Belief (Another Cart-Before-The-Horse Post)

I don't keep close tabs on who reads this blog, I know a few gaming dudes do, and a few close friends do.

I'm a somewhat hard-core atheist.  My parents, though divorced, are both pretty fundamental (southern baptist style) Christians.

For the record, I don't have a problem with Christians, my problems are with some of the more binary and closed minded parts of the faith.

Since I like to think about shit way ahead of time, I've tried to figure out how to approach religion and such with my daughter, and managed to raise more questions than I have answered.

It is worth mentioning that I'm not "out of the closet" to my parents.  Maybe they're more clever than I give them credit for, but as best as I can tell, they figure I'm a god-fearing, non-church-going sort of christian.  Heck, "Christian" is my middle name - seriously - but that's another story.

So I assume that at some point something is going to give.  Either Mom will want to take Piper to church, or something similar.  Maybe I'm wrong though - could be that Piper will be three or four years old before she catches wind of religion.

I take a pretty skeptical view of religion, but I try to be pretty tolerant.  I figure if you choose to follow a religious path, it is certainly your choice, and I'm not going to knock you for it.  At some point, religion is going to come up, and I'm going to have to offer some opinions or explanations or options to a young girl.  I don't mind if she goes to church, though I'd plan to go with her.  One of my big gripes against the "mainstream christian church" is its dogma, and how binary things are.  I'm open to Piper forming her own opinions about things and such, but I will have serious issue with the "heaven or hell" approach.

In fact, we've discussed doing Religion 101 with her... when she becomes aware of religion, helping her to attend a christian service, a  muslim service, a buddhist service, etc.  I think that religion is a matter of personal choice, and anyone who advertises it differently is dangerous.

So yeah, as an atheist, I'm not opposed to my daughter adopting a faith or religion, but I'll encourage her to apply critical thinking and free thought to it.

And back to the topic of this post:  my folks are pretty mainstream Christians.  As I said before, they may be more clever than I give them credit for, but I am anticipating some friction from them, especially my mother.  She tries to be open minded, but when she hears that her granddaughter is being raised by atheists, I wonder how her evangelical-ism will play out - whether she'll be able to respect people's opinions and philosophies, or whether we'll have a blow-up of sorts.

That's all I've got.

The best thing in the world, Ever.

The best thing in the world, Ever, is coming home from work and walking in the door, and saying hello, and having your daughter look up from all of her fun toys (or her screaming tantrum) and lock eyes with you, and smile as wide as she can and reach her hands out toward you.

Best. Ever.

Santa Claus and such things.

I have a tendency to worry about stuff. "is that enough of such-and-such?", "is that too much of so-and-so?".

Santa Claus has been high on my list of Things To Worry About When Raising A Kid. I've got tons of opinions, you might have heard some of them. I'll come right out and confess that I'm a little anti-Santa Claus. But I'm putting the cart way before the horse.

See, Santa Claus gets to go in the same boat as Pretty Unicorns and Really Awesome Faeries - both of whom I'm pretty cool with. I certainly do not yell at two year olds who like unicorns: "There's no unicorns and your parents lied to you and probably hate you!!" Yeah. Because unicorns are cool.

I'm assuming that in a couple of years, this battle won't even be in my hands, I'll be a General sitting on the couch, blissfully unaware that a battle is even being fought. And I'm not trying to call myself out as a hands-off parent, I'm just saying that Santa is pretty ingrained in our Middle-America culture, and unless I set out to make a Big Freaking Deal about it, I'm going to have to let a little Santa in.

I figure I'll be 'honest' about it and carefully sidestep issues about Santa's realism until we get to an age where that is relevant.

Look at me, taking a chill pill.

Howdy Santa. I think you're bogus, but if my little girl thinks that you're cool, I'm okay with that.

Update!

I always wondered why bloggers with babies didn't seem to post as frequently as I expected.

Now I know.

Time sure does fly. Piper is 8 months old now. She's got two teeth, and I'm sure more pretty shortly on the way. She's pulling herself up to standing, and is just on the verge of starting to try to walk a little. She smiles when you entertainer her and play with her. She is working on words, with lots of "mamama"'s and some "dadadada"'s and lots of other "boblebobleboble" here and there. Our favorite toys are some simple plastic colored 'envelopes' that came with a fisher price mailbox, and the TV remote. She turns to watch when Yo Gabba Gabba comes on. She seems to have "finished" in sign language - she's been doing it for weeks now, not especially articulated, but when she'll wave her hand around and refuse to eat more. We're still working on "hungry". She likes to clap her hands together, and sometimes to grab our hands and clap them together. She's a big fan of buttons and any small detail on something, she'll pick at it, fascinated.

We had our first big headcold-funk. She and Krissi both got it, and I had it a little bit. Piper sounded terrible, coughing and all stuffed up. We kept an eye on her and they're both doing much better now.

She's been a real champ when it comes to most foods. We've been really ambitious when it comes to giving her 'real' food to eat. I made some chicken soup from scratch the other day, and we puree'd some of it to feed to her. She's had bits of chicken, turkey, banana, avocado, beef, potato, carrot, and sweet potato.

My brain keeps yelling that I should format this post better, or gussy it up somehow, instead of just letting it be a weird list of stuff that Piper is up to. But that's all I've got. See you next time!