Click here to view the embedded video.

Sorry we have been so long between posts! We have been very busy moving, traveling every weekend to various family events, and slowly cleaning, unpacking, and settling in to our new house. There are a million projects to do, and a million things to get at the hardware store! But we are really enjoying it. We’ll post more on that later.

Thank you to all the friends who let us know last week that you were remembering James on the anniversary of his death (8/20/08). John and I watched the videos of his life and wept over him again for the first time in months. Two houses and two years later, it’s easy to feel disconnected, like it all happened to someone else. Looking back on that time of grief, I thought of Psalm 124:

¹ If the LORD had not been on our side—
let Israel say–…

⁴ the flood would have engulfed us,
the torrent would have swept over us,

⁵ the raging waters
would have swept us away.

I don’t know how else to explain how we survived that time and still had any joy, hope, or faith. I recalled how much it ached not to have his weight in my arms, those first days. And this year, our merciful God has filled my arms again.

Today all the Supergrands gathered for a very special occasion. Today Valor (who is already wearing 24 mo. clothes) officially graduated from being a baby into being a little boy (and one who likes cake!):

When we take a walk, if Valor sees a dog (even from quite far away) he does this excited high-pitched “squeak! squeak! squeak!” and opens and shuts his fists. This, translated, means, “I really like that and want to touch it!” He also does it for the cartoon frog on Baby Signing Time and whatever food his parents are eating (to get us to give him a bite).

So of these three choices of Valor’s apparent favorite things (besides his grandparents), we decided to go with dogs for his birthday theme. No, we didn’t get him a dog! But I did cobble together a dog cake. Necessity being the mother of invention, I was happy with how it turned out. In case you are interested, here is the process.

I started with a box mix which made 1 loaf cake (baked at 300° for about 40 minutes, then 325° for 17 more minutes), plus 6 cupcakes and 6 mini cupcakes (325° for 18 and 10 minutes respectively). In hindsight it would have been better to make a jumbo cupcake (using a custard dish) in place of a couple of the regular-sized ones. I had to send John out to buy a large muffin.

Cut off the crown of the loaf cake, turn it over, and shave it so the butt is higher than the front of the body, and take off those boxy corners.

Split the cupcakes and use them for legs, and the mini cupcakes for paws.

Frost it all in place to get the crumbs to stay put.

Up to this point I had thought through what to do. This is where it got crazy. I cut off a plane of the jumbo muffin (it was really a regular sized muffin with a puffy top), cut off the crown of a regular cupcake, and stuck the two flat surfaces together with 3 toothpicks. This is the head and snout.

Frosted the bottom and back and stuck it in the bod with a popsicle stick. The snout is resting on the front paws, so that helps with the weight problem. When I started frosting the front, my knife pulled away and created this little whisker. That inspired me to do lots of whiskers and make him like a Scotty-type dog.

Here are some of the accessories I used, along with buttercream frosting and a square of melted chocolate almond bark. The Milk Duds are the eyes.

Chop off the top side of a Dove and you have a nice doggy nose. I piped the paws and the tail with the almond bark on wax paper, below (I made a few because they were fragile and I needed backups).

I started to do a red collar out of some decorating gel I had, which was a disaster. It was runny and made the dog look like someone had slit its neck. So I put some gel coloring into the rest of my white icing and made a blue icing collar to cover the mistake. Then I realized I didn’t have his name on it anywhere so I piped “Happy Birthday” and “Valor” on the cake plate.

I think he liked it! He seemed to recognize it as a dog-like thing, because he squeaked a little.

He even pulled off the Dove chocolate nose and ate it!

Valor had a great time opening presents (he is just starting to get the hang of tearing the paper, and has stopped putting it all in his mouth) and just had a blast playing with his toys and his GPs. Chase-crawling is big fun right now. So is curling ribbon.

Happy Birthday, Valor! May you say one day, with the psalmist,

“You brought me out of the womb;
You made me trust in You even at my mother’s breast.
From birth I was cast upon You;
From my mother’s womb you have been my God.” Psalm 22:9-10

Enjoy this slideshow of his life so far, and praise God with us as we celebrate the gift of Valor Edwards!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Moving…again?!

