publix movie

Sunday, September 4, 2016

After our Sunday afternoon ritualistic nap, we all loaded up in the car and headed out to our neighborhood Publix to bag groceries for the week.  Selah June loves to ride in the cart that looks like a car, so Jeremy makes sure to hunt one down for her each and every trip.  He also takes her back to the bakery so she can ask nicely for a cookie.  It usually sounds like “Pleeeeeeeaaaaaasssseeeeee.”  And the lady says “what kind would you like?” And in a deep goofy voice she says “chocolate.”  By the time we make it to the other side of the store, she’s one big sticky chocolate mess.

She’s started really trying to engage people (and things) she meets out and about. She told some college kids while we were in Publix to “go guys!”  And then asked “how you today?”

Every time we drive up to the house now, she says “hey Daddy’s car! How you today?  I’m good…” And today she tried to tell the carhop at Sonic all about taking her shoes off and her stinky feet.

The funniest things today were while we were just sitting around the house.  After nap time, Jeremy brought her upstairs.  We were all laying on the bed.  Jeremy let one rip…and then so did she.  “Daddy poop; Selah June poop.”

Friday, September 2, 2016

I had a conference call this morning at 6:00am.  Uggggg…  I made it through a shower, but that was about as much as I could handle at that hour.  Little did I realize, it was a video conference.  I noticed just about the time my face flashed in front of the screen.  Double Uggggghh….

Luckily, Little Miss slept late and didn’t wake up until after 8:00!! That gave me just enough time to drink a second cup of tea and pack my lunch for the day.

We had a good trip to school, noticing all of the “tractors” (jeeps) and motorcycles and trucks and cars that looked like Grandpa’s car and Daddy’s car. We talked about what we were going to do after school (go to Satie and Bastian’s house) and enjoyed the final few bites of our Poptart.

When we got to her classroom, she grabbed her blue blanky and left me in the dust!  I signed her in and peaked around the corner to see if she’d even thought about me leaving. And to my great joy she caught sight of me across the room and came ambling over for a kiss and a hug.  So sweet….  I wish I could bottle it.  So much better than any drug you can buy.

I had a full day at work with meetings in the afternoon.  When I was sitting through a pretty long first-of-the-year Graduate Council meeting, I started getting texts.  [And that’s why I’m trying to be really good about having my phone on me.]

OH NO!!!!!  MAJOR CRISIS!!!!  CALL 911!!!!!

Blue blanky did not make it back into SJ’s bag and was left at St. Luke’s on a Friday afternoon leading into a three-day weekend.  ?????

Poor Jess…  Here’s the text I received about the “situation.”

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She wasn’t mad about not having her cup but she just kept telling me “No Mimi. No nap. Blue blankee for nap. Selah Junie needs a blue blankee for nap.”

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Jeremy saved the day. He stopped by and pleaded with the church secretary to let him in.  Under any other circumstances (than a holiday weekend), I don’t think it would have worked.  But she had mercy on us and saved one little girl a whole lot of additional heartache.

After being our hero, he left us for a guy’s gaming night.  Selah June and I had dinner and then decided to go on a walk. She wanted to walk toward Dean Brown’s house to walk on the rocks.  I saw his truck there and didn’t want to other him, but she’s hard to refuse.  We sat on the little “log” for a while just enjoying the quiet, the simple entertainment of rocks, and the ice from my drink.

We snagged a few selfies while we were at it, and one of them I really liked. Another just fully captures the trials and tribulations of trying to get any halfway decent picture of her.

She surprised me by asking “Where’d Cindy go?”  She was right.  Cindy was missing.  Miss Cindy is seeing to family in Memphis this week.  Before SJ was ready to leave, Dean Brown found us. He wanted nothing more than to have a conversation with sweet Selah Junebug. She ran and squealed up and down his rocky parking area until she heard some dogs barking.

Dean Brown heard her little “what’s that?”  And he generously led her back to the backyard where the dogs were hanging out behind a gate and a chicken wire fence.  The black lab, “Clementine (Clem for short), was a little too scary, but she liked the little dog and immediately named her(?) Selah June. She was quiet, which Selah Juney interpreted as “happy.”

She was NOT a fan of Clem’s barking and told Dean Brown while waving adamantly “close the gate!!  Close the gate!!” He thought that was awesome.

