Adjusting

Adjusting to having five kids (seven and under) has been a little slower than I expected.  Heh.  I feel like I say this every time I have a new baby.  Seriously, I need to write myself a note and remember to read it the next time (God willing) I'm close to giving birth.  It would say something like: 

Yes, newborns are easier than toddlers, and yes they do sleep most of the day.  But remember that their schedule is totally unpredictable.  They are going to need to nurse, or be changed, or be bounced for twenty minutes at random and unexpected times - usually the moment you were finally about to start a new task or run out the door.  Don't expect to get as much done as you're used to, and definitely don't expect to do everything in the same order or at the same time as you were hoping.  In other words, newborns force you to just be flexible and let go of the things that are less important.

We're doing fine, really, but I think starting the schoolyear almost at exactly the same time as we had a new baby made things extra challenging - because I had only had a week of trying to get into the homeschooling groove before Felix came along and totally threw us off.  And now we're trying to tackle the increased challenge of schooling the two big kids at once for the first time AND juggling a crying baby, super troublesome toddler, and whiney three-year old.  (All while failing to keep up with laundry, dishes, cleaning, etc.  Thank goodness for the meal train the members of my Catholic Mom's group have been so generously participating in!)

This past week, we didn't even have an actual official school day, because we were busy dealing with a potential medical issue with Felix, and had to spend a couple days in the hospital.  Long story short, he does this weird thing where he constantly bends his head all the way back - it seems to be his preferred posture.  He does show signs of reflux, and a similar back-arching posture is common for reflux.  But he does this all the time - even when he's calm or asleep, not just when he's having a reflux episode.  So our pediatrician was "very concerned" and wanted us to check with a neurologist, since peculiar posturing like this sometimes indicates a neurological problem.

His usual posture

The neurologist wasn't sure what was causing it, and decided to admit him to the hospital so they could figure out what was going on.  Felix had a full team of doctors working with him, and none of them had ever seen a baby do this with his head.  My poor little guy (6 weeks old) was subjected to: a head ultrasound, an EEG, an EKG, a neck x-ray, an MRI, blood draws, a bunch of wires that monitored his basic functions, and (totally unnecessary), tubes for supplemental oxygen.  

With 26 probes on his head during his EEG

And....all the tests came back normal.  Which I'm definitely thankful for.  But it's a frustrating non-conclusion to the whole ordeal.  At this point, the working theory is that perhaps it's just a weird response he has to reflux.  So we're going to try him on some stronger medication for that, and see what happens.  If the unusual head positioning continues, we may have to look into physical therapy.

*****

A few things we have managed to find the time for during this busy phase of life:

We had Felix baptized!

We've gone on a few more family nature walks, and are hoping to fit in one or two more before winter sets in.  We all really enjoy doing this together, and have discovered a couple great woods for walking.  Each of the three "big kids" has their own nature journal that they use to keep a record of our interesting finds.

Stella: proving once again that *any* creature can be snuggled

Another worm for the journal

Tom finally took the time to show the kids how to use the Mass kit I made for them to play Mass.  I've seriously dreamed about them doing this since they were born, and it just melts my heart.

Fr. Sly getting vested before Mass

The elevation.  Linus is an altar boy, and is ringing the bell

Fe.Linus baptizing Stella's baby (named "Florabelle" - I wonder where she got that from? :-P ), whom she had been begging to have baptized all morning.

Another mom whose kids are in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd with Stella and Linus heard that I was a big fan of "old-fashioned" baby clothes, and gave me an amazing little collection of old baby boy clothes.  Those are like the holy grail of baby clothes for me.  I've found some adorable smocked and laced baby girl dresses at thrift stores and rummage sales in my day, but I have never ever come across a good old-fashioned baby boy outfit.  Look at some of these!!

And lastly, after almost a year of very slow-going work, I have finally finished Linus' quilt for his bed.  It turned out a lot bigger than a twin size, actually, so it will definitely grow with him.  When he was only two, and I asked him what sort of quilt he wanted, he had answered, "Blue. And Green.  And squares."  I think I pulled it off!

