BlueEyedZoo.com » Thoughts

Optimum Time

Shannon — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 04:51:17 +0000

Bear, also known as PinkyT (short for The Pink Tornado), removed a few books from the bookshelf in the office today and left them in random places around the house. One of them was Ruth Beechick’s reading book from her Three R’s series. I found it in the living room and since it’s only 28 pages long, I read/skimmed through it while watching the Spurs game tonight. On page 4 there was this great quote I wanted to record here so I can refer back to it.

It is true that some children can learn to read remarkably early. But the fact that they can does not necessarily mean they should. Should is another question. One school district set up an experiment to help decide this question. Some kindergartners in the district received time learning science. They melted ice. They observed thermometers in hot and cold places. They played with magnets, grew plants, learned about animal life, and so on. Books and pictures were available for these children if they wanted them, but no formal lessons in reading were held.

And what did the school district learn? By third grade the “science” children were far ahead of the “reading” children in their reading scores. The reason? Their vocabularies and thinking skills were more advanced. They could read on more topics and understand higher level materials. The “reading” children, by starting earlier, used up a lot of learning time on the skills of reading, while the “science” children spent the time learning real stuff. And when they did begin reading, they were older and knew more and learned in a fraction of the time that the others took.

This research and others like it are compelling. They drive home the fact that each child has only a limited amount of time in his early years. That time can be squandered in trying to teach reading before the “optimum” time for it. Or it can be used wisely in teaching “real stuff” that the child is ready for.”

Kat has done very well with reading lately, particularly in the last week or two. But it has not been easy waiting for this “optimum” time. It’s not been easy to refrain from freaking out either. I hope the results in this study hold true for us.

Rest

Shannon — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:15:10 +0000

George and I just finished reading Messy Spirituality by Mike Yaconelli. Before returning it to the library this week I jotted down a few things from the section on living busy lives. Yaconelli writes, “we have no slow lanes anymore. Every lane is fast, and the only comfort our culture can offer is more lanes and increased speed limits.” He also describes speed as having “a deafening roar that drowns out the whispering voices of our souls and leaves Jesus as a diminishing speck in the rearview mirror.”

Yaconelli then discusses rest (as in Matt. 11:18).

The ugly truth, however, is that many of us do not know how to rest! Actually, we do know how to rest; we simply refuse to rest. Rest is a decision we make. Rest is choosing to do nothing when we have too much to do, slowing down when we feel pressure to go faster, stopping instead of starting. Rest is listening to our weariness and responding to our tiredness, not to what is making us tired. Rest is what happens when we say one simple word: â€œNo!â€ Rest is the ultimate humiliation because in order to rest, we must admit we are not necessary, that the world can get along without us, that Godâ€™s work does not depend on us. Once we understand how unnecessary we are, only then might we find the right reasons to say yes. Only then might we find the right reasons to decide to be with Jesus instead of working for him. Only then might we have the courage to take a nap with Jesus.

I think Yaconelli may be right. It’s not that I don’t know how to rest, I do. But it’s really hard for me to choose to rest. Figuring out how to choose rest without feeling guilty about all the things I’m not doing, now that’s even harder. But I want to try.

July 24, 2006 – Part 2

Shannon — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 23:48:37 +0000

A very sweet and special lady from my hometown died today. She was the mother of a friend and a friend of my mother’s. It was not unexpected, but it is still hard for me to process right now. Maybe because I’m physically distanced from it. Maybe because I just haven’t had that much experience dealing with death. Maybe because I just simply cannot imagine life without my own mother. I hurt for those closer to her. I don’t have much else to say, but I didn’t want to ignore it. It’s easy to blog about the fun things, but I think it’s important for me to blog about the tough things too.

Stepping Out

George — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 16:23:17 +0000

Wow, I can’t believe that it has already been 5 weeks since I quit my job! The time does fly. Some of you may not even know about all of the big changes we are going through right now. I have been intending to post about this for some time. I wanted to wait until I was actually out of there, but then I’ve just been caught up with lots of other stuff.

