Category: Things Kids Say

This Month in Girls-May 2013

I have been neglecting this monthly themed post, but I am going to do it for May. This month I am going to talk about each kid and what I love about them. 🙂

With the baby F, I delight in her little face and happy smile. I love how she curls up into my lap when she nurses to sleep. I love her little way of grabbing food off her tray and trying it out with her mouth. Her sisters talk about how she is angry when she tries a new food, because her expression is always a quizzical frown. I love when she can’t stop smiling whenever one of her sisters is looking at her and how they make her laugh more than M or I do. I even love how she needs me and how being worn in a sling is all she wants. I love how when her sisters play games with her, she can’t stop giggling and then all three are giggling together. I love waking up with her squealing next to me every morning. I am not sure why I disliked co-sleeping so much with the other two, but with F it is really sweet.

For L, she is my sweet 2.5 year old. I love that she is cuddly now that she is older, and will behave in Church if she is able to sit on my lap and be held by me. I love that her favorite breakfast is a piece of bread with butter (we were fighting her for weeks to eat cereal and milk before we discovered this). I wish I could take her to a store without her escaping the cart or screaming to get out, but that is not the two year old way, so I suppose I love the humility of having a screaming child whenever I shop. I love the way she does the Sign of the Cross (it is too random to describe in words) and how she does the “mea culpa” chest pounds perfectly. I love that whenever she talks about the past it always starts with, “Yesterday…” even when the event was weeks ago. I especially love her cheeks; they are so squeezable! I love how she knows just how to torment her big sister, but does it because she loves her. I love that she loves to play with G and wants to participate in all the pre-school activities.

And my first baby, four year old G, I find myself reminiscing about our time when she was the only baby. She was always good at the store, because she had my full attention. We took two naps a day together (or I would just lay next to her with a good book). I think F looks a lot like G as a baby and that must be why I am remembering her babyhood so much. I love that G is becoming more confident in drawing. She draws bodiless people, just heads, faces, and limbs and very detailed flowers; she had a lot of trouble with the fine motor skills when she was a toddler, so I love it whenever she draws or writes anything. I love how she is a good helper (when she chooses), and can clear her own place. I love how she is developing her own ideas and telling us what she thinks, “Sleeping Beauty is quite the story.” I love how she memorizes most stories, poems, and songs she hears. I love how she sings to herself whenever she is alone.

I am not sure exactly what changed or when it happened, but I am finally happy again. With my three babies I have gone into a post-partum funk, this last one it was a diagnosed post-partum depression, but besides that where I just do not feel like myself. I am fairly certain it is not a lower level of stress, because this whole moving thing is stressful. It is not the ease of taking care of three kids, because I definitely do not find that easy. But I am focusing on trying to love them and let go of my ideas of how things should be. I am learning greater patience and self-sacrifice. I am so happy I have my sweet girls, and so happy that I am finally able to enjoy them.

Moving, Late Quick Takes- Saturday May 25

M was sad I did not do Quick Takes yesterday, so here I am linking up with Jen late.
 
1. This is what my living room looks like and I am trying to ignore it so it does not drive me nuts:

 2. But then again our toys have never been so organized.

 Bedtime cleanup has been a breeze.

3. On the bright side, moving day is Monday. So maybe we will be able to live in order again soon. It also is not snowing in Minnesota anymore, so that is good. I also have fresh, hand picked, locally grown dandelions daily from my sweet daughters:

They pick only the most exquisite dandelions.
4. My new double-oven/range is at the store and will be delivered on TUESDAY! Hooray! M is going to attempt a self-installation since the installation quote I received yesterday was a little bit insane. Hopefully the youtube videos he watched will suffice since we will not have internet for about a week after we move in. Thus, I will not be around for any posting those days, but hopefully it will not be too warm out to try out my five burners and two ovens…
5. I know I promised pictures of the new house at some point, but here’s the thing. No room is entirely complete yet, and I hate to post pictures of an unfinished product. So I will post each room as I put the finishing touches on them. Mostly it is curtains and then rugs that need to be done.
6. Baby-o is working on that first tooth fairly consistently these days, which means naptime trouble and lots of crankiness. However, we also started her on solids and this time I am skipping the purees and doing Baby Led Weaning, which basically is giving the baby finger foods which she can pick up and feed herself. (“Weaning” is what the Brits call feeding babies things besides breastmilk). I tell you it makes baby feeding a lot easier since all I have to do is throw food on her high chair tray. Yesterday she ate three steamed broccoli “trees”and loved them! 
7. M is at his university’s graduation today. The house we are renting is adjacent to a house full of seniors apparently. I was explaining to the girls what graduation was and about the robes they wear when a whole group of our neighbors trooped outside with their parents and were taking photographs outside. We have been calling the house next store the “party palace” since they tend to play loud music at night at least once a week. As the girls were looking at the graduates out front I heard G say, “No L, it is called the Party Palace because they play bad music all the time!” I am glad we are instilling a love of good music in our children with orchestral and chant Masses and other good music in the home… 🙂