The pattern is called an Irish Chain

First Day of School and Some Reflections on the Kids

We started our school year yesterday!  Sly is in second grade now, and Stella's doing kindergarten.  We're calling Linus "pre-school", but I truly have no planned activities for him.  Flora, meanwhile, does her best to cause disruption and destruction while the rest of us are working on school.

We're sticking with Mater Amabilis this year.  I really do love the curriculum and the philosophy behind it, but it's a lot to fit in to our mornings.  Each subject just takes 10-20 minutes (in theory.....but I'll pay you money if you can get through a Saxon Math lesson with Sly in that amount of time!), but there are so many things to fit in, and a ton of reading aloud.  I think we'll need about two and a half hours each day to fit in everything.  It's going to get a bit more challenging to juggle it all once Stella adds in next year, so I'll have to start thinking about where I can combine the kids for various subjects.

*****

I love watching the relationship develop between Sly and Flora.  These two have always been so alike - from their looks, to their personality.  The day Flora was born, we were already predicting her to be a "female version of Sly."  They both have quick tempers and a tendency towards violence (hitting their siblings all the time).  But on the positive side, both are sociable and talkative and very smart.  They hit it off so well, and Sly takes such sweet loving care of her all the time.

But I'm predicting some challenges ahead with Flora.  She is such a troublesome toddler.  She's into everything - throwing things in the toilet and the trashcan, pulling stuff out of every cabinet and shelf.  Sly was just like that.  I had gotten used to my two "easy" middle kids.  Sly and Flora are definitely on the choleric/melancholic end of the temperament spectrum (which I am as well, but I just perceive as the more challenging "moody" types of temperaments), while Stella and Linus are more sanguine/phlegmatic (which I perceive as "pleasant and easy to get along with").

*****

Tom pointed something out the other day, about how people (ourselves included) tend to "blame" a lot of things on having a large family, but that it's not always the reality.  For example, Linus was a very late talker, and hardly said much at all until he was two.  Even now, his speech is still very poor, and he's been in speech therapy for a few months because he can't pronounce many of his starting and ending consonants in words.  It's easy to say "oh, it's because he's the third child, and didn't get as much attention."  Then there's Flora, who probably has the best vocabulary of any of our kids for her age.  And we found ourselves saying, "well, it's because she's the fourth child, and has all her big siblings to learn from."  I think for the most part, the answer is just this: every kid is different, and they're going to do things at their own pace.

*****

I'm eight days out from my due date with this next little boy (name still very much undecided)!  I'm feeling pretty good most days, but definitely mentally ready to get this show on the road.  My earliest baby has come a week early (Sly), and my latest was a week late (Linus, of course, who is showing himself to be late to everything he does).  So I'm expecting that as my range of possibilities.....but I'm definitely hoping for an early one!

Summertime Plans

I can't even believe it, but our homeschool year is almost done!  I thought I had mapped out our last term to end mid-June, but I recently checked the schedule I put together, and we just have until the end of the month!

We followed the Mater Amabilis curriculm pretty closely this year for Sly (with just a few changes/deletions).  I think we did admirably well keeping up the pace.  The only thing we went "too slowly" with was the math.  Luckily, it's an easy subject for Sly, and the Saxon program has tons of repetition.  So for these remaining weeks, we're just going to fly through, and concentrate mainly on the new concepts.  Saxon is a strong program, and I am fully confident that it's giving him a good foundation in math.  But....it's just so dry and boring.  I'm going to be talking with other homeschooling families, and doing some research this summer to see if there's something out there that will work better for us.  And that I don't mind spending more money on.

After giving up so much "free time" this year with school, it might be a little strange to have it all back this summer.  But my mind is ever itching to plan and make schedules.  So my loose summer plans - aside from generally just hanging out and enjoying the warm weather are:

1. Lots of reading aloud.  During the school year, I was reading aloud so often for our school curriculum, that most days I didn't have the energy or desire to read other books to the kids "just for fun."  I know compared to the older kids, Linus and Flora have barely been read to specifically.  I hardly ever pull out the baby board books for Flora.  So this summer, I want to set aside a little time each morning to sit out on the porch swing and read some books to everyone just because.

