You know that when­ever your spouse says, “Do you know what your son just did?” some­thing hasn’t gone quite right. This morn­ing, I was lay­ing in bed nurs­ing A, and Jason said those words. I didn’t answer, because I knew he was dying to tell me. Sure enough, the answer fol­lowed almost imme­di­ately. “He put Magic Butt Cream in his hair.” For those of you who don’t know, Magic Butt Cream is the dia­per cream that we get from our doc­tor for a dia­per rash that isn’t con­trolled by the reg­u­lar over the counter stuff. A few weeks ago, K and Jason had a talk about how we don’t eat the Magic Butt Cream. It’s only for sore butts. It’s not for eat­ing. Well, he didn’t try eat­ing it again. This time, he took about 1/2 of what was left, and he smeared it in his hair. Ugh.

Unfor­tu­nately for me, Jason was on his way out the door and on his way to work. I was lucky enough to take over the emer­gency bath. In addi­tion to hav­ing a head full of grease, K did not want to take a bath, and he had a poopy dia­per! I man­aged to talk him into the bath. Then, I started in on his hair with Dawn. Dawn cuts grease, right? I fig­ured that was my best chance at get­ting some of that stuff out of his hair. He was patient enough to let me lather and rinse his hair twice. THen, he lost patience, so I took him out of the bath, and he spent the rest of the day with the wet look.

Tonight at sup­per, he con­tin­ued on with the hair exper­i­ment and decided to try apple­sauce in his hair. I told Jason that it was his turn to work on K’s hair. He did the 2nd bath of the day with both boys. While they were in the bath­room, I checked the inter­net and found that some peo­ple sug­gested using corn­starch for get­ting Vasaline out of hair, so we tried it. K thought it was pretty funny, and I fig­ured it couldn’t hurt. I didn’t get a chance to see his hair after it dried, so I’m not sure if the corn­starch solved our prob­lem or not. I’ll be inter­ested to see how it looks tomorrow.

We are! Mem­bers of Min­nesota Pub­lic Radio that is. When our TV took a turn for the worse last month, we found that there was sig­nif­i­cantly more time to lis­ten to the radio. Nei­ther Jason nor I are hooked on one type of music. We both have pretty eclec­tic tastes. Because of that, we find it hard to find a sta­tion that sat­is­fies all of our tastes. We end up using iTunes or our iPods for get­ting our fix of music. When we’re lis­ten­ing to the radio though, we are usu­ally lis­ten­ing to MPR.

Jason started lis­ten­ing to MPR a while back. I resisted, because at the time I was hard-cord Repub­li­can, and I felt like there was too much lefty lib­eral stuff on there. I’m not sure if that was true or if I just heard what I wanted to hear. I’m guess­ing it was more likely the lat­ter. As time went on, I noticed that I was more and more inter­ested in what I heard while he was lis­ten­ing to MPR, and I noticed that less and less of what I heard was polit­i­cal. It was just inter­est­ing stuff.

Off the top of my head, I can think of sev­eral pro­grams that we reg­u­larly lis­ten to. Instead of TiVo’ing the lat­est TV shows, we are often down­load­ing the lat­est pod­casts of our favorite pro­grams. My favorites are Mid­morn­ing with Kerry Miller, Mid­day with Gary Eichten, Speak­ing of Faith with Krista Tip­pett, and the Sun­day Morn­ing Puz­zler. Some of Jason’s favorites are Sci­ence Fri­day and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!

One of the things that I like about lis­ten­ing to MPR is how I feel after I’ve lis­tened to it. I feel like I used my time wisely. I feel smarter. I feel more inter­est­ing myself. I like the fact the vari­ety of top­ics and per­spec­tives I get. It took me a while to believe Jason when he told me about it, but now that I’m lis­ten­ing reg­u­larly, I’m hooked! Lots of other kids can sing the lyrics of songs they hear on the radio in the car, what will my kids take away from our time in the car? I can only imag­ine!

Some of you may (or may not) have noticed that my blog has been a lit­tle quiet for the past week. This is pri­mar­ily due to the fact that I was not around from Thurs­day to Sun­day. I had the oppor­tu­nity to attend the MOPS Inter­na­tional 2008 Con­ven­tion.