Seven Quick Takes Friday-May 17

One of the things I am really looking forward to after we move is getting back to a normal schedule, and that means blogging beyond Quick Takes. If it weren’t for this link-up at Jen’s blog, my blog would be utterly deserted these days. It is a bit insane what we are attempting to do with three kids four and under, but we are managing somehow…and here come the Quick Takes:

1. My parents and sister came to visit Sunday night through Thursday morning, and it is incredible how much can get accomplished with so many adults around. The house is about ready for us to move in! There is another mornings worth of odd jobs and then we will be set.

2. I am going to have to learn how to use the power drill if I am going to get my curtain rods up. I am a bit nervous to try, but I need to do it. Is it allowable to hang curtain rods with a baby in a sling? Maybe we could get the on-the-back position down and then it would be safe…

3. Remember my yellow console table? I did not get it, but I am planning on painting my current free-standing cupboard yellow and taking off the doors and putting in a shoe basket. I also still need to paint the girl’s ($20 antique store find) dresser white so it looks presentable. It has been living and being used in their closet this past year, but the new house closet is not big enough. I am saving the painting projects for July. I have a vision of the baby happily napping all morning for several days and the big girls playing nicely in the yard while I paint…uh huh…

4. There is some packing accomplished now, no thanks to me. M did the family room bookshelves, and my sister and mom did started in on the living room and kitchen. Now for the rest… We have a week until the move.

5. Did I mention our new oven? In the many unexpected things about our new house, one of them was several gas leaks in the oven that came with it. It was not caught by the inspection. So rather than repair the oven, we decided to tap into savings and by a new one:

I am for serious. This baby is a gas double oven, with five burners including a middle one for a skillet and two super boil burners. I am really excited to cook with it! It also makes my kitchen three steps closer to my dream kitchen.

What my oven will look like next Thanksgiving. The top has cake because it will be L’s birthday.

The catch is that it will not ship until two days after we move in, so this means we will have to do crockpot, foreman grill, charcoal grill, toaster oven cooking for a week or so…

6. We had a fun Mother’s Day. M’s uncle, aunt, and cousins live on a farm about two hours away in Wisconsin, and we spent the day at their farm. We got to see the new kids, kittens, and chicks and some pregnant cows. The kids had a blast and I got to sit around and eat all day. The best part of the food were grilled veggies made in one of these:

I could eat only veggies for dinner if the were always cooked like that. The were amazing. I am pretty sure the vegetables were zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and asparagus. These veggies are a reason to move the gas grill to top of the “extras” list or I will need to figure out how to make the charcoal grill easier for me to use…

7. You know how I said that we were doing well with home schooling lately? Well I think preschool was having a week long vacation due to family visiting. I know the structure helps the kids stay happy, so even though we are packing all next week I am going to try to get some preschool back into our schedule. We did do a little today, however, when we talked about the M-E-N-A-R-D-S on the first store we went to today and the T-A-R-G-E-T on another. “Mommy, Target has two Ts in it!” We did some color work when I sent her to find brown sugar. I am pretty sure picking dandelions and running around the yard count for science and gym class. So maybe we did well with home schooling preschool this week…

Seven Quick Takes Friday, APRIL 19

Some snowy pictures from up here in Siberia Minnesota. The snow varied from 6-12 inches throughout the yard.

1. Snow lands in such a funny way on various things. I loved these snow spikes on the porch slats.

2. Contemplating the 5755395839859385938th snow of the “season”. L said that it was Spring now, and when I asked if this is what Spring looks like G informed me, “This is what the start of Spring is like.” My girls are true Buffalo gals.

3. A tree.

4. The snow next to the neighbor’s house got as high as the second level… wait is that a giant standing in the right side of the frame?

5. Here is L planting snow in the garden. I guess this is how Spring rolls here.

6. Tulips from California, shipped to Trader Joes in St. Paul, standing up in inches of snow. What does it mean?

7. My toddler sized snowman. The snow was not very cooperative for packing, but I did get to build my first snowman this year!

Head over to Grace at Camp Patton for the rest of those linking up this week.