I have spent the past 7 years working at a large company here in SATX. It was a good experience for me, but it had become very clear that it was time to move on. My more perceptive wife recognized this much sooner than I did, but I can be slow and stubborn at times.

So, what exactly am I doing? Well, now I’m now independent, self-employed, or maybe un-employed. I’m spending my time being with my family, writing code, and working on my house.

The current coding project is a PHP/MySQL project for a non-profit organization. I’m learning lots of new stuff, and I really enjoy the project. It’s great to work on a project that has a more meaningful outcome that will help families in need. The organization I’m working for is a great group that helps children with their neurological development. They help everyone with a wide range of neurodevelopmental issues ranging from down syndrome, autism, ADD, and much more; or fairly “normal” families like us.

The current house project is getting it ready to sell. That’s right, we’re moving. We will be moving to Fort Worth soon. How soon? Well, we get that question a lot. The answer is: it depends. Depends on how soon we can sell this house and how soon we find a new place. Since I don’t have another job (“workin for the man”) lined up, we don’t have a move date / deadline. We hope to have our current house on the market next week and moved into a new place by mid-June. The only deadline to speak of is the baby whom we expect to arrive in mid-August.

The current family project is reconnecting. Over the past few years I have been far too focused on work and career development at the expense of my family. The time I have given to my family has been largely child focused. I need time to reconnect and especially with my wonderful wife. We need to remember what it is that is most important to us and what we want our lives to look like.

We live in a time of quick fixes and 10 step programs. We want everything spelled out and simplified for us, and we’re not willing to make sacrifices even for things that are of utmost importance. We want medicine that will protect us from all disease instead of eating well and living a healthy lifestyle; we want the 10 minutes a week workout that will enable us to scarf all the donuts we want and still be in great shape; we want the simple formula from (insert popular parenting author here) to make our children respect and obey us; we want to spend our 20 minute QT (quiet time) every morning and live the rest of our lives however we want and still have a great relationship with God; we possess and consume until our houses are overflowing and then we want more. I must admit that I have fallen into many of these attitudes myself, but I’m a recovering americano-hypocondri-donutScarfin-QTskippin-consumerist with hopes of a better life. I’m learning that sometimes you must make drastic changes and sacrifices. It’s usually not easy, but it is usually worth it.

30 Things I’ve Done

Shannon — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 00:44:43 +0000

Picked wildflowers on soccer fields (instead of playing) … Used a first modem at the age of 2 … Won the Most Original Decoration prize at Sunray Funday’s turtle race … Held a season pass to Sesame Place … Won grand prize in the 7th grade science fair for studying the effects of cotyledons on embryonic plants (in other words, if you pick off the pieces of a budding seed, it doesn’t grow so well) … Won 2nd prize in the 8th grade science fair for studying the environmental effects of plastics (if you bury a plastic Sprite bottle in the garden, it will still be there a few months later) … Viewed the Southern Cross constellation from Brazil … Reprimanded by the nice police officer during my driver’s license test for stopping TOO long at an intersection … Sang America the Beautiful on top of Pike’s Peak (as part of a group, not a solo) … Tried oysters (once!) … Won the air car race in high school physics class, easily beating Carl N.’s fancy dual-propeller car with my cute and simple single-propeller car … Had a pet gerbil named Sneakers … Rode 50 miles with my dad on a bike trip to the lake and back … Consumed a 54 oz. steak in one sitting all by myself … Worked in a computer shop putting computers together … Promised myself I would never date a fellow computer science major because they were all too weird … Ate yummy, juicy steaks at the Lowake Steak House – including one occassion when I was kidnapped from work by friends and driven there for a birthday dinner … Passed Dr. Motl’s Assembler II class the first time through … Worked as a lab assistant in the computer labs for over 4 years … Tutored a fellow computer science major in Dr. Motl’s Assembler II class (he was cute) … Won free plane tickets to anywhere in the world … Dated and eventually married that fellow computer science major (breaking previously mentioned promise) … Employed at a Fortune 500 company for 16 months before deciding that was enough time for me! … Had 2 unmedicated hospital births to 2 wonderful kiddos … Allowed 3 hens to live in my backyard until they became a neighborhood critter’s midnight snack … Showed my daughter how to do a somersault while very pregnant with child #2 (NOT a wise idea) … Witnessed a caterpillar forming a chrysallis … Grieved the loss of a child I never knew … Witnessed the beauty of Niagara Falls on our 7 year wedding anniversary … Discovered that being 30 years old isn’t that old after all!

the poop scoop

George — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 04:53:47 +0000

The only thing worse than a trailer full of poop is a trailer full of wet poop! This has become a new slogan of mine.

