tfl: The Flatiron Life

This Sunday we sang a hymn that struck me.  The title is “O Church of God, United”.  This hymn proclaims the truth of the One Church and the One Faith.  It also encourages Christians to confidently proclaim the Church, Faith, and Gospel.  Unfortunately, while there is one Church, my church-body, the UMC, seems to have a strangle hold on the copyright for the lyrics, and i cannot find them online.  The next time you are in a UMC I suggest you turn to #547 and give it a read.

This was the Opening Hymn for worship that lead to a Sermon titled “A Family of Acceptance” on the topic of Holy Conferencing.  Holy Conferencing is the principle that lead Wesley to create groupings of Christians below the gathering together for word and sacrament.  He created class meeting and band meetings.  The purpose of these groups were to help shore up the foundation of Christians to help prevent them from backsliding.  This was not more law or special revelation, but it is the pragmatic experience of Wesley on how to bring those given the Faith into the Church United and not have them lost on their own.

Since learning about this concept several years ago, I have thought it was essential to the whole Wesleyan Method that Methodism is supposed to be.  However when Bishops Coke and Asbury landed in Baltimore, they seem to have forgotten this part of the system, and I have never been in a UMC church that practices this in any way, discounting Sunday School.  The Chicago Temple is trying to find ways of bringing this back.  The Tomaws hope to be involved in this, and I hope this will lead to more blogging on the topic.

This all being said, I think it was a fine sermon.  I am still trying to figure out what a sermon is supposed to be.  The Methodist gathered at the Temple on Sunday learned more about Methodism, the liturgy was read, and the Lord’s Supper was served.  Outside of Absolution, I am not sure any non-believers heard about the freely given forgiveness of sins.  This is what my intuition tells me a sermon should be.

Last week, Jonah had his 2-yr check-up.  It was 3 months late because, even though the staff at the doctor’s office will make you feel guilty for not calling 6-mo early to schedule an appointment, the doctor’s office does not remind you to setup an appointment.

Here are his updated stats:

• Weight: 27lb 14oz, 36th %tile
• Height: 34in, 21st %tile
• Head Circumference: 20in, 88th %tile

These are all consistant with where Jonah’s growth has been all along.  He continues to be our hearty, big headed boy.

The doctor was impressed with is development.  I take this with a grain of salt because every parent seems to report that.  The doctor was also impressed that Jonah just let her examine him with no struggles.

He only needed one immunization this visit.  He is now immune to H1N1 after having a booster.  We had the option of the mist or shot and chose the mist.  Jonah took it without crying and with a sense of curiosity.

No more visits until he is 3.  I think we will be in and out of the doctor’s office enough this fall to remember to schedule the 3-yr check-up.

Aside from physical growth, Jonah is developing very well.

He has started talking in complete sentences.  He has also started to use transitive verbs, however the direct object is usually just “it”.  He is picking up the names of things that we do not directly teach him.  For instance, he knows what my and Joscelynn’s real names are.  We have stopped responding when he says them though.

The puzzles we have are old hat now.  Trains continue to be a big hit.  He can sit down and leaf through a picture book and entertain himself for a while.  He has also taken to drawing.  He can draw a straight line, although his works are generally very abstract.  Simple shapes, like circle, triangle, square, star, and cross, are mostly conquered.

“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, “Do Re Mi” and “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” are probably his favorite songs and knows the opening bars.

It is not reading, but he can identify J-O-N-A-H as his name and I think M-O-M-M-Y and D-A-D-D-Y are not long behind.  We sing the alphabet when we wash hands and he will mouth the words, but he does not know the alphabet yet.

He also seems to be trying to anticipate which number we are going to say when counting, but he still has a logarithmic mind and has not been conditioned to our linear world yet.  When I ask how many vitamins he gets before bed, he always says “six”.  I say “No, how man do you get?” He says “twelve” and then I coax him to “two”.

Colors are the last area we are focusing on right now.  When asked what color something is he often defaults to “green”.  That has a 1 in 10 chance of being right most of the time, so perhaps he is playing the odds.  However, list night he asked for his brown PJs and was able to correctly names the colors of the dinosaurs.  He needed just a little help with blue which he calls black sometimes, which I think is just because they sound alike.

One last thing.  Jonah loves to help.  We give him all kinds of different tasks to do around the house.  He really likes to help cook.  Every night, he helps Jos in what ever way she can find to include him.  She told me last week when I was going to be late coming home that he did not understand why she was starting dinner late and pushed his stool to the counter to get her to start.

I could go on with a lot of other little things he likes to do, but I don’t think I would ever stop.