A few chapter books I'd like to work through are: finishing up Winnie-the-Pooh, finishing up the My Father's Dragon stories, and reading all of St. Patrick's Summer.  The first two were both started at "tea time."  A pleasant little ritual I did increasingly less as the schoolyear wore on, and have completely given up at this point.  Perhaps that will come back next Fall!

2. Weekly daily Mass.  I wish I could say we'll plan to go everyday, but it's just not going to happen.  I'll set once a week as my goal for now.

3. Weekly trips to the library. I'll probably combine this with our trip to Mass, since both are in easy walking distance of my house.

4. Continue having Sly practice reading.  He's not coming along as well as I'd like with reading.  But - I keep reminding myself - he's only six.  No one even started teaching me to read until I was seven, and I did fine.  But, in the interest of not losing anything we gained during the schoolyear, I'm going to have him continue to work on his reading a bit every day.  We'll be using easy things like Bob Books, since he actually enjoys those.

5. Light a fire under Tom's bum, so he finishes building the bookcases in our bedroom before this baby comes!!  Once they're constructed, it will be my job to caulk, prime, paint, and stain everything.  I'd really rather get that done before I'm just too enormous to maneuver my body into all the strange positions I'll need for painting.  Then - the most exciting part - I can finally organize all our books onto the shelves!  I've already claimed one entire side for homeschool stuff.

6. Continue planning out next year's curriculum.  We're definitely going to keep on with Mater Amabilis as our base for next year.  The big things will be deciding what to do about a math program (should I switch or not?  I already have all the stuff I'd need for Saxon grade 2), deciding how much - if anything - I will do with Stella next year, and writing out a daily schedule to ensure I can fit everything in.

7. Finish knitting a baby boy blanket. I'm approaching half-way already, so I don't think this will be a problem.

8. Get back in the groove with meal-planning.  I was good about this for a couple years, but I stopped doing it when Linus was born three years ago (my transition to having three kids really threw me off for a while).  I've been getting by all this time by keeping a well-stocked pantry and chest-freezer at all times, and assembling most of our meals from what we already have in the house.  But it's really starting to catch up with me now.  I think I could relieve a fair amount of daily stress if I just had a clear plan about what we're going to eat before the day begins, and the knowledge that every ingredient I will need is definitely in the house.

December Photo Dump

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

I took a photo  of Stella with a fluffy little toy alpaca she found in her shoe this morning, and realized that I have a bunch of photos in my phone that I needed to transfer over to the computer.  Here are just a few, to give a glimpse of what we've been up to recently.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, we had dinner with three other families we are friends with, all of whom live in Maryland.  Two of us are homeschooling the kids, and two of us send the kids to a Catholic classical school.  Needless to say, our children have all been made to memorize poetry.  So it was the most heartwarming and encouraging moment for me when, after we had finished eating, the children voluntarily took turns going up to recite poems for the whole group!  At one point, there was even a little scuffle as several of them began shoving each other, wanting to have the stage.  With the exception of that little episode, though, the whole experience so completely fit my ideal of the type of education I'm trying to give my kids.  A wonderful time.

Sweet sleeping baby shot.

While driving from Maryland to the Philly area to stay with the in-laws, we stopped at a tiny middle-of-nowhere diner that was a total throwback to the 50s.  They still had a functioning jukebox that played 45rpm records for a nickel a song!  The kids were fascinated by it, and loved watching the automatic arm put down the record and start to play.

My brother-in-law and my husband dressed super fashionably (they were in vacation mode, I guess) a couple days before Thanksgiving.  And yes, they did go out in public like this!

My quilting group meets on Monday nights, which is trash night around here.  Several times on my way home, I have pulled over to save some treasure from someone's trash.  One of my recent finds was this cute little children's rocking chair.  The wood wasn't in the best shape, so I didn't want to spend time refinishing it with stain.  Here it is primed and ready for painting.  Stay tuned for a future post to see what color it became!

