The Best Place on Earth

When my dad's father was a boy, his family would sometimes travel up to New York State to spend a few weeks on the shores of Lake Erie. When he had children of his own, he and my grandmother took them on frequent trips to the same area - mostly to a particular little turn-of-the-century quiet beach community. Sometime in the 70s, they finally bought a cottage of their own. And that little place has come to mean so much to my family. Although it has a name, as they all do up there ("Maple Oak"), it's referred to simply as The Cottage.

The little beach homes up there are all known as cottages (not beach homes, not cabins for goodness sake!). They are simply made from wooden boards over a frame - without any insulation. They have big open front porches, swings or hammocks in the yards, and some of them (like ours) have wooden board walls that don't actually reach the ceilings (to allow for air circulation, in a time when people didn't have fans and air conditioning).

Life up there is perfect. Simple, beautiful, and relaxing. People walk or ride bikes to get where they are going. The neighborhood is pretty small, and yet there are woods, three playgrounds, tennis courts, volleyball courts, soccer field, basketball court....and of course, beach. None of these things, I feel the need to say, are "well-kept" or "monitored" or in any way pretentious.

I've been going up there my entire life, and I can confidently say - as can every member of my large extended family - that it is THE best place on Earth. Each summer, we have one week which is designated "Family Week" where the entire extended family goes up together. My grandparents (who are no longer living) have 8 kids, 26 grandkids, and (so far) 19 great-grandkids. When you factor in everyone's spouses too...it's a big crowd! Two of my uncles have purchased cottages of their own, as have two of my dad's cousins. That makes five cottages under our family name! And believe me, we need all the space we can get during Family Week.

I write about this now because we are leaving to go there today. Even as an adult, I still long for this week all year, and get a thrill in my heart when we finally arrive at The Cottage. This year will be especially poignant, because I'll be introducing my son to the place for the first time.

I could go on about it for hours and hours. But instead, let me just share some of the story through pictures. I hope you readers can get a small glimpse of what makes this place so amazing for me.

It's Apparently NFP Awareness Week...

Note: I know that NFP is a scientific and very effective way of understanding a woman's fertility. It can be used to great effect in helping couples with fertility troubles to conceive. This is certainly a good thing. But, as we all know, NFP is mainly discussed as a moral alternative to artificial birth control. And this is the aspect of it which I want to address in this post.

All over the Catholic Blogosphere, people are singing the praises of NFP today. I admit, when I first learned, years ago, just why contraception was wrong - and that there was a Catholic alternative for postponing pregnancy - I thought it sounded pretty great. But over the years, after reading more about it, talking to people who use it, and dabbling in (an admittedly minor and half-hearted way) it myself, I have to say: I just don't get what all the hype is about.

Sure, it's moral, and it's effective. But that does NOT mean it's ideal. For a married couple to have to postpone pregnancy is NEVER ideal. It means your family is experiencing tough circumstances. Raising children is the primary purpose of marriage. Of course, it's virtuous to be able to accept the fact, and cooperate with God's Will for no new babies for a time. But it's basically a self-imposed temporary infertility. Isn't it proper to think of infertility as something less than good?

You always read how NFP is so great for "communication" and engenders "respect" between a married couple. Some sources even seem to promote it merely for this reason. Why doesn't anyone talk about the difficulties of abstinence? The ever-present questioning of one's motives? The strain it can put on a marriage?

Maybe Catholics are too concerned with spreading the Gospel of NFP that they don't want to admit any of the negatives?

I don't know. Sometimes I get sick of hearing people go on about NFP like a high-schooler with a crush. One priest once asked us what we thought about the idea of using NFP all our lives. Using it "to achieve pregnancy" at those times when God seemed to will it, and "to avoid pregnancy" at times when He did not. I understand that sacrifice - even of a sexual nature - can be good for the soul. But we said we didn't think that was the right thing for us to do. I mean...what ever happened to just leaving things completely in God's hands?

Sometimes, too, I feel unsettled because it seems like some people use NFP with a contraceptive mentality. I'm not trying to judge other people here. I really can't know what anyone's situation is actually like. But I have trouble seeing a desire to "space" children as a grave enough reason for using NFP.

Maybe if there was a child with special needs, the parents might legitimately need more time to adjust. Or they'd had multiples or something....

So many people cite financial reasons for postponing children. I wonder if everyone is being realistic about it, though. Okay, if you don't have health insurance, or both parents are unemployed, it's probably not the best time for a new baby. But kids can be much less expensive to care for than society wants us to believe.

Unless our financial situation completely turns around, there's pretty much no way we can pay for our kid(s) to go to college. We might not be able to give our children a ton of gifts at Christmas, or go out to dinner much, or have two cars. But these are facts that I'm okay with. I think God wants us to experience some measure of poverty. And it's okay for children to be raised in homes without a lot of money. The children who lived through the Great Depression grew up to be known as "The Greatest Generation." And there's a reason for that.

