A Thanksgiving Reminder

In the words of Dave Barry (2004):

But Thanksgiving is also a spiritual time of quiet reflection - a time when we pause to remember, as generations have remembered before us, that an improperly cooked turkey is - in the words of the U.S. Department of Agriculture - "a ticking Meat Bomb of Death."

Please be sure to cook your Thanksgiving dinner thoroughly. The USDA's actual quote is that means 165 degrees measured with a meat thermometer.

Food safety website Barfblog's recommendations: avoid Whole Foods turkey "For the past couple of weeks, Whole Foods has been pushing their turkeys like some form of food porn crack..." Chapman and Powell's advice for a safe Thanksgiving turkey here. The thing we are going to be most pressed to accomplish: "Refrigerate leftover turkey within 2 hours of taking it out of the oven."

Giving Pop Due Notice

Last year when my dad's choir sang the Hallelujah Chorus, Hyrum stood up in the pews and conducted with him. It was the single most adorable event in 2009 by many accounts.

I have some sad news. This year I don't think he's going to conduct...

But that doesn't mean that he won't be participating!

"Aw-way-woo-ya! Aw-way-woo-ya!"



You have been warned.

"An HE shall WAYNE fohevah..."

I Thank Thee Dear Father

At some point, Hyrum transferred our requirement that he eat five different foods at a meal in order to get a cookie into praying for "five things" before he can say Amen. He starts most prayers like this, "Dear Father Heaven, thank Thee for five things" and waits for me to show him my closed fingers ready to count off whatever his precious little heart is thankful for. After five, I will prompt him "Please" and he closes, "Please bless me be good, be happy, Jesus Christ Amen" in varying degrees of understandability, speed, and volume.

What is Hyrum thankful for?
Most frequently some combination of:
MommyDaddy [we're a packaged set]
this morning with Pop and Boo
Buzz, Woody, and/or Bob the Builder [usually in a set]
Marioparty, Disney SingIt, or any other Wii or board game he played that day
Cookie or Halloween candy

And on occasion:
Steve and Emie [if we've been visiting]
bowling and strikes [last night for Joy's birthday]
various songs he loves
Buzz, Woody, Jessie, Bullseye, Ham, Rex....
pajamas
Petersons
Toby train
numbers
General Conference
church or his tie
Family fun time
Muppets
potty stickers

In one prayer he was thankful for: Toy Story, Toys, 2, 3, 4....

This morning after we read about the Sermon on the Mount and what Jesus said about prayer, I sang "I Kneel to Pray" to him. He joined me in singing the entire second verse laying out the prayer. It was most impressive.

How to clean the fan

Remember those truths we hold to be self-evident? Here's another: It should be easier than this to clean the fan of a laptop. Video and song below the fold:

The Look of Love

You may have picked up by this point that our wonderful toddler is a bit obsessive in his preferences. Joy's response is to try to avoid giving him his latest obsession in the hopes it will tone down. My response is to try to dilute it by getting him a lot of obsessions he can choose from - that way Joy has plenty of other desirable things to replace the problem with. This is why I'm so vigorous in introducing new music and movies to him and keep track of recent successes on the right hand side of the blog (formerly Hyrum's True Love de Jour, now just Hyrum Discovers).

In the process, I've learned that Hy has this look when he's discovering a new True Love. And that's a fun thing to notice.

Last night before bed he asked me to read him The Crocodile poem again. As usual I was insistent that we read something new first. As I turned the page to the next "poom" he saw how long it was going to be and didn't have any funny pictures. He began to despair but I launched into it before he could object. .. I hadn't realized Silverstein wrote The Unicorn which I only knew as the song by the Irish Rovers and Roger Whittaker. But that meant I knew a tune for it and sang away.

And I saw ... the look. He sat entranced as I sang away about the mythic creatures. It's not a look of ecstasy, delight, or glee. It's the look of someone entranced - who is focusing every ounce of soulfiber into this wondrous new experience so that it won't be forgotten - for whom time and everything outside of this experience has ceased to exist and this one moment can continue indefinitely without complaint - slack-jawed and drooling, only his eyes betray the intensity of his interest.

I finish and there comes the greatest applause our little boy offers: in the softest, reverent voice he asks "again?"

My split personalities - a little navel gazing

In real life, Myers-Briggs tells me I am an introvert (like I needed someone to tell me I recharge my batteries by being alone and expend it in social interaction) who prefers abstract, intuitive thinking and that I prefer to use my thinking rather than my intuition to understand the rest of you (aka INTJ, the Mastermind, the rarest of the typologies). My boss is also INTJ so we get along splendidly. Joy, oddly enough, is ESFP - she would be my exact opposite if I didn't actually have a 60/40 split on each of the categories.

But my blogs are another story. Cue the Typealyzer who will perform a Myers-Briggs on your blog in seconds. This blog ... does not look like me. It is extroverted to my introvert, concrete to my abstract, and feeling to my thinking. We can't blame Joy because she's seldom on here. Far from being a Mastermind, around here I'm a Socializer! Our answer is that this is just a forum and place for me to express my other not-quite-half.

My work blog on the other hand is almost exactly me (The Duty Fulfiller). The only difference is that again I use concrete examples of things that are present in my communication rather than sticking to abstract thought.

I like the pictures of brain activity these two blogs present. Pity they won't let me copy and paste. Each blog lets me emphasize a very different part of my brain. (I enjoy that my brother's blog - Mental Meanderings of a Modern Superhero - gets a depiction of a fellow with a sword and shield, and the description for my mother's sounds about spot on.)

A morning with Hyrum

Hyrum likes reading his Shel Silverstein "pooms." His new favorite is the Crocodile and the Dentist.

Today Hy is wearing orange and there's a Tigger on his pants, so he isn't running everywhere. He's going "boing boing boing!" and running into things more.

We read about Jesus getting baptized today. I asked him, "Do you want to be baptized?"
"No," he says.
Uhoh. Patience ... "Why not?"
"I want to stay here."
Oh. "Do you want to be baptized when you're eight?"
"Yes."
Oh good.

While reading about John the Baptist, Hy made some unusual connections. I read that people asked John how they should live.
"Like Pinnochio!"
?? He said they should keep the commandments, tell the truth, and
"Like Pinnochio in the cage! Tell the truth."
Yes, Hyrum, just like Pinnochio in the cage. *ahem* John the Baptist was a prophet of God.
"Like Pinnochio!"
No, Hyrum, not like Pinnochio.

Truths Held to be Self-Evident

Click to enlarge

(part 1, a bit more serious)