The big kids put some reindeer antlers on Flora.  She is not crawling yet, but seems so so close.

Babies with anything on their heads are just the cutest.  Maybe I'll have her wear these when we visit "Santa" this year.

Someone posted this on Facebook, and I liked it.  I feel like I should have this posted up somewhere in the house, as a reminder to myself.

I'm very slowly starting the decorating process around here, trying to keep the spirit of Advent, and not go "full Christmas" too soon.  I pulled out some of my special paper snowflakes I made in college, and hung them up around the bottom floor.  The kids thought they were so neat, and wanted to make some of their own. It turns out that Sly is currently the only one with enough hand strength and control to cut through all the layers of paper....which means the younger two were alternately crying in frustration/whining at me for help, and....it just wasn't that fun for anyone.  Maybe in a few years we will try again!

Linus fell asleep for a late afternoon nap, and our cat was willing to go the closest she's ever gone to him!

Nature Walks with Young'uns

As part of our Charlotte Mason homeschooling approach this year, I've scheduled in some regular nature walks with the kids.  It's just every-other-Friday right now, alternating with our homeschool co-op's meetings.

So far - with the exception of one ill-fated trip through some uncharted and very hilly woods the day after a huge rainstorm wherein all my kids became truly convinced that we were utterly and irrevokably lost and all four of them began bawling in terror - it's been quite lovely.

After the aforementioned incident, I've learned to keep it small, and keep it simple.  So far, I've picked little patches of forest that I'm already familiar with near our home.  I live in Pennsylvania, afterall, so *all* the nature is forest.  And it's quite hilly around here, which means most of these forests also have a creek running through the bottom, which is awesome for exploration.

Each of the kids carries a backpack containing a nature journal, a pencil, a water bottle, and one piece of fruit to snack on.  I usually sneak a few tree or bird identification guides into the big kids' backpacks as well.  I wear the baby in the Ergo, outfit myself in what my husband calls my "combat boots," and off we go.

We just take a leisurely stroll down the paths we find, and I encourage the kids to notice certain little things I might see or hear.  But for the most part, they are much more observant than me.  It must come from being so close to the ground!  On even the most seemingly ordinary stretch of path, the kids can find plenty of things to keep them interested - spiky seed pods from a sweetgum tree, a decaying log, some ever-pervasive shelf fungus...

It takes a little while for me to get in the "mood" of the nature walk, so to speak.  But after twenty minutes or so in the woods, I feel myself starting to calm down.  To breathe more easily, and loosen upand just let go of my tensions.  It's truly rejuvenating for my soul, and I find myself longing suddenly to move out of the city and live a simple quiet life surrounded by the outdoors.

I've found it best to keep the length of the walk pretty quick.  Maybe forty-five minutes total.  That's short enough that the kids aren't too tired, and their curiosity hasn't been burned up.  At some point aferwards - though not always the same day, as I'd prefer - I have the kids draw a picture of something we saw in their nature journals, and then they dictate a little description that I write for them.

For all my talk of wanting my kids to approach science firstly through a love of nature and by using personal observations of the world, I know never would have built in the time for this in our schedule had I not been trying to give Charlotte Mason's education approach a fair trial.  It seems like such a simple thing - a short walk in the woods every now and then.  But I've been so amazed at the things the kids have noticed and learned, and the spark it has ignited in their minds.

Our Thrifted Kids' Mass Set

For years, I've been wanting to get a nice little Mass set for the kids.  I have long had dreams of my boys, in particular, playing priest, and asking me to sew them some sweet child-sized vestments like Pope Benedict did.  So far, neither of the boys have shown much interest or inclination, to be honest.  But maybe if Tom shows them how all the vessels are used and what everything means, they'll get a little excited about it?

