Vonnahme family blog

Cirdan has been saying things for a couple of months now. Here is a rough estimate of his words so far, arranged by frequency:

Mama (Mama) — 67,417
Nana (Liliana) — 521
Baba (Beren) — 165
Pbbb (ball, book, or potty) — 142
Maa (match) — 113
Abbaba (Dad) — 84
Hmnh (affirmative) — 58
Gma (grandma) — 6
Dada (Dad) — 4

I know what we should do. Let’s fill the house with love. Let’s fill it up so much that it comes SHOOTING out the chimney and fills up the WHOLE WORLD!

— Beren

Beren played “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” beautifully last night at his Suzuki group recital. We’re so proud of him!

The other day, eating pad thai and halibut curry with garden peas and cauliflower, this idea:

1. Grow a row of Thai Basil (Mammoth basil may be close enough)
2. Make it into pesto, using palm or sesame oil
3. Freeze it in ice cube trays and bag it
4. Add cubes to yummy Thai dishes all winter!

As part of doing the family musical number on Christmas Eve, I typeset our own sheet music for the first time ever, using the cool free tool GNU Lilypond.

So, without further ado, here is the sheet music, including lyrics and guitar chords, in PDF format and in the Lilypond markup language, in case anyone out there has a use for it.

I should also give credit to Sufjan Stevens for recording the song on a weird kids album from Paper Bag Records and thereby introducing me to it.

I love the lyrics. In the middle of a setting where humans in Rome and Jerusalem were acting like the human-devouring empire-beasts of Daniel’s prophecies, we have beasts of the stable, receiving the (later traditional) gift of speech on Christmas Eve and becoming more humanlike in worship around the newborn Jesus. The Messiah’s birth is the beginning of the New Creation, in which the first creation will eventually be fully redeemed and restored.