A couple month ago, I came across the scene below.  Jonah really wants to learn to use the computer because that is what mommy and daddy seem to use a lot.  I think we are still a couple years off from him being able to use a trackpad though.

Continuing my trend of posting some photos that got past me last year, I have a set from Jonah’s 2nd birthday party.

Jonah is very blessed to have a healthy and active great grandma around.  We are trying to get him to call her “Oma”, which is colloquial German.  This picture of Jonah and his Oma is my favorite one of the set.  I also like this one of him in the middle of the action because that is how I remember birthdays as a child.

One of the great things about not having cable TV is that we would have to work at watching political theater.  This means I have a time to finally tag some photos for Christmas.

Asleep on Mommy, originally uploaded by flatiron32.

We, The Tomaws, are expecting baby number two in August. I am coming up to the end of my first trimester and my belly seems to think I’m six months pregnant. Perfect strangers feel comfortable congratulating me, so it’s hardly practical to keep it a secret any longer.

It was difficult to find an appropriate picture for this post, but this one took me right back to the early days with Jonah; The days when our lives began to change for good. Looking back, I don’t even know how we used to fill our time. I know we used to consider ourselves busy people, but how was that even possible?

Things were tough and very overwhelming in the beginning. Jonah was not the easiest infant, but slowly he grew and each day got a little easier and now he’s this awesome little person who talks to us. Asside from his weird aversion to eating food, Jonah is a piece of cake now. This can mean only one thing. It’s time to start over.

IMG_1820, originally uploaded by flatiron32.

This is Jonah and his friend Nathan dressed as sheep for our church’s Christmas pageant. These costumes are adorable and ingenious. The babies mostly thought they looked hilarious and didn’t try to undress themselves at all, which is impressive for a bunch of two-year-olds. The little lambs didn’t end up getting much stage time and since Jacob helped guide them, it mostly looked like he was standing at the front of the church in his bathrobe for no reason. The parents were happy, though, and that is what matters.

Last Fall on what tuned out to be the last warm weekend, we went for a walk in the South part of Indian Road Woods, part of the Cook County Forest Preserves.  Here you can find a few other photos that I took of Jonah.

With Jonah turning 2 last month, it was time to transition Jonah into bed.  The crib we have is a “4-in-1“.  Only 2 of those 4 really make sense, nonetheless we wanted a crib like this so we could convert it to a bed of sorts.

Saturday was set as the day of transition.  After first nap, I broke out the Allen Wrench, took off the drop side of the crib, and installed the side guards.  Jonah was very excited and was ready to pretend nap in it with Pooh.

However when it came time for second nap, he needed more convincing than normal that a nap was a good idea.  Eventually he talked himself down.

Things got interesting at bath time though. When Joscelynn undressed him in the bathroom, he bolted out of there and ran straight for his bad and jumped in.  It was as if he had always wanted to sleep in bed naked and he was finally going to do it.

We coaxed him back to the bath and the night went normally.  The last couple of days have also gone well.  He needs to be a little more tired than what was normal for a nap.  I don’t think he knows he can get out of bed without permission, so he will stay in bed trying to convince us to come get him and eventually talks himself down.

I have expect to find him on the floor in the morning.  Either because he got up to play and then went back to bed or because, like his father, he is a faller.  I fell out of bed up to an age that is embarrassing.  I remember falling out of bed in “my room” in Flat Iron long after if was mine but before the divorce, so at least I was 5 or 6.  I think Jonah’s transition is going better.  When we travel and he sleeps in our room, I have not noticed him tossing and turning a lot.

So, congratulate Jonah the next time you see him and enjoy these pictures.

After traveling around west-central Indiana for Christmas and up to Michiana for New Year’s, we are happy to be settled back at home.  Everything is unpacked, but there is a little bit of packing that needs to be done.  We are trying to institute a one toy in, one toy out policy.  By my count, Jonah got 10 toys and so we need to send 10 toys down to the basement for either future use by future children or for a rummage sale.

This morning, Church was a nice reset for the beginning of a normal week and Jos and I hope we can quickly get back into the rhythm of work.  Jonah seems to already made it back into the rhythm of sleeping in his own bed.  However he has grown very used to having his mommy at his beck and call, and it will be interesting to see how he does with Megean tomorrow.

I will not make any promises about posting pictures, all about our travels, or even just more this year than last.  I always fail when I promise to blog.  What I would like to promise, but will not because I will fail if I do promise it, is to be more consistent.  Maybe that is posting weekly, maybe that is every time I think of something clever.  What I know it is not is meeting the goal of everyday I have had for a few years.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year