So we made some new friends today….and some new frienemies apparently. Now we’re watching The Good Dinosaur for the billionth time while we snuggle in Mommy and Daddy’s bed. Pretty nice way to end a Friday.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Today was Election Day for state and local primaries.  Jeremy had work all day and then election watch parties into the evening.  Selah Juney had a big surprise when Grandpa showed up at school to pick her up.  Apparently, Dad had no trouble at all, and she went to their house and took a good nap after playing for a bit.  I made it to their house by about 5:30, and Mom and Dad fed us both after a dip in the pool.  (I’m really digging this heated pool thing.)

Selah Juney pigged out on some cantaloupe.  She just kept saying “More? More of that? Selah Juney have more? This? Plate? More?”  It was a hoot.

We came home and watched The Good Dinosaur, but she fell asleep before Daddy got back from Destin.

Here is SJ and Grammy with new water color paints.

And then crazy crayons!

And a quick little splash into the pool.

So contemplative!

She’s really just thinking about Grandpa getting his bathing suit on to come see Selah Juney in the pool.

And that’s my monkey!

Monday, August 29, 2016

Selah June and I played with her colors.  She was a total goof (as usual). She discovered that she could stick her fingers in the marker caps and have “marker fingers.”  And that cracked her up.  Between marker fingers and screeching at the top of her lungs, she kept her mom entertained.

Friday, August 26, 2016

So this happened!!  What??!!

I took Miss Priss home for a nap. She was OUT!  Jeremy and I had to wake her up to keep her from sleeping into the evening. We picked up pizza at Papa Murphy’s and took it to Grammy’s house to swim in their SOLAR HEATED pool.  Say what??!!  It is totally awesome.

Selah June is no longer the least bit afraid of the water….which is both good and bad.  Jeremy and I are giving her lots of practice to demonstrate her float and her “swimming.”  She likes to count to three before kicking off and floundering towards another adult.  She’s got all of the elements – great breath control, great kicking, great aim….She just needs a little boost and a little arm effort.  We’ll get there.

Min the meantime, it’s all hands on deck!

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Selah Juney has developed a love of music and “creative time” at school. We knew that she loved all things musical, but her affinity for coloring has only intensified since starting at St. Luke’s. When we went to Grammy’s this weekend, she had a spectacular set of “colors” (also known as crayons and markers). Selah June loved all the options and the beautiful clear plastic cylindrical container that held them all.

Our markers are all dried up because we like to take all the tops off.  Mommy and Daddy decided to take Selah June on an adventure to get some more colors. We went to Target expecting a good selection, and they had the exact same set!!!!

Here she was just seconds before making our discovery. She was on a clear mission.  This little cuckoo bird knew what she wanted and blazed a trail right through Target to find it.

Then we had to look for some good paper!

As soon as we got home, she wanted to get out her “colors.” We had to recreate the perfect coloring experience we had at Grammy’s house.

At first she wanted to have several markers available without their caps at the same time. But Daddy put a quick stop to that.

This is definitely her favorite thing at this moment. She even likes to work on collaborative masterpieces, claiming anything someone else draws as her own and sometimes even allowing contributions to her papers as well.

I love that she loves to color. I can’t wait to spend lazy days being artsy and crafty together. And I can’t wait to decorate our home with all of the eclectic “projects” those special moments create.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

It has really been a rough week.  I can tell that I’m emotionally drained because my reactions to others are about as whiny and huffy as Selah June’s when she doesn’t get exactly what she wants.  I feel like all of my emotional intelligence checked out somewhere along the way this week, and what’s left is just moody mess…  Maybe that should be a word.  Building on moodiness, we should describe the result as moodimess.

I ordered a few books a week ago, and two of them arrived the other day.  One of them is super interesting.  It’s’ called A Theology of the Built Environment.  It’s by a theologian who certainly knows his stuff about the liberal arts.  His writing draws from philosophy, history, architecture, art, and anthropology.

Tim Gorringe, the author, is blowing my mind.  Here is just one little quote: ” For Paul the temple is not a building but the community living in the world.  There cannot, therefore, be an idea of the profane as the sum total of common life outside the sphere of the holy.” What??  He is taking on the polarity of our language and our understanding as private/public and sacred/secular.  Here is more.  “If Eliade’s two realms mean the de-sanctification of the everyday then the implications of secularization, by contrast, as Richard Niebuhr rightly observed, is the sanctification of all things.  What we learn from Scripture is that every day is the day that the Lord has made; every nation is a holy people called by him into existence in its place and time and to his glory; every person is sacred, made in his image and likeness.”