For a long time, I had my eye on the gorgeous set at My Father's House  (it says it's not available for sale now, but you can still see the photos.)  I can't recall the exact price, but I know it was way out of the budget.  Maybe $160?  I had to give up on it, because it was just sooooo much money for something I wasn't even sure my kids were going to use.

I decided instead to activate my thrift-shopping superpowers, and start the long slow hunt for items that would work in a kids' Mass set.  I wanted the bare minimum needed for a Traditional Low Mass.  So I wasn't holding out for the incense implements, etc. which would be required for a High Mass.  I've been keeping an eye out for items for about two years now.

The one item - though not a strictly necessary one, I believe - that's been holding me up for the past year from finally completing the set (by my estimation) was a ciborium (a vessal which holds the Eucharist).  I needed something metal, roughly cup-shaped, with a lid.  Not many non-liturgical items look like that!  Finally, at Goodwill last night, I FOUND one.  It's some Paul Revere reproduction piece, according to the etching in the bottom.  I was thrilled, Tom and I high-fived in the aisle, and there was much rejoicing!

We have: a crucifix, two candlesticks, a chalice, a ciborium, a paten, two cruets, a bell, and also a shell-shaped dish in case the kids want to play "baptism" - haha.

The one part I still don't have are all the necessary altar linens.  Never having served at the altar myself (a fact I am now, in retrospect, very happy about), I have never actually seen any of those linens up close,.  All I've seen are my little line drawings in my missal.  So I'm going to have to get some clear descriptions from Tom, and then I can start trying to acquire what I'll need.  I'm sure a lot of them can be made from re-purposed thrift store finds as well, and any that can't be, I will sew.

Is there anything else I forgot??

I know having a Mass set is not a guaranteed way to encourage my boys to consider the priesthood, but at the least, I'm hoping all my kids will get a clearer knowledge of what the priest is actually doing up at the altar during Mass, and the meaning behind it all.

Our Homeschool Year

I haven't paid a visit to my blog in quite a while.  My best excuse for it is because we've started up our homeschooling year, and I've found myself with much less time.

"back to school" 2016

Sly is in "first grade" this year, so I wanted to get a bit more serious about his schooling.  After spending the early summer in an excited frenzy of reading and listening to anything I could get my hands on about Charlotte Mason, I decided to give her approach a whirl this year.  We're almost perfectly following Mater Amabilis, which is a free Catholic Charlotte Mason curriculm.

Somehow, I had gotten it into my head that a CM approach was pretty light and fluffy, and not as rigorous an education as I was looking for.  But how wrong I was!  Many of the books we're reading are ones which I would have thought too advanced for my kids' ages, but I've been pleasantly surprised by how much they are picking up and understanding.

Last year, I pieced together my own curriculum, and as the year went on, I just kind of dropped things here and there as I was developing the classic "homeschool burnout."  Since I had no one to answer to but myself, I had no trouble just ditching parts that took too much out of me.  I think (hope) this year will be a little different.  Because I'm following a plan put together by someone else, I feel more obligation to stick to it (though I think I may drop some of the geography lessons...because that part feels really thrown together to me).  Sticking with this curriculum also forces me to incorporate some subjects which, while worthwhile, I may not have made time for otherwise - things like artist study, poetry memorization, or nature walks.

Our actual school time is close to two hours per day.  That gets stretched out, though, because I try to shoo the kids outside for short breaks in between some of our lessons.  The past few days, Sly has been insisting that he keep working right through with no breaks at all.  He says he prefers to save up all his playtime for one solid chunk at the end.  But I've noticed that his focus has been really slipping.  His brain needs to take those little breaks.  So I'm going to start insisting on it, even if I have to push him out the door whining and crying.

I set things up so that we only do our normal lessons Monday through Thursday.  Fridays alternate between going to our homeschool co-op, or taking a nature walk.  And we've already fit in a couple additional "field trip" days to a special Divine Liturgy at an Eastern church, and a visit to a fort from the French and Indian War.

