Reading Material

I'm the kind of king that doesn't spend a lot of time on his throne. As a consequence, I rarely get a chance to read the Reader's Digest which sits on the rack next to said throne. Since I don't really like Reader's Digest, it all works out okay.† Standing there the other day, however, I read part of an advice column that was excellent. I think the trick is that they have a man writing the advice column for once.

Dear Abie,
The other day I set off for work, leaving my husband in the house watching the TV. I hadn't gone more than a mile when my engine conked out and the car shuddered to a halt. I walked back home, only to find my husband making love to our neighbor. He was let go from his job six months ago, and he says he has been feeling increasingly depressed and worthless. I love him very much, but I don't know if I can trust him anymore. What should I do?

Sincerely,
Frustrated

Dear Frustrated,
A car stalling can be caused by a variety of faults with the engine. Check that there is no debris in the fuel line. If it's clear, check the jubilee clips holding the vacuum pipes onto the inlet manifold. Or it could be that the fuel pump itself is faulty, causing low delivery pressure to the carburetor float chamber.

I hope this helps.

† On a side note, my goal of getting a joke published in Reader's Digest continues to elude me, so I guess it really is harder than it looks to write a terrible joke.

Take at look...

at my ward's new Relief Society 2nd Counselor:


Yup, it's me. I'll be released from Ward Newsletter and Historian as soon as they find someone to replace me. I'm actually not too nervous. Maybe I'm finally getting old enough that this sort of stuff doesn't intimidate me anymore. I guess PTO president was probably good prep too.

Unicorns and Princesses

My firstborn turned 8 this last Friday. I gave her a well-timed present the night before. She was going up the stairs while I was going down and we managed to collide in the dark. I knocked her down the stairs and she was pretty sure she had broken her arm. She’s world class at milking it for all it’s worth. I felt pretty bad about the whole thing. She probably did sprain her wrist so we wrapped an Ace Bandage around it. We didn’t get much sleep that night. I told her she could talk about it at show and tell, but when she got home she said so many people were asking her about it that it wasn’t necessary.

For the actual birthday we started out the day with waffles, her request. Our tradition is happy meals for lunch on birthdays, but she was having a pizza party so we delayed that till Saturday. Sadly the pizza party didn’t happen. It was okay though because we had pizza for dinner that night. After dinner we opened her presents. The main present I bought her was a Nintendo DS game, Mario party. That ended up being super lame so I gave her the Zelda game I had been saving. Now I have Mario Party listed on half.com since we can’t return it. E had a pretty good time albeit a tad grumpy due to the previous night.

Saturday we had her friend birthday party. She chose a unicorn theme. I draped crepe all over the front room and taped purple balloons everywhere. The kids really enjoyed that, they thought it was pretty magical. For the party we played limbo, hula and pin the horn on the unicorn. To top it all off we had an indestructible unicorn piñata at the end. Even J had a hard time breaking it open.

We were pretty exhausted when it was all over, but E still had a birthday party to attend that night. Her friend has the same birthday so she was pretty excited to go. All in all I think it went very well. We are excited for her upcoming baptism on April 12th.

Stats

E and P both had their well child checkups this last Tuesday (8 year and 6 months). E is in the 8th percentile for both height and weight. She’s been slowing down more and more in her growth. I haven’t really been worried about it since there are short genes in the family. The doctor did say that she may not end up short. There is something called Constitutional Growth Delay. That is when a child starts out average size and gradually moves down on the growth charts compared to their peers. They hit puberty a little later, but catch up in growth. He said that tends to run in families and that kids also tend to be an average of their parent’s heights. It’s obviously not for sure, she may still end up short, but it was interesting to think she may be taller.

P is quite the opposite. She is in the 90% in height and the 20th for weight. Her head is about average. She’s a tall skinny girl like her mama. She loves eating, but doesn’t eat a ton. We are working on getting her crawling right now. She can hold herself on all fours for a few seconds.

