Baby update

Warning...cute pictures and video ahead!!!!

With Great Grammy Schur

Sittin' pretty and pondering the meaning of life...

Big Bro loves Lil' Sis!

Two peas in a pod!

Two cuties!

"Talking" to and smiling at Mommy earlier today (click to play video)

LH

At the font we start our journey...

Sunday was Pumpkin's (yes, that's her blog name) baptism. It was a beautiful day all around--some 30 friends and family were there, including Pumpkin's great grandmother. The worship service was incredible...once a quarter our church does a service of healing, and it fell on the same Sunday as the baptism--which was oh so right in so many ways. One of the great things our pastor does is break up the baptismal liturgy into sections that span the course of the entire worship service, making the baptism a part of the whole worship experience and not just a compartmentalized addition on the side. And as our opening hymn we sang At the Font We Start Our Journey, a relatively recent hymn by Jeffery Rowthorn. Here's the lyrics:

At the font we start our journey,

in the Easter faith baptized;

doubts and fears no longer blind us,

by the light of Christ surprised.

Alleluia, alleluia!

Hope held out and realized.

At the pulpit we are fashioned

by the Easter tale retold

into witnesses and prophets,

by the power of Christ made bold.

Alleluia, alleluia!

Faith proclaimed, yet still untold.

At the altar we are nourished

with the Easter gift of bread;

in our breaking it to pieces

see the love of Christ outspread.

Alleluia, alleluia!

Life embraced, yet freely shed.

At the door we are commissioned,

now the Easter victory's won,

to restore a world divided

to the peace of Christ as one.

Alleluia, alleluia!

Easter's work must still be done.

Promises were made. Promises by her mother and I, promises by her sponsors, promises by the congregation. And as the water was poured over her head, she was baptized into the death of Christ and raised to new life, she was sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.

Pumpkin, Mommy and I love you more than you'll ever know. But there is One who loves you even more, and with a more perfect love than we'll ever have. May you grow up to know that One, to draw your strength and faith from that One, and to serve that One by serving others.

LH

Thoughts on the advent of my baby's baptism

My little girl is being baptized tomorrow. Of course, my religious tradition will baptize anyone at any age, but as far as I'm concerned, there is no greater example of how God comes to us before we deserve, desire, or even realize it than when a baby is baptized. Pure grace.

Sweetie and I will be making some promises tomorrow--promises to teach, nurture, and encourage. But the biggest promise of all has to be one that will remain unspoken...which will be to let my little girl be herself, as the beautiful person God created her. To allow the Holy Spirit the room to do its work, which sometimes means that I must cling tighter...and sometimes I must let go, as painful as it might be at the time. To remember that my job will be the job of nurturing and encouraging faith--not of creating it.

When we try to do the job of the Spirit, more often than not we end up pushing our children (and adults) away from God, rather than drawing them closer.

I LOVE this reflection from Gordon Atkinson at Real Live Preacher:

Children are so soft. Their skin is fragrant and pure, like baby leaves.
Their minds are eager and ready, their hearts are trusting and open, and their
eyes will lead you softly to the very bottom of their souls.

Children know God because God can be found in the soft places of the world.
In mother’s hands and in father’s soft shirts. In laughter and at dinner and in
the goose bumps that rise when lips slide across skin.

It is a terrible thing when soft, childish flesh meets the hard steel of
religion. We cut through children like butter. In our collective unconscious
there is a swishing sound. It is the sound of the swords of Herod’s men rising
and falling on the children of Bethlehem.

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie.Take a deep breath
now, and free your mind. Do you remember when your spiritual softness was taken
from you?

Did it happen at church?

What sort of church was it? Was it a brick building in the suburbs? Was it
a synagogue or a mosque or a cathedral? Was it the secret church of one man’s
desire, or the feral church of neglected children? Was it the cold sanctuary of
science that stole your myths and left you wounded and empty and suckling at the
stars? Or did you construct your own lonely chapel, like Saint Frances, barefoot
and one stone at a time?

I was wounded along the way. It happens to everyone. Life is hazing. It’s
one big rite of passage from beginning to end. I grew tough as leather, deeply
protected, calloused, and hard. But I worked my leather with the oil of my hands
and with tears and time until I became soft again. And soft, worn leather is
such a comfort to have and to hold.

Now I guard children’s hearts against all religions, sacred and secular. I
will throw myself at you, church man. Stay away from that child’s mind. Let her
be a pagan; let her be a skeptic, a scientist, or a saint. Let her be any or all
of these, but for God’s sake, let her be.

Let her be because her soul was never yours for the taking. If you lay your
hands on her, she will grow hard, and still she will not be yours. But if you
love her and let her and listen to her and allow her, one day she may return
from the far country, fully grown and newly wise.

And soft, still soft. And strong, so strong.

First Bath

I. Love. This. Picture.

Other than a little fiddling with the contrast and putting in in black and white, I wish I could take credit for how cool it looks. But I can't--the sun was coming through the window of the hospital room at just the right angle with just the right brightness and the rays landed in just the right place to really give it the effect of studio lighting. I love too that Kiddo provides his own caption: "I'm the big brother." I love the look of care and concentration on Kiddo's face, and the obvious gentleness with which he's handling the cloth.

Seeing one of my children helping to take care of the other gets me a little verklempt, too.

I'd say I'm proud of this picture, but that would imply that I did the work to intentionally compose it like this. Nope, I just got lucky. Right place, right time. But as they say, better lucky than good, right?

