Tag: Kayla

Theology, and a Kayla Photo

Learning is a lot of work. I spend a little time with my girls, a lot of time with Greek, and what’s left gets spread around to everything else.

Becoming a “theologian” wasn’t near the top of my list of reasons to come to Dallas Theological Seminary. In fact, it wasn’t even on the list. Like many other students, I’m here because many leaders that I admire came here. I came to learn what they learned. We came to learn how to effectively meet the needs of others. The first thing I’ve learned is that to some degree, I am a theologian and so are you.

Theology is not what I so adamantly opposed. Theology is simply thinking about, or studying God. I’ve been a theologian (albeit amateur) for many years. Even the agnostic who questions God or the atheist who denies Him is practicing theology. So, it’s not theology I was opposed to, it was bad theology. So, what is bad theology?

If you are even slightly interested in what theology is, I highly recommend a very easily read book: Who Needs Theology by Stanley Grenz & Roger Olson. It explains what theology is all about and outlines the degrees of theology which range from “don’t confuse me with the facts; my mind is made up” to “I will believe only what I understand.” Obviously, good theology is neither of those extremes. Theology is not (yet) what I expected, it’s better.

Unexpected treats

The past two months have been marked by unexpected good fortune. I’m quite fond of the quote “luck is the result of fate intersecting with preparation”, but all the recent good fortune exceeds any rational explanation, and can only be explained as confirmation that we are where we’re supposed to be, doing what we’re supposed to be doing.

After getting moved in, it was time to get connected. We started out visiting our neighbors, one house per evening. We’ve met all our immediate neighbors and a few more of the near ones. We are thankful to be surrounded by some extremely good neighbors all the way around us. What a blessing.

Now we’re church hopping, searching for a church home that we’ll enjoy and grow in. This morning we went to Fellowship Church over by Lewisville. It’s not the church we’ll be attending but boy did we have a good time. We just happened to visit the Sunday when Newsboys were live in concert. Better still, they played three of my favorite songs. You know it’s a great worship service when your voice is strained afterward.

Classes begin Tuesday. On Thursday, Jen and I attended orientation. Orientation is basically an interactive way to give you the laundry list of things you need to do. Get your ID card. Get a parking permit. Find your mailbox. Figure out how to open it. Read your student handbook. The library is there, sign up for a guided tour (yes, it’s almost necessary). Deadlines for X are on Y date, etc. All very exciting stuff. Yawn.

Friday was far more fun, consisting of two entrance examinations and two take home assignments. The first test was the MMPI (Minneapolis Multiphase Personality Inventory). The instructor told us it’s a way to help them determine how well we adjust to personal and social change. S-u-r-e, that’s one of the uses, but it’s also used to assess mental disorders. With more than a few of the 567 questions like “someone is out to get me: T/F?”, and “I’m being followed: T/F?”, it’s evident what they’re looking for. “Sir, your results are in. Would you mind wearing this jacket while we take a little walk?”

The other test was a biblical & theology knowledge test. We get to take this test at entrance and graduation. The goal is that you do better the second time. That won’t be hard to do. The test was very humbling. I’m guessing I scored about 6%.

One of the take-home tests was actually a pretty enjoyable one. It’s called “PROFILES of Ministry” by the Association of Theological Schools. The test consists of 24 scenarios. Following each scenario description is a selection of possible responses. You rate each response based on your likelihood of using it. Finally, you are presented with a selection of motives for choosing the responses. Again, you choose how likely you would be to have each motive. I expect those test results to be quite valuable and interesting.

Last, but certainly not least is Kayla. We’ve now passed two parenting milestones. We’ve left her in nursery twice now. That’s no small step for a first time mommy. Kayla is now 24″ long and weights 13 lbs. She started out on the small side but has made up for it since. We’re almost certain she spoke. When Grandpa called from Alaska today, I heard her say “Halibut” and lick her chops.

Settled In

Although we’ll be adjusting (to) things for some time to come, we are now “settled in.”

The hardest thing to get used to is the heat. It’s been over 100 every day of the last week, and it doesn’t cool off to the mid eighties until early morning (5-9 AM). Thankfully, the humidity stays right around 70% so the heat is only mildly intolerable. To help get used to it, we keep the thermostat in the house set to 82°F, which is barely below misery for a northern boy like me.

Kayla’s latest kick is standing up. Forget about crawling, this little chic wants to stand. If we fail to oblige her, she’ll remind us. She really enjoys being upright, and it’s a fine digestive aid. It helps her relieve unwanted pressure from both ends.

Simerson Moving Schedule

Howdy pardners,

Everyone wants to know when we’re leaving. The final answer is: Aug 10th. That’s the short answer. If you plan to see us on Aug 10th though, you’ll be disappointed. Here’s the full schedule:

July 27th – Drive to Nashville
July 28-30th – Marco’s Wedding
July 31st – Drive back to Cadillac

Aug 1-5 – Pack up the house, install trim and paint in a few places
Aug 5-8 – Load everything into the truck
Aug 9th – Last minute odds and ends
Aug 10-11th – Drive to Texas
Aug 12-14 – Unload the truck in our Texas home
Aug 16-22 – Unpack
Aug 25th – School starts

And, no post would be complete with a Kayla photo.

This morning she had her 2 month checkup. She’s now 22 inches long and weights 10.6 pounds. She also got her shots so now she’s got Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussus (whooping cough), HIB, Hepatitis B, Polio, and Pneumococcal disease. Despite her little body being a disease riddled mess, she’s holding up remarkably well. She is mildly fussy and has a low grade fever, which is to be expected. What surprises me is that in spite of not feeling well, she’s still a very happy little girl.

