Kain-isms

Kain- Is it possible to change your skin color?

Me, wondering if he was channeling Michael Jackson- Um...not very easily. Why? Do you want to be a black man when you grow up?

Kain- No. I want to be an Indian.

We've been doing a lot of westward expansion/Daniel Boone/Lewis and Clark type of reading lately. Guess he's enjoying it. :)

If it's free, it's for me!

Ok, I found this on someone's blog. Since I've plowed my way through tons of blog posts in the last week, I really don't remember where it came from now! Sorry about that. Anyway, Glidden is having a paint giveaway. Register here for a free quart of paint. Yay! Free stuff!

https://www.glidden.com/promotions/free-paint-giveaway.do

I ordered the granny smith white, which is really boring, I know. I really wanted to order something fun. But the only paint projects I have in mind right now are big ones...like walls and such. I thought I could use a small can to paint doors in the rooms I am working on.

Dear Good Morning America,

Good Morning America is my primary news source. It embarrasses me a little to type that. The intellectual snob in my head wants me to explain myself. I sit down most days with a bunch of laundry to fold, or the makings of a menu and shopping list for the week, or some paperwork to dig through, and I watch Good Morning America, zipping through the commercials and interviews with minor celebrities from Dancing With the Stars so I can see the headlines, weather, and anything else of interest. I don't really have time to read the daily newspaper anymore, and our local news drives me over the edge with their 6 minutes of headlines and 24 minutes of commercials, sports, and you tube video highlights. We don't have real cable, and I cannot even BEGIN to handle Kathy Lee Gifford, so it's just been me and you and my laundry folding, GMA.

But I don't know how much longer I can hang on. I knew this day would come. First, there's just been issues of general irritation...like the constant barrage of teeny bopper singers that grace your stages. How many Disney tween idols do you really need to put on a news show for adults anyway? And honestly, if I see one more "survive the recession" segment in which you interview a "struggling" family that is spending $12 a day on lattes and $50 a month to buy the latest dvd's for their kids...Oh the humanity! Being reduced to home-brewed coffee and Netflix!!!

But there's actual offensive stuff from time to time too...stuff that not only do I not want my kids to see, but that I really don't want to see myself. It wasn't too very long ago that you ran your story about America's first transexual mayor, complete with an on camera interview, that sent me running for the remote before one of my kids walked in the room. And just this week there's been the constant playing, playing, and replaying of very graphic footage of shootings in Iran. But this morning was really over the top. First of all, let's pretend that I even really *want* to know all about the South Carolina governor's affair in Argentina. Let's pretend that discussing such things in such minute detail is not just crass and low-class, not even just for the sake of his wife and boys. The actual quotes from his letters are really unnecessary. I don't need to hear, really, how he loves her tan lines and the curve of her hips, or how he "cries out" for her body and the touch of her lips. This kind of detail is really just not necessary for a morning news show. Am I the only one with the sense to blush when hearing such a private and intimate thing being read so bluntly reported, rattled into a microphone like they are reporting so many Dow Jones points? Am I the only one to feel like this kind of thing smacks of a Jerry Springer show?

summertime

So, my google reader is down to a mere 125 posts! Woohoo! Progress!

Think I should change that goofy Easter picture up there? Well, I'd love to, but my camera cable is STILL MISSING, and I'm very, very unhappy about that!

We are settling into summer here. It's hot. Hottie hot hot. Temperatures in the 90's. Heat index was 105 yesterday. This is why we don't take 3 months off in the summer. Summers are *miserable* here. We are winding down our school year though. Kain will be done next week. Maria will too, mostly, though she'll still have some Latin to finish up. After the 4th, I will begin my Big Summertime Project...purging, painting, and organizing the schoolroom. It is in REALLY tragic need of an overhaul. I already bought the paint. On an impulse. I'm not happy with the colors. But it's too late, because I can't think what else to do with the paint I bought and I can't really think of what colors I really want to use, which is why I bought these colors to begin with...lemon grass and fern green. It hurts just to type them. We'll see how it turns out. It is a big tall room with a vaulted ceiling, so my plan is to paint one color on the top third of the walls and another on the bottom 2/3rds. And then run our timeline between the two colors. Oh well...anything has to be better than what is on there now,,,dirty white.

We are switched over, officially, to our summer schedule, which means I'm letting the big kids sleep in later. The littles and I are going outside as soon as we get up and fed in the morning. In fact, I'm heading right out when I'm done with this post. It's the only time I can stand to be outside, and somebody has to water the weeds taking over the vegetable garden.

Seriously, every spring I get all giddy with the garden thing. I love getting outdoors when it starts to warm up, and I can't wait until the last frost date passes so I can get out and start planting. And then I remember...I hate to sweat. I hate the heat. Hate. So June roles around, and I start avoiding the garden. So, I'm trying getting out first thing in the morning this year. So far, it's helping. It's like the procrastination center in my brain is still in bed or something. Which makes sense. It's still tired from putting off bedtime last night.

