Further Adventures in Babysitting

It's been a pretty busy week for me. I can't even remember what I did on Monday at this point. I wanted to blog so badly yesterday, but there just wasn't any time.

So... yesterday I found myself in that very professional, responsible, and adult role of ... BABYSITTER. Yes, I got to babysit! And it wasn't even for family this time. My friend is working a lot at her new job, and she needed me to watch her little guy *K*. If you know me, you know how much I enjoy babysitting, but I agreed to help pretty quickly.

*K* just turned 2, so he's the youngest charge I've had in quite a long time. We get along very well, though, because... well... he loves me! Yeah, he is somewhat infatuated with me for some odd reason. My friend thinks it's funny that he picks the one person who is not so "into" kids to gravitate to. He's been known to walk through a large crowd of people only to come directly to me and raise his arms up, asking to be held.

(Here we are at the start of our relationship. You can see he was much younger, and my hair was much shorter.)

Anyway, *K* and I do need to work on our communication skills, though. He told me all sorts of things yesterday. About what? I have no idea. It kinda went like this:

*K*: Assiiiii (pointing out the window)

Me: Outside?

*K*: Assiiiiii!

Me: Outside? What's outside?

After awhile he took me upstairs because he wanted to see the kitty. We found kitty napping on the sectional, and we woke her up. Kitty went to eat, and we went and watched her. Then we decided to watch Nemo. We were somewhat fascinated with Nemo, enough to keep our attention. Finally, *K* climbed up next to me, and we watched it together. Our favorite part was when Dory told Marlin to "just keep swimming...swimming...swimming... just keep swimming". We looked at each other and laughed.

When it was time to go downstairs to get ready for the relief babysitter to pick him up, we almost had a bit of a spill. *K* wanted me to carry him down the stairs. I told him to slide down the stairs like he had just done awhile ago. Nope, he wanted to be carried, so he stood there at the top of the stairs holding his arms out to me. I'm trying to grab him before he takes a flying leap, while holding two cups and something else I can't remember, and as I lean in to brace myself against the steps, I fall to my knees on the step. Ouch!! *K* laughs. I laugh. Oh boy... (sigh) We both managed to get down the stairs in one piece.

Piece of cake!

Wordless Wednesday

Margaret Becker in concert

Brushing Up on Scripture Memorization

Having grown up attending Christian school and church, I've memorized much scripture. The problem is I know a verse here and there but not entire passages. I also must confess that I've let much of my memory verses go, having forgotten them long ago. I know that memorization is important because Psalm 119 says hiding God's Word in our hearts will keep us from sin.

So this year God has impressed upon me the value of scripture memorization, partly due to John Piper's book When I Don't Desire God. He teaches many ways to use God's Word in our fight for joy, and memorization is one of them. He cites another book that gave him a systematic way to memorize entire passages, An Approach to the Extended Memorization of Scripture by Andrew Davis. I started using his memory method, and it has been the most beneficial system I've ever tried. I've never had much difficulty memorizing, but this has been even more effective for me, especially as it pertains to whole chapters and then some. I want to share it with you, in case you might find it helpful. I'll explain it here, but you can also go to the website and read the book. You'll find this information on page 117 of the pdf file in Chapter 8.

The basic plan is to read a verse with the reference 10 times, then recite the verse 10 times. The next day you recite that same verse. Then you read the next verse 10 times and recite it 10 times. The following day you recite both verses. Then you read the new verse 10 times and recite it 10 times. You just keep adding a verse a day and recite all the previous days' verses together.

I've personally been working on the entire chapter of Romans 8. Today I am through verse 31. It just blew my mind this morning when I realized I have memorized 31 verses. THIRTY-ONE! Mind you, I don't have all of them perfect yet, but it will come. It is okay to look at the verse when you hit a snag. Eventually, it comes.

I believe it's biblical to pray over your memory work. Ask the Lord to use His Word to work whatever He wants to accomplish in your life. It's amazing the new meat you will find as you meditate on His Word in this manner. You'll see things that you haven't seen before, and then when you are sitting under preaching and teaching, you'll find many things that relate back to that memorized passage.

Excuse Me While I Rant a Bit

I'm feeling a bit miffed at a blog I read last week, and I've decided to sound off about it a little. I wish I could find the link to where I read this, but unfortunately I haven't been able to locate it again. The blogger is apparently a blog "expert", and he gave a list of 20 some things that you should not use on your blog to keep it clean, interesting, and cause readers to come back for more.

One comment he made, though, really set me off. He said something to the effect of ... A blog is not a personal diary. Nobody wants to hear about your daily life because that's not interesting.

I think that's just stinky! The definition of a blog, according to Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English, is...

an online diary; a personal chronological log of
thoughts published on a Web page

Seeing that a blog is defined as an "online diary", I'm not sure where said blogger gets off saying it's not a diary.

I personally find lots of personal blogs very entertaining. Most blogs I read are written by moms telling about life with their kids, and I don't even have kids. Yet I still find them interesting. You should see the list I've got going on My Yahoo, and I don't know any of these people personally. Yet I find myself watching for their latest posts, so I can go read them. In fact, I can hardly stand it if OhAmanda hasn't posted in more than 24 hours. (She's my favorite!)

As to why I find all of these strangers' lives interesting... that's still to be answered. Part of it has to do with the WAY they write. They're amusing! I also enjoy the spiritual aspects. I want to know what Christians out there are thinking and learning. I would also say that they help me learn to blog. I read about other people, and it jogs thoughts in my own mind. That aspect has helped me tremendously. So I guess you could say I read blogs to blog. Yeah.

So here are a couple of my favorites, just in case you might be looking for an entertaining blog to read.

1. Discovering Liz (That's mine. Did you think I would leave it off the list?)



2. OhAmanda!



3. Because I Said So (She's writing a book & was recently made famous by her eBay auction)



4. BooMama



5. A Coach For Life

So, fellow bloggers, keep it up!

Preparing for Christmas Blogging

It bugs me that I haven't written a thing since Thanksgiving. It isn't that I haven't tried to, but it's more like I've been feeling some weird emotional stuff that sort of caught me off guard. I want to get back at this writing thing, though, so here I am. It'll be a quick one because it's Sunday afternoon, and you know where I will be - napping! Need to get that in before I go back to church for choir practice.

Over Thanksgiving I was able to scrounge through photo albums at my parents' house, and I found some good Christmas pictures from childhood. Unfortunately, I also found some old school pictures that I would just as soon forget about. (sigh) Back to the Christmas stuff... the memories have been stirring, and I'm going to have some to share in my December blogs now and some photos to show, too. You're welcome to come back for the ride down memory lane with me.