Stella is only four, so I'm mostly just casually trying to get her to learn her letters and the sounds they make.  Linus is almost two-and-a-half, which I have found to be the magical age for potty training.  So when the big kids started school, Linus began "potty school."  I'm just taking a very slow and gradual approach to it.  Having him sit on his potty a few times a day, and seeing if anything happens.  And reading our all-time favorite book for potty training, Ian's New Potty.  And Flora is six months old, so she mostly fusses during school time until she's ready for her morning nap, and then Mommy rushes to try to finish up the rest of the school lessons so that maybe she'll have a tiny bit of time left to fit in some baby-free chores before naptime ends.

It's been an adjustment for us all.  It's been hard on the kids to realize that they can no longer play with their good across-the-street friend during the mornings, and that Mommy is likely going to turn down most offers for morning playdates and outings because she really needs to get serious and make sure "school" happens most days.

And it's been tough on me to have to give those things up as well.  We're just not morning people in this family.  We can't get up early enough to get lessons out of the way and still have time to go anywhere in the morning.  So hanging out with friends, trips to the supermarket and other errands have to get pushed to other time slots.

It's kind of like I've taken on a part-time job in addition to my already full-time job of mothering and housekeeping.  I need to remind myself constantly to be responsible and just get it done, and not be tempted by every possible excuse to push lessons aside until the next day.  I figure, if the kids were in public school, they'd have to show up every day, and they'd stay there until mid-afternoon.  At least we have more flexibility and free time than that!

Slowing Down and Teaching From Rest

"last day of school" 2016

We "officially" ended our first "official" year of homeschooling a couple weeks ago.  It went well, overall, and gave me a good - though small - taste of what I've actually gotten myself into here.  Overall verdict: this is going to require a ton of self-discipline, on my part, to make time for what's important each day....and not using homeschooling as an excuse to laze around the house all morning.

It seems that in the weeks before our school year came to an end, all the dozens of other activities and groups the kids and myself were involved in had ended as well.  I didn't realize how busy we had been until suddenly I saw myself looking at a full week on the calendar with nothing planned. It's forced us to slow down our usual pace, and find new ways to occupy ourselves.  

picking black raspberries

I'm trying to seize this opportunity to teach myself to slow down and just live - with intentionality - in the moment.  To pause and allow myself to take delight in my children and (perhaps even tougher) my husband.  It's really hard.  And I've failed at it more often than I've succeeded.  I am definitely a "Martha" and not a "Mary" - always wanting to keep busy, getting things done, and nagging everyone around me to make sure they are doing their fair share of keeping busy in the exact way I've determined they should!

I just finished reading Teaching From Rest, and what an inspiring read that was!  A short little book, but such a breath of fresh air.  I'd been spending the weeks since we ended our school year doing endless research and stressing over what the heck we should do next year for Sly's education, as he'll be starting first grade.  If I could sum up the book very briefly, the message is "Chill the heck out, Mama.  All those things you're worried about aren't actually a big deal.  Here's how you should be living your life.  Here's what your vocation is requiring of you."  I would not be surprised if I end up re-reading the book maybe every six months or so.  I know I'll probably need it!

Stella, loving a bit too tightly on a "baby caterpiller" she caught

The other day, I was washing the dishes.  Stella was in the kitchen with me, and began crying about something.  I can't remember what it was, but it was something I determined to be completely ridiculous.  As she usually does when her emotions get the best of her, she was asking me to hold her - "I want you, Mommy!" is how she says it.  And as usual, I was brushing off her feelings, and telling her there was nothing to cry about and if she wanted to be held, she'd have to wait until I was done with what I was doing.  Telling her, in other words, that she was less important to me than a few dishes sitting in the sink.

But I remembered some of what I'd been reading in the book, and realized that - unnecessary as her tears might be - she truly needed me to respond to her and love her at that moment.  And I knew that this need which was presenting itself to me was what God was asking me to do at that moment.  To tend to the soul of my child, instead of some stupid dishes - that was what was most important.  So I turned off the faucet, and picked her up.  I gave her a hug and some tender words, and in just a short time, she was all better.  And we were both left feeling love for one another - rather than rejection on her part, and annoyance on mine, as has too often been the case in the past.

