Author Archives: Randy Peterman

For My Birthday…Wait, Forget My Birthday!

For my birthday on Monday I would love for the readers of this blog to post in the comments at least one good thing that has happened to them in the last week (that is G rated 🙂 ).  I just looked at the news headlines from the BBC and I just don’t like the death, destruction, and debt being reported around the world and adding to that the detention of Lou Diamond Phillips.  It’s just a bit much…

This just in!  Adeline Grace White was born this morning at O-Dark-Thirty!  The Whites announced that Jillia was preggers and then shuffled off to the Carolinas in search of a home closer to family and tropical storms.  But finally, after what has probably been yet another eternal experience of pregnancy, Jillia went into labor last night.  Congrats Whites!!  Thanks for the new little girl to admire.  And Ella, you keep things updated on the website while your parents recouperate 🙂

The Cat in the Hat Principle

As a rule, when I find others may benefit from my experience, I like to blog about it. This morning I experienced something that hasn’t happened since Abby, but needs to be written about for other fathers: The Cat in the Hat Principle. This principle can be summarized as follows: When poop can go everywhere, it will go everywhere.

You see, I was changing Evie’s diaper and when I opened up the ‘package’ it was fully loaded. Apparently whatever we’ve been feeding her decided that a mass exodus was the best plan of attack. So when I started wiping the poop started to spread – just like the spot in the Cat in the Hat books. Except for I didn’t have cats A-Z to wip up after me. As soon as I started the substance spread to the areas I was trying to wipe instead of coming off. It was as if the poop was one of the biblical plagues.

Eventually, after probably laughing silently to herself, Jessica stepped in and became cats A through Z. She quickly cleaned up and I went to the washroom to avail myself of its cleaning products hoping that the phenomenon didn’t reproduce in our recently cleaned bathroom.

Beware fathers of babies – this could happen to you!  And tell your other father and father-to-be friends, this needs to be warned of so that they don’t panic and lose consciousness with the baby on the table.

Switched-Up Sports

Abby and I went to her second week of ‘switched-up sports’.  The last two weeks have been soccer.  We’ll do soccer again on Wednesday – next week will start tee-ball.  This is her introduction to various sports, but tonight things were not team oriented.  Hopefully Wednesday they’ll let the kids play ‘bunch ball’ (soccer, but at their ages, they all follow the ball instead of staying in their positions).

Cuteness happened.  Balls were kicked all over the basketball court (yes, basketball court), and Abby ran her little heart out.  I can’t wait until Wednesday 🙂

Happy Birthday, Mom!

I wrote this post already, only the dogs of the internets deemed it not capable of going up.  Further, I have enhanced this poste with more miss spellings [no, not Tori].  My mother turned older than five months yesterday, and since you are not supposed to ask someone older than five months how old they are I will simply say that I am turning 29 in one week and she is older than me. We went to dinner last night with my parents to celebate.  I have posted a few pishdurs bellow [SIC].

My mom and Abby and Evie

What is Scream Apparatus?

Scream Apparatus is the name that I have for my pretend band.  It came from those word refrigerator magnets.  Someone put them together and they have been in my mind since then.

I will be posting music up here as I have time to record it.  Which may not be all that often, but it doesn’t hurt to have something in place.

Ben’s & Kate’s Friend

Last night I went to our church and worked the sound for a wedding rehearsal.  And by sound I mean I plugged my MacBook Pro into the sound system and ripped the MP3’s of the songs needed onto it and used the remote control to start, stop, adjust the volume and switch tracks.  Wee!  But this post isn’t about how the Apple has made my life easier, its about a new life that’s about to start as two lives become one.

Ben & Kate have been going to the Tuesday night study that I’m part of.  Kate is the siter of the hosting family and as she started dating Ben he showed up.  In the shorter time that I’ve known Ben it has become apparent that he’s just a neat, neat guy and in the longer time I’ve known Kate it has been apparent that she’s a really awesome bride-to-be.

I’m looking forward to their wedding almost as much as they are.  I’m pretty sure that they’ve had a sleepless night, they’re probably about ready to jump out of their skin about now.  But rought 11:30 or so they should officially be married and beginning their amazing life together.  Sure, there’ll be sickness and health, richer times and poorer times, Denver Post and maybe New York Times, but wherever they live, whatever they do I’l be praying for them and joining many, many folks in holding them up.

My name tag said, “Randy, Ben’s and Kate’s Friend: Sound”, I’m not sure about being sound (though I’ve been called noisy), but I’m thrilled to be their friend.  Congratulations Ben & Kate!

1 Cup of Flour

Nothing has been more amazing for me to watch than my childrens development.  Abby is learning how to read and that is quite awesome.  I was just upstairs getting a bit more coffee and watched Abby read the ‘1 cup of flour’ line as she is helping Jessica make some sort of baked good.  Abby doesn’t like to read in front of me for some reason.  She’s a very strong willed little girl and I think I need to read to her more so that she can understand that I don’t expect her to read to me all of the time 🙂

But I love to see my little girl grow and mature into what will probably be the most frightening thing: a woman.  Not frightening in a bad way, but scary for me because I will have to let go.  The name Randy means ‘house wolf’ or ‘protector’ and I know that my tendency is to want to protect my family, but I need for them to learn how to be critical thinkers, socially adjusted, and most of all baby-makers.  Because if these girls don’t reproduce how will I take over the world through vicariously living through my grandchildren [that’s a joke]?

I have been saying to Abby, and will be saying to Evie, that we want her to grow up to be a godly wife, just like her mom.  It lets her know what we expect for her to be aiming for, but it also lets her know what that looks like.  That will look like a human woman who is not perfect, who admits her faults, but clings to God, co-leading her family as best as she know how.  Lovingly.  And if Abby is as smart as I think she is (she’s probably smarter), we’ve got a whole lot of fun, baking, growing, stretching, screaming, laughing, scraping, explaining, learning and running to do.

And I can’t wait!

Jessica’s Trashy Husband

Jessica came in after having been out getting Abby’s dress tailored and asked, “Did you miss the garbage collection?”  Which turned out to be a silly question to ask.  It was silly because missing would have implied that I had attempted to get the garbage to the curb.  Instead this morning I got up and went straight to work and didn’t even once think of the garbage needing to go out.  Now this afternoon the sense of humor of God showed up as iTunes played the song ‘Trash Can Darling’.  Yup, that’s me.  Oh, the irony.

Critical Thinking

I just read a blog post about how machine guns that fire through propellers on air planes were created.  One of the first commenters didn’t understand the value of the post [so I left a comment explaining one particular application for him].  One of the things that gets me over and over is that as a human being I am challenged to always cull through the massive amount of information, experience, and emotionally charged things in life and think about what they’re there for.  If someone is always expecting a pre-processed bit of useful wisdom, a report culled from data, or an instruction book in life: they’re not going to get farther than that.  Instead, as a responsible, brain-gifted humans people should be pushing for a consistent method for interpreting life through.

Critical thinking is a great part of what that means.   Being able to grasp language, comprehend stories (and their morals), understanding humor, and grasping the depth of emotion that a story holds are critical to thinking.  I don’t fault the commenter for their not understanding what was posted on that blog, but it did cause me to think a lot about how important critical thinking is to me.  I hope that you are able to take that away from this blog.  Sometimes I’m critical, sometimes my posts are just fluff, and other times I have written very intense, highly opinionated pieces.  But in the end this blog exists, in part, to encourage folks to think.  If you don’t think, someone else will do it for you*.
* And if you don’t understand the problems that can lead to, there’s probably not much hope for you 😉