The week­end was filled with speak­ers, authors, artists, and time to get to know oth­ers from my local group. Because our local group has helped us with fundrais­ing for lead­er­ship train­ing like this, one of the other women who attended and I are going to be giv­ing a lit­tle recap of our week­end tomor­row at our meet­ing. When I got to think­ing about what I wanted to say, I had a list that was far too long for the time I’ll be given. I am try­ing to whit­tle down two and a half days of infor­ma­tion into about two and a half minutes.

The final gen­eral ses­sion that we attended was where it all came together for me. All week­end, we had been asked to wear but­tons that said SDWSC on them. Peo­ple had all sorts of guesses what that could mean, and on Sat­ur­day after­noon, we finally learned. It meant, “she did what she could.” Elisa Mor­gan, the CEO of MOPS, was speak­ing that after­noon. She talked about Mary bring­ing per­fume to Jesus and seem­ingly wast­ing it in an elab­o­rate ges­ture of pour­ing it over his head (Mark 14). Then, she elab­o­rated on the sen­tence “She did what she could.” Mary gave what she had. She did what God had asked of her. She didn’t look around to see what oth­ers were doing. She didn’t trade her per­fume for some­thing more use­ful. She didn’t sit around wish­ing that she knew how to sing a beau­ti­ful song or write a breath­tak­ing poem. She did what she could. That right there was the Big Idea for me.

In addi­tion to our gen­eral ses­sions, we also had smaller ses­sions through­out the day on Fri­day. My first ses­sion was geared toward rais­ing chil­dren with a con­cern about the world, the envi­ron­ment, and how our actions affect oth­ers. The speaker, Tracey Bianchi, talked about teach­ing your chil­dren to love some­thing and become pas­sion­ate about it. Then, once they love it, what­ever that it is, they will be more likely to pro­tect it and try to save it. The “it” might be a cer­tain pop­u­la­tion of peo­ple, a type of ani­mal, an aspect of the envi­ron­ment, or some­thing else entirely. Although she gave many ideas, I didn’t leave her ses­sion feel­ing over­whelmed, I felt moti­vated. I want my kids and my fam­ily to be socially aware. I want us to make a pos­i­tive impact on the world. This includes the envi­ron­ment and, as much as pos­si­ble, peo­ple on the other side of the world, too. I also had two other great ses­sions. I have a cou­ple many new books on my to be read list. There is so much I could say tomor­row about this con­fer­ence, but what really sticks out is that she did what she could. That’s what God expects of me. That’s what I should expect of myself. I don’t need to do every­thing, but I do need to do what I can when I can.

Well, like I said last month, I don’t have a night­stand. There’s one on Jason’s side of the bed, but we don’t have books on that one either. I just have my books all over the house. There are a cou­ple in our room, a cou­ple on the back of the couch, one behind the couch, one in my purse, one on my end table, and tons down­stairs on our bookshelves.

Last month, I was read­ing The Breast­feed­ing Answer Book, Reclaim­ing Nick, and Hap­pi­ness Sold Sep­a­rately. I have made some good progress in the Breast­feed­ing Answer Book. I read Reclaim­ing Nick and the two other books in the series, Tam­ing Rafe and Find­ing Stephanie. I did not fin­ish Hap­pi­ness Sold Sep­a­rately. It fell behind our couch, and I sort of for­got about it. Whoops. I did start it, though, and it’s pretty good from what I remember.

In the last month, I also dis­cov­ered Paper­Back­Swap and Book­Mooch. I wouldn’t say that I am obsessed with them, but they are so fun! I put 20 of my books on the sites (10 on each) and so far, I’ve received 4 books with a 5th on the way. I also thought I would try a swap with any­one on here who wants a book that I’ve read, but so far no one has taken me up on my offer. Since I wrote the post, I have decided, I will just give those books away, so if you want one, let me know. If you have any you’d like to swap, I’m open to offers, but I guess it’s now a giveaway!

