BilikFamily.com

This weekend had a number of firsts for the NH Bilik family. To the average Joe these may not seem like a big deal, but relative to our station in family life, they are milestones nonetheless.

Mall - After working out at the YMCA on Saturday morning, we took all five kids plus one sleepover guest to the Pheasant Lane mall. We stopped going to the mall about 4-5 years ago as soon as the twins started to climb out of their stroller. I've often joked that once you go beyond two kids, you move from "man on man defense" to "zone defense". This does not work well in a mall... too many zones to cover.

Well, now that all three boys are reasonable about listening to directions, we attempted a mall visit and were successful. Abby said, "I've never been to the mall before" not remembering that we used to go before the twins became mobile. They all behaved well and we did the usual things you would expect: visit the pet store, the toy store, the video game store, the food court, etc. The boys were just in awe by the scale of everything. Two stories, with high ceilings, row after row of shops... all indoors. "Wow!"

Movies - Sunday our plan was to see 'Cars'. At first we thought of just taking the older four kids to the nearby Cinemagic but thought it might be interesting to try the combination restaurant/movie theater known as "Chunky's" in Pelham, NH and take everyone. Alas, even though we arrived 20 minutes early, the show was sold out.

The kids' needed a ton of help in calming down emotionally. I opened the GPS to search for the nearest "regular" movie cineplex and determined we would head back towards Nashua and go to the Tyngsboro theater just south of the Pheasant Lane mall. We made it about half an hour before the next showing. It was just enough time to get everyone to the restroom, buy snacks, and get seated.

Timothy made it through about two thirds of the movie but was understandably tired of just sitting there. 'Cars' is just shy of two hours long. Instead he went outside to the lobby with Michelle and thought he was playing video games. Who are we to tell him that they are just demo screens?

Diapers - The last major first of the weekend... I took out the trash this morning and there was only one soiled diaper in it. The end is in sight! Roughly 10 1/2 years after purchasing our first pack of diapers! I'm sure I'll have plenty of other child rearing issues to worry about soon that will make the annoyance of diapers seem trivial by comparison, but still... Rejoice with me!

Editorial - I wanted to close with a plug for an editorial in the Washington Times I found via Jimmy Akin's weblog.

The boy's spontaneous insistence on the primacy of life also reminded me of a powerful pro-life speaker and writer who, many years ago, helped me become a pro-lifer. He was a preacher, a black preacher. He said: "There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life.
"That," he continued, "was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore out of your right to be concerned." This passionate reverend used to warn: "Don't let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn't a human being. That's how the whites dehumanized us... The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify what they wanted to do and not even feel they'd done anything wrong."
That preacher was the Rev. Jesse Jackson...

His early political career was quite different from his more recent position. Read the whole article if you have the time. Al Gore's political shift was similar as he transitioned from House to Senate to VP. I've read some inklings that George W. Bush had a shift in the reverse direction (towards a prolife position).

Some days I enjoy following politics. Other times it just makes me wretch in disgust. I don't think a politician absolutely must have his convictions carved in stone, but the political expediency aspect can be rather annoying.