Otherwise, everything else went well. I have appointments set up for the 3 oldest to have their eyes checked in a couple weeks. I imagine at least two of them will end up with my bad eyesight.

Comics

As we were walking into the school for the concert, another girl told E she looked beautiful. Then she said that she looked just like Cinderella. E said thank you in this kind of embarrassed yet proud/happy voice. It probably made her day to be told she looked like her idol.

L was drinking some apple juice yesterday morning. He said “Mom, this makes my face happy.” He’s getting a lot better at expressing himself and reasoning.

J brought home one of the new fangled grocery bags yesterday - the cloth kind you are supposed to use instead of environment destroying, global warming causing plastic bags. Apparently they are having a contest to see who can use it the most. So I'm supposed to let him know everytime I use it. His unappreciated comment to his coworkers was "seems awful expensive to throw a bag like this away everytime I shop". If you get that you will laugh like crazy, if you don't I'm not explaining.

Spring Concert

E and B had their Spring Music program yesterday. E was first. As soon as she located J and I in the audience she started hamming it up like crazy. That child has no shame. She is definitely destined towards a career in drama. B did well too. He wasn’t super excited at going. He didn’t understand why he had to change his grass stained pants. He did a great job singing though and even did the actions. Thankfully the program was fairly short. I thought it was well done.

Photo Shoot With Daddy

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

E had her first play on St. Patrick’s Day. It was called “The Lost Pot of Gold” and she played the part of Toby. She did a great, albeit wiggly, job. She obviously knew everyone else’s parts because I could see her mouthing their parts when it wasn’t her turn. If they messed up then she would get them back on track. I’m so proud of how hard she works and the enthusiasm she puts into it.

There's a new sheriff in town:

She has started sucking it in a normal way, just not in this picture:

She's a Maniac

P's first two teeth have come through. I found this in the toy basket and stuck it in her mouth. Surprisingly she enjoyed sucking on it. I just think binky babies look so cute. If she didn't suck her thumb then she would be one right now. At least I get some pictures to remember.

This is P sleeping during church on Sunday. I took the picture during the RS practice song. I'm sure everyone around thought I was crazy. I always have my camera with me though so I couldn't resist.
P's new favorite activity. I think she is training to be a future aerobics instructor. If you look close you can tell these were all taken mid-jump.

Out of Control

On a separate topic, have you guys heard about the lady being charged with child endangerment in Chicago? She left her sleeping 2 year old in the car while her other two kids gave money to the salvation army. She locked the car and stayed within sight of it the whole time. I read this and was absolutely astounded. This has gotten ridiculous to the extreme. How about a little common sense here. It is amazing how many kids can fall through the cracks while a perfectly good mom gets prosecuted. Oregon's law is fairly open ended. A child under 10 cannot be left unattended for an length of time that could endanger their safety or health. You could probably be fairly liberal with that, but I guarantee that won't help you if CPS disagrees with you.

Lest you think it is all bad

I thought I'd share a positive post about L. He certainly has his moments (like painting the carpet blue the other day), but he is still a very good boy. I gave blood last Thursday and had to take him with. I was a little nervous, but he was awesome. He sat on a bench next to me the whole time and didn't run around getting into stuff. He kept all 10 fingers in his mouth till I finally told him to take them out. I think he does that when he is nervous. I noticed him doing it during primary this last Sunday too.

He's starting to be like E with strangers too. We were at the park the other day and he kept talking with a lady there. He doesn't like me to leave him, but he can handle talking to other people.

Princess P

has her first tooth. J noticed it yesterday. It looks like the second one might not be far behind. She's moved onto another cold too, hopefully this one won't be as bad. She's become an expert at shrieking when happy, sad and mad.

E has definitely been hit the worst by all the colds. Her last two have been pretty flu-like and her lymph nodes swelled up and made her neck pretty sore.

This morning L said "I'm sick in the head". I couldn't agree more. He managed to overflow the toilet this afternoon while J and I were napping. B came up to tell us and I went running down. That is when you learn how fast you can plunge a toilet.