I’ve often tried to articulate my motivation for studying the varied subjects of democracy, community, architecture, public space, and civic engagement.  Right now particularly I’m thinking through this question because I’m at the end of one major project and charting my course for the next one.  What do I want to read?  What do I want to explore?  What might I have to write?  Everything I have produced so far has stemmed from personal experience coupled with real world observation and scientific inquiry.  I don’t anticipate that the next project will be any different, but my experiences are shifting.  I now experience everything as a mother of a very small child.  The questions attracting me at the moment involve the rhetorical statements of children’s television shows and movies, the value and sustainability of an early-education model that pre-supposes a single-income family structure, or the potential impact of new technology on parent-child attachment and children’s emotional and social development.  Those are obviously nowhere near my academic training.

Even now, I really see space for work that identifies the core values, the foundational infrastructure, and the communal activities that undergird democratic life.  I don’t know that democracy is inherently a good thing, but I know that we assume that it is.  I think that we make design choices that shape our built environment and that environment then houses our community activities.  I know that we have had major shifts in individual (and societal) behavior driven by emerging digital technologies.  We have no idea how these will impact our relationships and our longterm psychological health.  What might these changes bring about for our political lives — at the level of the street, the neighborhood, the city, the state, and the nation?  I think that’s where my head is right now.

Selah June’s been taking a good afternoon nap, so I actually have had 15 minutes to read and think.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

I picked up SJ at St. Luke’s just after 1:30. They were playing outside, and she was about worn out.  She made sure to say “bye” to Miss Ceara and all the kids, and we went inside to get her bag.  Right next to her bag was another little girl’s bag with a folded pink blanket on top.  “Thats’s Emma’s blanky,” she very clearly said to me.

Not to be confused with Selah June’s blanket.  Apparently, this has been a clear territorial division between Selah June and Emma.  We have worked on mine and yours in our first few weeks at St. Luke’s. We might not quite think clearly about the reciprocal nature of “share,” but we do clearly understand ownership…at least when it comes to blankets.

She wanted milk, and that could not be secured until we got home, but she was out cold within the first two minutes of our drive.

She slept hard for 3 solid hours. She woke up just before Daddy came home with sandwiches. She was so funny at dinner, wanting to play with all of my “money” – which ended up being bills.  She thought the faces and “a,b,c’s” were interesting and got a kick out of telling us that it was not Mommy’s money.  “Noooooo….. It’s Selah Juney’s money.”  And then she started saying it was Aaron’s money and that Andrew Jackson looked like Mommy….  ?

After dinner we we went on a walk.  Of course we had to stop at Miss Cindy’s house where the rocks are.  That’s our favorite thing about walks.

Then Miss Cindy drove up!!!!

You can see that we spent a while there.

We met a new family on the final loop back to our house. They moved in just a few days after we did. They have two kids just a few years older than SJ. We hit it off pretty well, and it’s good to know yet another set of people in the neighborhood.  We live on a pretty good street.

We stopped to see Buddy the Cat. Selah June and Mommy walked up the driveway and talked to Buddy, but the the puppies inside started barking, and SJ decided it was scary.  But she also told Buddy to “go inside the house!” It was definitely a moment.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

I have much to say, but it has been a miserable few days.  There are people in my life with much bigger issues, and I am praying for them without ceasing.

Selah June wanted me to get her out of her crib this morning.  It made my day.  She also nodded when I asked her if she knew that I loved her very much and she nodded when I asked her if she loved me.  My mind is rattled, but my heart is full.

Sunday, August 21, 2016

We joined East Brent a few weeks ago.  I moved my letter from Hillcrest, and Jeremy moved his letter from McFarlin Methodist.  EB requires that church members profess the faith and be baptized by immersion.  Jeremy visited with Wade about it, and he felt very good about the “meaning” of his public demonstration of faith through immersive baptism.

We wanted Grammy to be able to make it, so we waited until she had enough mobility after her knee replacement to attend the service comfortably.  And she did some sneaky work behind the scenes to invite all of the Jones sibling families to be there in support of our little family unit and Jeremy’s public step to join this church family.

Precious Satie Isabella wanted to wear her most beautiful dress for the occasion.  It was pink with lots of pearls around the neckline.  And her shoes were fabulous.  Sebastian looks thrilled, doesn’t he?

Jeremy joked with Wade that the two of them were going to test the limits of the “bathtub” — two big guys making waves.  Wade didn’t realize how accurate that premonition was until they both climbed in.

After church, we all went to Dickie’s for BBQ.  Selah June was very happy to get to sit next to Satie.

You can kind of see Satie’s dress.  I wish I had a better picture.

She’s getting to be such a big girl.