* Friday night saw the addition of the newest Tredway to our household. (In order to do this properly, I’ll add photos later.) I would like to introduce the world to: Betta “Goldfish” Tredway. He’s blue, has fins, and lives in a water-filled glass bowl. What’s not to love? Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa, Livia’s passion is now a reality.

* By Saturday morning the main floor of my house was sparkly clean and filled with a bevy of lovely women, and a few good men, celebrating the impending arrival of Baby Girl Lawton. Kristin’s belly is growing delightfully and we’re all eagerly awaiting the day we get to hold this child in our arms. I can’t quite find the words to express how thrilled I am to become an aunt for the first time… Suffice to say I feel duty-bound to purchase every cute pink item I see for sale. Isn’t that what an aunt’s supposed to do?

* After a busy weekend (which also contained Miami Vice and a great martini bridal shower, separately of course), Sunday worship at Zion was food for my hungry soul. For the first time in a long while, we attended the late service and I found the music to be incredibly worshipful. What I both like and dislike about the late service is that it’s very well-attended. The sheer mass of voices made chorus and hymn singing feel like we were blowing the roof off with praises to the Eternal King — it filled my heart with joy at a time where I felt somewhat lacking in the joy category. I want to throw out a big bloggy thank you to Karen Choi who continuously labors to lead and make music at Zion. Thanks, Karen. You do a wonderful job week in, week out, and we all appreciate you.

* Finally, sweetly, delightfully, a Sunday evening walk through the neighborhood. Anyone else LOVING the lightweight August temps we’re experiencing in Lincoln? A little downtime with Jeremy, Livia and a few pb&j’s wrapped up the weekend in a very peaceful kind of way.

John Rosemond’s parenting column in the Lincoln Journal Star:

One does not have to teach antisocial beahvior to toddlers. They are by nature violent, deceitful, destructive, rebellious and prone to sociopathic rages if they do not get their way. Example: A 2-year-old who has never experienced, witnessed, or even heard described an act of violence will slap his mother across the face or bite her most accessible body part if she dares deny him a cookie and then ventures too close to his tantrum. Toddlers are convinced that the rules do not apply to them, that they are under no obligation to obey legitimate authority, that in fact is is they who are to be obeyed. It is surely a measure of either God’s mercy or the purposefulness of evolution that unlike other mammals, human beings to do not grow to full size in one or two years.

Socializing the toddler is the Single Biggest Challenge of Parenthood.

Hallelujah! Someone understands my life!!! Thank you, Mr. Rosemond, for a healthy dose of empathy and encouragement during the exact moment I need it most.

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She Got Up Off the Couch, by Haven Kimmel

The couch in the den was the color the crayon people called Flesh even thought it resembled no human or animal flesh on Planet Earth, and the couch fabric was nubbled in a pattern of diamonds. It was best to prevent the nubbles from coming into direct contact with one’s real Flesh, so there was usually a blanket or a towel or clothing spread out as a buffer. Also no one wanted to pick up the blanket, the towel, and the clothing and fold them. Or even pick them up. So it was a fine arrangement.

This book is Kimmel’s follow-up to her earlier memoir A Girl Named Zippy. The author is hilariously detailed in recording her childhood memories and I’ve enjoyed this set of memories as much as the last. I’m not yet halfway through the book, so I’ve got more to go, but one story in particular about her father’s encounter with a nest of rats had me laughing out loud. Good stuff.

Grrr… I’m trying to figure out how to place my Flickr pics onto my blog in the right size. Anyone have a suggestion for me? Help!

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Keith, thanks for the help!

I’m new at this Flickr thing and, as my husband well knows, I tend to be slow to change. I was reluctant to start blogging and I’m still dragging my feet with Flickr. I like the idea of Flickr but it kind of freaks me out a bit, too. I feel much more in control of my photographs here on the Prairie Box (what is there to control? you might wonder, rightly so). I’m not too fond of the idea of random and unknown bloggers posting my pictures, but then again, I’ve never been much of a group project person when it comes to creative assignments. Also, I admit I’m totally intimidated when it comes to the a-ma-zing photography on Flickr. Instead of propelling me to go and do likewise, I feel like giving up this hobby because so many people are so much better at it than I am. Silly, but true. Anyhow, Renae’s been after me for a long time to get aboard the Flickr train. So here I am… With a Pro Account on my birthday/Christmas wishlist.

