the sias family

Anyone watch that new ABC sitcom “Better With You”? Me neither. But I did see a few minutes of an episode a little while ago, and it had to do with Christmas cards. The patriarch of the show, played by Kurt Fuller, explained that there are basically three kinds of Christmas cards: those that people place on the mantle over the fireplace, those that people hang on the refrigerator, and those that people toss in a big holiday bowl. Only the best cards go on the mantle; only the worst go in the bowl.

This year, the Sias family is gunnin’ for your mantles. And in order to pull it off, we’re recruiting the services of Shutterfly. I’ve been using Shutterfly for a while now, and I can honestly say that I think they’re the best at what they do. The pictures I’ve ordered (including a number of enlargements) are all of great quality, and they’ve all been delivered promptly and securely. And anyone with an even remotely artistic eye can tell that their designs for photo calendars and holiday cards (not to mention cards for other occasions) are a lot better than those of other companies (I’m lookin’ at you, Snapfish).

So go ahead and clear a spot on your mantle, ‘cause the Sias family Christmas card may be coming your way.

My week in a nutshell: studying and exercising. Also, I finally hung our collection of black and white pictures from our last two apartments … only to realize that James isn’t in any of them. So I guess I’ll have to order some new pictures this summer.

Molly’s week has been an interesting one. Work is a little stressful, but I think it’s a good stress. Molly and her co-workers think that God is up to something good at their school, which is always cool.

And of course, James is wonderful. As many of you know, his sleeping habits have been a bit trying at times. He’s only recently started to become somewhat predictable, but that only means that his sleep schedule is sometimes predictably bad. When he naps for an hour or less at preschool, he’s really sensitive (read: whiny) during the afternoon, but he usually goes down early and easily. When he naps for 3 or more hours (sometimes he takes a 4 hour nap at preschool, continuing to sleep while classmates play loudly around him), it usually takes a lot of effort to get him to bed at night. We’ll be downstairs trying to eat dinner, or watch a movie, or whatever, and we’ll hear him upstairs, softly calling, “Moooooommmmy.” And sometimes it takes 5 or more trips upstairs, rocking him for anywhere from a couple minutes to a half hour, before he finally starts to get tired. And who knows how many times he’ll wake up during the night.

A couple nights ago, we heard him over the monitor say, “Mommy, I gotta tell you something.” So we both laughed, and Molly went upstairs to put him back in bed. When she got to his doorway, where he was waiting, she leaned down and asked him what he had to tell her. At first, he smiled and looked down, coyly, since he didn’t really have anything to say to her. He was just baiting her into coming upstairs again. But then, he put his hands on her cheeks, leaned forward, and kissed her. Now, granted, this was only after trying to deceive her into giving him what he wanted — another few minutes of rocking. But still, pretty sweet.

And last night, as I was rocking him, he randomly wrapped his arms around my neck and said, “I yuv you, daddy.” Pretty much impossible to be frustrated when he does stuff like that.

As some of you know, I’m a big fan of G. K. Chesterton. I’m currently working my way through his book Heretics. In the chapter I just read this morning, Chesterton talks about how humanity has lost its sense of awe at the largeness of the world, and along with it, our sense of contentment with our place in it. In other words, as a culture, we’ve gotten to a point at which we won’t be happy until we’ve traveled the world, seen what it has to offer, and even made our way to the moon and other planets … and yet, in the meantime, we’ve completely lost our sense of amazement at the blades of grass and leaves on the trees in our own backyards. The more we “think of the earth as a globe,” he says, the smaller and less inspiring it will seem to us. And yet, the larger and more awe-inspiring the world seems, the easier it is for us to find happiness and contentment with the little things in our lives. You can read the whole chapter here (chapter 3), so I’ll just share a few of my favorite quotes:

“In the heated idleness of youth we were all rather inclined to quarrel with the implication of that proverb which says that a rolling stone gathers no moss. We were inclined to ask, ‘Who wants to gather moss, except silly old ladies?’ But for all that we begin to perceive that the proverb is right. The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive.”

“It is inspiriting without doubt to whizz in a motor-car round the earth, to feel Arabia as a whirl of sand or China as a flash of rice-fields. But Arabia is not a whirl of sand and China is not a flash of rice-fields. They are ancient civilizations with strange virtues buried like treasures. If we wish to understand them it must not be as tourists or inquirers, it must be with the loyalty of children and the great patience of poets. To conquer these places is to lose them. The man standing in his own kitchen-garden, with fairyland opening at the gate, is the man with large ideas. His mind creates distance; the motor-car stupidly destroys it.”

“Under this vast illusion of the cosmopolitan planet, with its empires and its Reuter’s agency, the real life of man goes on concerned with this tree or that temple, with this harvest or that drinking-stone, totally uncomprehended, totally untouched. And it watches from its splendid parochialism, possibly with a smile of amusement, motor-car civilization going its triumphant way, outstripping time, consuming space, seeing all and seeing nothing, roaring on at last to the capture of the solar system, only to find the sun cockney and the stars suburban.”

Wish I could write like that.

Well, my first full week of the summer is over, and once again, I’m reminded of how different summers are for me now. This used to be a time of relaxation. Now it’s a time work, work, and more work … with the occasional indoor basketball game (I bought James a little basketball hoop that hangs over doors, and I’m the only one who really uses it).

