You can now find me at esthergood.com.
Looking for something? Here are some popular posts:
DIY Wall Map
Part II: To the Conservative Christians Fighting for the Integrity of the Church
Part I: To the Progressive Christians Fighting for LGBTQ Rights
Thank You: Taking Off My Facebook Face
Dear Fred Phelps: Thank You and RIP
Lessons in Parenting #1: How to Put Down a Sleeping Baby (without waking them up)
God Loves Fred Phelps
On Wednesday, Fred Phelps, founder of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church, passed away. While Westboro Baptist Church was made famous by their message of hate, I believe Fred Phelps and his clan have been one of the greatest driving forces of unity in mainstream Christian culture.
We’ve all heard plenty of advice from parenting books, weather we read them ourselves our had them quoted to us by some fanatic. It seems like the holy grail of parenting advice is to be consistent. I guess I thought it meant, “I am consistently not a push-over,” or “I am consistently the boss of you,” because I always associated that phrase with laying down ultimatums and putting my foot down.
I have since learned that the exact opposite is true. If you want to be consistent (follow through on what you say,) then don’t ever put your foot down ever. The reason for this is quite simple: In all likelihood, your child can put their foot down harder than you can.
![IMG_4440[1]](https://dustofafrica.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/img_44401.jpg?w=490&h=326)
Feet
Next time, try saying something like: “Now I see you haven’t finished all of the food that I labored to put on your plate. I’d like you to finish it, but I’m a reasonable human being. Let’s negotiate. I’ll let you get off with two more bites if you promise not to wake up before 6 a.m. Deal?”
In conclusion, try not to say anything you’ll later regret if your child turns out to have a stronger resolve than you do. In most cases, putting your foot down really is going to hurt you more than it hurts them.
No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. -1 Corinthians 10:13
Yohannes and I had only been married for a few weeks. We were just getting settled in our new house in Lancaster and I was trying to get caught up on Social Security and County Assistance applications for my clients at work. Then, without any warning at all, my heart was ripped out of my body, shattered into a million pieces and scattered over the ocean. It’s been four years, but there’s still an ugly scar and all those pieces being pounded into sand on the shore of Costa Rica.
I struggled deeply with my faith after Matt died. Each Sunday I would stare out the church windows toward the cemetery and the pain and bitterness would boil up inside me. I couldn’t bring myself to forgive God for what he had taken away from us. The weight of the loss was so heavy; I didn’t feel like I could stand up under it.
The next year, when Natnael Matthew was born, I waited for that deep, overwhelming love to wash over me — the love I had heard about and read about and dreamed about. What overcame me instead was a devastating pain. I knew the instant I saw him that if anything ever happened to him, I could never recover. There is not a more vulnerable feeling in the world.
But in the last four years, I have had the privilege of watching Matt’s mother Deb walk through her loss with the most incredible grace. I selfishly wanted to hoard my grief and bitterness, because I felt like my mourning was the last part of Matt that was uniquely mine. But watching Deb has inspired me to move beyond that. Instead of hanging on to bitterness, she chose treasure his life, and that’s what I want to do too.
After four years, I finally feel like I can stand up under it. Sometimes I still get swept away by the magnitude of what we lost, but now I can find my balance again. I choose to treasure the memories.
Dear Matthew,
I miss you.
Love, Esther
Easter morning at E-town Mennonite.
Yohannes turned one of our garden boxes into a sandbox this year. Best 700 lbs of sand he ever lugged into the back yard. Nati is in heaven.
Happy boy.
Lily spent the morning hanging out on the quilt.
Happy Girl.
Things I like about the back yard include food and flowers, though I apparently know nothing about flowers.
Blueberries
Raspberries
Basil
Yellow flower?
Purple Flowers?
Blue flower?
Purple banana flowers?
When Nati finished in the sandbox, he ate raspberries and blueberries as fast as I could pick them.
Yummy.
Things I don’t like about the back yard include wasps, mosquitoes, and the spider that crawled across my sleeping baby’s head. Also, we have a lot of glass and trash that has been worked into the soil in the past.
I don’t like you, Wasp.
Hello, cracked glass marble in our strawberry patch.
In other news, Lily sucked her thumb for the first time. Should I be glad that she’s self-soothing, or nip the habit in the bud? I sucked my thumb as a baby…and toddler…and elementary aged child…so I see how it could become a problem.
Sleepy girl.
I recently had a breakthrough in homemaking where there was only one week’s worth of laundry left unfolded at a time. Score. Since then, my resolve has deteriorated and I’ve got two weeks worth of folding that’s starting to get mixed up with the dirty clothes, but I WILL PREVAIL. (I hope.)