Remember this blushing bride of a year ago? Well, today’s her birthday.

The Tredways love you, Nae Nae! Happy birthday!

Blogging is a strange medium that has great potential for allowing misperceptions and miscommunication to run rampant. To put it bluntly, you may not really know me if you only read my blog. Like any other blogger, I pick and choose what I post in this space and my readers get a very skewed version of Rebecca Tredway because of my picking and choosing. Recently I’ve had numerous conversations with close friends about the oddness of blogging. Sometimes a blogger’s voice truly shines through his words, and at other times a blogger’s posts don’t reflect his personality at all. I’ve heard of bloggy crushes that have developed based on a perception that is far removed from reality, and I myself have quit reading blogs because my own perceptions created frustration and irritation with the particular blogger.

All in all, I think there needs to be a lot of grace issued in the blogging world. Grace to understand that messages recorded in print may not tell the full story, that comments listed may not truly reflect one’s heart, and that each item posted simply records a moment in time, that the blogger herself may change her mind on the same topic tomorrow.

Finally, these conversations with friends (in particular, one with my dear friend Sarah late last night) have pushed me to question, why blog? Here’s the best answer I’ve come up with…

I blog for three reasons. One, blogging is a fabulous creative outlet. I’m able to combine two passions — writing and photography — into one small space on the web. Sentences have a way of composing themselves in my head, and if I’m smart enough to record them quickly, I end up having great fun with words. I have loved to twist, turn, manipulate and create with the English language as long as I remember. Most everything I write here is factually true, but I admit I take a writer’s liberty with the telling of it. As a child I’d hear my mom relating a story on the phone and I’d think, Wait! She’s not telling it right!! The truth was that my mother was telling her own story, complete with the nuances important to her. That’s exactly what I do here. Okay, back to my three reasons for blogging. The second reason I blog is that The Prairie Box is my personal Soap Box — it’s my chance to speak my opinion freely on matters like breastfeeding, public schooling, child advocacy and politics. In the same manner, I can give personal opinions on movies, books and television programs. Lastly and most recently, blogging has become my kid’s scrapbook. I am far too perfectionistic to create decent scrapbooks by hand, but the blog allows me to post photos and memories of Livia’s baby years. (Many a time I’ve wanted to retitle the blog, “The Livia Project” since it’s mostly about her!)

Any thoughts on all this? Why do YOU blog?

The only thing worse than stepping on toy cars in the dark is, perhaps, stepping blindly on plastic cookie cutters. The bottoms of my feet have now experienced the piercing pain understood only by a cold blob of sugar cookie dough.

Title makes you a bit squeamish? That’s okay—I experienced a similar reaction when first reading about WBF on Kristen’s blog, This Classical Life.

Today I began leaving a comment on her first blog post this week and I realized it really should be posted on my own space in the WWW. So here ’tis:

I was a breasted baby and grew up around people who breastfed, so honestly I didn’t understand the important of WBF—until now. I recently heard a statistic that went something like this: a majority of the American public thinks it is inappropriate to breastfeed in public and an even larger percentage (71%?) think breastfeeding is indecent when shown on tv. Now, I’m just repeating what I’ve heard/read and I don’t have the proof in front of me, nor do I know what the actual survey stated, but still, the notions behind these statistics are absurd! Breastfeeding is GOOD and DECENT (when a bit of discretion is used, of course) and is a GOD-GIVEN way to feed babies. I find it hard to believe that it’s considered appropriate to show breasts in sexually suggestive ways on television but not as a way of feeding a child (you know, the same child that was carried in the same woman’s womb for nine months). Also, I wonder if the “public” is aware of how often a newborn infant eats…. To say it’s inappropriate for a woman to breastfeed her child in public is like saying this same woman doesn’t deserve to live outside her home for more than an hour or two at a time. Ridiculous.

