Religious Debates in Weird Places: Wal-Mart

It started out as a rough day. I woke up with a headache after another night of not sleeping well due to Trillian (and now Scott too) being sick. After Scott and Atom headed off to work and school, I headed out with Trillian to show the rental house at 9am. I had 4 people scheduled to come, (only 2 showed up) but only one seemed interested. I hope she gets back to me with her application. After that, I decided to drive out to Scott's work to get some medicine that had been accidentally left in Scott's car after our trip to Gainesville over the weekend. Happily, Trillian napped in the car through all of this. At about 10:30 after I finished picking the medicine up from Scott, I decided to stop at Wal-Mart on the way back, to do some shopping and kill some time before I had to go get Atom at noon.

So, I'm walking around Wal-Mart. Trillian is awake in her car seat in the shopping cart and she's being very good; just calm and looking around at everything. I was reading the label on some hot chocolate mix, when an older, grandfatherly man in a grey suit approaches and starts talking to Trillian and telling me how cute she is and how much he likes babies. He says he likes their expressions at this age. I smile and nod and look down again at my box of hot chocolate, the way one does when complete strangers are getting a little too close to your baby. "Let me ask you something. Are you a Christian lady?" he says, clearly expecting me to say yes. I shake my head no, and try my best not to look apologetic about it, since I get the impression he intended to tell me some Christian related anecdote or something, and this is plainly not the answer I was supposed to give. He then asks if he can tell me about Jesus. I say that I don't have a lot of time to listen right now. He apparently takes this as an opening and moves closer to tell me that he used to be a preacher. He says "Believe me, Jesus is real and hell is real. If you don't believe in Jesus, you're going to end up in hell, and believe me, you don't want that." I probably could have been amiably dismissive at this point and just said "Thanks! Gotta go now..." but I didn't. I had been debating this very point recently online, so I guess I was feeling emboldened. I said, "So, if I'm a good person all my life, but just don't believe in Jesus, then God is going to send me to hell for that?! That's terrible! That's a horrible God, and an immoral God. That's not a God worth worshiping." Now, honestly, I think I got caught up in the adrenaline at this point and I can't remember the specifics of what was said after that. We spend a few minutes going back and forth, while I tried to ignore the people who were probably giving us funny looks while they walked passed us arguing in the aisle. He brought up something that didn't make any sense about Atom (edit: Adam :) I've gotten so used to spelling it the other way!) and Eve, and I said something about how there was no more evidence for the truth of his religion than there was for any of the other religions. Then he told me to have a nice day and that he hoped I changed my mind.

It took me 10 or 15 minutes to get back to a calm state where my heart wasn't pounding. I always kick myself after I have these kinds of in-person exchanges. So many things that I could have said, and ways that I could have made my point better. I wanted to ask him how he can love someone who would torture literally billions of innocent, good people, for ETERNITY, just because they didn't believe in him. How does he sleep at night supporting and advocating for an idea like that? I understand that a lot of people believe in a God like this. What I don't understand, is how they can think this God is a good God; a moral God, when God's so-called morality bares more resemblance to that of an evil dictator then that of a benevolent father. How is it noble to worship and love someone out of fear; out of the ever-present threat of punishment?  I try to imagine how I might feel if I actually thought this fairy-tale was real and I can only hear Christopher Hitchens in my head comparing God to a "Celestial North Korea." "Greedy, exigent, greedy for uncritical praise from dawn til dusk, and swift to punish the original sins with which is so tenderly gifted us in the first place.” Why on earth would anyone chose to love something like that? It is a contemptible position. It reeks of a self-serving desire for reward at the expense of other people's eternal torment. There is a good reason why Liberal Christianity has basically rejected the concept of hell, or else modified it into irrelevance. A loving, all-good God seems a lot less tenable when he's torturing people for eternity for thought crime...