Tomorrow at 10 am, we plunge headlong back into homeownership. After our home in Central Florida sold—a miracle, given the distressed real estate market there—we started looking in New Bern, but we didn’t find anything compelling, and we had more or less decided that we would continue to rent for another six months or so.

And then, in the same week that we learned that the house we were renting was going into foreclosure in mid-August, this gem hit the market. It had House of Gjertsen written all over it (at least, we thought we could make it out under all the overgrown foliage):

It’s in a great, established neighborhood (Trent Woods), but in a newer section built in the ’90s so it has an open-feeling kitchen and no formal living room. It has the cheaper of the two utility companies in New Bern (Progress Energy), plus natural gas heating & stove…a great park just around the corner…walking distance from a good elementary school…and it’s only FOUR minutes from John’s office!

It hit the market on a Thursday night at a pretty attractive price; we saw it that Friday, made an offer on Saturday, and by Monday morning we were under contract. The many houses we looked at in May and June helped us see what a great floorplan, and awesome deal, this one was.

Here’s the floorplan, as I roughed it in for my dad, who was trying to picture it from our shaky video footage. There is a 1-3 split of bedrooms, with the master suite on the left and the other three bedrooms on a private hallway to the right.

Almost 3,000 SF, 4BR, 2.5 BA, with a finished room over the garage (“FROG” in Realtor lingo) and an air-conditioned brick workshop building in the backyard. Drool, drool!

Here’s the foyer and the dining room…

Better shot of the dining room…

Big family room with a gas fireplace! more wood floors, and prewired speakers…

Sliding doors to the back patio from there, and the kitchen back to the left…

Kitchen has a gas stove and tons of cabinet storage space…this pic only shows part of it. I’ve never had so many drawers!

One of the things that really sold us was the built-in computer desk in the eat-in area behind the kitchen. We really like having the computer in a “public” part of the house, ideally near the kitchen, yet not in the front of the house (because the desk is always a mess!). So this was a super sweet configuration.

Painting the master bedroom and closet (they’re copper-brown right now) and replacing the worn carpet in all the bedrooms will be our big projects next week, before the furniture is moved over on Friday. I can’t wait to see the transformation!

We chose a sort of aqua or blue-green for the walls to accent our silver and dark wood furniture. We will post photos after we’re done!

The master bedroom opens up onto the brick screened porch, which also connects to the desk area and the patio:

The master bath is painted with gold stripes, which we’re not crazy about, but it has a lot of light and a fancy cultured marble tub…

We love this floorplan because it has four bedrooms, all on the ground floor. I wasn’t crazy about becoming a turbo StairMaster on laundry days or whenever the baby woke up. Here is the private hallway for the secondary bedrooms and second bath, with a great closet to boot:

Here’s a sample secondary bedroom. This will actually be the guest room. Notice the trees that create lots of privacy and shade!

The only thing on the second floor is a huge bonus room, which will be empty for a while until John and I divide it into a sewing room and a home theater someday. Here it is with the prior tenants’ stuff still in it:

The house is on 0.72 of an acre, with a great stone tile patio and lots of backyard privacy—only one neighbor to the side, a wooded lot on the other side, and lots of trees in the back. There is a small backyard lawn area right off the patio. Lots of room to garden, if we can get some trees out eventually! At this time of year, the shade is delicious.

Aaaaand…a 16 x 18′ brick workshop. One word: mancave!

Woohoo! We are so excited! We will start moving boxes, ripping out carpet, and prepping to paint tomorrow, so we may not post for another week or so. God has provided a new House of Gjertsen, and we hope it will someday be filled with as many happy memories and great friends as the last one!

Friday night : finding a replacement for Gino’s Pizza :: Sunday morning : finding a replacement for Orlando Grace.
Both endeavors have left me hoping there’s something else out there.

All the colons, above, are the Aristotelian notation for an analogy. Since 2005, I understand analogies have been eliminated from the SAT. Kids these days… how can we expect them to think logically?

I digress. This post is not about analogies.

Nor is it about pizza—though I’m happy to report we did find a reasonable approximation of Gino’s at Mario’s in Havelock. (However, their pizza comes with two extremely thin paper plates wedged under its edges and no serving utensils, so we bring our own plates and silverware. Makes us look really odd, but have you ever tried to cut pizza with a plastic knife?)

