so she still had 25 years of periods after she’d finished having babies!

    So I wondered, based on my mother’s history, if I would have periods far into my 50s, especially since I had more children than she did (8 pregnancies — 6 full-term — to her 5 total, full-term-only pregnancies), and because I didn’t start periods until I was 15.

    As it turns out, I didn’t even come close to her 44 years of fertility, as my periods (are there any guys reading this? — it feels funny typing this on a mixed-gender blog, lol!) went from the month before I turned 15 1/2 to the month before I turned 52. Thirty-six-point-five years. And when you consider that I was pregnant for approximately 57 months, and I averaged about 15 months of lactational amenorrhea for each full-term pregnancy, there was an additional 12 years within those 36 1/2 where I was not ovulating at all.

    I must not have been born with as many eggs as my mother, apparently. Or maybe she had a lot more sterile periods (menstruation that occurs without the release of an egg), especially, I would think in the early months or years of her cycles, given her unusually young age at the start.

    My sister who has gone through menopause only had about 12 months without periods during her fertile years (9 months of pregnancy, and 3 months of lactational amenorrhea), years which extended from around ages 13-49, or about 36 years like me. Except she was ovulating for 35 of those years, and I only about 24 1/2.

    So I guess we’re kind of all over the map! Interesting to see individual differences in God’s created order, and to know how we all are fearfully and wonderfully made.

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  150. I scared everyone off with my multiple long posts. 😉

    This is 1,956. Will Mumsee or Peter L get 1957? We haven’t seen either of them on this page for a while now. Three days ago for Mumsee, seven days ago for Peter.

    Next?

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  159. LOL!

    While you were taking 1964, Karen, I was over at YouTube listening to the #1 song of 1964. Late to that number now, but here it is:

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  171. 1977! Hubby graduated from high school!

    And my family drove out to California to visit aunt and uncle and cousins. A July/August trip, we had no air conditioning in the van, and the back seat wasn’t anchored to the floor, and was facing the passenger-side back window instead of the front. Bouncing and swaying, putting up with lots of motion sickness, but still a mostly fun and very memorable trip.

    First and only time swimming in the Pacific Ocean. My 10-year-old sister got knocked over by a wave in shallow water, and that was the end of the ocean for her!

    Oh, and 108° in Fresno. Can’t forget that!

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  172. Thanks for that clarification in your second 11:17 post, Mumsee. I wasn’t sure about that. 😉

    Nice to read all these reminiscences. When we get to #2016, we will have to start predicting the future. 🙂

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  176. I don’t know if I “stole” anyone’s numbers on 1981 or on this one, but I’m going to retype my graduation year in bold, and see if I can get it right this time!

    1980!!!

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  181. 1985! The year I met my hubby. But he wasn’t my hubby yet. 😉 And we were married in 1986, but I’ll leave that alone in case someone else wants it.

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  183. Karen, I was going to type almost the same thing you did at 1984 — that nothing significant happened! Instead, I typed “Kind of quiet around here…”, refreshed the page, and saw that you had gotten 1984, and my comment was 1985, on which number I had meant to say that was the year I got engaged. So I had to quick grab 1986, the year I got married!

    Sorry I stole your numbers in the process, but it was actually *you* who snuck in here!

    (I like that word “snuck” too.) 🙂

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  190. 1993 was the year 2nd Arrow was born, but I missed that. The number, not her birth. 😉 But maybe this is 1997 now? The year 3rd Arrow was born.

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  199. For some reason, every time I post a comment on this page, the comment goes in the right place, but I get flipped back to the previous page.

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