On the philosophy front, I’m writing up some dissertation-related ideas for my advisers to read; I’m doing some serious reading about St. Thomas Aquinas’ theological epistemology (i.e., his views about how we can have knowledge of God); I’m converting some of the Powerpoint slides I use for teaching into real lecture notes; and I’m working up the nerve to ask one of the members of the philosophy faculty at Duke to be on my dissertation committee.

In the meantime, I re-caulked our shower. Next week, I’ll hang a bunch of stuff on the walls, and possibly reorganize James’ room. And I’m determined to get in shape this summer, so in the evenings, I’m exercising.

If I can keep up this pace (highly doubtful), this will be the most productive (and least relaxing) summer of my life. But still, I’m thankful that the weekend has finally arrived … even though I’ll likely be working just as hard tomorrow and Sunday as I have all week.

Molly’s wonderful as usual. She never ceases to impress me with her thoughtfulness toward others. I think she’s beginning to develop a reputation (among both neighbors and coworkers) as someone who randomly brings people dinners. And it may not sound like much, but you’d be surprised how much that can mean to someone. She also had the opportunity this week to lead worship (with James on her hip) for the staff at her school. Her job can be stressful at times, but we really appreciate the fact that she works at a place where the staff meets during the week to worship and pray together. Pretty cool.

And of course, James is perfect in every way. We were just reflecting the other day on how the “terrible 2’s” really haven’t been terrible at all. There was a brief period a while back during which he was a little bipolar, but that only lasted for a couple months. For the most part, he’s just been a wonderful, hilarious, cheerful, mischievous boy. He imitates every little thing I do (which is as frightening as it is flattering); but he’s still a momma’s boy, which I like to see.

When Molly got off work today, we all met up with one of her friends for a play-date at the park. Her son Brooks is one of James’ good friends. Here are some pictures (if you want to see more, go check out Molly’s album on Facebook).

Here’s a video of some of the guys at North Point Community Church poking fun at the “contemporary church” movement (which, I assume, includes themselves to some extent). Made me laugh, so I thought I’d share it.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers reading this blog! Molly and I count ourselves seriously blessed to have the mothers and mothers-in-law that we have. You two are perfect moms, and perfect grandmothers. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done, and continue to do, not the least of which is your constant prayer.

And of course, a very special Happy Mother’s Day to Molly. As long as I have something to do with it, my son will never lose sight of how lucky he is to have her as his mother.

Now, back to blogging …

I can’t promise that I’ll be as reliable as I was when I first started this blog. But I should be good for a post every week or so. And there may be a limit on how many pictures I include. Since most (if not all) of you also have access to our Facebook profiles, where we’ll always be uploading pictures, it seems a little pointless for me to post them all here as well. So I’ll probably just post a picture or two and then direct you to Facebook if you want to see more.

This Spring was officially my last semester of coursework. I’ll never have to take another philosophy class ever again. I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet. I’ve been taking courses, either undergrad or grad, for literally a decade. And now I’m done. Weird.

Unfortunately, though, thanks to a rather serious misunderstanding on my part of one professor’s expectations for our term papers, I’ll spend the next month rewriting my paper for her. So I can’t quite kiss the Spring semester goodbye just yet.

Once that’s done, though, it’s basically just me and my dissertation for the next two years. I’m slowly but surely narrowing in on a viable dissertation topic. One thing I never would’ve thought that I’d struggle with is choosing a dissertation topic, but as it turns out, it’s a lot harder than I expected. At this point, I’m pretty sure that it’ll have something to do with the role of emotion in the formation our moral beliefs. But beyond that, who knows.

Here’s something cool, though. Back in college, I took a course on moral realism. This was the course that really got me hooked on philosophy (to this day, I still spend a lot of my time thinking about issues related to moral realism). The two main textbooks for that course were Essays on Moral Realism, edited by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, and Finite and Infinite Goods, by Robert Adams. Well, as long as I get my hands on a viable dissertation topic this summer, the chair of my dissertation committee will be none other than Robert Adams, and the first of my additional committee members will be Geoffrey Sayre-McCord. Kinda crazy how things work out.

So anyway, that’s the latest on grad school. I’ll be teaching this summer, starting June 17 and lasting until late July. But we will be visiting the great state of Georgia for the second week of June, and then spending a week in Gulf Shores in early August (thanks, Mom and Dad!).

Molly is doing well. The left side of her body is more tan than the right side, since the spray bottle apparently spent too much time in her right hand, but I guess a two-tone tan is better than none at all. She’s also excited about this breadmaker that she recently stole from her mom. The first loaf didn’t turn out exactly the way she wanted, but I think the fact that it made our whole house smell like a bakery for the afternoon made it all worthwhile for her.

James is almost completely potty-trained. I mean, I don’t really know what counts as “completely potty-trained,” but I figure he’s gotta be close. He still wakes up in the morning sometimes with a little tee-tee (that’s what we’re calling urine, by the way) in his pull-up, but he pretty consistently tells us when he’s got to go. That’s big news around these parts. And his personality seems to be getting bigger by the day. He’s got Molly’s showmanship and my imagination, which is kind of a scary combination. I can totally see him doing everything from music to theater to any (or all) of the major sports. And probably some volunteer firefighting. Lately, he really seems to be getting into baseball. We’ll have to take him to a Durham Bulls game sometime.

Alright, everybody (or, as James would say it, “Alright, all-the-bodies”). Thanks for checking in. Stay tuned for more. I’ll leave you with a couple pictures of James rocking your faces off.

Jim here. Once my Spring semester responsibilities are over, I’m thinking about getting the ol’ Sias Family blog back up and running. So stay tuned.