The trouble with blogging...

...is that if you fall behind, it gets harder and harder to get the motivation to catch up. Wow a lot has gone on since our last post, both in the world and in our lives. It's hard to even think back that far. Here goes...

The wedding. The wedding (and all the insanity surrounding our preparations for it) went off without a hitch. Well...not without a hitch but without incident. Well...not without incident but with acceptable casualties to our peace of mind. It went well.

Faith and Mari were abso-freaking-lutely adorable as the flower girls. They walked down that aisle perfectly, side-by-side, nice and slow, big smiles on their faces which were pulled nice and tight by Beth's miraculous work on their hair. I know someone will send us pictures soon and we'll post them ASAP. Wonderful memories for us and them, especially since the 'family wedding' time of our lives is now over for a long time. The only problem happened at the end when it was time to 'recess' out of the church...it all happened really fast and Faithy thought Grandma S was mad at her when she pushed her out of the pew into the aisle...and she and Mari then pretty much crazy cried all the way outside.

After that, things stayed good. Faith and Mari loved dancing at the reception - Mari especially loved chasing the disco ball lights across the floor. Mari would have danced all night. Faith, on the other hand, started to get tired as the evening wore on. And then...well, she accidentally got a big mouthful of champagne. She just picked up a cup thinking it was water and...BOOM. Spit it all over herself, freaked out, melted down, and her night was over. Ought to have no trouble with underage drinking from her, I think she may be ruined on alcohol for life.

Thanks so much to mom and dad for taking them and the babies home so we could stay and help out till the bitter end. They also took everyone home on the night of the rehearsal and dinner so we could stay and do our Best man/Matron of Honor duties.

Going out of order here....Halloween was good, too. Nice to be in a real neighborhood now where we can walk up and down the street to trick or treat. We went to G&Z's neighborhood too, but most of our candy came from our own street. The girls were both ballerinas. Only problem was that Mari kept tripping over and over again in her ballet shoes. Must consider footwear more carefully with clumsy Specter children. Babies never really got their costumes on, which I was kinda sad about, but what with the preparations for the wedding going on and all, there just wasn't the time.

Proud of myself, though...Mr. Totally-not-at-all-Artsy did another fine job on the jack-o-lantern this year. Again, I'll post pics as soon as possible.

Meanwhile...Mari is now a potty machine. We had kind of suspected for a while that when she finally started potty training for real, she'd do it all at once, like a switch, and that is exactly what happened. She goes ALL THE TIME now, and it is so hard to not say "oh it's okay, just go in your pull up" when she picks the most inopportune times to want to try. But she also is actually able to use the pull up as a pull up so you don't even need to stay right there with her necessarily. It's so good, and we're so glad to see the rapid decrease in pull up usage and cost.

Of course, that is being countered by our beginning to use formula with the babies' cereal. Ever since I accidentally left the freezer door open a few months back and ruined boxes full of frozen breastmilk, we've been struggling to keep up with the babies' increased intake. That, coupled with the fact that Steph has some surgery coming up in December which will leave her out of commission for a few days has led us to start formula a little earlier than we had originally planned. They love it though, and it allows us to freeze and save that much more a day.

And then there's the events of the world...

Well, look. Everyone who knows me knows my political bent. That is not important to this blog, which is a family blog. Anyone who identifies their family as a "Blue" or "Red" family, in my opinion, has serious priority issues and is deeply confused about the entire purpose of a family. But as for my thoughts on the state of the nation...

Here's my concern, and I hope I can say this in a party-neutral way: I am very afraid that there is a significant portion of this country who have crossed a line. They will not be able to bring themselves to do what Americans in their position have found a way to do for the entire history of this nation - put aside their differences and unite behind their leader for the good of the country. Sure, you expect some boos and some frustration at a concession speech...but this time it somehow felt different to me, and that difference is frightening. I fear there are more than ever who have bought into their own ideogolgy so strongly that they can not come back to any kind of middle ground. I hope it's just the leftover anger and frustration. I really do. I hope it passes and that both sides can move forward with dignity. I just wonder. Because if now we've lost the ability as a country to swallow our pride and stand behind someone we didn't vote for, don't necessarily agree with, and maybe don't even understand...then this country is already dead. And I've heard people on both sides saying only half-jokingly that if 'the other guy' gets elected they'll have to leave the country. I'm sorry people, that's a sad thing to even joke about. And if you think that EITHER one of these two candidates was SO DANGEROUS or SO WRONG that you have to make jokes about leaving the country...then you have truly lost all sense of perspective. Grow up.