Someday, maybe I'll try to go to a bible study group or something like that where I can practice verbal debate on religion and get better at it. Although, I have a feeling I'd probably wear out my welcome pretty quickly in a situation like that. :)

September

School started again for Atom on September 4th. Once again, he had to go through an adjustment period to get used to the morning drop offs without getting upset. Then, only about a week and a half into school, he got sick again and had to miss a several more days. And, later on towards the end of the month, he got another little cold! All this getting sick and interruption in patterns made things more difficult and stressful this month for everyone. Trillian's sleep has been really messed up since she caught Atom's cold too. She's gone from sleeping solidly through the night, to waking up multiple times and not going back to sleep easily. It doesn't help that she's also teething now and has a lingering cough that makes it hard for her to sleep comfortably. I resisted getting sick until the last cold of the month, and then I finally caught it too. Like Trillian, I still have a lingering cough and congestion from that. Scott got sick as well, but it was much more mild for him, mainly just a sore throat. 

In spite of getting sick, Atom is still really enjoying school! He always seems so happy and excited about the day he's had when I pick him up. He's getting along well with everyone, but he's also made one friend in particular so far, a 4 year old girl named Ireland, who seems to have taken Atom under her wing and helps him out a lot. She's only there 3 days a week, but I always see them playing together on those days!

Along with getting several teeth this month, Trillian has been vocalizing a lot! Lot's of Ma-ma's and Da-da's and Ba-ba's. I don't think she's using those sounds specifically yet to identify anything, but it's still nice to hear! She also learned to wave hi and bye, which is really her first purposeful signing kind of gesture. I've been trying out some other signs occasionally to see if she picks them up, but I'm probably not using them frequently enough. With her, I'm finding it much harder to focus on the kind of "teaching" things that I did with Atom when he was this age. I'm constantly amazed at how much harder it is having two kids than it was when I just had one. It probably has a lot to do with being outnumbered here by myself with them during the day. Many days I'm lucky to just make it through the day without falling apart, let alone getting anything done that I want to accomplish. One more reason I'm really happy that I have the mornings now with Atom in school! I think it's a really good thing for both of us!

Scott's work has been relatively calm lately, without a lot of the stress and wacky hours he has to deal with sometimes. He has had a few deadlines where he's been more stressed, but mostly it's been okay. It's still quite busy at Itec though, with several different projects that Scott is working on.  

I continued through August and September trying to find a new tenant for unit B of our rental house. So far no luck, though I've shown it to a lot of people, I haven't found anyone suitable yet. I keep trying to schedule most showings for Saturday, to make it easier for me to do that without the kids, but then of course it takes up a lot of our weekend together. :( I'll be very glad when I finally find someone and am done with this process.

Messy baby and messy house!

Sliding

Walking

He's getting so big!

Two cute pictures of Daddy and Trillian 

Getting all twisty!

This is what happens when I don't take the double stroller.... Actually, this was taken after Trillian's 9 month doctor checkup, waiting to get bloodwork at Labcorp, on a day when Atom had just gotten a cold. He was not feeling well at all and Trillian was very tired and cranky from being out and awake so long. Since that setup was only practical for snapping a quick picture, I had my hands full that day!

Trillian has also been more interested in books this month and I need to try to read to her more. There's one book in particular called "Babies" that she always wants to read!

Strolling with Trillian 

Wiped out!

Holding hands in the shopping cart. Atom usually sits in the bigger section, but he wanted to switch it up this time!

Trillian has recently discovered the concept of sharing!

Atom with his friend Ireland

August

In August we began establishing our new patterns with Atom going to West Orange Montessori School regularly every weekday morning. Scott drops him off on the way to work in the morning at 8:15 and I pick him up at noon. The school is less than 10 minutes away from our house, so it's really very convenient. It took him about a week to get adjusted to being dropped off without getting upset, but even at that stage he seemed happy and excited when I would come to get him and he clearly was enjoying being there in spite of the separation anxiety. I'm very happy that we started him there over the 3 week summer session when there are fewer kids and more opportunities to bond with the teachers and get lots of individual attention. About 2 weeks in, Atom got sick and had to skip several days of school, which was a shame, since the summer session was so short to begin with. During the last week of August, before the next school year started, we had a couple really fun playdates with Tina and Gwyn. One day we went to Monkey Joe's and the next one was at a gymnastics place in Oviedo where they had open floor play time for toddlers. Atom had a blast at both of those places and he loves playing with Gwyn! I hope we can find a way to continue having playdates with them, even though it's harder to coordinate with Atom being in school now. I don't have as many pictures of those playdates as I'd like, since my camera finally broke after 3+ years of abuse. I've been using the camera on my phone since then, but the pictures are not great, especially indoors. 