One Week In

Today is my first solo day with four kids.

I keep remembering that I have four kids now, and feeling blown away by the fact of it.  How did this happen?  It really sneaked up on me.  It seems like just yesterday that I came home from the hospital with baby Sly.  And my kids have all been born just about two years apart, which doesn't seem like a crazy pace (unlike my grandmother's, who had her eight kids in ten years!), but somehow, we've already hit four.

When we're out of the house, older parents often look at our children wistfully and tell us "it goes by so fast."  For a while, I think I was too caught up in the thick of things to really be aware of the truth of that statement, but suddenly, it's really starting to hit me.  It's all going by so fast!

Tom amazingly managed to pull off a week of paternity leave from work, and my mother-in-law was also visiting until yesterday.  So the transition to becoming a family of six was definitely smoothed out a bit.

But as for today, and having to deal with the daily tedium of caring for so many young children, I'm managing so far,

I was worried the older kids would have an especially rough day today since they're coming off a  full week of exciting visits from friends and family, and a very jumbled schedule.

Stella fell asleep at the dinner table last night.  That's what a new baby in the family + daylight savings time can do to you, I guess

This was Sly at lunch today, upset because he didn't want to eat the tuna noodle casserole that he wouldn't finish at breakfast.....that he wouldn't finish at dinner the night before.  Yes, we're those parents.

But we're making it through.  It helped that we didn't have to go anywhere this morning, and I could just jump back into our former routines.  I've been working really hard to keep my attitude in check today.  Because I know myself well enough to realize that once I let myself lose my patience with the kids once, it becomes that much easier to lose it again and again.

We "did school" today for the second time all month.  I'm not going to waste time feeling guilty about it, because, hey - I was nine months pregnant/newly postpartum for that whole time!  And what's homeschooling all about, if not the ability to be flexible and adjust things to your own family life?

Ever-pleasant Linus, peeling his clementine into the trash

A number of friends and people from church have offered to bring us meals over these next few weeks, which will be so helpful for me.  Obviously, providing meals to a new mother is useful in a material sense (i.e. there is a meal already sitting in my fridge for me, mostly prepared and ready to go), but I'm especially appreciating what it does for me mentally (i.e. the sheer freedom of not having to worry about what I'll make for dinner or whether I'll have to drag four kids out to the supermarket for something relieves so much potential stress).  Seriously - if you know anyone expecting a new baby, try to bring them a meal!

My Flora - what a doll baby!

I think I may consider easing back into more regular blogging.....I have a birth story that I owe it to Flora to write down, at any rate.  And the photos on my header and side bar are in sore need of an update!

7 Quick Takes (Vol. 44)

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It seems like the Catholic-blogging topic du jour is Santa.  Everyone's sharing whether they "do Santa" or not and explaining why.  Check out some of these posts at: Catholic All Year,  One Catholic Mama, and Carrots for Michaelmas.



Our Santa policy will surely get more defined over the years, but for now we're still taking the "neither confirm nor deny" approach (in the words of Haley) that we settled on last year.  We still have a few books about Santa (I weeded out any that weren't otherwise a good story with attractive art work), but 90% of our Christmas book collection is based on the birth of Christ.  I'm confident that Sly understands the "real meaning of Christmas" from the conversations we've been having about it during Advent, and the Adventen [that should be a word.  Like Lenten, but Adventen.  Make sense?] practices we use: Advent wreath, hymn-singing, Nativity sets, Jesse Tree, etc..

At four years old, Sly is definitely getting more interested in the Santa idea this year.  I can tell he's wrestling with whether the tale is true or not.  And I'm okay with that.  If a direct question comes up, I'll probably handle it similarly to my approach to some of our other stories.  When I read the kids a story about a Saint or a version of the Nativity that's faithful to the real story, I often tell them, "This is a TRUE story."  But if we we read a made-up story about some lamb or donkey or camel that was present at the birth of Christ, I don't say "this is a true story."  Sometimes, Sly asks afterwards.  And I tell him, "well, parts are true - such as this and this.  And Mary might have said something like this.  But we don't really know what the lamb was named, or if it happened just this way....What do you think?"

