A case of potty fraud....

I want to assure you that we are not pressuring nor pushing Johnny to do this potty training thing. He is, after all, the third child, so I am well aware that although we think we are guiding him to this milestone, parents really have very little to do with a child's potty training. He does it when he wants to. That being said, the General did bring in the little potties that have been collecting dust in our garage and has put them on display in each of our bathrooms, so if Johnny decided it's time, he has the necessary equipment.

Imagine my surprise today, when Jack came to me saying, "Johnny peed in the potty! Johnny peed in the potty!". I ran into the bathroom followed by Johnny who was just as surprised as I, and, lo and behold, there was pee pee in the potty. Jack cheered and patted Johnny on the back. Johnny started jumping up and down saying "I peed! I peed!". I was ready to break into the traditional Estes celebratory potty dance, but then the light from the window reflected drops on the potty chair...., drops on the floor....,.... drops on the wall,... drops on the door. I then knew that Johnny was not the urinator in this particular instance. The male who used this little potty was obviously standing, a skill that takes months, nay, even years for some men to perfect. There was no way it was my Johnny boy. It was a clear cut case of potty fraud, so I grabbed the Clorox wipes and sentenced the perpetrator to hard labor cleaning up his mess.

Ambition

"Mom," Jack exclaimed this morning with big blue eyes blazing, "I know what I want to be when I grow up!"

"What?"

"Everything....I want to be EVERYTHING......foreverrrrrrrrrrr."

And with that declaration, my sweet middle child embarked on his second "first day of preschool".



















Jack is thoroughly impressed with the loft in his classroom....except he calls it his castle and has declared himself the king. I wonder what his classmates will think of that.














Johnny has his own ambitions this year as he enters "Potty School".

Opening a can of political worms.....

I have seen the following statement on several friends' Facebook statuses the last few days:
_____________ (insert name here) thinks that no one should die because they cannot afford health care, no one should go broke because they became sick or injured.

First of all, let me say, that I know my friends who are posting this are full of compassion. I value and respect the people who have posted it, but I feel compelled (and I may regret this later) to make a few observations drawn entirely on my own experiences which I admit could be somewhat skewed. Here goes....

• "No one should die because they can not afford health care"...There is an underlying assumption in this statement...A portion of people in America are not receiving health services... in my experiences, that is untrue. . I have never seen someone who needed health care be turned away from a medical institution. I have worked with many low income families. From time to time, they come to us needing money for food, rent, utilities, but we have never had someone say, "I can't find a doctor to treat me." I have been uninsured. During that season, I had a baby, and there were also a couple of emergency room trips. We were never denied services.
• While I was never denied health care, I was denied the right to NOT PAY for the health care services I received. I was sick. A doctor, nurse, lab tech, and receptionist all put in time and energy in helping me get well; therefore, they needed to be paid for their services. That is just the way it is done. Now, are those charges sometimes too high, yes, but must those services be paid for? Yes. In my uninsured times, there were instances where the bill for the services was more than we could pay. I called the hospital or doctor's office and set up a payment plan. Sometimes the payment was as little as $30 a month, but as long as I paid that every month, the hospital was happy. There were also times where the church stepped in to help us with the expenses....the church, not the government.
• "No one should go broke because they became sick or injured." I agree with this statement, but I don't believe the way to solve it is by the government taking over. The government was never told by Jesus to take care of the poor, the sick, the imprisoned...it was the individual. If someone around you is going broke because they are sick or injured, then you, as an individual follower of Christ are commanded to help them, and, by the way, the only way you can do that is to have some portion of your life invested in the communities where the poor reside and to have actual relationships with the people around you, so you can know when they are in danger of going broke because they are sick or injured.

I am not saying that our health care system is perfect. It's not. Does it need fixing? Yes, but by the government? No. There are creative solutions out there in the mainstream just waiting to be discovered....a church that opens a clinic in the middle of the inner city...a doctor who, rather than dealing with insurance companies, charges his patients a monthly membership fee for the services he provides....an individual who raises money for his uninsured neighbor who has cancer...Health care can be improved, and it doesn't have to be done with town hall meetings, massive legislation, and massive propaganda. It can be done by individuals living together in true community.

So, you think you can dance....

I wrote back in January about the reunification of Almost Angels. For those of you who are wondering if we are still practicing the answer is yes, we are....well, sort of. Last night, as is our tradition, we gathered together, shared a meal, talked for about an hour and a half, and then practiced for twenty minutes. Our big gig, the James Avenue Homecoming Weekend, is only a few weeks away, so next week, I think we will shoot for thirty minutes of singing since that is how long we are supposed to be actually performing.

In our various and sundry conversations last night, there was some talk about making some changes to the Angels. To be completely honest, talking about change makes me a little twitchy. After all, I am still wearing the same hairstyle that I had in middle school. So before we go off willy-nilly making changes, I thought I would get your feedback, and, of course, whenever requesting feedback, I think it imperative to use bullets.