We have yellow squash growing in the garden for the first time this year. I would take PICTURES for you if I could UPLOAD them onto the COMPUTER, but I CAN'T. The yellow squash is a winner though. Big and bold, huge yellow flowers that magically morph into slender squash. The kids are fascinated. John was also very surprised to learn that the vegetables form from the actual flowers. He never knew this! City boy.... We have already harvested a small crop of beans, and we have a few green tomatoes out there too. My peppers are doing very well, which is exciting, because I managed to kill them for the last two years. There's no peppers on there yet though.

In other summer news, we are grilling out on the weekends when John is off work, and since parish religion classes are done for the summer, the kids get to stay up late on Saturday night and catch fireflies (classes were early Sunday mornings). I'd take PICTURES for you if I could....well, you know.

We are going to the pool a couple of times a week, and the library for summer reading program activities a couple of times a week. We've been to the lake and hope to get back at least a couple more times before summer's end. And the kids are waiting anxiously for VBS. We *love* us some VBS. This year they are doing it in the evenings instead of during the day. Is that weird? I've never seen that before. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It's going to run until 8:30, which is pretty late for my gang...three of my four are usually in bed by then. They are hoping that having it in the evenings will allow more people to attend, people who have to work and can't get their kids there during the day. Which is nice I guess, except I don't know if it'll make much of a difference. From my own "working parent with small children" days, I can say that I never would have had my child out that late on an evening that we had to get up and go to daycare/work the next day. And it's only going to be three days instead of five this year. So...I guess we'll see. Nobody asked my opinion, and we would go whenever they had it, because my kids love love love VBS.

Ok, well, that's all the summer ramblings I have for now. I'm headed out to weed the forsythia bushes. I always catch up on the front yard first, for the neighbors' sake. My forsythia bushes are a new addition. We just added them this spring. I'd show you the PICTURES if I could...well, you know.

a loss of hope

When I said that we had not had any catastrophes happen, that was not entirely true.

Kain's mother died. It happened last weekend, she died of a stroke, secondary to a drug overdose. That's all I really know. My brother tells me he doesn't know anymore details. I don't really believe that, but that's what he's telling me. Kain doesn't know yet. We have been hemming and hawing, talking it over with his therapists, etc., and the end result is that we are going to hold the drug overdose part until he gets a little older...he doesn't even really understand what illegal drugs are, so it would be really difficult for him to understand right now.

We are going to tell him she died of a stroke, which is true enough for now. I talked to my brother about it one last time this evening, and he told me to just go ahead and tell him. I didn't do it. Not tonight. He's had a really good day, his best couple of days in a long time, actually, and I want him to go to sleep happy. I want to tuck him in and give him one more night to sleep with his hopes that one day his life will go back the way it used to be, that things will work out in the end, that his mother will get herself together and get him and his siblings back. Even though he hasn't even seen his mom in two years, I know that's what he wants and what he still hopes for. I know the hardest thing for him to handle is going to be losing that hope, coming one more step closer to realizing that the best he's going to get in this life is to be raised by an aunt and uncle that he really doesn't want to be with...not because he doesn't love us, but because we just aren't his mom and dad. He wants his mom. And now that can never happen. And I will be the one to tell him. God, give me the right words, if there are any, to tell a child that their mother has died.

Please pray for her.

the do-over

"Do-over" is a common term in our house. It's a discipline technique we use, most often with Kain. Basically, it's a way to re-do a moment in time when his impulsive behavior gets the better of him. Sometimes the do-over is accompanied with other consequences, depending on the severity of the misbehavior, but very often it is not. Usually the incident in question just involves less than polite behavior or just plain thoughtlessness. If he rudely shoves past someone, a do-over means that he will practice moving politely by and saying "excuse me". If I tell him it's time to do math and he begins to whine and wail, a do-over means that he will practice saying, "yes ma'mm" and planting his rear end at the table quietly. (No, we're not big "ma'mm-ers" around here, but I do demand it when I feel respectful behavior needs to be strongly established...i.e., when I hear a "tone".) And for these kinds of circumstances, performing the do-over without a lousy attitude is enough of a consequence.

Yesterday, God gave me a do-over. Isn't He good?

We were in the library parking lot yesterday afternoon, running late as we so often do, and there was not a parking space to be found. They were having a special children's program, and it was mobbed. On my third impatient circle around, I spotted a woman beginning to load a couple of kids into a van and descended. I perched behind her, waiting, while she loaded up and backed out of the space. Of course, you can guess what happened next. Another van approached from the other direction and tried to swoop in on the space I was waiting for. "OH NO SHE DIDN'T!" you cry! But yes! Yes, she did! She sure did! In a move out of character for my nonconfrontational self, I aggressively zipped in ahead of her, just barely, and shot her a LOOK. She paused and I wondered briefly how ugly this was going to get, but in the end she left to look for another spot.

Once in the library, I began to feel embarrassed at my behavior. True, I HAD, just for the record, been waiting for the spot long before she even showed up. Also true was that she probably didn't know that. I was behind another row of cars, and it's very possible she didn't even see me waiting there. True, I was running late for the children's program,,,but she probably was too. In fact, she was probably in the same room with me, a thought that came into my head frequently as I tried very hard to avoid making eye contact with any other adults there, pictures of various ugly confrontation scenarios running through my head. The question wasn't so much did I have a *right* to take the parking space, but was taking the space the right thing to *do*? Was it the most *charitable* thing to do?