During my short stint as a groundbreaking homemaker, I decided to try to move up to the next level: homemade stuff. I decided to make homemade playdough from a recipe I found on Pinterest. What you need: 1 Cup Flour, 1/3 Cup of Salt, 2 tsps Cream of Tarter, 1 Cup Water, 1 Tbsp Vegetable Oil, Food Coloring.
In case you don’t know what salt is.
Mix together the dry ingredients. Add the water, vegetable oil, and a few drops of food coloring (I added a lot). Heat on medium for a couple of minutes until its about the consistency of…erm..playdough.
Why yes, I did scrub down my stove top in preparation for this shot. Thanks for noticing!
Let it cool down and then play! I was really pleased that it feels and smells like “real” playdough. I would’ve gone for the taste test, but playdough doesn’t seem as appetizing now as it did when I was a kid. The whole process probably took less than 10 minutes, and it’s a great use for all those yogurt containers I’ve been obsessively saving for no reason.
He asked me to make yellow next. I forgot an made red. Oops.
Just be aware, if you leave the blue playdough on the counter in the yogurt container, your husband might take a peep inside, think that some aggressive blue mold has annihilated his precious Greek yogurt, and throw it in the trash…and then dig it back out again later when you explain that it was homemade playdough.
When I was at boarding school in third grade, I made a friend on the playground one day. I was swinging by myself on a marry-go-round swing that was meant to have two people, and he came over and said, “Do you want a friend to swing with you?” Immediately followed by, “Well, not a friend.” This was the obvious thing to say, because 5th grade boys can’t very well be friends with 3rd grade girls. So he swung with me and even asked if I wanted some of his crackers.
It was a rare movie night and while we were waiting for the movie to start we wondered from the playground toward the entrance of the building. We were on the top of a small slope, and no one else was in the area. Somehow, our not-a-friendship evolved to the point where he pushed me down the hill. I laughed it off, and climbed back up, but when I got to the top, he just pushed me right back down again. I climbed up again and again and again, and each time, he pushed me back down.
I was starting to get a weird feeling about this guy. He no longer seemed like a slightly taller version of my other playmates. Actually, he was starting to seem huge. Gigantic. More along the lines of a very tall, extra-strength 5th grade beast that puny little 3rd graders would never have a hope of outrunning.
Just then, one of his friends rode up on a bike. My not-a-friend said, “Hey, check this out! Total wipe-out!” Then he proceeded to demonstrate how he could push me down the hill. I don’t remember what his friend said, but it was something along the lines of, “That’s not cool.” I am eternally grateful.
Needless to say, after that little incident, I avoided my not-a-friend like the plague. If I saw him across campus, I turned around and walked in the other direction, and I almost never went anywhere by myself if I could help it. One day I was running late after lunch and needed to go to my dorm before class. I was about half way there when I came up behind that 5th grader walking with one of his teachers at a leisurely pace. If I didn’t pass them, I would be late. If I passed them, he would see me.
I debated back and forth for a few minutes, during which time, they seemed to walk slower and slower. Finally I decided there was no way he would come after me if he was with a teacher and I speed-walked around them and up the path toward my dorm. I hadn’t gone far when I heard him hurriedly excuse himself and walk after me. I decided to play it cool, hoping he would just walk past, but when we were in a wooded area with no one around, he caught up to me and grabbed my arm.
What happened next was a bit of a blur. It involved some vague threat from him, a vicious threat from me in return (something like, “me and all my friends will get you”), and my nails digging into the flesh of his arm. I got away and ran as fast as I could back to my dorm. He never bothered me again.
A few years later, some friends were talking about someone they knew in the U.S. who was being bullied at school. I got up my courage and talked about the 5th grader who used to terrorize me. They brushed it off as not “real” bullying, because I didn’t get bruises or anything. I never talked about it again.
Have you ever seen a toddler with a cat? They love that cat. But they don’t really know how to play with it. The cat gets its tail pulled and feel threatened and will hide under the couch for hours if it has to. I think that’s how it was with the 5th grader. I don’t think he was a bad kid. I just don’t think he knew of an appropriate way to play with a 3rd grade girl. I’m sure he didn’t think he was bullying me, and he might even have thought I was having fun too.
I certainly didn’t feel like a bully in middle school when I made fun of the girls who wore makeup and had older boyfriends. I had a low self esteem and thought they were pretty. Somehow, in my mind that added up to mean that they were beyond my reach. That nothing I said could really hurt them, or even matter to them. So I bullied them without ever knowing that that was what I was doing.
When I was at Binns Park a few days ago with Nati and Lily, there was a wide range of kids there. In particular, there was a young elementary-aged girl playing with a slightly older elementary-aged boy. A little later, an emo tween boy came. It was obvious that the younger boy looked up to him. Somehow, the interactions that followed led to the girl standing in front of them and yelling gleefully, “I have ADHD! I was born that way!” The elementary-aged boy started to make fun of her, but the emo kid immediately interrupted and said, “No, that’s cool! There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Dear emo kid,
My hat is off to you.