Seven Quick Takes: April 5

1. M is in San Diego, CA right now. He keeps on texting me pictures of palm trees, sunsets on the ocean, and panda bears. So I texted him a picture of an ugly bike rack in St. Paul. I won’t complain about our weather here because the high has been above freezing for about a week now, and many days above 40°F! He is in CA giving a paper at a conference, which he has to do to get tenure someday, and sightseeing with a college friend who lives there. I think he is having fun.

2. We are having fun here as well. While M went to the San Diego Zoo yesterday, we went to the Como Park zoo today. When I told G we were going to the zoo, she asked, “Are we going to meet Daddy there?” It would be kind of cool if each zoo had a secret connector to another or something… Also, at the zoo there were a couple of families with at least 6 kids and I wanted to stop and ask them if they were Catholic and home schoolers, but I did not of course.

3. My wonderful mother-in-law is in town to help me manage the wild take care of the children. They are extra active and willful with their father gone. Tomorrow I have to put them all to bed alone since my help is leaving at noon and M does not get in until 9pm. I am contemplating declaring it movie night (their first one!) for the big girls until I have the baby asleep because I will have no other way of preventing them from knocking down my bedroom door repeatedly (as they exit their own room and beds) as I am putting the baby to bed.

4. I started running again this week for the first time since I was about 15 weeks pregnant with F. The weather is finally warm and I decided that I had no more excuses for putting off running. I had forgotten how much I enjoy running and how it adds in a positive way to my mood.

5. Four months is the magic age for good sleepers to become bad sleepers. I am now wishing that babies were born with all of their teeth (though I am thankful they are not during the first week of nursing). Anyway, lets just say that the only positive thing for me in F needing me next to her to stay asleep at night is that I have been going to bed at 10pm (after her first wake up) instead of 11pm.

6. I hope this is not too complainy of a post. I am feeling pretty tired and cranky today. I have not yet read the thing everyone is sharing about the Pope talking about not complaining…

7. I have been eating a lot of Easter candy this week. Let’s just say it is a good thing that running increases my appetite. I am sure the sugar intake is not helping with my stress of being husbandless for the time being, but it is a temporary relief I suppose. When M was away interviewing last winter I spent a lot of evenings with a daiquiri, so maybe candy is a better stress reliever than rum?

Head over to Jen’s blog for more quick takes!

Seven Quick Takes-Friday March 22

1. In case you have not heard it is Spring. But I guess that is not something we have in Minnesota. So all of you who have Spring, please enjoy it for me. However, today is sunny and 31°F so I went for a walk once the kids were down for naps and M was doing some grading at home.

2. G had a well visit today up at the family clinic that we have been frequenting way too much this winter. The doctor suggested we do a food allergy and celiac panel on her. She was awesome through the blood draw (it kind of stinks for kids that they have to draw as much blood as they draw out of adults for these tests). She did not even cry. So, we should find out next week if she has any other food intolerances. Apparently asthma, allergies, and eczema are commonly linked in family genetics; all things which are common at least on my side of the family. I’d like to think that intellectual prowess us also included in the DNA.

New vacuum and L’s little foot.

3. Our vacuum died last week, and after the birthday festivities and relatives went home I started to search for a new one. Using the resources available to me I looked at Consumer Reports and asked the advice of my Facebook friends. There was a lot of pressure to buy the Shark Navigator Lift-Away, so I did some research and found out that I could get the professional model at Bed, Bath, and Beyond (with a 20% off coupon) for Amazon’s list price on the basic one. The professional has a hard floor attachment which I am excited to try in the new house. I tried it out as soon as I got it home and it picked up so much hair and dust that I am disgusted at the amount of filth we had been living in… well it was not that bad, but it was a lot.

4. The kids have been really into having a new pope. They have a duplo train that has a smoke stack and I overheard them the other day exclaiming that there was smoke coming out of it and that we had a new pope.

When G and I were driving to the doctor’s this morning she noticed a building with white smoke pouring out of it. She said: “White smoke! It is like having a new pope!” I then explained to her about the special chimney on the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican and that was the one that announced the new pope. So, we then talked about what the Vatican was and also the Vatican flag. When we were at our awesome Catholic doctor’s office there was a book with St. Peter’s Basilica on the cover. G saw it and said: “Look! It is where the pope lives!”

5. Tonight M and I are going to watch the last show of season three of Downton Abbey. We were using the awesome free PBS app to watch it until they took down all the episodes. Now we are spending 1.99 an episode to watch them from Amazon. I suppose that is not so bad considering how much money we save by not going out on Friday nights due to having kids. Unfortunately, my Facebook friends enthusiasm for the show already spoiled the main event in this last episode, but maybe I misread their status (M tells me that status is the plural of status) and it won’t be so bad after all?

