on the love of food.

Ambrose has fallen in love with food this week. Here's my current list of food that he likes and actually eats: Sweet potatoes Oatmeal Strawberries Peas...kind of. He'd rather just play with them, but likes them when he actually does eat them. Scrambled eggs Chicken Celery...if you count knawing as eating. Carrots Bananas sweet corn Cheerios Green Beans Toast French fries...(hey, the other option was screaming all the way home.) Tater tots Broccoli...kind of and Chocolate chip cookies... go figure. Also, all cakes and any other danish. Definitely takes after me in that department. On the other hand, the pregnancy hormones have taken over my body and I have developed a strong love/hate relationship with all things edible. That is as it should be at this stage of the game, I suppose. My first appointment with the midwife is the 24th of August. So, if all goes well, we should be able to hear a nice little heartbeat then. Last time I was pregnant and I had to wait 6 weeks to get in to see the midwife, it felt like eternity. I'm so much less anxious this time, about everything. It's nice.

This morning, in a sleep-deprived blur, I stepped on the scale--only to be totally mortified and nearly have a heart attack at my massive weight gain. I stepped off, thinking, "how could this have happened?!" And then I realized that I was holding the baby.

life...

is full of surprises! You guessed it. We're pregnant!

toads and oatmeal.

So, just now I went out to our patio to pick up some of the damage the storms had done lately...including knocking over the stroller. When I went to pick it up, out jumped this TOAD. He's pretty big, too, at least for living in an cemented-over apartment complex. Needless to say, I was caught totally by surprise and my heart is still returning to it's normal pace. Anyway, we finished up the Face the Truth tour on Saturday, and we've settled back into our usual routine. The second part of the tour was great, though. And, while protesting in Evanston on Saturday, a pregnant girl was persuaded not to have an abortion. And that makes the whole thing worth it. Ambrose has discovered the joy in pulling himself up on things. Particularly the dishwasher, when it's open, so he can pull all the silverware out of the basket. He has 5 teeth poking through right now. All at once. 4 on top, one on the bottom. Oh, and he loves LOVES oatmeal.

Face the Truth

This is the sign I carried yesterday when I went out with the Pro-Life Action League to protest in Rockford. We lined up alongside the road at busy intersections with a few other images of murdered babies--in such a way that there were 10-15 images of a first trimester abortion (at least 20 feet between each sign, too), then 10-15 of a second trimester (which is what you see here) and then the same of the third trimester....and variations on that theme. In the end, our protests at three different sites stretched out for a mile or more. I was fortunate enough to be standing near stoplights at 2 of the stops, which gave me ample opportunity to talk with drivers as they waited for their light. It was remarkable. I'd have to say that it's encouraging that the feedback was pretty evenly split between getting a thumbs up and getting flipped off. But the thing is, at least for me, that I'm not standing out there with that sign to convince the hard-headed-pro-aborts that abortion is wrong. I'm standing out there so that the completely unaware half of the population knows what abortion really is. Because they really, truly don't know. I'm standing out there for the 15-year-old girls who gasp in horror and ask, "Is that really a baby?" and for the big black man who took a long, hard look at my sign and declared, "That SUCKS! I am a-GAINST that!", for the elderly couples who shake their heads muttering, "What a shame." Early in the morning, two ridiculous liberals pulled up in front of me and began a discussion: "Are you guys Christians?" me: "Yes." guy:"Let me ask you something. Why do this? What effect do you think this is going to have?" me: "I'm doing it so people know what they're doing to babies." guy: "People know what they're doing to babies." (said in the MOST condescending way. He proceeded to ask me about the war and a few completely irrelevent questions.) But they don't. They don't know. In fact, I bet that most of the women who decide to abort their babies don't know what that means, as is evidenced by the woman who came strolling along the sidewalk just moments after that bozo drove off. She came over to admire Ambrose, who was sleeping pretty soundly. "Gosh, he's cute," she said, stroking his arm. She looked at my sign for a moment, and then slowly started moving on. "I had one of those once," she said, pointing at the sign. She paused and stared for a moment. "But I'm real sorry. I didn't know it was like that. I didn't know. It was just my situation...but I didn't know." Killing babies--killing anyone--is wrong. But they're not just stopping a beating heart (which would be awful enough in itself). They're brutally and unapologetically dismembering and murdering them. People need to know that. Anyway, Ambrose and I are going back out again with the Pro-life Action League tomorrow and on Saturday. Pray for us and for the group and most importantly, for the message.

your mission...

The love of my life is spending today and the upcoming week working with our friend Eric in the pro-life movement--that is, traveling around the state and parading around with posters of aborted babies in public places, among other things. You should go visit his very dusty blog and ask him how it's going, and tell him that he ought to blog about it. Because he really should!

why you shouldn't bathe the baby in ice water, and other helpful hints.

A few days ago, I picked up the book The Mechanical Baby at the library. It's more or less just a review of the history of theories and practices on child rearing. Interestingly enough, before the days when most people were literate, almost all childcare literature was written in the form of prose--to make it easier to memorize and then pass from person to person. In the 1500's, it was apparently a very common practice amongst the Germans to take a newborn baby and give it a bath in ice water--the theory being that this would "harden it to the cold". In 1584, a man named Schevole de St. Marthe wrote this poem regarding the practice, basically saying that you shouldn't bathe your baby in ice water.........because it will kill the baby. It's oddly humorous, really...but awfully sad to think of how many babies were lost to such a dumb idea. "The Germans use, a race inured to cold, To war, to labor from the cradle bred.... The new-born child, yet reeking from the womb, They took to what oft gave him to the tomb; Lest he should from his father's strength decline, They plunged him shivering in the freezing Rhine... And taught him thus, from childhood, to defy The cold and frost of an inclement sky, The force of dreary winters to despise...." "The Germans grown more wise, as more refined, And doomed, no more, to ignorance of mind, For ages have their barberous cure despised And all condemn what their rude sires devised A method how superior! learning gave, To bathe the infant in the tepid wave."

and we're back!

So, we're back. We had a great time. I've got a bad case of the post-vacation blues (the mark of a truly satisfying getaway?). The waters of Lake Michigan are still pretty frigid, but the weather was g-o-r-g-e-o-u-s, and I totally loved the beach, fair skin be damned. My nose is a lovely shade of pink to prove it. *Sigh* I just love vacation pace. It's so nice to wake up...take it slow...check out the waves...eat...eat...and eat some more. All I can think about is how much I don't want to do all this laundry I've brought home with me, and how much I'd really love to be back there. Here's a gazillion pictures, free of charge. This was Ambrose's first experience with sand. He was fairly indifferent to it, and thought it was better for eating than anything else. This, friends, is surely one of the better things in the world. It is a blend of green tea and lemonade with freshly picked raspberries (we went picking on Sunday afternoon). I managed to snag a couple pints of these beauties (the berries, that is) before we left. Perhaps on of the best perks...sitting on the cliff overlooking the beach while nursing the baby. Oooh, this is my mei tai, even though you can't see it very well. It's still ranking #1 on my list of baby-carrying devices--definitely the best for roaming the beach and climbing the stairs from the beach to the top of the cliff. This is the beach at sunset. Isn't it so pretty? We had a bonfire on the beach Saturday night and set off a few fireworks. Totally fun. Matt reading the paper while Ambrose eats his. Half of the Yonke cousins: Stephen, Kristine & Ambrose, and Daniel. And my super awesome hubby whom I adore. *Sigh* Off to finish the laundry.