No, this post is about finding a place to worship God in small town, USA.

But first, here is the obligatory photo of our little speed racer, without which I’m sure I’ll get flamed in the commentary:

By brief way of background—for those who have not known us well, who maybe stumbled into our little “House” from Epbot—Abby and I are Calvinists. In a nutshell, that just means that we believe in a God who is not thwarted by anything, whose perfect wisdom and love and supremacy are revealed in the Bible. We believe—and our lives bear testimony to this reality—that God is all about rescuing sinners from eternal punishment, the just consequence of our sin.

We all start off as enemies of God, believing that we know better than he does, and thinking that he is forbidding good things out of meanness when we read his rules for a happy life. But God loves us and wants us to be part of his family, having mercy on us without compromising His holy justice toward our sins. He accomplished this through the atoning death of his son Jesus, which is the gospel—his very own blood paid to punish our guilt. The nuance with Calvinism (or monergism) is that we believe God actually saves the elect, not merely makes salvation possible to all; the rescue starts with the Rescuer, not the choices of men and women who the Bible describe as dead in their sins. In every heart that cries out to God for mercy and desires to be a part of his family, the Holy Spirit has first done a work of regeneration to first incline it to act that way.

Ah, such boring subtleties these must seem to some. Let’s see if Shai Linne can help make it more interesting:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Anyway, that’s our background and how we’ve come to understand our own adoption into God’s family. Where we’ve moved to, there’s a pretty strong historical influence from Free Will Baptists and Wesleyans, who take a different view of grace. While we affirm that many Christian denominations make up the Church as a whole, whether they agree with us or not, our hope to find a congregation with a similar understanding of grace limited our choice of churches.

Additionally, Abby and I are emotionally-motivated, sing-at-the-top-of-our-lungs kind of worshipers. (That’s probably why we got married: we could actually stand next to each other in church and hear someone besides ourselves.) The church we left back in Orlando was a good fit—it had instruments that plugged in as well as an intentional connection between theology (what we believe about God) and a heartfelt affection to God. No doubt that’s a relatively new style for reformed churches, influenced by leaders like John Piper and C. J. Mahaney.

Well, we knew in advance that New Bern was probably not going to have a carbon copy of Orlando Grace. But we’ve spent a lot of time looking for one, which has been the most discouraging part of this whole adventure of moving. In the lack of a local fellowship to connect with, I’ve felt the kind of dulling or stalling-out of my faith. Last week I found the phrase “ineffective or unfruitful” in this passage particularly unsettling:

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. —2 Peter 1:5-8

Prior to making the decision to relocate, I emailed a questionnaire to several New Bern churches. I guess it’s no surprise that the most encouraging response came from a pastor who’s church we’re now prepared to join.

Tabernacle Baptist Church is a historical church in downtown New Bern which has been around since the 1800s, but has been led for about a year and a half by a young pastor with a shepherding heart, Scott Gleason. I’ve corresponded with Scott via email and at lunches on a couple occasions, and Abby and I are convinced that Tabernacle is where we’re going to peg our tent, so to speak.

We’ve been greeted very warmly there, and have been encouraged to see a wide spectrum of generations worshiping there together. Scott is a fine preacher, and strikes me as a patient, peacemaking man, with a heart that beats strongest for discipleship.

So tomorrow we’ll probably do the (awkward, to Abby) Southern Baptist thing, and walk down the aisle during the invitational, formally expressing our desire for church membership.

It doesn’t match exactly the template we were looking for in terms of doctrine or worship style, but there is enough there to make it work. Perhaps we’ll have to bring our own plates and silverware. (Not really—I’m drawing an analogy.)

Tonight we celebrated a hard search completed with a pie at Mario’s.

Those buddies used to laugh together…

Cry together…

And recount their heroic exploits to each other…

But Isaiah never told Valor the secret of his amazing superhair.

Read the comments at the end of the EPBOT post if you want to feel the love! We miss you, Mister I, and thanks, Jen!