6. The underwriter has approved us and we are set to close on April 22! Then we will officially be paying a bank to live in a house instead of paying a landlord, and in 30 years, no one! And to clarify my post about doing things on the house. We are not moving until the end of May since our lease in our current home will not be up yet.

7. Finally, if you have not done so yet and want to easily follow my blog on Facebook. Please “like” it by using the handy little box to the right. 🙂

Read more Quick Takes at Jen’s blog www.conversiondiary.com.

Seven Quicktakes Friday-March 15

1. Beware the Ides of March! G is four today (yesterday)! I have been a mother of an out of the womb child for four years. Can you believe it?

2. We went out for dinner on Sunday to celebrate the new house (which appraised properly and now we just have to wait for closing, yay!). M and I both ordered drinks, and we got carded. Us with our three kids got carded. I guess we still look young. Yay!

3. Yesterday (Thursday) was M’s birthday. This is the dinner he requested. He may or may not have eaten all of that pasta. That was the serving dish, but there was more in the pot and he had seconds… That is goat cheese. G says that she likes goat cheese because it is “soooo creamy.”

4. I also made this cake for M.

It has dark chocolate and coffee in it.


And almond crust with chocolate ganache on top.


And tofu. It was really good and almost vegan, except I used real butter and milk. It goes really well with breakfast, as breakfast, or as second breakfast. 

5. M said I could get this for the new house. 

From http://www.amazon.com/BISSELL-Natural-Sweep-Sweeper-92N0A/dp/B001GL1NXU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363376536&sr=8-1&keywords=bissell+natural+sweep+dual+brush+sweeper

I bet I could convince G to use it and her help would actually be effective.

6. My mom is in town and is coloring with G. G is having my mom draw Noah’s Ark. 

G: “Draw people drowning!”
Mom: “It has been raining for so long there aren’t any other people around.”
L: “Draw people drowning!!!!”

My kids are entirely normal. I promise.

7. I am throwing a birthday party with friends for G. I think it is going to be pretty lame from the kids perspective. There is no theme or decorations. M is at the store right now getting a few balloons, but no helium. There has been speculation that Fr. Z does birthday parties among our friends in St. Paul, but we forgot to invite him. 

Head over to Jen’s for more Quick Takes.

Waiting Week

Four years ago today I was 9+ months pregnant with G. M was on Spring Break his first year in graduate school for his PhD. G was due on March 7 and that was the first day of his break. The idea was for the baby to come at the beginning of the week and then him to have a whole week off for us to adjust to the new life of being parents. That did not happen. Four years ago today my sister went into labor and had her second child and daughter who is also my Goddaughter. We were due the same day. G decided to wait until her father’s birthday to kick me into labor. I made his birthday dinner with some friends over. The contractions got stronger and stronger and closer together as we ate dinner, had cake, and chatted. Our friends suggested playing a board game as we often did after our dinner parties. “Actually,” I said, “I am pretty sure I am in labor.” They got really excited and said they would go home. They could not wait to hear our news. M and I started practicing our Bradley relaxation techniques, called the doctor, called family and finally decided to go to the hospital around midnight. G was born 5 hours later on the Ides of March. Now she is about to be four, and is a sweet, pretty, intelligent, and pious little girl who either wants to be a princess, nun, or marry her three year old friend who she has playdates with…

Photo by bk1bennett.

This year we are waiting for the white smoke. Today it was black. I should the girls the closing of the Sistine Chapel on the live broadcast by EWTN, and am now finally an EWTN watcher. (I love when TV that is worth watching is available online since we do not have a TV.) The girls seem unable to distinguish between baseball Cardinals and Church cardinals, since after seeing the doors close, L requested to see Fredbird. At any rate we have been telling them about praying for the conclave and for the new pope. Maybe they will be able to see some live smoke streaming. This is the first time in their lives I will let them watch live television. Pope TV is probably the best that TV can be.

Here we are waiting. Maybe it will be the Ides, and that is not a bad thing for the next pope unless he picks the name Caesar I which would be just wrong… But I know of a sweet little girl born on the Ides and she is just fine.

Seven Quicktakes Friday-Feb. 1

I am going to link up today, so make sure you go visit Jen for all the quicktakes.

1. The major thing that happened to me this week was the realization that I have been having mild postpartum depression. Some days I have been totally fine, but other days I have felt completely overwhelmed at the thought of taking care of the kids and the house. I was attributing it to the adjustment to everything new in my life, but it turns out it is probably a hormonal imbalance. I was shot up with some progesterone yesterday and I am already noticing a difference. Hooray! So please keep me and the family in your prayers. And also please pray for someone else I am close to who has been diagnosed with depression (the non-postpartum version).

