7 (Kind of) Quick Takes

-1-

So it's Friday night, my husband's at a great conference I wish I could be at, but I was too tired after a day of work and little Peep (I have decided I will call him Peep on the blog for now because he loves this character).

I can't believe I haven't blogged in over a month.  I've barely even read other people's blogs. (Sorry.)

I wrote some of these things a week and a half ago but never published them.  Fail.  Now they all need updating.  But here you go:

-2-

I'm just about 20 weeks along now.  I'm starting to show and enjoying feeling the Little One moving around. Thankfully my nausea has just about all subsided...just about.  Now I'm hungry.  Yum.  EAT ALL THE THINGS!

Bad news: heartburn.  Ugh.  This child is giving me so many more problems than Peep.

-3- 

Work is driving me nuts.  I hate to say that here, but it's true.  We recently had a large staff turnover, and all the newbies are trying to figure out what's going on.  We're trying to figure them out too. (In a good way...really!) There's a million projects buzzing around and too many cooks in the kitchen.  Oh, and none of the cooks are communicating very well.  Too much salty, too much sweet, and no balance anywhere.  Say a prayer we get ourselves and our offices straight soon!  There are too many good things coming down the pike for the Center for us to get bogged down in the piddly things that won't matter in the end.
 

-4- 

Here's picture from several weekends ago.  Thanks to our friends for so graciously sharing the bounty of their land with us!

The apples were so delicious too!  They have slowly been made into applesauce and apple butter.  I finally finished processing them all the other night.

-5-

In case you haven't seen it, I'd like to show off a picture of my masterpiece:

Little Peep is currently somewhat obsessed with the Notre Dame Marching Band.  He was a little embarrassed to put the uniform on at first.  He hasn't quite fully grasped the idea of pretend/dress up.  He kept insisting that he was going to be in the marching band "soon soon" but "not yet."  It took a little convincing to get him to understand that I was not going to stick an instrument in his hands and send him marching off to the stadium.  Now he's starting to comprehend that he can pretend he's in the band and he can look like he's in the band without actually being in the band.

Child psychologists: go crazy analyzing that whole scenario. I've probably just destroyed his grasp on reality and turned him into a pathological liar and/or schizophrenic - right?

-6-

One last thought, a little belated:  Halloween?  To celebrate or not celebrate?  I had a very interesting conversation about this at work with good co-worker friend and mama of two (very soon to be three!).  She and her husband don't even talk about Halloween with their little ones.  It really got me thinking, but for all my thoughts, I haven't reached any conclusions.

Halloween can be a lot of fun - who doesn't love candy and dressing up in costumes?  At the same time, how good are either of these things for very young children (see #5)?  Peep himself was rather frightened by all the costumes - even cute princesses, fairies and superheros. He was terrified of our next-door neighbors' cemetery decorations.

There is a lot of darkness with Halloween.  Witches, goblins, zombies, vampires, demons, etc.  None of which are things we should be celebrating. 

It is good to be mindful that there are evil forces in the world.  It is good to remember our own mortality.  But unfortunately modern culture puts way too much emphasis on glorifying the darkness. - and sexualizing it.  Sexy witch costume for a 6 year old?  Yep, there's one in every store. 

Not good. 

The best thing I can say is dressing up as a saint, Bible figure or even some other good moral role model must surely be the way to go.  Talking with your kids about Halloween is obviously important.  If they can dress up as a great figure of heroic virtue, be able to understand and tell you about the person they are emulating, go out and push back on the darkness of the vampires and sexy witches, how awesome of a witness is that?  That sounds pretty good to me.  

What do you think?  (And now I'm even less sure about how wise or worthwhile it was to make that band uniform.)

-7-

 I put a poll on the sidebar about Halloween. What do you do? I'd also be interested in any comments people have on the matter. 

 Happy Friday!

Linking up with Jen.