After a month or two of backing up, Valor passed the 10-month mark and sprang into action, developmentally speaking. First, he was able to sit up by himself (from a lying down position). I walked into his room after his nap one day and found him sitting up. Then a week went by before he did it again, making me wonder if it was a fluke. Then I would see him sitting up again. Thursday morning after I found him sitting up in his crib, he had also detached the breathing monitor’s velcro straps, disconnected its cord (an RJ11 connection, no less), and left it on the other side of his bed. That’s when we knew it was time to pack away the monitor, take out the bumper, and lower the crib.

We were all betting that Valor would walk before he crawled. Wednesday I told my best friend Susan that Valor was cruising between chairs, but was lunging more than crawling when he was on the floor. She commented that her first daughter learned to walk by pushing a box. That sounded like a great idea, so I found a box and we tried it out. At first the box slipped over the vinyl floor so quickly that he couldn’t keep up with it and kept falling down. But Thursday he was doing a little better, so I set the camera on the floor to film him. However, the sight of a cute electronic gadget on the floor was so enticing that before I could pick him up and take him to the box, he tentatively but deliberately crawled to the camera.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Valor still prefers walking to crawling, and he primarily crawls to find me and get me to help him walk. His favorite kind of walking is holding someone’s hands and “driving” himself where he wants to go.

But he is also becoming a box-walking pro, and loving every minute of it. This accomplishment occurred on Friday:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m still stunned; it was all gradual, but the end result of sudden locomotion still leaves me giggling with wonder. When I look around and find Valor five or ten feet away from where I left him, I am thrilled. Movement is such an amazing gift. Recently we approved a new comment on an old post which caused us to re-watch a vignette from the past: me helping James try to stand. He looks so much more floppy and weak than his brother, even though he was at the strongest point in his life. Standing was a huge accomplishment, a step toward independence and maturity, even if he could still only do it with my support.

Like James, Valor is also very proud of himself when he moves. On the crawling video you might have noticed him clicking his tongue with self-approval (a sound he learned from his Grandpa). When he started walking with help, he made little boastful sounds and stopped for a victory dance every so often.

Every day Valor does something new, and discovers something new. Today he pulled to stand on at least four new pieces of furniture, including the vacuum cleaner which promptly fell over and dumped him to the ground. He even pulled up on my legs using my shorts as handles (good thing I was wearing a belt). He has learned to make kissy sounds—he actually did them for the first time in the box-walking video, above.

New abilities have expanded his investigations of the house. He opens and shuts cabinet doors, squats to feel the texture of a bathroom mat, peers over the edge of the bathtub, and pats the trash can lid. When he discovered that the toilet was off-limits, he settled for a sample of toilet paper. Hmmm. The taste was pretty bland, but the mayhem potential for this little stash was off the charts.

Valor’s communication skills are developing even while his motor skills are surging ahead. Today he reached for his sippy cup of water when he was thirsty (he usually just looks at it). He likes to watch our lips and repeat sounds back to us, although he doesn’t seem to attach meaning to any sounds yet. We got him to say “va-va-va” just by saying to him over and over. I think he might have said “bye-bye” this morning when John drove off to work. Dah-dah-dah and mah-mah-mah are still his favorite sounds, but he also still does a really cute whispered ta-ta-ta, especially in the morning when he’s just woken up. I’m doing some sign language with him, but I don’t know if that’s registering or not. I think he understands “no” and “that’s not for eating.” Valor will usually click his tongue at you if you click at him, kiss at you (sort of) if you kiss at him, and clap if you clap your hands.

We celebrated Valor’s new independence (and our nation’s older independence) with a new kiddie pool courtesy of Grandmommy Peg. John and I immediately realized the utility of such a device, minus the water, inside the house as a containment device. I am already trying to imagine how I can get the house packed and moved now that Valor is a man on the move.

On the night of the Fourth, John’s boss generously invited us to check out a new side of New Bern: the river side. We went out with his family in their boat to see the fireworks display over the Neuse River. It was wonderfully cool on the water, and a novel way to beat the event traffic. Valor was more excited about their dog than the boat ride; I’m not even sure he understood that we were on a boat. The rocking waves did make him sleepy, though, and he was out before the noise began.

Click here to view the embedded video.