2. And here is an advertisement for the Creighton Model of Natural Family Planning and NaProtechnology. They only reason I went to the doctor about feeling not normal was because my charting (which I started dutifully at 56 days postpartum which is what they ask when one is totally breastfeeding) indicated that my hormones levels were not quite right. I had a follow-up with my practitioner and she told me to call my doctor which lead to me getting some more hormones which after 30 hours seem to be helping a lot. So, if you are thinking about charting; having a regular follow-up person and charting can help with a lot of things, not just for avoiding or achieving pregnancy. Such as helping you be a nice mom instead of a spastic yelling mom who can’t handle tantrums at all…

3. G gave this to me today and said: “This is to help you with your blog.” Here it is:

I think that is a “G”.

4. We went to the Mall of America on Saturday despite G’s pleas to go to the art museum. My kid is already geeky. We got some smelly soaps since I had a gift card from my birthday in June that I had not used. Now everytime G washes her hands she says, “Mmmm, this soap smells like flowers! Do you want to smell my hands mom?!”

5. Lent is coming up. I am going to adapt a Tenebrae service this week for a Lenten devotion for my family. Look for more on it at Truth and Charity this week. Also, don’t forget that tomorrow is Candlemas, the Presentation of our Lord, and the last day of the Christmas/Season after Epiphany. So, it is the last day for your nativity scene and tree.

6. Now that I am going to be feeling better, I am going to attempt to do potty training for real again soon. Typical potty training episode so far which is why I had given up:

L: “I have to go potty.”
Me: “Okay, let’s go!” I put her on the toliet.
Me: “Have you gone yet, L?” L grabs at the toliet paper and pulls off a piece.
Me: “If you go you can have a frozen blueberry!”
L: “Blueberry!”
Me: “Have you gone yet? I am going to count to ten and then you go. One, two, three, four, five…”
L: “A flag!” She waves the toliet paper in the air.
Me: “Are you going to go?”
L: “No. All done.” She drops in the toliet paper in the toliet and then flushes.

7. I have just started Sigrid Undset’s biography on Catherine of Sienna. What an incredible life. I will probably be blogging about sainthood in the future, but one thing I do know and I told M last week is that I am not living a life of heroic virtue. His response: “I could have told you that!” Thanks dear. 🙂

Some Thoughts on the Liturgical Worship of God

I did not realize how much I really love our new parish in St. Paul of St. Agnes Church until we came home after a long vacation to see family and went again to Mass in the small daily Mass chapel. While traveling we went with our parents and siblings to the parishes that we went to when we still lived at our respective homes. There was the familiarity of the place and the way liturgy was celebrated at each church, and in a way they felt like home. But they were missing the aspects tradition in the liturgy that characterized the Church for years.

We went to the 8 AM Mass with our three children for the first time. Father processed in with the male altar servers and started the Mass. He read the readings and gave a solid homily. And then he turned his back to the people, or is it that he turned to face the tabernacle and the crucifix. He led us in prayer (in English for daily Mass) as he prayed the offertory and then the Eucharistic prayer. As L would call it, “Body of Christ”, was on the altar and then he turned to offer the sign of peace and then continued on with the liturgy. The congregation all knelt at a communion rail and received on the tongue. As that morning Mass progressed I realized that good “saying the black and doing the red liturgy” really leads me to God and teaches me how to love Him. The proper worship due to God is that which has been passed down to us by Tradition, and it is in the liturgy that we love Him. I guess I have a “liturgical love language” towards God.

Today was the orchestral Mass at St. Agnes which was Antonin Dvorak’s Mass in D. I got to nurse F during the Kyrie in the small Marian side chapel:

I wonder if she will retain the memory of the Kyrie and the painting of Our Lady and baby Jesus that she was gazing at when she finished nursing. It was a Latin Novus Ordo Mass (new Mass as opposed to Latin Extraordinary Form). It was beautiful, between the music with the chanted propers and orchestral Mass parts and the “dance” of the priest, deacons, and servers on the altar as they prepared for the Eucharist and then the Sacrament was there. There is something special that has been preserved at St. Agnes in its liturgies, and I am so glad that we get to be a part of it now. As I am learning proper worship of God there, I am finding that the proper liturgical worship I learn there allows me to worship God no matter what the church I am in.

P.S. Just as I was publishing this L stood up next to me and sang: “Hosanna in the highest! Hosanna in the highest! Hooray!”