One of the many tasks we’re working on now is attempting to get our lawn looking alive and well again. That means fertilizer and water. We checked the weather report and saw that it was supposed to start raining Monday. So we decided we should get some fertilizer on the lawn so the rain can help soak it in. I happen to believe that the best kind of fertilizer is of the “natural” variety; yep that means poop to the unlearned.

We found a place here, Garden Ville, that carries composted manure, but when I got there, I forgot to ask what exactly is in the mix. I just asked what they had that would make my lawn green again. After filling my trailer, the guy driving the front-end loader waved me down and asked, “Is that pregnant girl over there your wife?” Yes she is. He then tells me, “don’t let her get too close to this stuff. It’s made from solids from the city sewage. It should be safe, but she shouldn’t be the one spreading it just in case”.
WHAT! I thought I was getting cow manure?! Yikes. Well, as you can imagine, Shannon was just heart broken that she would not be allowed to spread any of the fertilizer. I on the other had, got the joy of shoveling three trailer loads of the lovely smelling stuff while trying not to think about itâ€™s origin. I did get it done today, but not before the rain started to fall. I really didn’t want to have a trailer full of wet poop in my driveway, so I stepped into over time and got the last of it spread out then headed inside for a long shower.

For those of you that live here in San Antonio, you can all take some pride in the healthy green lawn at our place. Keep up the good work!

Sometimes life stinks…

Shannon — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 21:20:00 +0000

It’s been an intersting month. We’re very excited to add another cousin to the family and very excited for George’s brother and his wife. And Baby Katherine is definitely an adorable little girl. But the week she arrived was a tough week for me. I had received a call on Tuesday that my sister was in the hospital with a likely miscarriage. The pregnancy announcement letter she had mailed was still traveling through the postal system so I had no clue until then that she was even pregnant. The very next day was when we heard that Baby Katherine would be arriving later that day. I spent the rest of Wednesday waiting for the phone to ring, but not knowing if it would be my mother-in-law calling with the joyful news of a new baby’s arrival or my own mother calling with the dreaded news of a definite loss. Both calls eventually came, but I think I had a hard time processing them both at the same time.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to keep my mind off things and pass the time, I make the mistake of turning on the TV. It seemed that at every commercial break someone wanted to say “Coming up on the news tonight: It’s been 6 months since Hurricane Katrina and tonight we’re going to look at ……” Blah, blah, blah. Hurricane Katrina made landfall the morning of Monday, August 29. That was also the day we had our own miscarriage. So thank you, dear media, for reminding me of our 6 month miscarriage anniversary.

A pregnancy after a miscarriage is a whole different deal than a pregnancy without ever having a miscarriage. Someone described it this way:

Everyone “knows” that miscarriages happen and pregnancies fail, but until it has happened to you, you get to enjoy pregnancy in a whole different way. You assume that getting pregnant will mean you will have a baby in roughly 9 months. Once you experience miscarriage, this isn’t so. Getting pregnant no longer means having a baby. What it means is 9 nerve wracking, panic filled months of wondering if your baby has died yet.

And that’s exactly how I’ve felt since we found out we were expecting another baby. My brain is not working under the “we’re having a baby in August” mode. It’s more like “if everything goes well, we think we’ll be having a baby in August”. I will admit that it is slowly getting better as the weeks and months pass. And I am thankful that I had 2 “innocent” pregnancies before the miscarriage. But I’m quite frustrated that my sister didn’t get to experience that before her miscarriage – AND there’s nothing I can do about it. I can tell her that her next baby will most likely be fine. I can tell her these things just sometimes happen and we never know a reason why. I can tell her to lighten up and that there’s no use spending the whole 9 months being fearful. I can tell her things until I’m blue in the face, but what good is it going to do if I can’t even believe it myself?

