Funky Dung

• family

by Eric

This cute little milestone for Lily is a few weeks old, but I didn’t get around to blogging about it until now.

Every evening before we eat dinner, Amanda and I lead Alex and Joel in saying grace. One evening a while back I noticed that Lily (about 9mo at the time) was staring at us and had clapped her hands together. At first I wasn’t sure if it deliberate or just a coincidence. Well, it happens just about every time we eat together now, so it’s definitely deliberate. Whenever we start grace, she watches intently and usually drops whatever she’s eating or drinking to put her hands together (though she sometimes ends up clapping them or swinging them around like she’s practicing a Captain Kirk double-fist thump).

I think that’s pretty cool, and as a Catholic it makes me proud as well. Anyone else have a story like that ...

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Tags: Catholic, dinner, grace, Lilian, prayer, Religion

• family

by Eric

This sad little story happened several weeks ago, but life interfered with blogging. A while back, Joel had to stay home sick from daycare because he had pink eye. After dropping Alex and Lily to daycare, Joel came along while Amanda dropped me off at work. As I left the van, I said goodbye to them both and thought nothing more of it. Later, Amanda told me that as I walked away Joel got the saddest little face and whimpered, “Daddy leaving me?”.

I don’t know about you, but that mental image certainly made me weepy.

Tags: Everything Else, Joel, sad, separation, sweet

• family

by Eric

This blog post is brought to you by the letter 'A'.

I actually finished this months ago, but I’ve been so busy with grad school and whatnot I haven’t gotten around to writing about it. Here it finally is, offered as-in and without fanfare.

My wife and I have been using Signing Time videos to teach our kids ASL since Alex was four months old. Ever Alex got good at identifying letters I’ve wanted to combine reading English and learning ASL in order to ease the kids (and me) into learning Latin. Why Latin? As the root of all romantic languages, it’s the piano of languages. It’s also the official language of the Roman Catholic Church, to which we belong. It took me a long time to think of how to achieve my goal, though.

I don’t recall what inspired my eventual solution, and I’m sure someone deserves credit that ...

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Tags: ASL, education, language, Latin, reading, sign language

• family

by Eric

The kids and I had an interesting experience this morning. Our neighborhood parish, St. Rosalia, offers daily mass on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I wish it was offered every weekday, but that’s a topic for another day. I meet with my PhD advisor on Fridays, so I take the kids to mass on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Sometimes mass is cancelled unbeknownst to us (since we don’t attend Sunday mass at St. Rosalia to get the weekly bulletin). That wasn’t the surprise we received this morning, though, and even we ‘d had the bulletin we would not have been prepared. As we entered the church, we were informed that a funeral would be taking place.

Hmm. Decision time. Should we stay or should we go?

Reasons to go:

• We weren’t dressed in funeral attire.
• We weren’t family or friends of the deceased.
• It would be longer than a typical daily ...

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Tags: funeral, mass, Religion, St. Rosalia

• family

by Eric

Tags: birthday, Joel, Lasting Memories, Milestones and Achievements