One of the fun things about the small town atmosphere is the variety of small town things to do. We already wrote about Fiddle Fest, and the Civil War battle reenactment. Last month, the nearby Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station hosted an Air Show with the Blue Angels. We actually didn’t get to see the Blue Angels in flight (we got too sunburned out on the tarmac with the earlier performers) but we did see a stunt helicopter named “Otto,” Canadian skydivers, and an F-15 (pretty awesome piece of technology). And there were also things to enjoy on the ground, like Shockwave, a truck that goes from 0-300 miles per hour in 11 seconds, thanks to three jet engines behind the cab:

And to complement the picture we took with Valor and the Civil War actors, we made sure to get a shot of him with some modern-day soldiers. His name was pretty popular with this Navy medical team:

In addition to fun weekend outings, we’re in home-search mode. In fact, we’re currently in the midst of negotiating a price for the next House of Gjertsen. No sooner had we purposed to probably rent for a few more months, with the expectation that the housing market would continue to dip towards the end of the year, two things happened:

1. A police officer showed up at the door with a foreclosure notice on our rental house. Hard to imagine how the owner would let it foreclose with rent coming in, but that’s the reality. In all likelihood, whatever entity ends up owning the property in mid-August will probably be happy to keep us as renters, but it does throw a little bit of uncertainty into the process.
2. A house just came on the market in our target neighborhood that might just be the one.
   

I should back up—we’ve been casually looking at houses since we got here, and since my exam is behind me, we’ve been more seriously looking. The demand, especially in our price range, seems very low, but oddly it doesn’t seem to really be pushing the price down the way it seems like it should. But I’ve obviously just moved out of an environment where every other listing is a foreclosure, so it’s taken some adjustments to my mindset. Anyway, from the outset we targeted Trent Woods, an established, centrally-located municipality  that is 5 minutes from my workplace. Mostly the square feet we wanted has been out of our price range. But this one we just saw on Friday is on a very nice street, with cheaper utilities, and looks to be the right blend of “move-in-ready” and “fix-up projects to take on over time.”

So we put in an offer this morning, 8% below their asking price. And they’ve countered, dropping less than 2%. With it just hitting the market, they may not be that motivated to reduce their price. And it isn’t really a bad price where it stands. So I’m going to do a little more fine-tuned analysis of tax and insurance costs, borrowing costs (I found 4.5% fixed; pretty happy about that), and probably counter-offer on Monday. If it does work out, we’ll tell you all about the house in another post.

Oops, there I go again, writing about real estate when all anyone wants to hear about is Valorbug. Well, as I write this, he’s either teething (top two coming through) or having grandparent withdrawal, or both. Abby’s parents drove up from Tallahassee and spent a week with us. Grandma was very helpful in helping Valor stand and take steps forward while holding his hands.

We’re not sure if he’s going to crawl before walking or not—so far it’s still only backwards motion on his tummy. But Grandpa Warren made sure he put in his reps.

For my part, I’ve been training him to get around in other ways.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“The glory of young men is their strength,
gray hair the splendor of the old.” –Proverbs 20:29, NIV

In December 1962 my father rode home from a hayride with three of his best buds. They all fell asleep and the car hit a tree, hurling my dad through the windshield (no seat belts back then). He broke his upper and lower jaws on both sides and still bears a network of scars on his face from the glass cuts. My grandmother, who was 40 years old at the time, said that it was so traumatic for her that her hair turned grey because of it.

I struggle with a fear of aging. It’s tied up with my vanity. Youth has buttressed the scant helping of looks I was apportioned to begin with, and the thought of losing the tight, smooth skin or plain, brown hair color makes me terrified of becoming less desirable as well. Not just to my husband, but to my culture that is obsessed with beauty, charm, and newness. I wouldn’t always be the hip, fun teacher; the sexy wife; the energetic young mom…

My fears started to subside after having James. My priorities shifted, and life was a little bit less about me. If I had stretch marks all over my stomach, or a c-section scar that marred my “bikini bod,” it felt like there was a good reason for it. Like a badge of courage, saying: “I made it through a difficult, scary time, I learned about my limitations and about sacrifice, and I am wiser (and more filled with faith) because of it.” In fact, when I read a scientific news article naming stress as a cause of grey hair, I remembered the family tradition about my grandmother and was kind of surprised that I didn’t turn grey after having and losing James and Dora. (Yes, I know that stress is not the only factor for greyness.)