Today was a water fountain kind of day. It is hot, and I didn’t want to hang out in the hot sun at the park. The pool would be nice, but I’m nervous about juggling two kid by myself when neither of them can swim. Thankfully, Lancaster was prepared for my dilemma.
Binns Park: the place where all your dreams come true. That is, if it’s 95 degrees outside, and you are dreaming that cold water would bubble up from the ground into a glorious fountain and spray all over you. When we first got there, Nati was shy and wanted to wait until all of his friends were done. I explained to him that it was 95 degrees, so his friends were never going to be done so carpe diem. He hung out mostly on the edges.
Ready…
Catch the water!
Lily was not terribly impressed by the water, but allowed me to splash a little on her every now and then to cool her off. She was in more of a cuddling mood after getting her shots yesterday.
Eventually, Nati was emboldened to go closer to the center, but only if I held his hands. This means I got soaked and later had to walk through a store to get prune juice for my constipated baby while looking like I had just peed my pants. Still, it was worth it for the squeals of delight.
Yohannes has started teaching Nati his right and left. He actually gets it right a surprising percent of the time, although I still have a hard time believing that it’s more than a coincidence. Left is definitely his favorite. He enjoys telling Yohannes to turn left at red lights, and seems to have a tendency to hurt his left hand or his left foot.
We actually haven’t been able to tell for sure yet if Nati is right-handed or left-handed. It seems like each time we think he’s left-handed, he’ll go and kick the ball with his right foot. And then when we decide he’s right-handed, he’ll pick up a spoon with his left hand and eat an entire meal that way. Yohannes is a leftie, and he’s secretly very proud of that fact, so I know he’s rooting for Nati to be the same.
I receive monthly emails from Baby Center with information on child development for Nati’s age. This morning, the email I opened told me that Nati is at the age where it will start to become more obvious if he’s right or left handed. I hadn’t really been paying attention to his handedness for a while, so I decided to be extra vigilant today.
Just a few moments later, Nati walked into the room and walked over toward his Lego table. Which hand would he use? The tension mounted. Suddenly, Nati lunged forward with both arms and grabbed a Lego in each hand. Alas. Maybe he’ll give us a clue another day.
What is the American Dream? I recently heard a program on NPR that discussed how home ownership is a huge part of the American Dream, because Americans don’t want landlords sitting on their backs. It’s true. I don’t want landlords sitting on my back. I also don’t want banks sitting on my back if a mortgage payment is late. It’s probably fair to say that I don’t want anyone sitting on my back, because that’s no fun. Do you know who else doesn’t want anyone sitting on their back? The whole world.
The American Dream was never about whatever material possession Americans currently want. It was the idea that America, as a new country, could offer something new. It was about freedom. That’s a loaded word, and I’m sure that slaves and American Indians would have had a thing or two to say about it at the time. But people flocked to America, hoping for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from poverty.
The American Dream is the idea that in American, anyone can be anything. I think it’s true that America offers many opportunities. It is possible to go from rags to riches. (Possible, but not likely.) There is a large measure of freedom of speech. It’s not perfect, but lets be real: the thousands of people who bash Obama today are probably still going to be here to bash him again tomorrow. (A moment of silence for those massacred in Syria.)
I fully support those who are motivated to make positive change in this country, I’m just pointing out that it’s a more decent place than we often make it out to be. That’s why people all over the world want to come here. A lot of people. They can’t all come because we have countries and borders, which are necessary so that American law enforcement doesn’t all hop over to Amsterdam and start arresting people for smoking cannabis, and so that Saudi law enforcement doesn’t all hop over to America to start arresting women for driving. That’s why America has many undocumented “citizens”, and I use that word in it’s earlier definition to mean “inhabitants of a city or country.”
Although country borders are necessary, immigration is a rigid, legalistic system that sometimes unnecessarily hinders the natural, organic movements of humans. My in-laws want to come see their new grandbaby. Great! They just have to get a couple of governments to sign off on it first. I have friends, former classmates, and several friends-of-friends who are undocumented. That’s why I support the DREAM Act, which has been proposed to offer a path to legal status for some undocumented people who were brought to the U.S. as minors, completed a certain level of education, and maintained “good moral character.” I was happy to see that Obama is attempting to address this issue. I just hope that the round-about method doesn’t railroad efforts for a more permanent solution. Because the American Dream is not about buying a house. It’s the dream that we can build a country where the circumstances of your birth don’t dictate who you can become.
Dust Of Africa 