Maybe I'll understand better after I've been married longer, and have more children. Maybe one day, we will have to use NFP, and I'll experience the blessings it can bring. But for now, I just thank God that we don't have to use it.

I'd be interested to hear thoughts, experiences, and wisdom that anyone has to offer about this topic. I apologize if anything I said brought offense to someone. Please correct any misunderstandings I may have.

Extending our Cloth-Loving Ways

Ever since I've discovered the joys and benefits of using cloth diapers over disposables, I've had the urge to rid myself of other unnecessary disposable items.

The first, and most obvious culprit was paper towels/paper napkins. Even though we were already pretty conservative with their use (I only buy the half-sheet size, and I try to use just half of that, when I can get away with it), I knew we could cut down on waste even more by going all cloth! Plus, I suspected that, like cloth diapers, I'd find "real" napkins to be much more absorbent and efficient than the paper ones.

I already had one set of six cloth napkins that I'd picked up at a flea market months before (simply because they were the lovely teal/aqua color of my kitchen!). And a trip to a "vintage clothing and furniture sale" yielded me a handful of hand-embroidered hankies for $.25 each.


We keep them in a little basket on the counter (purchased at a dollar store). We really don't need too many, just being the two of us (Sly hasn't quite mastered the use of a napkin!). And the great thing is, I just need to use one all day, for all my meals. When one gets dirty, I just toss it down the basement stairs, where we do the laundry.

We really only use these "nicer" napkins for wiping our face and hands while eating. If I need to clean spills, wipe down the counter, or remove the typical huge mess off Sly's highchair, we have dishrags that we use.

As you can see, we do still keep a roll of paper towels. There are a few tasks where these come in handy...such as wiping excess grease out of our cast-iron pans, and squashing spiders!

Rubber Ducky Explosion and Growing Baby

Sly is 11 months old now (well, technically, tomorrow). This makes me realize just how quickly the time has gone by. I cannot believe he's almost ONE!

My mind has been planning out what the do for a birthday party for him. Although I fully realize that he won't really care what sort of party he has, nor will he remember a single bit of it, I do want to put in a little bit of effort to make it cute and baby-appropriate.

I decided on a rubber ducky "theme", since Sly is obsessed with rubber duckies. In my mind, the extent of rubber duckiness was going to be some sort of cute homemade invitations (which are currently in progress - will post about them later), and - if I could manage it, being that I have no experience in cake-decorating - a rubber ducky cake.

I made the mistake, however, of mentioning this to my mother. Why don't I ever learn? My mom goes CRAZY with shopping anytime she has the slightest excuse. One day I casually mention to her that I want to make a rubber ducky cake, and the next day, she's calling me to tell me about the extraordinary amount of unnecessary rubber ducky items that she ALREADY ORDERED online!!

Some of the things I remember: Tons of mini-duckies to float in punch (and she bought me a new punchbowl too, since mine broke a couple years ago), felt ducky wall decorations, an 18-inch inflatable duck, ducky necklace party favors, a new ducky onesie for Sly, a ducky t-shirt for him, balloons, 2 tablecloths (we only have one table!!), some duck that all the guests are supposed to sign, and the worst one - 12 inflatable rubber ducky coasters. What?! There was a lot of other stuff that I can't even remember. So...this party is going to be a bit over-the-top now. And it looks like every future child we have is going to be having a rubber ducky themed 1st birthday, since what the heck else am I supposed to do with all this stuff?!

Since we're trying to keep this party small - immediate family, the godparents, and a couple close friends only - I don't think there will even be ANY other kids there. haha.

*********
In other news, Sly has been confidently saying his first word over and over: "ball." It started out more like "BA!" but today he's been adding a slight l-sound at the end :-)

Also, my cousin got him to successfully walk across the floor to me (a distance of about 4 feet) several times in a row! Ahh, my baby's growing up!

Babysitting Duty

For the past two days, I've been babysitting my cousin's four young kids while she works (and I'm doing it again tomorrow, and maybe a few days next week!). She's mostly a stay-at-home mom, but has the occasional part-time assignment she needs to do.

The kids are one, three, four, and six years old. The oldest and the youngest ones are pretty easy to care for. The middle two, boy - well, they are pieces of work! They constantly have tantrums. It kind of makes me dread when Sly will be that age. These have been long, tiring days for me. And I've also had Sly with me, of course. So that's five kids to keep happy, when I'm only used to one. And I still have to come home in the evening and take care of my own house. Seriously - how do "working mothers" do it?