But the other day I pulled some of my hair back to put into a barrette and noticed a hair in the middle that was kinky and lighter than the rest. Was it blonde, or was it…? I looked closely, and sure enough, it was my first grey hair. My first, strong impulse was to yank it out! Get rid of it! (Denial is one of my favorite coping mechanisms.) Then I tried to make the best of it: it’s curly! I’ve always wanted curly hair. Then I struggled to remember why grey hair seemed cool not that long ago. Then I thought, I’m not stressed; this is about the least stressful time of my entire adult life (no school/job/family crisis). Why am I getting grey hair now, instead of two years ago?

Then I realized, this grey hair has been growing for a while. How long? I figured out the growth rate of my hair from the short pieces that have been growing back in since Valor was four months old. I carefully measured the grey hair, pulling it to its full, un-kinked length. I counted back to the time it was “born”… June 2008. What happened in June 2008?

Ah. That was the month our daughter Dora died for unknown reasons (at 16 weeks’ gestation). And suddenly, that grey hair became a precious thing. A mark of suffering, a strand of memory, a link to a dream of our little girl.

Happy Birthday, Dora Jewel. You are still our precious gift, waiting to be unwrapped.

Note: I’m turning off comments for this post only. Stay tuned for a Valor update!

Well, my excuse is that April and May, even when they aren’t compromised by a sudden relocation to another part of the country, are really crunch-time for CFA Candidates preparing for their exams. That’s the Chartered Financial Analyst program, for those those unfamiliar with the lingo, and it’s a pretty big credential in the financial world. It’s earned by a series of passing three annual exams, which cover everything from how to detect when companies are stretching the truth on their balance sheets to how to value collateralized debt obligations. Basically, everything which would have been helpful to know in the past few years! I believe it will continue to be helpful to know.

But anyway, I sat for the Level 2 CFA exam last weekend, as I did last June.  Last summer I realized how freakishly difficult the second exam is after narrowly failing it, so this year I ratcheted up the intensity and I have a better feeling about it, although I won’t know until sometime this August.

On the subject of financial stuff, I’m loving the new job. My boss, David Blain, is a CFA charterholder himself, and has encouraged me in my pursuit of mine. I’m also pretty thrilled to find another man who loves to push Microsoft Excel to its limits, and I get the sense he’s happy to have another advisor with the intellectual capacity to bounce ideas off of. We’re also growing in terms of new clients, which keeps the work fresh and interesting. The other staff in our office, Mary Ellen and Jeb, handle administrative and marketing matters.

Some of you who know me might find it ironic that I now wear a suit to work every day. David’s a West Point graduate and former special-ops, and the degree of fashion formality sort of fits the James Bond shtick. Though it isn’t exactly my preference, the suit-wearing isn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. It’s getting pretty hot in New Bern, but unlike Orlando, I understand the heat only lasts a few months. Abby has pushed Microsoft Excel to a different sort of limit by identifying every combination of suit, shirt, and tie in my wardrobe that work well together.

The day before my exam, we actually closed on our house in Fox Glen (the original house of Gjertsen!) so we’re officially non-homeowners now. It is a tremendous relief to have sold a house in Orlando in these extreme market conditions. Unfortunately, we haven’t found nearly the degree of desperation and devaluation in the New Bern market while looking for a new home.

So our two biggest pursuits now are finding a home and finding a church home. Each probably deserves their own post.

Right now Abby’s parents are actually visiting us, and we’re going out tonight for our first date night in… hm… maybe three months? Tomorrow will be our 12th anniversary. The downtown movie theater is showing To Catch A Thief—movie + popcorn + drink for $5. And fitting with the jewelry heist theme, I managed to find a diamond necklace and earring set for pretty much a steal on eBay.

Grace Kelly has nothing on Abby Gjertsen.

When we first moved in, we were intrigued by the flags with the subdivision’s “coat of arms.”

Abby: Well, the pineapple is a symbol of hospitality.

John: Is that a leaf? or a clover?

Abby: I think it’s an oak leaf? I guess that means “we have nature.”

John: Golf ball means “golf”! But what is the cannon for?

(pause)

Abby: Defense?