And, you know, that’s all I really feel like talking about it right now. Plus, naptime is over so little ones will be up any minute. Hopefully future posts will be a little more light-hearted, but I couldn’t really go on with blogging until I got that out of the way. (And just for clarification, this is a different sister than the one that was married a few blog posts ago.)

Just REST!!

Shannon — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 05:19:29 +0000

I had a conversation with Emily several weeks ago that I keep thinking about. The weather outside was nice and I agreed to let her lay down on our porch swing in the backyard for her rest time. The back of the swing folds down and actually makes something like a small bed. Since there was enough room, I decided to join her. I had tons of stuff to do, but decided to instead try to finish the last chapter or so of a book I’d been reading in for months. Emily often has trouble settling herself down and getting still. This was no exception.

Emily moving all around trying to get comfortable.
Me: Emily, please be still.
Emily: (still for a few seconds before squirming again) I need a pillow.
Me: (handing her a porch swing pillow) Here, now be still. You need to rest your body for a bit.
Emily: (still for another few seconds before moving again) What time is it?
Me: It’s not even 2:00 yet, probably 1:30. Now, rest your body!
Emily: (aware that I am not wearing a watch) How do you know what time it is?
Me: It doesn’t matter. Now rest!
Emily: But how do you know?
Me: (Getting a WEE bit irritated by now, I place my finger on the sentence I was reading, look her in the eyes and speak sternly. ) I am the mommy. I know. Now, just REST!!!

That was pretty much the end of the conversation. She stayed fairly still after that. I picked my book up to finish reading the paragraph I’d been trying to read for the past several minutes. I followed my finger to the word it was still touching. It was the very word I’d just spoken: REST. I don’t remember now what the paragraph was actually saying, but it was speaking about resting in God. I sat there for a few minutes and then listened in on myself having the following conversation:

Me: I’m concerned about all the things that still need to be done before L’s wedding.
Voice: I know, but it’s okay. Just rest a bit.
Me: I’m worried because we couldn’t hear the baby’s heartbeat last week and I’d sure feel a lot better if I knew that our baby was real and alive.
Voice: I know it’s hard. But I promised I’d hold you though this. And that promise didn’t stop this summer. I’m still holding you. Just rest, okay?
Me: We have so many big changes coming up and it’s just all so overwhelming, and…
Voice: Yes, I know about them all. Now, just rest!

(Notice I did not say God said those things. Maybe he did, or maybe my brain just said what I think he’d say. Either way, I still got the point. And I don’t want to risk putting words in his mouth.)

I did finally put the book away and rest on the swing for a bit. And I have thought about the conversation a lot since then. But did I really rest? I don’t think so. I don’t know that I really know what that means or even how to do it. Did I stop worrying about things? No, of course not. Is that really even humanly possible? How do you really NOT worry … about ANYTHING … at ALL? I sure haven’t figured that out.

On another note, some would say I should have dealt with the original sitation better and not have been so patient with Emily in the first place. If she wasn’t going to be still and rest like I’d told her, I should have immediately addressed the situation more sternly. Andf maybe I should have. However, I am glad that the voice telling me to rest didn’t lose it’s patience with me, as I was starting to do with Emily. And still hasn’t lost patience with me. I struggle with knowing what my response as a parent should be to situations like this. On the one hand, as a good parent I am supposed to be enforcing the things I tell her to do, right? On the other hand, I see undeserved patience and grace being shown to me ALL the time for things I know I shouldn’t be doing. Mostly by God, but also by George, my kids, and others. But I can’t go around showing undeserved patience to her all day, can I? Or can I? Ughh. I have NO idea.

