Motherhood uncensored has a brilliant little idea to encourage blog readers to click through their RSS feeds and give the blogs they love a little extra traffic. Since I’ve managed to totally mangle my rss button, I don’t think I have too many subscribers. But if you read other blogs, check out her whole post and send a little love to the writers you read each day.

There are LOTS of things swirling in my head right now that I’d like to put into a blog post. So many.

I want to write about

• How our list of prayers for the dead should really stop growing
• All of the preschools I’ve been visiting and how there should be one with this
• This Speaking of Faith interview with Barbara Kingsolver that I just re-listened to
  (and how it makes me want to grow more vegetables)
• My sinking suspicion that out life needs to slow down more–and I don’t think we’re that busy
• The latest book I’m afraid to read: Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life

But- I’m trying desperately to launch a new project out the door and know that I have to keep up here or I’ll lose all of you who never leave comments (bad you!) So, here’s a list of words another busy brain has been spouting:

Knows for sure:

Meow
Bath (this was her 1st one)
Mama
Dada
Nana
Papa
Auntie
Ball
Bear
Dog
Cat
Bubbles
Pool
Zebra
Bow (and she does!)
Mail
Peas
Please (sounds more like “eeeese”)
Elmo (Welmo)
did I mention Meow?
Hot
Brrrr (that would be cold)
NO!
No, mama.
Know? (with a raised shoulders and arms)
All Done
Blue (all colors are blue)
Noodle
Basa (that’d be kielbasa)
What’s That (was tat?)
More
Beach (sounds like bitch…)
Melon
Birthday Cake (birday cay)

There are some more words I’ve heard her mimic, but not say without prompting. Of course, I can’t remember most of them.

But my favorite thing I’ve heard come out of her mouth:

Renoir

I’m not joking. We look at impressionist paintings in a little book (in French!)

She’s a genius. Or at least a really cool sponge.

We’re still finding bits of sand in nooks around our house, but we’re back from six glorious days in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.  My parents took us to the land of timeshares, swim up bars, and wide open beaches and I don’t think any of us wanted to come back.  Certainly not Jake.  He’s plotting his return.

I read some great books, did a little writing and took lots of photos.  This post is for the photos…

I have some very important work to do here:

Dad is cool:

They make the same look:

Already knows to pose for the camera:

Whoa!

Why do we have to go home again?

I love flickr and digital photography and the fact that if you hate looking at vacation photos you totally could skip this post and not miss a thing.

Ah, Cabo.

The last time I posted about Audrey teething, we had a week from hell and got nothing but big white spots under all of her gums.  This round, I’m really hoping for some teeth.

To complicate toddler teething matters,  I think she has some allergy that’s making her eyes puffy, she spiked a 102.7 degree fever this evening and she will eat only blueberries or things masked in bites of blueberries.  She’s winning the discomfort lottery right now, I tell ya.

Right now, she’s moaning every 20 minutes or so but not quite crying enough to wake herself up.  We’re open to any tips and tricks at this point–we leave for Cabo a week from today.  I want these stupid teeth to make an appearance but I REALLY want her not to be working on a case of bronchitis.  Sigh.

Lots of fun things happened at the end of the week, I may even blog about them.  It will have to wait for tomorrow when I’m pretty sure I won’t be at church due to my potentially contagious, highly irritable baby girl.

Now that the car-induced week from hell is over, we’ve been buzy making up lost fun.  I was inspired by SAJ to make Audrey a daisy chain crown.  We didn’t have any daisies so I used yummy smelling sweet peas from our garden.

This lasted for a few seconds.   She was much too busy enjoying a special treat– JUICE!

Those Trader Joe’s juice boxes must be super powered because Audrey quickly decided that the ground was not the place to sip apple juice and squish mommy’s favorite flowers.  She needed a new perspective. It was time to climb.

So, that was the beginning of a whole new world for us.   Audrey can officially hoist herself up onto everything.  No table, chair or light switch is safe.

The light switch game now provides hours of entertainment around this place.   I’d much rather have her be entertaining herself with full access to my tables, counter tops and upholstery than the days when she needed my constant attention all. the. time.