Yesterday we went to a good friend's baptism. It was nice for E to see since she'll soon be joining the ranks of the church. April 12th for those of you that didn't get the email. On the way back from the baptism we stopped at Wendy's for lunch. J and I got a baconator. That was a big mistake. I couldn't eat dinner. Talk about calorie overload - I'll have to add that one to my Word of Wisdom no no's :)

We teach gun safety early in this family:

J is practicing his artistic expression:

I haven't bothered to secure the bumper on the crib very well, maybe I should now:

L put this on while I was picking B up from the bus and came running outside to greet us:

The Great Debate

My mom and I were having a discussion last night concerning caffeinated sodas and the Word of Wisdom. I’ve been thinking pretty heavily about the topic since then and felt it worthwhile to share my thoughts.

I was raised to not drink caffeinated beverages. Since getting married I have relaxed that prohibition. I don’t care for any colas really, pepsi is okay, but I do LOVE Mountain Dew. My all time favorite soda is still A&W root beer, but sometimes a Dew really hits the spot.

I believe that while growing up it is important for parents to impart their values and prohibit those things they consider wrong. However, as a child grows and matures it is just as important for them to investigate and determine why they believe what they believe.

A key example is President Hinckley’s prohibition on more than one earring. I had my ears double pierced in college (to my parents chagrin) and had been considering a nose piercing for quite some time. I immediately took my double piercing out, although it pained me to do so. However, the issue of whether or not to get a nose piercing has dogged me over the years. Sometimes I would think, “it is not an actual commandment so why not?”. I finally came to be at peace with my decision a few weeks ago. I began searching the internet for stories from other mormons concerning nose piercing. I found a blog created by an ex-mormon who had a nose ring while still a member. She left the church for good after divorcing her husband and had made some pretty terrible life choices. She was pretty vile in her diatribes against her husband and was about as amoral as it gets. I was pretty repelled by her lifestyle and decided that I do NOT want to be associated with that kind of person.

My job now is to determine if I believe it is wrong to drink caffeinated sodas.

Below are the quotes I considered in my decision:

“Larry King: No to caffeine?
Gordon B. Hinckley: No to caffeine, coffee and tea.”

D&C 89:2 “…showing forth the order and will of God in the temporal salvation of all saints in the last days”

Church Handbook of Instruction: The only official interpretation of "hot drinks" (D&C 89:9) in the Word of Wisdom is the statement made by early Church leaders that the term "hot drinks" means tea and coffee. Members should not use any substance that contains illegal drugs. Nor should members use harmful or habit-forming substances except under the care of a competent physician.

That’s right, just those three.

I believe it would be folly to take what President Hinckley said as a commandment from God (we could segue here into a debate on when the prophet’s words must be followed). If it is taken in that interpretation then we must no longer eat chocolate as well.

Here are some caffeine amounts to help put chocolate in perspective:

Coffee – generic: 133mg
Mountain Dew: 54mg
Pepsi: 38mg
Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate Bar: 31mg
Hershey’s Milk Chocolate: 9mg

I guarantee that the amount of dark chocolate I have eaten in my life outweighs the amount of Mountain Dew.

Now, to the topic of substances that are harmful and habit forming: My dad doesn’t drink Pepsi because he felt he had become addicted to it. My friend doesn’t eat chocolate because she felt addicted to it.

There has been a lot of press lately about the glycemic index. The amount and type of carbohydrates we eat plays a pretty big role in how tired we feel in the afternoon. If you eat foods lower on the glycemic index you will not experience a big crash in the afternoon. I would equate this type of physiological reaction with that of caffeine withdrawal. It creates an effect, but no more so that many other substances and foods we already take into our bodies.

Since chocolate is not prohibited by the church I have to conclude that caffeine is either not the problem or it is only a problem in large quantities. If it is the latter then it is safe to say that the amount I am consuming is not harmful. So, yes I do believe caffeinated sodas are okay.

I don’t expect this to convince anyone either way. It was helpful to me in formulating why I think it is okay to drink caffeinated sodas.