• Our name...in 1996, when we were all in our twenties, the name Almost Angels made sense. But if after 13 years, we are still almost angels, it seems almost depressing. Surely we have made some progress. Could we be just "Angels" or perhaps something between almost and completely, like "Just About Angels" or "More or Less Angels" or "Very nearly Angels"? Any thoughts?
• Stage Presence...Another proposal last night was the addition of our own background dancers to the act. My niece, Abby, has volunteered to join up and since D.J. has been trying to teach himself the moonwalk in his spare time, I think he would jump right in. I noticed on this year's Doves that many of the performers had their own dancers, so it could certainly modernize our image. It goes without saying that our dance troupe would be governed by the mandates of Lipscomb Sing-a-Rama Choreography circa 1990. We would definitely need more than two dancers. Is there anyone out there who wants to dance with the angels....an a capella, female, Gospel quartet?

So there you have it, the new and improved Angels....What do you think?....

(Don't worry, mom, I am only joking about the dance troupe.)

A lost art.....

Yesterday on the way home from school, D.J. told me about the songs they sing in chapel at school. Among those was "Flintstones Jesus Loves Me".... Jesus Loves Me to the tune of the Flinstones theme song. After he sang it for me, he said, "I just don't understand why they call it Flintstones Jesus Loves Me. " So I had to explain to him that many years ago, there was this cartoon TV show that came on about the Flintstones and that the melody was actually the theme song.

I went onto say that during that Golden Age of Church Camp Songs, we also sang Amazing Grace to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song, Amazing Grace to the tune of the "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" jingle (He's the real thing...Christ is...), and Amazing Grace to the tune of "Peaceful, Easy Feelin'" by the Eagles. In that era, circa 1989, I never asked why Amazing Grace was the chosen remix hymn, I just closed my eyes, put my arms around the people next to me and swayed. But in 2009, as I performed, these three different versions for D.J., he was unmoved and unimpressed. He thought it was weird to sing the same words to different melodies.

I guess it's just a lost art, but I will always look back fondly on those days of Amazing Grace recycling. Like that one night when my brother Woody and I were on some road trip to somewhere, and we passed the time putting Amazing Grace to the tune of all the TV theme songs we could think of and amazingly enough, it fit with almost all of them. Even Dallas, Laverne & Shirley, The Jeffersons, and, of course, Little House on the Prairie. The only one that was kind of a stretch was The Twilight Zone theme.

Back by popular demand....Fab Five: Movies that Never get Old

It's been a while since we've participated in healthy debate on this here blog, so I thought I'd get it churnin' with a new Fab Five: Movies that never get old....List five movies that (a) are shown regularly on TV and( b) you watch over and over again even with commercials because you love it so much. Here are mine:

• A Few Good Men - It's on as I type and is the inspiration for this Fab Five, so I have to give it the first slot. I love this movie, especially the courtroom scene at the end. I also love that at the end of the movie, they write "The End" across the screen just like in the old days. Tonight while viewing, I was awakened to the fact that my eyebrows could be a crossbreeding of Tom Cruise's and Demi Moore''s and probably lean more toward Tom's at this moment, but I can't dwell on that too long because I can't handle the truth...or the pain of the waxing. I'll save that topic for when I do Five Fab beauty rituals I despise.
  
• Steel Magnolias - I would especially watch this when we were living in that foreign Yankee land of Ohio (No offense to my beloved Buckeye friends and family) and I missed the sound of Southern accents. And, yes, I still cry at the end....every single time I watch.
  
• The Wedding Singer - "What I'm saying is all I really want is someone to hold me and tell me that everything is going to be all right"..Never gets old.
• The Fugitive - I have a thing for Tommy Lee Jones, then...not now...
  
• Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit - I just like when the choir sings "Oh Happy Day" in the middle and "Joyful, Joyful" at the end, and I will sit through the entire movie just to hear them.

HONORABLE MENTION: Sixteen Candles and Meet the Parents

OK, now it's your turn to tell me your movies that never get old. Don't let me down.

Dream big...

As we prepare for the Y.E.S. Annual Dinner, the volunteers who are decorating asked us to have our kids write paragraphs about what they want to be when they grow up. We have some big dreams in this group....firefighter, music producer, computer engineer, designer, doctor, marine biologist, teacher, sportscaster, neonatal nurse, professional basketball player, WWE wrestler. One boy even wants to be Batman. One of my favorite paragraphs is by Passion, a 2nd grader, who writes:

"When I grow up, I want to be a doctor. I will get another doctor to help me learn how to put the medicine in the right jar."

Someday I fully expect to be rolled into the Emergency Room struggling for my life and look up and see the face of one of my former students standing over me. I find comfort in knowing that face might be Passion's and that whatever medicine she gives me will be coming from the right jar.