I have a trip com­ing up in about 1 1/2 weeks, so my read­ing list is a bit more ambi­tious this month. I have some high hopes that I will be able to read a lot on my trip. So, here is my list for October:

See­ing and Savor­ing Jesus Christ by John Piper (from Paper­Back­Swap)- I was look­ing through avail­able books on Paper­Back­Swap, and I saw this one. I hadn’t heard any­thing about it, but if it’s John Piper, I fig­ured there’s a pretty good chance it’s got qual­ity content.

Break­ing Free by Beth Moore (from Paper­Back­Swap)- My friend from col­lege pur­chased this study, and she has done it sev­eral times. I love Beth Moore, so I fig­ured if my friend can do the study 5+ times and find it valu­able, I would prob­a­bly enjoy the book.

Mid­wives by Chris Boh­jalian (from Book­Mooch)- This is a book I had heard about, but I’m not quite sure what I will think of it. It’s a sub­ject I have pretty strong feel­ings on (mid­wives and home­births). I sup­pose it could really go either way.

The Mem­ory Keeper’s Daugh­ter by Kim Edwards (from Book­Mooch)- I was in Tar­get wan­der­ing around one night after a stress­ful evening try­ing to put A to sleep. I picked up this book and read the back of it. I had actu­ally for­got­ten about it for quite a while, but when I was trad­ing away my books, I decided to look it up.

Wild Goose Chase by Mark Bat­ter­son (received from Monica’s give­away on her site Paper Bridges)- I actu­ally found this give­away last month when check­ing out oth­ers’ lists.

Water for Ele­phants by Sara Gruen (bor­row­ing it from the library)- After hear­ing about this one for so long, I decided to find out what all the talk is about.

A Tree Grows in Brook­lyn by Betty Smith (don’t have it yet, but will be get­ting it from the library and hope to be a part of Octo­ber Book Club on 5minutesforbooks.com)- I have heard about this book, but I don’t know any­thing about it. Maybe it’s time I start learn­ing what the clas­sics are all about!

The Prob­lem with Breast­feed­ing by James Akre (bor­rowed from a friend)- She said this book is a must read. I guess I’ll find out.

Don’t for­get to check out www.5minutesforbooks.com for a list of peo­ple who have shared what they are read­ing this month!

K and A, that is. I just love watch­ing them as they expe­ri­ence some­thing new for the first time or as they learn to do some­thing. Lately, A has been prac­tic­ing stand­ing up with­out hold­ing on to any­thing. He will crawl up to me, Jason, or a piece of fur­ni­ture (yes, I just com­pared myself and my hus­band to fur­ni­ture!), stand there for a moment, and then let go. When he does, he gets a huge grin on his face and plops down on his butt. He is so proud of him­self for doing that on his own. It’s so amaz­ing to watch him. K has been exper­i­ment­ing with lan­guage and words lately. He has started singing along with us when we sing a few of his favorite songs. He is also using new words on a daily basis. Recently, he has started using “both” and “either.”

I have a friend, who I respect a lot, that said some­thing once that really got me think­ing. She said that she had read some­where that every time you do some­thing for a child, you take away his oppor­tu­nity to learn it for him­self. Now, there are some­thing I obvi­ously want to be a part of my child learn­ing, but other things I want to stand back and let him dis­cover the world on his own. The other thing that she had said that got me think­ing was so often we as adults tell kids how to play with par­tic­u­lar toys. Some­times, we tend to get too caught up in the right way to play with some­thing that we for­get about let­ting the child decide what is the right way to play. For exam­ple, we have this lit­tle duck key chain that Jason’s friend, Harry, gave us. K played with it for a while, and then he got bored with it. That was until he found a new use for it. The duck isn’t just a duck. It has a lit­tle but­ton on the side, and when you push it, a light turns on and it quacks. Well, of course, in the mind of a 2 year old, the duck became a cam­era! As some­one who likes rules and likes to do things the “right” way, I never would have thought to tell him it could be used as a cam­era. He fig­ured that out on his own, and he loves tak­ing our pic­tures with his duck cam­era. Maybe he takes after his aunts who are photographers.