{phfr}: ordinary time

{pretty}

Gladys draws so well and so interestingly. So much of her stuff looks like it is right out of Millions of Cats, very detailed, dark. She barely ever colors anything in. And lately, her houses look like they have eyes for windows, which she told me was on purpose.

Also, I'm so glad we painted this room yellow. It's so cold and gray out but the room provides it's own light.

{happy}

Fatty Lumpkin, Ermintrude (?), what am I calling her? She is so pleased with her new hat and coat. She smiled especially for this picture, wide mouthed, still for half a second so she could be photographed.

{funny}

We own a treadmill, lying there in disuse down in the basement, and Matt insists on having a forty five minute walk five days out of seven, besides his hour long work out, but he won't use the treadmilll even though it's something like 20 below outside. He wraps himself up in all kinds of layers and goes out in it anyway.

Why does this fall under Funny? you ask. Shouldn't it be in a new category called Insane or Very Very Stupid? Yes, but I do derive so much pleasure from the the extraordinary personality of my husband. And Fatty Lumpkin, curled up in bed with me just now, pointed at him as he put on his mask, and gave a hearty belly laugh. A just and true reaction to someone who won't ever take any excuse to vary his routine for any reason ever.

{real}

Since we haven't fixed on any kind of systematic evening devotional I asked Matt if we could work on the catechism because it's becoming unruly and cumbersome during the school day. There are so many things we're trying to memorize I don't want to neglect the weighty matters of spelling rules and the multiplication tables just so all the children can perfectly rattle off all 146 questions of the shorter catechism from young children. I mean, of course the Jesus part is super important but the day is so short. Choices have to be made, I'm sure I frequently make the wrong choice.

So we talked about points one and two over dinner: Who made you, and What else did God make? Who made you was a nice reason to talk about the March for Life. What else did God make was too tempting to not talk about how terribly they treat their stuff. But then somehow we got to Adam representing all his posterity and why God would create the devil. And here is where childhood development is so interesting, because a fourteen or a sixteen year old child is very likely to have real existential angst about the idea of God being glorified by pouring out his just anger on those who have been prepared before hand as vessels of wrath. Whereas the six year old child thinks God beating down Satan is super cool and is prepared to spin around the dining room table making light saber noises. 

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