In some ways, it seems like this could be "good practice" for when we have more kids. For example, I now know more than I ever wanted to about wiping little kids poopy bums after they use the toilet. But it would be different if these kids were my own. I would likely have received them one at a time, for starters, and had the time to adjust after each new addition to the family. Plus, if they were my own, I would know them much better, and know how much I could realistically expect from them. I would be seen as "mom" rather than "entertainer." And I would have a stronger authority over them. I've really had to experiment with different tactics to try to figure out how to get them to do what they need to do...or to stop doing what they shouldn't be doing.

I know one of my brothers has watched them a couple times, and he always pulls the old, "let the little ones watch tv, and the oldest one play video games the whole time" trick. And, of course, that keeps them busy and very easy to watch. But something in me - I guess the fact that I'm now a mom myself and constantly thinking about how much I don't ever want to fall into that trap with my own kids - prevents me from using that.

The oldest one, Jonathan, begs constantly to be allowed to play video games. I know his parents definitely limit how much he can play them, but I've already seen the damage it has done. All morning, he complained about how bored he was [I should mention that I'm almost certain that he would not have attempted to get video game permission from his mother. He thought I would be easy to persuade]. At one point he even said, "I'm so bored. I don't understand why the only time I'm not bored is when I'm playing video games." Oh my gosh! I know why. It's because video games are like crack! Tom was not allowed any video games growing up, and always insisted we withhold them from our own kids. I used to be kind of resistant to that idea. I mean, we had them growing up, and it never got too bad. But I'm also a girl. I have now seen many examples of the startling negative impact they have on some kids, especially boys. So now I'm in agreement. I made Jonathan look for his own fun instead, and you know what? He eventually found it :-)

And now, just a few cute things...

Olivia, age 4, thinks Sly is called "Slide".


Olivia: Who's your boy?
Me: You mean...Sly?
Olivia: Nooo...your big boy.
Me: My husband?
Olivia: Yeah
Me: That's Tom.
Olivia [with a swoon]: Is he awesome?
Me: haha...yeah.

Jonathan: You know those things that when you have four of them, it's a dollar?

On Blessings

On Saturday, I attended the beautiful wedding of two friends. During the Mass, I didn't have Tom to help me baby-wrangle, since he was part of the wedding party. It's sometimes difficult to keep Sly content in church, where all he can think about are the rows and rows of lovely pews to climb along, and all the people who would be fun to grab.

For a while, I found a solution that worked. Standing, I held him to my chest, and rocked slowly back and forth. Sly was relaxed and peaceful. When I heard the priest say, "Let us ask for God's blessings," my immediate thought was, "I have God's greatest blessing right here!" as I squeezed Sly a little closer, and gave him a kiss on his head.

At that very moment, Sly reached his little pincer-hand around to the skin on the back of my arm, and pinched it SO HARD. Had I been anywhere but Mass, I surely would have let out an, "aaaargh!" As I removed his little claws from my arm, though, it came to me that perhaps God was telling me something there. Telling me that some of His blessings are painful. That just because they hurt makes them no less blessings, and we should be no less thankful for them.

Looking just at the issue of parenthood...When people refer to children as "blessings" - which they so often do - it seems to be mostly based on the great joy that children bring to our lives. But what about the often painful ways that children help us to grow in holiness? As parents, we are forced to sacrifice much, to die to self everyday. And surely, anything that pushes us a little closer to Sainthood is a tremendous blessing from God.

The Whole Kitten Ordeal, Part IV

...continued from the other day

Iive ("ee-vay") was ushered to a back room, and Mom and I were shown to an exam room to sit and wait for the doctor. When he eventually came (a different vet from the one who'd taken her back), he confirmed what we already knew - the only thing to do for her would be a c-section. But things were more complicated now. The remaining kittens were all surely dead, and there was no real way of knowing how long they'd been so. Changes were, some nasty infections were setting in. She would need antibiotics, and there was more risk to her life than originally thought.

At this point, I was starting to regret or decision to wait until morning to get the c-section for her. "If we had done it last night", I thought, "maybe one of those kittens could have made it!" (I've since been told that even that was unlikely, as it still would have been over 24 hours since the onset of labor.)

The vet left to put together an estimate for the surgery. A vet tech came back about 20 minutes later with an itemized list of all the procedures and equipment, and how much each part would cost us. The list was more than a page long, and had many rounds of IVs, drugs, and other little unexpected charges. The c-section ALONE was something like $708! The total projected cost was listed as $1800-$2000. WHAT?!?! If we had stuck with the vet from the night before - the one who claimed she was more expensive than most vets - our estimated cost would have been $1300. And that was already way more than we thought we could afford. Now this was really getting out of hand!!