Trillian has started pulling herself up on furniture this month and she can actually walk using the baby walker now, which she loves! She's very curious and wants to explore everything these days and of course put everything in her mouth!

On the 1st, I was informed by the tenant in unit B of our rental house that he wants to leave when his lease is up at the end of October and that he'd like to leave sooner if that's possible. It is not possible, as far as I'm concerned, unless I'm able to find someone else to rent it before then, which I said I would try to do. So begins the annoying and time consuming process of finding another tenant once again... It was nice to have so much advance warning this time to find someone, but at the same time, it's much harder to show and rent the unit when it's occupied. Here's hoping we get it rented soon and get another year of not having go through this again.

Summer in Florida means lots and lots of mowing!

Walking on the baby walker

Happy baby

Getting creative without a camera and using my computer to take pictures.

Scott and Greg practice guitar, Trillian watches.

Atom and Gwyn have fun at the splash pad

Atom shares his puzzles with Gwyn 

Atom has a routine of getting a cookie and a balloon whenever we go to the grocery store. He's very good at asking for them himself! This time they got 2 balloons!

This was at the Dr. Phillips splash pad. They both had lot's of fun in the water

An impressive storm on the way back home. We had lots of thunderstorms this month.

I always use these kid carts instead of the normal ones when I see them available They like sitting next to each other!

Atom's school had a yard beautification day, where the parents came to help spread new mulch on the playground, do weeding, trimming and other yardwork. Everyone had fun, but we were very tired afterwards!

Trillian was in the backpack most of the time, but what she really wanted was to crawl around and try to eat the mulch!

Got you!

Atom and Gwyn play at Monkey Joe's

Trillian really wants to follow her big brother!

Atom flies a kite for the first time! Thank you Matt, Mara and Vincent for the nice present!

July

July, in pictures and video:

4th of July and Scott's birthday. Scott's family joined us for a visit and lunch earlier in the day and then Scott's Dad stayed overnight at our house, so he could catch a flight out of Orlando in the morning. He also came with us to see the fireworks show at lake Apopka.

Trillian stayed up wayyy past her bedtime, but was surprisingly calm and fascinated most of the evening by all the new sights and sounds.

Atom

Atom and Daddy

Trillian and Mommy

Dancing

At lunch with Greg, Tina and Gwyn. Atom gives his friend Gwyn a hug!

Atom relearned to swim again this month! He is now able to swim without the life jacket again, though he still needs a little help.

Kelly stops by for a visit. Trillian is very happy to see her!

We spent several Saturdays this month at the splash pad and farmers market in Downtown Winter Garden.

Trillian explores with Daddy

Sharing

Toward the end of the month we went to the beach. We only spent 2-3 hours there, but it was relatively fun. Expectations for going to the beach have to be reworked somewhat when you have a cranky 7 month old who just wants to eat sand and a 3 year old who just wants to be in the water, even when he's really cold and shivering. We also had some unexpected trouble with Scott's car battery on the way there and the way back and we ended up having to jump it each time.

Playing in the sand

Happy 

Trillian learned to crawl this month. Here she is crawling on the beach.

Trillian tries out the new stroller that I won in an art contest this month. We both like it!

Atom gets his hand stuck in a subwoofer.

Mommy trying to sneak computer time...

Bike ride

I thought all these pictures of them in the shopping cart were so cute and I couldn't choose which ones to include, so here are all of them.

Cute little Trillian

3 years old!! We went to my parent's house on Atom's birthday and he had a great day of swimming and playing and a yummy birthday dinner!

This was taken at his pre-birthday celebration at the T-Rex cafe in Downtown Disney with Papa, Pippa, Kelly and Travis. He had a great time there too! He's looking at his ice cream volcano cake desert!

This was taken on July 30th and it's Atom on his first day of preschool. He's going to West Orange Montessori School 5 days a week from 8:30am-12:00. He's been experiencing a little separation anxiety over these first few days since he started, but he seems to be doing well and having fun too. I'm feeling pretty good about it and I really think it's going to be a great experience for him.

He loves the playground at the school

Painting!

Trillian has started vocalizing a lot more, and she's particularly fond of screeching when she's uncomfortable or not getting what she wants. Here's a little sample of that...

And now, a more pleasant sound!