Shopping

Shannon — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 06:17:08 +0000

This morning, the kids and I headed out to do some shopping. Within walking distance from the first store was a Goodwill. Inside Goodwill, in the toy aisle, was an EleFun game. Emily played this game at a friend’s house MONTHS ago and has been asking for one ever since. They usually cost somewhere between $13 and $17. The EleFun game on the Goodwill shelf looked like it had only been played a few times. It included all the original pieces, plus 4 working C batteries (usually not included), for $1.99. How can you turn that down? The 4 batteries alone would have cost more than that! We bought it and had a good discussion about the price difference and what a good deal we got because it was used, blah, blah, blah.

And then what did I do next? It was lunch time so we stopped to eat. I spent almost $12 and got up from the lunch table with 2 kid’s meal toys and temporarily satisfied tummies. Why did I make such a big deal to Emily about how we just “saved” $11 and thenI go and spend $12, without even thinking twice, on something that’s so temporary? Arghh.

(By the way, the EleFun game WAS a big hit at our house tonight. We have been trying to play more games with Emily in the evenings and this is one of the first times we have played a game that Nathan can actually participate in as well. We have definitely gotten $1.99 out of it so far.)

A New Kind of Christmas

Shannon — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 04:54:47 +0000

We get frustrated by all the greed and commercialism that we see this time of year. At the same time, many of us are also annoyed (and frustrated and some even angry) when retailers, employers, etc. remove the word “Christmas” from their holiday vocabulary. It’s Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. It’s a Holiday Party instead of a Christmas Party. It’s the Season of Sharing instead of Christmas Cheer. And for a lot of Christians, that annoys, frustrates or angers them. But why? Every time someone says the word Christmas, do you REALLY stop and think about Christ? If the lady behind the StuffMart counter says Merry Christmas, will those two words really shift the focus off of my purchases (whether it be bananas or an IPod) and back onto Christ? And what good is my faith if I am relying on the StuffMart employees to remind me what this season is to be about?

We complain that the retailers are taking Christ out of the season. But didnâ€™t we already do that? We as Christians sure spend quite a bit of time during this season doing holiday stuff (list-making, house-decorating, gift-buying, card-mailing, cookie-baking, party-attending). Contrast that to how much time is spent really reflecting on Christ (whatever that really looks like in real life). Sure we might light Advent candles and read Luke 2 a few times, but does that really compare to the hours I spent doing all of the other holiday stuff?

So let’s say we all boycott StuffMart because they are no longer saying Merry Christmas. Let’s say StuffMart loses money and decides to use Christmas in their advertising again next year. Would they not just be using Christ’s name to sell more stuff? Is that REALLY what we want to ask them to do? Put the name of my LORD on your advertising (even though it means nothing to you) so that we Christians will start buying stuff we don’t really need from you again. We complain that there is too much commercialism at Christmas time – but then we complain that retailers have stopped using the word Christmas to describe this crazy, greedy, consumeristic season. Why would we even want Christ’s name associated with this season of greed?

How about if we just let the Happy Holidays folks have their holiday!! Let Happy Holidays describe the craziness that goes on this time of year. Let Happy Holidays describe the people standing in line at 4:oo am to be the first into the store. Let Happy Holidays describe the grown adults fighting in the aisle over the latest trendy toy or trampling over each other just to get inside the store. Let Happy Holidays describe those (of all ages) that tear open every package under the tree in 15 minutes and then ask â€œIs that all?â€ Let Happy Holidays describe all of that. And let Merry CHRISTmas describe something else. Something with more giving than receiving. Something with more quiet reflection and less hustle and bustle. Something that makes us obviously different from the rest of the world. Something more Christ-like.

Our problem is that we donâ€™t know what that New Kind of Christmas would look like. Iâ€™m not really talking about some small token things I could do, like making a shoebox gift or buying a gift for a family in need (which are good things to do and we have done them). I mean some really significant change so that the way we celebrate Christmas is radically different – and radically peaceful – and radically refreshing – and radically unselfish. Is that possible? Weâ€™re trying to brainstorm some ideas and we really may be too late to implement much this year. But if anyone else has any ideas, weâ€™d like to hear them.