And if for some reason these aren’t enough photos of my adorable snugglebug, there are more posted at my photoblog.

These aren’t even close to all of the photos I’ve taken on our trek up to Spokane, but I thought I would share some while I had a little time.

This is the last picture I took in Louisiana, of Kyrie sitting on our front steps of the house we won’t be going back to.

We all took turns driving (just kidding)

At a friend’s house in Oklahoma, playing in the backyard:

FYI, my grandpa has started to get a bit better from dialysis thrice weekly. He’s still not the same, but he’s been making some progress with physical therapy. He was able to dress himself a bit, but his muscles are still very weak.

In John D. Caputo’s What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, Caputo relates Jacques Derrida’s concept of gift to the New Testament concept of forgiveness. He notes that, in the New Testament, forgiveness is uneconomic and mad–that is to say, it is not an exchange of debts and credits.

Caputo rightly expresses that the Christian Right (as well as Jews) has typically put conditions on forgiveness. In this economic view of forgiveness, forgiveness has four steps:

Forgiveness requires an expression of sorrow, the intention to make amends, a promise not to repeat the offense, and a willingness to do penance. If someone meets all four conditions then they have earned forgiveness. We owe it to them the way the bank owes us the deed once the mortgage is paid off. A deal is a deal.”*

But Jesus turns this concept of forgiveness on its head in Matthew 5:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Or as Caputo puts it,

“If you love those who love you, what good is that? It makes perfect sense. Even the mafia does that. The unaccountable excess of love is felt when you love your enemies, when you love the unlovable–those whom it is unreasonable to love–which is the madness of the kingdom, which follows the nonprincipal of nonsufficient reason! Just so, the unaccountable excess of forgiveness is felt when we forgive precisely those who do not meet some or all of the four conditions, who are not sorry, do not repent, and do not intend to mend their ways. That is, genuine forgiveness is offered unconditionally, not the subject to meeting any or all of these four conditions, exactly the way Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of the Roman soldiers. Just so, we often speak of things that are unforgivable–the Holocaust, say, or the atrocities of American slavery or apartheid, or the several attempts at genocide we have witnessed in the past century. But would not such unforgivable things be the very subject matter of genuine forgiveness?”**

Can you imagine a world where we actually followed Jesus’s teaching on forgiveness instead of our hearts?

* 73-74
** 74

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Today we went to the zoo. While we were at home getting ready, I noticed that Kyrie had taken all her clothes off. So I told her, “Kyrie, you can’t go to the zoo if you’re naked.” She argued, “Animals are naked.”

Also, this morning she was watching VeggieTales on TV and it was about baby Moses in the basket. She suddenly started to cry and ran out of the room. I went to see what was wrong and she said, “I’m afraid of the baby, and I don’t know why!”

After coming home from a very rainy experience at the zoo, Rick decided to lie down to rest and asked Kyrie to sing to him. She began to sing, “Eat this bread, drink this wine…Evie*, Esther, Grandma Lisa…Alleluia, Alleluia.” Then she put a (toy, plastic) slice of pizza in Rick’s mouth and walked away.

*The Evie she was referring to was her little friend, Evelyn Companik

I decided to take pictures of my diaper stash today. I tried to get them all clean at the same time, but there are a couple BumGenius ones missing from the collection.

Here’s what I’ve got. I’ve got two Thirsties covers in red and blue, a bummis super snap cover and a prorap cover below that, and then a Dream-Eze AIO (All in one) diaper. I already have prefolds in the covers. Next to all those are my BumGenius One-Size pocket diapers. The pink ones are Kyrie’s (obviously) which she wears at nighttime. They’re on the biggest snap-setting, whereas Antonio’s are still on the smallest. On the bottom of the pic are some prefolds and cloth wipes (aka baby washcloths) that kinda got cut off because they’re not as cute/interesting.

They don’t quite all fit in this drawer…most of them do.

Here’s Antonio modeling the Dream-Eze AIO. I would like these diapers even more if they came in cuter colors.

And here I am at the park with Nio in the moby wrap, sleeping.

I think they look sooo cute, but I’ve heard some less than stellar reviews of these diapers. Anyone tried them and had good success with them?

Here are the ones I’m eyeing:

Waaahh! They’re CUTE. I want them to work well, too.

Kyrie: “I want to go to Papa’s restaurant.”
Me: “I didn’t know Papa had a restaurant. What’s it called?”
Kyrie: “It’s called Grandma’s.”

Well, my grandpa had another code blue, but was revived again. He has some sort of heart damage, and they’re doing a scan now to check for a pulmonary embolysis. They plan on running a heart catheterization tomorrow, but he’s also scheduled for dialysis tomorrow.

He’s not functioning like he was just a few weeks ago. It looks like he’ll need permanent assistance for just basic needs like bathing and using the bathroom from now on. In any case, prognosis is not looking too good.

My mom seems exhausted, and everyone else is too.