Currently Listening New Surrender By Anberlin see related

BABY BOY

Ack, I haven't updated xanga in a long time!  Most updates are happening over at twitter and facebook these days instead, including lots of pictures, etc. of the new baby boy.  Most people post a big story about the birth, but Tal's birth was pretty straightforward.  It felt like it took like 10 minutes from the beginning of the operation to Tal joining us.  He was "from his mother's womb untimely ripped" as Shakespeare would say; Heather took awhile to recover from the C-section, but overall it has been an easy process, and he has been an easy baby.  It's becoming more and more apparent that he looks like a mixture of me and my dad.  That's a weird feeling to have a baby who looks like you because you wonder if he'll have your same fears, hopes, weaknesses, etc.

When Tal was born, my parents gave me this book called "Family-driven Faith" by Voddie Baucham.  (You may remember me raving about what a good speaker Voddie Baucham is after I heard him speak at conferences back in  1999-2000.)  Anyway, I'm only 50-60 pages in, and it has been really good so far.  A lot of parenting books are super-vague and don't contain anything you haven't heard before.  Voddie's book has a lot of surprising, interesting, and somewhat controversial content that I don't often hear, and it has already sparked some great conversations between me and Heather already.  I'm not sure I agree with everything he says, but for the most part, the book is spot-on with a lot of good Biblical wisdom.

Baseball playoffs are upon us, and the Red Sox are looking good so far.  I feel bad for all the despondent Cubbies fans though.

In lighter news, I was listening to the Adam Carolla show on thursday, and Ed Harris called in to promote his new movie, Appaloosa (which looks good), and the following exchange happened:

Adam: Great to talk to you, Ed.
Ed: Great to talk to you, Adam.
A: Would you please yell, "Stand down!" at us?
E: What?
A: Say, "Stand down!"
E: You want me to say, "Stand down"?
A: Yeah.
E: What are you talking about?
A: Just do it, come on.
E: I don't--Oh, you mean like in "The Rock"?
A: Yeah.
E: <sighs>  Well, ok.  STAND DOWN!!
A: <high-fives everyone in the studio> Yes!!!  My life is complete.

Currently Reading On Becoming Baby Wise: Giving Your Infant the Gift of Nighttime Sleep (On Becoming. . .) By Gary Ezzo, Robert Bucknam see related

GREAT SCENE FROM A GREAT MOVIE

The voices, the music, the visuals, it's all fantastic. 

Currently Reading Baby & Child Care: From Pre-Birth through the Teen Years (Focus on the Family Complete Guides) By Paul C. Reisser, James C. Dobson see related

LOOK AT ME

A good example of why Heath Ledger should win an Oscar (seriously, who else could do this?):

Currently Listening Finally Woken By Jem see related

SIX...

This weekend I saw the main two movies that I was excited to see this summer:

The Dark Knight – Well, it definitely lives up to the hype.  This new Batman movie was a sprawling, long crime epic (the director accurately compared it to Heat), and I thought it was exceptionally well-written, well-directed, and well-acted.  Heath Ledger’s maniacal impression of the Joker was particularly excellent.  I never would have thought that the Joker could actually be frightening, but his Joker was pure nightmare fuel.  I was very impressed.  (By the way, no child should see this movie.  There’s very little language and no sexual talk, but there are some horrifying images and violence.)

Wall-E – Pixar’s newest movie is about a lonely little robot left on earth after humanity leaves Earth to colonize space.  There’s not much dialogue, so most of the story is told through the action and through the expressions (especially the eyes) of the robot characters.  This movie was very cute and surprisingly romantic.  I’m not much for romantic movies, but Heather and I gave each other a lot of sweet looks watching Wall-E and Eve (the sleek white Ipod-looking robot) dancing through space.  I highly recommend this one.

so...yeah, twitter and facebook are much easier to use than xanga, so I'll reserve xanga for long posts from here on out.  pictures go on facebook, short stuff goes on twitter.

I felt the baby's hand punching the side of heather's tummy today!  It got a little dusty around here...