I do some painting. Jonah does some waving. The most fantastic apple (not Apple) ever. Jonah’s baptism class, part 1. All the hubbub, bub.
I spent several hours painting my parents house today, in part because it needed doing and I’m willing to climb up ladders and paint stuff, and in part because I owed them for coming over a few days ago and watching Jonah while I did some of my own yard work. Well, all that plus I’m a nice guy. I’ll be doing some more exterior painting for them in weeks ahead. ‘Cause I’m a really nice guy.
After Erin got off from school, she came over and fed Jonah. Man, does he get excited to see her. Since we’re together all day, he’s not nearly so enthralled with me, though in the mornings when he wakes up and in the evenings when both Erin and I are around he does a lot of smiling, giggling, and yelping in my direction. While Erin was holding Jonah today, he started waving back at Grandma Carole. He also appeared to respond to his name, but it’s more likely that he just heard somebody talking and turned his head to see what the noise was. I’m gonna try testing this a little more in the next few days to see if I can figure out if he’s really picking up on his name or not. As an aside, Jonah’s bottom tooth number 2 is coming in, and I can tell you from personal experience that they’re both sharp.
While we were at my folks’ place, they gave me one of the best apples I’ve ever had. The variety is called Honeycrisp (which sounds vaguely like breakfast cereal). It’s large, crisp, and yummy. It’s also outrageously expensive at about $3 a pound. But there it is: One of the best apples ever. They bought the apples at LifeSource, an organic store here in Salem, so the produce might be hard to come by. But if you get the chance, check it out.
We attended the first baptism class for Jonah in the evening. It would have been more useful perhaps if both Erin and I were less versed in the rituals and traditions of Catholic Christianity. After a bare-bones introduction amongst the attendees, we all watched a lame 1980s video that with a few tweaks could’ve just as easily come from an evangelical or fundamentalist protestant church. I was unimpressed.
The hour-long gathering ended with the coordinator reading a list of broad demographic information and repeatedly applying it directly to everyone in attendance. Setting aside that this is a huge fallacy to begin with, it’s also annoying to be told by someone you’ve just met not only who you are but who your child is and will be. It’d be infuriating as well if there were any validity to taking general statistic evidence (“kids in this generation are more compliant toward authority…”) and applying to individuals (“…therefore your children won’t be troublemakers—isn’t that great?”), but there’s not, so instead it’s just well-intentioned dimwittedness. On the brighter side, Jonah didn’t seem to mind one way or the other.