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My mom gave Stella a new outfit - a tunic top with leggings.  And I realized that I just don't understand modern fashions.  I was dressing her, and put her in the leggings....with high socks and tennis shoes.  It looked pretty silly.  I think the right "look" is to wear leggings barefoot with ballet flats?  See, I don't even know.  But it's wintertime in Pittsburgh!  It's cold!  So I guess she'll just look silly in her socks.

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But remember when leggings used to be called "stretch pants"?  (Or, as we called them when I rowed on the crew team in high school, "spandex pants").  Remember when yoga pants were called "sweat pants"?  I feel like if we called things by their non-trendy names, maybe they wouldn't seem so acceptable as everyday wear!

[Flip-flops also used to be called thongs, which just sounds especially bad these days, but I'm conveniently not mentioning this example because I have been known to wear flip-flops from time to time...]

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As much as I am behind on a lot of technology, it's dismaying sometimes to see just how dependent I've become on some things.  The other day I was going to a cookie exchange for my mom's group.  I have been to the hostess's house many times, and yet I'd always just used the GPS to find my way.  When I got in the car, the GPS cord was broken, and the thing would not turn on.  After struggling with it in the car for a while, I dashed into the house so I could print out some directions from Google (which now seems sooooo old-fashioned), but the website with her address wasn't opening.  Gah!  I literally didn't know where she lived or how to get there without my technology!  So I had to get really old-fashioned, and call her on the phone and ask her how to get there.

And then later that night, I had a dream which was just...me scrolling through Facebook.  And my imagination was coming up with realistic-sounding statuses that real-life friends might post, and I was having internal dialogue about them ("oh, that's interesting").  Wow.  Maybe I need to go on a technology fast...
 

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We had some family photos taken last month.  Basically, every year that we have a new baby in the family, we get a professional photo taken.  It provides a much-appreciated yet simple Christmas gift to give the grandparents.  And cheap, too, if you hunt down coupons for free sitting fees and free prints, which I always do.  I've never spent more than $20 on our professional photos.

JCPenny also threw in a few free photo Christmas cards from our shots.  I went against my personal stance against photo cards, and sent those ones to select out-of-town relatives who I knew would love them.

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Sly and I are still making our way through his reading lessons.  Recently, the pace has slowed down a lot with us getting through only two lessons a week (as opposed to one lesson a day, which is the intention).  For a while now, I've suspected that Sly could be finishing each lesson pretty easily, if he could just focus.  Reading lessons had become a little martydom for me, a momentous struggle not to yell at him for all his wiggling, messing around, intentional mis-pronounciations, etc.

But I finally found something that's helped him to concentrate on the lessons, and I think it's hilarious how well it's working.  Before we start our lesson, I give him a cookie.  I let him take one bite.  And then I tell him he can finish it only when the lesson is over.  The cookie sits there on the table the whole time.  He has that little taste still in his mouth, and he just can't wait to finish it.  Sly has been moving through the lessons so beautifully since I've started this!  He does know all the sounds and words, he just needed some incentive to concentrate :-)

Nope.  Not above bribing my kid with food.

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Over Thanksgiving, Tom's mom treated the two of us to a date night at their local BYOB paint-your-own-picture place (her offer included chauffeuring us there and back, providing us with wine and snacks to take with us, and watching all three kids for the night!!).   It was a "couple painting" night where two people each make half a scene and you put the canvases together to make a full painting.

we're in the leftish foreground

An art instructor taught us how to paint, so no experience was necessary.  It was pretty fun, and I was pretty impressed that I managed to paint something half-decent...even though it is a cheesy snowman.

Tom refused to kiss me under the mistletoe, because he was embarrassed enough by the dorky snowman painting

wed joked that the male snowman is reaching out longingly for the woman, and she's saying, "um, we can just shake hands."

Quick Takes is hosted at This Ain't the Lyceum