Toddlers and Scholars

Here are A & J with some of their favorite toys. In the second picture they’re giving the stuffed puppies drinks from their sippy cups. The puppies also got to taste their crackers and raisins. Why can’t sharing with each other be as easy as sharing with the puppies?

• Just got chapter #9 back from my adviser. He liked it! Two more to go.
• Last night we went out to eat some barbecue with the boys for the first time in a really, really long time, since they tend to become inappropriately “exuberant” in new and exciting places. The boys did really well. But the more exciting news is that four hours later, the place nearly burned to the ground. The news report I heard on the radio said that “even by 7:15 this morning, the scene still smelled strongly of barbecue.”
• Just got an email from Lisa: “I just put andrew back in bed for the 4th time. Next time he’s going to get spanked. I’m pretty sure he understands.”
• Peter Hochstedler came over a couple of nights ago to eat chili and watch Friends of God.
• We enjoyed having Nico Brenneman over Monday morning. He played nicely with Andrew and Jonathan.

Andrew and Jonathan are doing their part to ready us for a newborn. From 11 to 3 last evening, one of them woke up every half hour. We think they’re having nightmares for the first time.

It might be time to abandon the cribs. For two nights in a row, Andrew has swung his legs over the side of his crib down to the floor, then climbed onto the bunk bed, then lowered himself down into Jonathan’s crib, where we found both of them giggling in the morning.

I’m sitting my 12th-floor study carrel in the library at 7:30 this morning. As I write I’m eating an orange, which hurts badly because of several cuts in my tongue and cheek. My ankle hurts badly too because of the long walk from the parking lot after a basketball injury late last night.

I’m working hard today to edit my first draft of chapter nine entitled “Identity Politics: The Fragmentation of the Progressive Coalition.” I’m on page 44 of 67. My goal is to send it off to my parents by 5 p.m. for them to critique over the weekend before I send it to my adviser next week. Reading my inane crap is their special reward for getting me to this my 23rd grade of school.

I need to work especially hard for the next four hours. At noon, I switch with Lisa, who will come to campus for the afternoon.

Here’s a sentence I just finished in a section on fights between Anabaptists and Calvinists in the mid-1970s: “Jesus’ greatest temptation was that of wielding political power, or as Yoder suggested at conference at Calvin College, of becoming a Calvinist.”