Things are good around this place.  I’ve been busy with freelance writing work and Audrey’s busy growing up.  We’re both happy

Today marks day 7 of the teething chronicles at our house. Audrey is working on all of her molars at once and her gums are bright red with little white tooth polka dots brewing beneath the surface. Oh how I hate teeth! She can chew just fine, who needs molars?

This latest round of teething knocks out all of the other unpleasant tooth emergent weeks, including the first one we spent at the Lodge in Colorado and thought we were dying from dehydration. My poor bunny! She is so miserable and the only good thing I can think of is that she’s learned where her teeth are. Ask Audrey, “Let me see your teeth.” and she’ll shove her finger so deep in her mouth you have to back up in fear that she’s going to gag up her last round of green onion (numbs the gums) and banana (stops the drool.)

Last night was the culmination of a week without large chunks of sleep. She started to cry during the last few minutes of our recording the latest Man in Black podcast. This was 9 pm. While our friends were circling to leave, I went upstairs and got her back to sleep. That lasted 15 minutes. I warmed up a bottle (a special treat since she’s a sippy cup girl now) and Jake took a turn. Twenty or so minutes later, he had her quiet for a minute and a half and then we decided to let her cry for a while.

Blissful quiet. For 20 minutes. This was long enough for Jake to fall asleep and me to recharge. She would cry for 5 minutes then be quiet for 5… I eventually went in and found her and the sheet soaking wet. That bottle had leaked and she was whimpering. I win the bad mom moment award.

Fresh jammies, nice blankey covering the sheets and I nurse her back to sleep. More crying when she hits the mattress. I go back to bed and think she just needs 5 minutes. I give her 15. At this point, it’s 11:30 and I’ve given up on sleeping in my bed. I’ve taken plenty of red-eye flights and the rocker is more comfortable. The only problem is, I’m willing to sleep in the chair but she’s not. Audrey wants to play on the floor and point “oooh, ooh, ooh” at the light stripes the street lamp is casting on the floor through the blinds.

I take my pillow and blanket and lay on the floor and she plays around me. Who knew she had so many toys that made noise? Eventually, she points at the bottle that now only has 1 ounce of milk and I give the rocker another go. She finishes her bottle and lets me rock her to sleep for the first time in her 14 months of life. I wait until she’s snoring, place a folded blanket in the corner of the crib and angle her head on the raised blanket and her body next to the bumper. Quiet.

I go back to bed and watch the clock hit 12:01. I fall asleep praying the Jesus prayer:

“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me a sinner.”

But by mercy, I mainly mean sleep.

I challenge you to find a better hostess gift:

Notice, the wine bottles are empty.  I didn’t feel it appropriate to show you what a well appreciated diaper looks like.

You might notice Sacred and the Profane looks a little different. I’d like to think our new layout looks less full of itself and will be updated more regularly. While my initial goal for this site was to talk about religion in the news my biweekly (if that) posting made it pretty clear that I wasn’t really reading the news anymore. My time has been pretty occupied with the dichotomy between sacred and profane in my own life so there wasn’t the attention span required to analyze anyone else’s.

The new format also makes it much easier to post via my blackberry. Technology snob? Washington intern? No, I’m just a busy mom and freelance writer and my laptop time is pretty focused on working or reading the adventures of Secret Agent Josephine. If you’ve received an email from me in the last few months odds are high the blackberry was the composition object. There seems to be more time foremails and hopefully blogging when I’m letting Audrey finish a nap in the car or while I’m waiting for a meeting to start.

So I hope you like the new format and hook me up with those comments I love so much.I’ll be tweaking things here and there so if there’s anything you’d like to see, please let me know!

…that I didn’t take.

Here is a link to a beautiful photo essay by Jackie Nickerson, from her latest book of photos titled, “Faith.”

The photos depict Ireland’s Catholic monks and nuns, people who have chosen to practice their faith through what she describes as an “institutional life.”

The Pew Forum has a new study out about religion in America.  It’s fab.

Seriously.  This is just one beautiful factoid.  But there’s much, more here.

“More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion - or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.”