I hate discussing politics. Family and friends have heard me lament for a while now that politics and government is no longer a dialogue. A dialogue or a conversation implies to me (and I owe some of this to Paul Knitter's "One Earth Many Religions") that people are coming to the table to state their own case, and then must be willing to listen to opposing viewpoints, AND BE WILLING TO RISK THEIR OWN POINT OF VIEW. I know very few people who enter into a political discussion with any intention of risking their own point of view. When's the last time you heard an argument between Democrat and Republican where someone at the end of the discussion said "You know, you make a good point. You're right. You've changed my mind." ??? It's laughable. No, more likely, you bring your facts and figures, I'll bring my facts and figures, we'll both use them totally out of context (because in this day and age, there are facts and figures to support ANY POSITION YOU COULD POSSIBLY WANT TO TAKE) and yell at each other until we've reduced a complex issue to a series of labels and absurd extreme examples. That's not a dialogue, it's a series of monologues. I'm not interested. Leave me out of it.

I have friends on both sides of the aisle. I have seen the people on both sides of this rift become increasingly stupid. They both say spiteful, hurtful, childish, bitter things. They have become what I call knowingly uninformed. They care more about defending their own point of view than searching for a truth beyond it, and if you have the nerve to call them out they simply hide behind the argument that their point of view IS the truth. What arrogance, what idiocy!

Politics, and society itself, have become so infinitely complex that NO one, NO ONE, could possibly understand it all. Even those who study it and live it are clearly in over their heads, and are just now waking up to the fact that meeting the challenges of the 21st century society requires something more nuanced than an 18th-century philosophy. It's a many-headed monster that has taken on a life of its own. And yet I have friends whose business is NOT politics, who aren't even that interested, but who spout diatribe and bile that they picked up from Fox News, from CNN, from Micheal Moore, and Rush Limbaugh.

Listen to me, people...YOU DON'T KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT POLITICS, ECONOMICS, DIPLOMACY, or ANYTHING ELSE UNDER THIS UMBRELLA to be spouting off like some kind of expert! And neither...do...I. So let's both SHUT THE HELL UP.

I'm not saying don't care. I'm not saying stop trying to learn what you can. But BE HUMBLE IN YOUR ARGUMENTS, for God's sake! YOU DON'T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS!!! YOU MIGHT ACTUALLY BE WRONG.

Tell me what you think, tell me why. Tell me where you heard it. If you heard it all from the same place, be freaking responsible and at least explore the other side even if you reject it. Try to find something resembling a neutral source, and don't fall into the trap of thinking that every source that disagrees with you is biased. Step back. Use your higher-level thinking.

Then don't get angry with me if I disagree. Don't resort to name calling. If you have a point, make it. If I make a good point, be an adult and admit it. You don't have to come over to my side...but say "I'll have to think about that" or "I haven't researched this enough" or God forbid, "I don't know". I promise I'll do the same for you if you make a point I can't argue with. I make mistakes all the time, I don't mind owning up to them when I do.

And then if we have reached a fundamental point we disagree on, I think we'll find it's a small point and we can be civil and live with that. And probably along the way we'll find 4-5 things we DO agree on that are much more important. And then, for heaven's sake, let's talk about something else that we both know more about so we can have an INFORMED conversation.

...

Wow, this is longer than I wanted to go on. I hope I managed to stay nonpartisan on that rant. I hope I never have to go off like that again - let's get back to what this thing is all about...our family. Sorry for the diatribe.

Matt