(By the way, to see the picture full-size, click on it to enlarge.)

First Bath

(c) 2008 by Matt Schur

LH

More baby pics

How lucky am I? =)

LH

P.O. Pears We Hardly Knew Ye

We take a brief respite from baby news for this important bulletin:

March 23, Easter Sunday will (ironically enough) be the first day Lincoln is without one of its dining landmarks.

Yes, the venerable P.O. Pears will be closing its doors.

P.O. Pears is quite possibly the coolest restaurant ever. There are some out there with better food (though Pears IS the home of my fave hamburger...more on that in a minute), there are some out there with a better bar, better bands, better decor...but there's nobody that put it all together in the unique way and with the devil-may-care sensibility that P.O. Pears did.

Where to start...well, there's the front door. I have to admit to falling prey to the "PUSH other side" wording on the door handle more than once.

Then you get to where you order your food, which in P.O. Pears' case is a giant set of lips which, according to their website, was originally used as a promotional device by the Rolling Stones on one of their tours. Apparently the rumor is that Keith Richards got *ahem* "acquainted" with one of his wives on that very set of lips.


The decor of the place is peppered with old movie artifacts, including a sleigh from Dr. Zhivago, a scale model ship from Tora Tora Tora and this wheelchair, which played a notable part in Psycho.


In fact, there's all kinds of crap hanging from the ceiling throughout the whole place, which is notable because P.O. Pears did this and made it look cool well before corporate places like Applebees started using that style of decorating in each of their 10,000,000,000 restaurants.

Then there's the food itself. This is probably my favorite hamburger ever:

It's called the Jiffy Burger. A big ol' juicy hamburger patty with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, bacon, jack cheese, and...peanut butter. Look at the picture again. What may appear at first glance to be yellow cheese, is in fact the gooey goodness of peanut butter.

That's right. Peanut butter is what puts the "Jif" in "Jiffy Burger."

And my GOODNESS is that burger good. Probably takes a year or two off your life expectancy each time you order one, but well worth the potential health risk.

So Monday, Sweetie and I went to P.O. Pears for lunch one last time, and I ordered what was probably my last Jiffy Burger.

I may be in mourning for quite some time.

LH

More baby pictures...

...because right now, uploading photos is just plain easier than trying to string together coherent thoughts. =) Suffice it to say that all is well...baby's doing great, Kiddo's been an amazing big brother, and mom and dad are happily sleepy. Or is it sleepily happy?

Those first few weeks with a newborn, you stop thinking about time in terms of daytime and nighttime, and instead switch to a mindset of sleep-time and awake time. And in our case, baby came home with some jaundice, which is caused by high levels of bilirubin, which apparently is something the body gets rid of by pooping it out. And in order to poop a lot, one needs to eat a lot. And when one is a baby, that means mom and dad need to feed you a lot. Which for Sweetie and I has meant feeding about every 2 hours since baby came home from the hospital a little over a week ago. 2 hours from the beginning of each feeding...not the end. So if you figure each feeding takes about 45 minutes, we're talking maybe a little over an hour between the end of one feeding and the beginning of another. Round the clock.

I'm not complaining, mind you...but I just realized that with all of this, we've kind of retreated into a little "baby cocoon." Our own little world of 2 hour feeding and sleeping cycles.

An interesting sidenote...Saturday night/Sunday morning, I got to watch the clock on our cable box switch to daylight savings time. It said 1:59 AM, then all of a sudden it said 3:00. I always wondered how that happened.

Well, I said I wasn't going to write much and here I am rambling along. So here's the promised pictures. I'd better get going.

After all, it's almost time for baby to eat again.

Ain't she a cutie?!?!

Does a dad's heart good to see scenes like this...

LH

Commence Heart Melting...

Okay, I thought having one child led to heart-melting moments. Well, we're finding that having a second child around only multiplies those moments exponentially...

Click on the video:

LH

Welcome to the world...

On February 28 at 7:43 AM, we welcomed our new little girl (not sure yet what her blog nickname will be) into the world. She was 6 pounds and 7 ounces, and measured 19 inches long. She's a beautiful little girl (obviously taking after her mother!) with a pretty full head of hair and an easygoing temperment. She's just a little sweetheart, and we all just feel so incredibly blessed to have her as part of our family. Kiddo has been a very proud big brother! He loves to hold her and talk to her, and even sternly told his mom and dad once to stop talking because his sister was trying to sleep! We are sleep-deprived but otherwise doing well...keep us in your prayers!

LH

"It's the final countdown..."

Okay, so I've had that song by Europe in my head all freaking day...can't imagine why. ;-) We're nine hours away, and both of us just bubbling from a combination of excitedness, anticipation, and nervousness. Kiddo's spending the night with grandma and grandpa, we'll be getting up at 3:45 to get ready to head to the hopsital, and as far as we can figure, we're set to go.

Sweetie's sister, proud and loving aunt that she is, has come down with a really bad case of the flu-like upper respiratory junk that's been hitting pretty much everyone this winter--in fact, she was in the ER for it yesterday. She's okay, but heartbroken (and we're heartbroken for her) that she won't be able to hold her new niece tomorrow, and will have to wear a mask and won't even be allowed in the room for very long. But we've told her that as soon as she's over this crud, she can hold the baby as long as she wants... ;-)

God bless--keep us in your prayers tonight and tomorrow morning!!!!

LH