A couple weeks after we moved,we got a better idea about the meaning of the cannon. A guy came and took pictures of our backyard, and we thought maybe he was interested in buying the house we’re renting; however, a couple days later our neighbor got a notice from the HOA to tear down his kids’ treehouse. We also got a reprimand through the rental company saying that our flower beds (that were empty except for pinestraw) needed “attention.” We asked what they meant by this, since as renters we are not obligated to plant flowers, and they told us to ignore it, that Taberna had sent them something complaining. Soon after that, sources that shall remain nameless whispered that the Taberna HOA is sometimes referred to as the “Taberna Taliban.” Which brought new insight to the last part of the coat of arms.

As we’ve mentioned, this year is New Bern’s 300th anniversary, and almost every weekend there is something fun to do associated with the celebration. A few weeks back we went to Fiddle Fest, a concert of four local bluegrass bands, and it was wonderful. I was surprised that John liked it so much, he didn’t want to leave! He said it made him feel relaxed and plugged in to our new city.

A couple weekends ago was the biggest reenactment ever done of the Civil War’s Battle of New Bern. I love learning and teaching about the Civil War, but I have never lived anywhere with any significant Civil War history, so I was thrilled to discover that New Bern was the site of an actual battle. I packed Valor up one day and headed out to get the free battleground tour. What I didn’t realize until I finally found the battlefield (which was inadequately labeled) was that it is IN Taberna. Literally, right inside the entrance to our neighborhood. RIDICULOUS!

Which, of course, is (probably) the explanation for the cannon on the coat of arms. The Yankees’ landing south of New Bern was actually the first combined-forces (navy and army) attack in the United States. From this hand-drawn map that I got from my excellent tour guide (who is writing a book on the battle), you can see that the North (blue bars are their regiments) were marching up from the south to attack the Rebs (black bars), who were dug in behind a series of redans, or trenches.

You can actually still see some of these trenches at the battlefield site…gives me the chills to imagine the scene in 1862! A rail line splits the two sides of the Rebel line, with Brices Creek on the western end and the Neuse River on the east. The Yanks broke through the line at the railroad tracks, and despite the brave defense of the outnumbered 26th NC, the Union won the day and occupied New Bern until the end of the war. Taberna’s entrance is at the railroad tracks, right in the center of the map, at the beginning of the western line of curvy Rebel redans. So 148 years ago this March, Taberna was in the thick of it.

We met some of the volunteer Confederate reenactors, who were being great sports despite wearing woolen uniforms in the heat. We asked the one on the left when in the course of the battle he was slated to die, and he said for this reenactment no one had told him any specifics. He said he usually just waited for a good volley, or until he was so hot he needed to take a break, and just dropped. (We actually this guy “die,” later; he got injured and yelled for help before a Yankee solider came up and finished him with the butt of his rifle. Nice.)

Uh-oh!

Here come the Yanks, pushing the Rebs back over the Cunningham drawbridge. (The reenactment didn’t really recreate the historical battle as much as approximate it in a concentrated area near a public park. In other words, it was like a show-battle.)

The Rebs defend their land. The cannons were loud!

Here you can see one of the boats in the background, shelling the shoreline (with blanks) to prepare the way for the Union infantry. The Yanks are in blue, on the right.

We saw a desperate Rebel bayonet charge, but history had foreordained that the Union took the day, so there was a lot of retreating. All in all, it was a great time. In two more years, on the 150th anniversary of the battle, they hope to do it all again.

Rebel troops aren’t the only ones retreating around here. For the last two weeks, Valor has been crawling…backwards. The more he wants to get the toy in front of him, the faster he moves away from it. He can’t get his behind up high enough to get his knees under his hips, so his arms just push and his body slides backwards.

Quite frustrating, as you might imagine, although when someone comes over and exclaims about how fast he moved so far, he’s placated.

There’s nothing made that Valor doesn’t want to get his hands on. He loves to grab so much that when there’s nothing in front of him, his little fists open and shut in anticipation.

Discipline has begun to show up on our radar. The list of “no”s has expanded from “don’t bite Mommy” to “don’t hit Daddy’s face” and “don’t drink the bath water.” He still laughs when I say this in my sternest voice, but he did seem to stop drinking the bath water tonight, so maybe it’s getting through. Either that or he realized that the soap doesn’t taste good.