Daddy Day Care: A Spoiler?

As I sit here with the world’s cutest and happiest baby cooing in my lap, I can’t help but think that we’ve been blessed with a spoiler. What’s a spoiler you ask? Quite a few parents we’ve talked to (even before we had Kayla) have made comments such as, “Oh yeah, we thought we had parenting all figured out with Bobby and Sue, but then we had Billy…”

Now that I’m getting used to living on less sleep, I’m beginning to think that Kayla is our spoiler, given us to cut our parenting teeth, and encourage us to have another. Let’s be realistic here, who wouldn’t want another precious little easy to care for baby? Before we had our first we had all sorts of doubts. Oh sure every parent tells, “You’ll know how to tell which cry is which.” I can take such statements on faith, but there’s a difference between expecting something, and accomplishing it.

We were given quite a few excellent books on parenting. Thanks to Jen’s friend Christina, our baby actually DID come with the baby owner’s manual. Jen and Eric gave us Babywise, which is also excellent. The What to Expect… books are also good. We read them all and referred to them often during them first weeks. They helped set our expectations realistically and provided us with an arsenal of tools to help us manage our new baby and integrate her into our life.

Now, 7 weeks into this gig, it’s easy to determine what her needs are. We know that each evening she’ll have her fussy time. To get her ready to eat, just uncover her for 15 minutes while warming up her milk. She’ll cool off and wake up ready to eat. Keep her awake for a half hour of “happy play time” and then warm her up and she goes to sleep. Now we’re listening to The Rolling Stones and I’m about to get a little work done during her nap. In short, life involving a baby is becoming predictable.

I mean sure, we did have to learn some new skills, but we expected that. Just as we had to learn new skills to thrive as a cohabitating couple, so too did we need to make changes and grow with this new addition. It almost seems to have been too easy. Is this the calm before the storm?

Chronicles of Day Care Daddy

She looks beautiful doesn’t she?

Perfectly innocent, and safe. Not a care in the world, and nothing at all to be concerned about. Well, there are things we’ve learned that are simply too precious not to share, especially since they weren’t mentioned in our Baby Owner’s Manual.

There are certain things about changing a diaper that are intuitively obvious. Chief among these is that leaving certain parts of baby uncovered is hazardous to everything near babies discharge ports. Discharge is normally on the bottom end, but you can’t count on that. Again, this is obvious. However, what isn’t obvious is Day Care Daddy’s first corollary:

Never remove babies diaper within 5 minutes of any activity near the babies bottom.

There have been numerous “events” that have led us to draw this conclusion, but I’ll share one of my favorites. While Ricardo (grandpa) and Paulette were here, we left Kayla in Paulette’s loving care while the rest of us went shopping. This might be something peculiar to Kayla but we failed to warn Paulette that if Kayla does a “download”, immediately going to change her is a bad idea. No sooner than Paulette got one diaper off, Kayla was letting go and discharging more. Several diapers and fresh clothes later, things got back under control. This leads us to Day Care Daddy’s second corollary.

Never change baby on anything that isn’t easily cleaned (or disposed of).

All the evidence we’ve seen indicates that exposing a babies excretion ports significantly increases the likelihood of discharge. Because of this, we’ve adopted a method whereby we leave the old diaper under her until the new one is ready to be slid into place. Thus, excepting a two or three second transfer period, there is always a diaper under her. This has prevented many an incident, and I can’t say exactly how many times I’ve had her discharge into the new diaper before it was installed. However, this practice alone is insufficient to insure against catastrophe. Today I disregarded the first corollary. I did not forget the second, and therein lied my salvation.

Daddy got careless and unlatched her diaper within 5 minutes of a discharge. Two wipes later, her nasty little tail was cleaned up and ready to go into a fresh diaper. In the few seconds after the first diaper was removed, a precious little stream emitted that didn’t stop until the entire disposable changing pad was soaked. These are wonderful little things. They’re just like a painting drop cloth, plastic lined paper that absorbs fluid but won’t let it through.

I wrapped up my freshly soiled bundle (in the disposable pad) and took her directly to the sink with the new diaper still in hand. Ever mindful of the events necessitating the unscheduled bathing, I wasted no time getting her back into a diaper. This brush with disaster was a major accomplishment of the day. Yawn. So concludes today’s issue of “Day Care Daddy”. Stay tuned for more exciting adventures to come.

Greetings from Oklahoma City, OK

In the spirit of being footloose and fancy free, on Sunday evening we decided to pack up and drive to Texas to buy a house. Yesterday we left home around 1PM and spent the night in St. Louis, MO. Today we once again got up bright and early (9:45, just in time to catch breakfast) and got onto the road by 12:30. This traveling with a baby takes a wee bit longer than we’re used to. If all goes according to plan, we’ll arrive in Dallas at 9:45PM this evening.

Tomorrow we meet with Jack, our realtor. We’ll spend a day or two house shopping and then return home. Unfortunately, I did forget my Compact Flash adapter for the laptop, so there won’t be any photo uploads on this trip. Kayla is a good traveler. The motion lulls her right to sleep. We wake her to feed and then let her go back to sleep.

Evidence found.

After my water broke on Friday night, we had a couple of hours before heading to the hospital. We packed our bags and Matt finished baking the cookies. Today evidence was found that yes Matt is susceptible to impending birth jitters. I found the unused cookie dough in the pantry next to the chocolate chips instead of in the refrigerator. Oooops. Obviously a few more important things were on his mind. 🙂