The Lord has blessed us with yet another healthy son.

I am pleased to introduce you to Nathaniel Luke Ding, born @11:33p on 1/5/12 in Los Gatos, CA.  Measured in at 8lbs 1oz and 20inches.

For years, as a quick and easy meal for the kids, we’ve often turned to those boxes of instant quick and easy “Mac & Cheese.”

Somewhere along the way, we discovered that Kraft’s “Mac & Cheese” had a bit of disclaimer: they didn’t really use cheese but a “cheese product.”

So we decided to try store-brands: Wal-Mart, Costco’s Kirkland Signature, etc. with real cheese.  And they were better.

But not by far.

And somewhere (farther) along the same way, we thought: “Macaroni is just pasta.  Cheese is just… cheese.”  How hard could it be to make this dish from scratch?

Tonight, I tried my hand at it, following the famous Pioneer Woman’s recipe for baked macaroni and cheese.

How did it turn out?  Well first, the quantitative evidence:

1. I had a great time cooking it; for the first time preparing a roux and tempering an egg (click through to the above recipe if you don’t know what I’m talking about).
2. I liked eating it.  But then, I cooked it, I’m prejudiced.  But I would actually choose to eat this – not just when I was desperate for something quick & easy.
3. Our youngest daughter asked for three servings.  Unless it’s loaded with sugar, she never asks for three servings!  Gonna do this one again! (Never mind that she kinda had a sparse lunch.)

Qualitatively speaking, it wasn’t bad either (in other words, “presentation is everything”) — we added our own flair with panko bread crumbs on top:

Digging into the third serving!  Did I mention that it was her third serving???

One of the many blogs I follow is that of Chris Brauns, who serves as a pastor in Illinois and has written the book Unpacking Forgiveness.  He was featured in a brief Q&A video on Christianity.com discussing how Christian parents should educate their children.

His answer focused not on a particular method (e.g., homeschooling vs. public school), but on our mindset and goals.  I appreciate how he points out that every method has its own potential challenges and pitfalls.  Ultimately, he offers a brief yet helpful reminder that no matter what our choice in educational models, there is no “foolproof” and “easy” method that removes the importance of involved parents who are committed to teaching their children to know and follow Jesus.

Check it out:

In a blog post today, Nancy Wilson offers some real world insights, no doubt based on her experiences as a friend and pastor’s wife, on some of the contradictions that she has observed in younger women who express a desire to be married and yet remain single.  Both Lois and I appreciated her honesty and insights, and would encourage both men and women who are single to take a look and see what wisdom they might glean.  Among her interesting observations:

• Marriage requires a kind of death. Though this is required for both husband and wife, the wife dies in a unique way. She takes a new name, and she has a new calling. This is what scares some women off, despite their desire for marriage and children.
• Another snare lies in the whole concept of falling in love. Hollywood is not a trustworthy instructor in how to conduct a relationship. Yet many of our assumptions about love come from Cinderella and all her descendants.
• A woman is free to marry whomever she likes, so long as it is in the Lord. If he is a Christian, a woman is free to marry him. Or not. She doesn’t have to have lofty reasons for saying no. She can say no because she doesn’t like his nose or his taste in music. She is a free woman. But she ought to at least consider some of these things I’ve mentioned, in case she is exercising her freedom in a way even she would say is contradictory: “He’s everything I want, and yet I don’t want.”

Read the whole thing.

In case you didn’t pick up on the not-so-subtle message in my last blog post — and even if you did — here’s a little video that makes the point a bit more explicitly:

This was inevitable.  It happened once before, but still, there was no guarantee that it was not going to happen again.  A two-year-old plus a pair of scissors is just not a good combo.

A couple of minutes ago, my two-year-old daughter came up the stairs with a pair of scissors in hand and I found a lock of hair by her foot.

I picked her up.

And found another lock.  And another.  And still another.

Then I looked more closely at her hair and saw the damage.

Sigh. . . . self-application of scissors is definitely not the preferred method for giving a toddler a haircut.

Life is undoubtedly filled with adventures with little ones.  Now I have to go figure out how to cover her little head.

Several weeks ago I took the boys to the dentist to have all of our teeth cleaned.  I went up on the dentist chair first, per the boys’ desire.  Before the hygienist can get to work, she had to keep the boys occupied with something to do.  They had two choices: watch a TV show or read books.  Both of them unanimously chose to read.  I was rather surprised because I thought they would pick TV because we don’t have a TV at home so this would be a treat to be able to watch something.  My hygienist was impressed.

Of course this got me thinking.  Are my boys just born nerdy?  Or can reading be cultivated?  I read in the recent news that reading has been declining, which is no news actually, especially in boys.  In order to appeal to boys, authors write about gross and inappropriate topics such as bodily functions and sounds.  I was flabbergasted, but not surprised.  So, how do we cultivate a generation who loves to read?  I have several thoughts.

I firmly believe that a love for reading is firmly modeled by the parents.  Children are led by examples.  If they see that their parents spend a lot time fishing, playing ball, or watching TV, most likely they will model after their parents’ interests.  Likewise, if parents value reading by modeling it, most likely their children will like to read.  Both my husband and I are readers and we have books lying about in the house.  We also talk about the books we read and pass them along to friends.  Our kids see all of this.

Reading out loud as a family has many benefits.  We really like listening to stories and we started this practice over two years ago, and with some ups and downs, we’re back up again being more committed to have daily family reading.  Both my husband and I realize that having one of us read out loud can get quite tiring very quickly.  I find that after a whole day of homeschooling, I really don’t have enough voice to read out loud at night.  We are very thankful that we’re able to find a lot of good audio books at our library where we can check them out electronically, download them, and listen on our ipod or computer.  This definitely solves the tired voice problem!  Once we get sucked in to listening to a great book, the kids clamor for more and ask if we can listen to it in the car when we’re out running an errand.  It’s well understood that we will not listen to a book if someone is missing because none of us want to miss out.

I believe in reading good books, not just any books.  I once had a conversation with someone telling her that there are good books and bad books.  She looked at me funny and said “really”?  I want to look back at her and say “really?” for saying “really?”  To this person, the act of reading is good so it doesn’t matter what kind of books you read.   We strive to read books that teach good character, books that have a deeper meaning, books that are intricately woven together, and books that have a good story line.  I am fond of Lamplighter books whose motto is “Building character one story at a time.”  We read Teddy’s Button long time ago, and from time to time I still bring this book up whenever we’re faced with a sin issue in one of the children.  I remind the children to fight their sin from within, just like Teddy who’s enlisted in the Lord’s army in fighting sin.  How valuable it is to be able to bring up a story we read to teach character.

We also think it can be valuable to read books that might not be explicitly (or implicitly) Christian; but whose story lines nevertheless contain many themes that are valuable for the cultivation of imagination and virtue.  Tolkien greatly disapproved of those who considered his Lord of the Rings trilogy an allegory.  And it certainly contains elements of evil and fantasy that some Christians might consider inappropriate.  But it also elevates heroism, sacrifice and nobility in a fashion that is awesome fuel for considering in light of Scripture, the gospel, etc.  So, we also strive to read widely — with discernment — so as to give ourselves and our children a broad literary vocabulary from which to understand the world we live in, and speak the gospel into that world.