The vet tech told us it that the increased estimate was due to the fact that things were more serious now than they had been the night before - the risk of infection made many more interventions necessary. Now I REALLY wished we had just done it before! Tom and I had already been debating whether it was worth $1300 to save the life of a cat...but at the time, we also had to consider the lives of the three unborn kittens. Now, those lives were out of the equation...

Throughout all this, I was sending texts to Tom via his work e-mail, keeping him up-to-date on what was happening. I said "$2000 is a LOT of money!! I think we might have to consider...putting her to sleep." Poor Tom. All he wanted was to be with me at the vet to help make these tough decisions, but he was stuck at work, forced to communicate by text only. He said I should ask what Iive's chance of survival was, to help us make a decision. W were still were keeping in mind the generous offer of his parents to pay half the cost, and thought maybe we'd be crazy enough to go through with it all.

The vet tech went to get the doctor again. When he came back, my mom spoke up for me immediately, "listen - this estimate is much higher than we were expecting. You know, she's considering just having the cat put to sleep." The vet - who was actually a really nice guy - seemed taken aback. "Oh," he said, "we don't want you to have to consider that option. No. Let me take another look at this and see if I can cut out some of the less necessary procedures, and change out some of the drugs for less expensive ones..."

And this is when I learned a VERY IMPORTANT LESSON about visiting the vet. They often can give you a lower price: if you ask. When the initial estimate is put together, the vet will often choose all the "best" and top-of-the-line procedures. They will assume that the pet owner wants to do anything and everything to get their pet back to health. I used to think that they were just trying to gouge the customer, and take advantage of them during an emotional time to make a lot of money. But after all my interactions with various vets recently, I've come to see that they are actually just very passionate about saving the lives of their animal patients. It's not their money, so I don't think they really consider the cost too much.

The new estimate came back - only half a page long this time - and listed the final cost as $800-1100. Still a good chunk of change, but definitely more manageable. My mom and I were studying the paper, and noticed that the c-section itself was no longer listed there. The highest individual cost for something was $266 for "feline OVH" which didn't mean anything to us. We thought there was an error, and checked with a receptionist. Nope - that one item was the cost of a feline ovarian-hysterectomy (essentially, spaying, which we wanted). Of course. Why would they charge us for a $700 c-section of dead kittens when for $200, they would achieve the exact same thing by just removing the whole uterus? Again, I don't want to assume the vet was trying to cheat us with the original figure. But I think he realized he could save us money by billing it differently.

After a few more agonizing text exchanges with Tom, we decided to go for it. Tom made me promise to see Iive one more time, just in case she didn't make it (the vet gave her a 70% of coming out of everything fine). They brought her and the kittens back out, and I snapped a few pictures.

I asked what they would do with the two kittens, while Iive had surgery and recovered. They wouldn't be able to stay with Iive, they said. They'd be kept in a separate cage, and bottle-fed. "It's going to cost more money to have you guys lodge them and care for them, isn't it?" I asked. "Yes, a bit more" was the answer. So I asked if I would be able to take them home and care for them myself. They were fine with that, and went over what I needed to do. They packed the little ones into small box, and we headed home.

Kittens cannot regulate their body temperature well, and need their environment to stay between 80° and 90°. Thankfully, it's summertime, so we don't have the cold weather working against us. But the vet still advised us to use a hot water bottle or something similar. My mom remembered that she had a product called a SnugglePuppy (she had bought it for a pet dog, but never used it). This thing turned out to be perfect! It's a little stuffed puppy, and inside its belly is a mechanical "heart" that produces a realistic "heartbeat." It also came with heating packs which you could insert in the belly. The kittens took to it as their temporary mom. The only sad part was that they were constantly rooting around for a nipple on it, and mewing and mewing because they couldn't find one.

In a laundry basket now

For the next 30 hours, we were dropper-feeding them kitten formula (yes, they do make such a thing) every two hours. Tom and I had to take "shifts" setting our alarms and waking up during the night. It was like we had a newborn baby in the house again!

But the kittens made it through, and we got to pick up Iive the next night. She was groggy and not eating enough yet, but at least she accepted back her babies (we had been warned that she might not)!!

It's almost two weeks later now [geez - it took me forever to type out this whole saga!], and the babies are still doing well. One is much chunkier than the other, and they both seem larger than kittens typically are at this age - probably because there's so little competition over the milk supply. Their eyes opened a few days ago (kittens are born blind), and their ears are starting to lift and become more pointed.

We gave them both intentionally ridiculous names - ones that we've often joked about being potential names for future children, but would never actually use: Odoric (actual name of an obscure Saint we found in our "Is it a Saint's Name?" pamphlet a couple years ago), and Suitbert (after Fr. Suitbert Mollinger, who founded St. Anthony's Chapel, one of the largest reliquary churches in the New World).

Suitbert

Odoric

THE END!