I will never be a militant supporter of breastfeeding and I do believe some women go overboard in their methods to support it. I do wish that well-intentioned people would quit asking me if I’ve heard about breastfeeding adopted babies (for the record, yes, I have) and I do wish that breastfeeding and bottle-feeding mamas alike would support one another’s choices. There’s way too much judgment flying around women in this arena and it only serves to make someone feel guilty about the choices they’ve made.

Still, I find it hard to believe how uncomfortable the general public is with breastfeeding. I’d be more blunt with my thoughts here, but well, I’m trying to keep this blog rated G. Or, maybe PG-13.

I’ve been reading about freezer paper stencils on the blogs of katiek and Diber, and just had to give them a try. I purchased a 5 pack of white baby onesies and went to town—now I’m slighty obsessed with the whole process.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Trace a stencil (or freehand a drawing) onto the papery side of some freezer paper. I use this Reynolds product.
2. Using an exacto knife and perhaps a wooden cutting board, cut out the stencil.
3. Iron stencil onto fabric—the plastic side will melt onto the fabric, preventing paint from seeping under your stencil. I recommend placing another piece of freezer paper under the fabric as well to prevent possible paint transfer.
4. Now you can paint! I’m currently using acrylic paint, which may not be the best longterm paint option. Fabric paints are recommended.
5. Remove stencil carefully and let the paint dry for a few days.

For more information, search for freezer paper stencils on Google or Flickr.

I recognized the author’s name from a previous book I had read (What Should I Do With My Life?) and thus ended up with Why Do I Love These People? in my hands during a road trip several weeks ago. The byline on the front cover, Honest and Amazing Stories of Real Families, demonstrates what I often look for in a nonfiction book: other people’s life stories. The real-life element, paired with Po Bronson’s gift for writing, makes a highly readable, interesting and thought-provoking book.

Bronson states that the word fashion is not normally associated “with a time-honored core like family, but the pairing is apt. Many of the ways we think about family are really just fashions, fabrications for the sake of aggrandizing the present day” (p 14). The author continues on the following page of his introduction by taking a glimpse into the world of love, and how it has been fashioned with fairy tales:

To quote a wise woman from a future chapter, “Real love is not a primitive biological response that any schoolboy can have.” Nor is real love formed on a first kiss; rather, that is a mere starting point. But thanks to fairy tales, we indulge in an overly romantic ideal that only sets us up for disenchantment. We believe the right spouse can be chosen out of a lineup, and that this “rightness” is inherent to the chemistry of two personalities – that it is fully formed right away, as if at first sight, rather than formed over years and decades of living together. We are afraid of commitment because we think everything has to be “right” before we commit. We believe that by picking someone who wants the same things as we do, those things will actually happen. Having chosen each other on the basis of similarity, we have no skills to resolve the differences that inevitably emerge between any two people. Our romantic spirit is crushed as easily as a paper bag. We avoid conflict when we should be training ourselves on its barbs. We’ve come to think compromise is a dirty word, when in fact you can get nowhere in real life without it. We look for partners who give us no problems, rather than partners we are good at overcoming problems with.

I found the theme of the entire book wrapped in this one sentence, “The test is not whether we have problems, but how we deal with them” (p 19). Every family, every relationship will be tested by problems, and there seems to be a million different ways to overcome isssues. I found Bronson’s real life stories to be a breath of fresh air as I struggle with being a black-and-white kind of girl in a gray kind of world.

I admit I’ve become a little less reflective in recent months. For proof one has to look no further than the monthly letters I write my daughter; last month’s was exceedingly short and this month’s is non-existent. I credit the lack of reflection to the busy nature of mothering a toddler. Livia and I spend so much time interacting face to face that I feel less emotional desire to write lengthy letters to her. The desire to look deeply into things has faded in other areas of my life as well… I’ve been shooting less pictures and writing less (both on the blog and otherwise). So, it was with great intention that Livia and I set out for a photo walk a week ago. It was time to look into the details of creation and take a few moments to admire the Creator’s work. I don’t believe the beauty of the rose or the perfection of the acorn happened on accident. Even the small things of creation point to the One who planned it.