Lydia Grace

Lydia Grace Forrest (or, as Asa calls her, Lydia Grace Speedy Forrest) was born this morning at 7:45. The delivery was mostly good and incident free. Everyone is doing well. Yes this is a low-res picture from my phone, but it's all that I've uploaded thus far. I'll load up Flikr later.

The Boys' Weekend

A couple funny kid items from the weekend:

* Asa learned to play musical chairs in his class at church this morning. They played twice and he was, according to the teachers, the first one out both times. Evidently he was basically willing to give up his seat for the other kids who wanted it. That's both pitiful, funny, and endearing all at once.

* This evening we had some friends over (Matt and Anna M). They have served as babysitters for us on numerous ocassions. Asa was excited to see them (he'd been anticipating their arrival all afternoon). Eli, however, had a different response. As soon as he saw them walk in, he stood up, began sobbing, said "Mama" and went straight to Keri to hold on to her. He thought for sure we must be leaving. Again, pitiful and funny at the same time. (Not surprisingly, the thing that finally broke his mood was his favorite thing in the world: reading "Go Dog Go.")

* Asa was inspired by the French Open (Roger Federer specifically) to play a little tennis. So we got my racquetball racket out (about the right size, for now anyway) and began teaching him a bit in the driveway. Not surprisingly, he took to it fairly well. He does conflate his sports a bit. He was confusing tennis with baseball a little bit (the way he'd get into a stance and ready to swing), and then he'd say "Throw it to me, I'm open" - so football is up there somewhere too.

* We enjoyed a few minutes of MLS Futbol on Telemundo again this afternoon (we've done that a few Sundays). We all enjoy it when someone scores and the announcer (along with us) calls "Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!"

Death of a Blog? Nah... Perhaps a New Start

There was a time when my job afforded me lots of dead time in front of a computer screen waiting on customers to enter a store. So I started a blog and blogged a lot. I was into it and was, for a little while, getting 100 hits a day or thereabouts. There was politics (national and denominational), culture/worldviewish stuff I was studying, etc.

Happily, I don't have that job anymore. Now I don't have the time and, frankly, I'm not sure I have anything all that interesting to say. And even if I did, I'm not sure that anyone is here to read it! It seems that blogs in general aren't what they once were. Sure there are some big-time blogs that emerged at the right time with the right content and achieved a wide readership.

So I've thought about killing this thing. But I won't.

Instead, I'm going to be more intentional in making it the Forrest Family Blog. I'll use it to post funny anecdotes and quotes from the kids and that sort of thing. I may put occasional pictures on it, but really I'll utilize Flickr for that since I ponied up the $25/year to do so (and since it is a much better format for photos). Thought about changing the URL to something like ForrestFamily... but for now I already have this one, and there's plenty of family stuff mixed in with the first five years of this blog.

The timing is good... Lydia Grace will likely be here in about 10 days. Here we go...

This and that

A few random things that have been going on...

* Eli cannot get enough of "Go Dog Go" - and who can blame him? It's got lots of dogs and they often drive cars. He talks his way through it... sort of. "Ah-Ah" for dog. "Guh dah guh" is the title. "heh-wo" in a very high pitched voice when the girl dog greets the guy dog and asks if he likes her hat. You get the idea...

* Asa had to get an impromptu shower one morning this week after slipping into the potty... after the fact...

* Asa has been up 3 nights in a row with nightmares. He's scared of the dark for some reason. And once he has a nightmare, he cannot stand to remain in his room. And we've long since passed the point in pregnancy when we have room for him in ours. So I stagger out of bed and manage to get him set up on the couch. It's really a bit frustrating - we need to be sleeping these final pre-newborn days.

"You need to get your shoes, big guy."

-- Asa, to me as we're leaving the house a couple weeks ago.

Photoblog Updated

If you're curious, I've posted a bunch of pictures on my photoblog. There are family pictures (mostly the boys) and a number of scenic-type pictures (me having some fun with the camera). The date of each post is an approximation of when the photo was taken, but everything on the first page was uploaded in the last week or so. It's a handy way of backing up and sharing photos.

Good Music

Let's mark March 3 on the calendar! It will likely be a good day for music fans.

Stott on responsibility for the death of Christ

John Stott reminds us that, though it is easy to cast blame and look with incredulity upon the likes of Pilate, the Sanhedrin, and Judas, ultimately we are equally responsible for the death of Jesus.

"We may try to wash our hands of responsibility like Pilate. But our attempt will be as futile as his. For there is blood on our hands. Before we can begin to see the cross as someting done for us (leading to faith and worship), we have to see it as something done by us (leading to repentance). Indeed, 'only the man who is prepared to own his share in the guilt of the cross,' wrote Canon Peter Green, 'may claim his share in its grace.'"

Yet there is one who is ultimately responsible for the death of Jesus: God Himself. The Father gave Jesus up to die on the cross. Jesus, for his part, willingly gave himself up to death in obedience to the Father.

"As we face the cross," Stott concludes, "we can say to ourselves both, 'I did it, my sins sent him there,' and 'He did it, his love took him there.'"

-- John Stott, The Cross of Christ, 63-64

An amusing anecdote

The story is a bit unseemly, but I can't help but record it for posterity. As I tried to persuade him to try to go to the bathroom before bed, Asa, with his pants at his ankles, pointed to his backside and informed me, "The poo poo is asleep in my bottom."

Asa and the Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

A little anecdote worth recording for posterity...

During a recent weekend visit at my parents' house, my mom was putting Asa in bed for a nap and told him a fairly well known story about monkeys jumping in the bed:

"Five little monkeys jumping on the bed,
one fell off and bumped his head
Mama called the doctor, and the doctor said,
"No more monkeys jumping on the bed"

Four... Three... etc.

As she finished the story, Asa looked at my mom somewhat quizzically and said: "That doctor must have been very frustrated." (pronounced 'bery brustrated' - it will be a bittersweet day when he begins to properly pronounce the letter f.