Hello everyone.

I just wanted to write about this while it is the same day. A wonderful
thing happened today. The background is that several of you know that
Geoff's company had been closed, then re-opened, that he had some freelance
work at MIT and with his friend's company-- simply that we have been really
living paycheck to paycheck, praying to scrape rent together-kind-of-living.
What happened today seems to us the culmination of great acts of love coming
from our parents, from as far away as Japan, New Kensington, PA, the Media
Lab at MIT, and as near as our St. Rose St. nabes.
Anyway, I went for the mail this afternoon to find a card with no postmark,
addressed "The Beatty's" and our address and with a Statue of Liberty stamp.
A Hallmark card on the outside reads:

"There, in the heavens, set your heart upon the brightest star."

inside someone wrote:
"Jesus"

"Psalm 128"

and enclosed a money order for $500.

My heart caught in my chest and I covered my mouth and just buried my face
in Manny's chest. This gift was creepily timely and paralyzingly good. I
don't want to go on about the way this makes us feel, the way it fills us,
the way we feel cared for, the way we do not deserve this, the way that so
many people need way more, the way that this makes us want to work for our
salvation and toil and flagellate ourselves for not being better friends to
people, for being so judgemental and acting so entitled. I don't want to go
on about these things but I could. I just want to say that we are so so so
thankfully thankful.

Whoever you are, tonight, you have sent us to bed heaving heavy breaths of
"we don't deserve it" and then laughing belly laughs of "how good, how
good." I just want everyone to know about this, not for our sake, or even
the givers' sake but so that people will know God's goodness, His timely,
perfect, knock-your-socks-off, anonymous goodness.

Kids I used to teach at Hollow Reed used to call it "balancetimes." In a
way, I like this better, makes the day seem a little more reflective, more
rational.

Anyway, Manny wants me to write:

HAVE A MEMORABLE AND LOVELY VALENTINE'S, now where did that arrow get to?

"Let the games begin," is what Jodi wrote in Manny's baby book even
before we brought him home from the hospital. And, ladies and gentlemen,
the games are in full swing and this baby means business. He's a
boundary-pusher-- put him in the center of a quilt and he finds the edge to
mouth or to look beneath. He's an explorer-- give him a cup and he will
find the echo of his voice and the click, click of his two teeth. And he's
a pioneer-- shedding the baby infant carseat for the "Evenflo Conquest."
(Of course, it swallows him at this point.) Also, the kid is undaunted-- he
has this breathy roar that we love. I think it's funny and ironic; when
we're cuddling him, he'll do his growl but at the same time we are just
inhaling his buttery, milky breath. And if in the games, there are winners,
it is impossible to say if it is Manny who wins our devotion and our hearts
or if it is us who win days with this beautiful, wild baby.

"This baby is taking it all in WHOLE and UNEDITED. Baby Emmanuel, Lion of
God."
--Bruce Herman's comments while holding Manny at the Killeen's and in
response to Manny's ferocious roar

Happy #7, tiny Manny. We love you so.