Of course not. I've been reading the Treasure Box books to Jack, and the story of St. Therese and her sacrifice beads popped into my brain, how she would quietly accept little opportunities like this to offer up to God. The charitable thing to do would have been to back off and let her have the space. Not out of intimidation or fear of a confrontation, but out of love for Christ and love for this other harried mom who was just trying to find a parking space.

Later that same day, late in the evening, I was circling the Big Box Mart parking lot and thinking about the incident earlier that day in a distracted kind of way. It was a busy evening, and so I was pleasantly surprised to see a spot, open and waiting, front and center. Just then another car came around the corner. I could tell he had seen the spot and was hurrying towards it. And even though I was right there, ready to park,,,I drove on. He took the spot, and I thanked God for the do-over.

catching up

Hello! Hello!
I'm back! Is this thing on!
Thank you to everyone who has emailed me privately to make sure we were still alive and well. We are. Nothing catastrophic happened. I seem to have some kind of aversion to sitting at the computer lately. It shows. My inbox is hopelessly backed up all the time, and so is my google reader, though I am making efforts to catch up on everyone's blogs...so don't be surprised if you see some weird comment to something you posted about two months ago. I need a laptop, that's what I need. Then I can find a quiet place to sit and be comfy. I'm very unhappy with our computer desk situation right now. It's in a major traffic area of our living room, and if you are sitting at the desk people are tripping over you, chattering over your head, etc...it's most irritating. John or Maria always seem to be on the computer after the littles are in bed. I had been taking my computer time during afternoon rest time, but now Kain has therapy twice a week during that time...so I'm not sure what to do...maybe move my computer time to early in the morning and move my prayer time to the evening?

Anyway, here's a quick catch up on everybody here. We are finishing up our school year and planning to take all of July off. We school year round, but we do take July off. I have tons of wonderful pictures of my beautiful babies, but I can't find the cord to my camera, AAARRRGGGHHH, so I can't upload any until I find it.

Tessie turned a year old on May 28th. Please join me in a collective pensive sigh. (SIGH) She is just...what can I say? Beautiful. Precious. Yummy for chewing. She is so much fun and just the light of our days. She is still sweet and easy-going. She's not walking yet, but it's coming...she's cruising the furniture and is a very busy girl. The mosquitoes love her...we can't walk out the door that she doesn't get half a dozen bites, and she has some kind of reaction to them so that each one swells up half-dollar size, poor child.

Jack will be starting preschool here at home in August and he is *very* excited about that. Every day he says, "Am I doing preschool today?" But I'm not ready to start just yet. I need July to get ready. His reading has just taken off...he's reading Henry and Mudge and other easy readers this summer. And yet he still can't even hold a crayon or pencil properly. So I plan to concentrate on those small motor skills this school year with him. We will be starting Little Saints, and I can't wait...it looks so fun and I think he will really enjoy it, and I like that it is not academic in nature at all. Time enough for that later. It's a Montessori program and focuses on a lot of small motor skill activities, which is just what he needs. It's not a low-maintenance program...it does require a lot of prep time. but I really want to do this with him. He's going to love it.

Kain is finishing up 3rd grade. More or less. His math skills are quite behind still. His memory is *terrible*, and he spent the whole first half of the school year struggling to remember what the different operation signs looked like, that sort of thing. We keep plugging along. It drives me crazy to be "behind" where he is "supposed" to be. I'm trying to keep it in perspective and tell myself, "So what? So what's the worse case scenario, that he only gets through Geometry or even a year of Algebra before he graduates? Maybe he's not Harvard bound. Maybe he's not college bound at all. Maybe he becomes a tradesman of some kind, or a fireman, or a chef, or heck, a freakin' janitor, does it really matter?" And it doesn't, not at all. It's not like we are a family of Ivy Leaguers anyway, you know? It's too easy to get your homeschooling ego all wrapped up in what your kids are accomplishing, and it's not fair to them. Kain has delays, that's all there is to it. I was hoping that it was just immaturity, and I guess it still could be, but I don't think it's just that. He has a hard time learning most subjects. He just does. His brain was marinated in drugs for nine months, you know? His formative baby and toddler years were spent just trying to survive. There's bound to be some effect from those things. If he were in public school, I'm sure he would have an IEP and be in some kind of special ed. classes. So why do I expect to work miracles here? I'm letting it go. We will plow on to fourth grade, and we will ignore the fact that we only got through half of the third grade math book. In August, we will pick up where we left off. I'm educating for eternity, not Harvard.

Moving on. Maria will be starting 7th grade. Now this child...she has really matured so much this year. We've tweaked our curriculum for her for..well, since the beginning...she's diagnosed with dyslexia for those new to the blog...and I'm very proud to say that this year she has very nearly been able to follow the syllabus as written. I'm so impressed with her progress. Her writing skills, while I'm sure they are still behind grade level, have improved so much. Our curriculum is very writing intensive from here on out, so I have faith that she will make great strides in the coming years, if just out of sheer sweaty practice. Her spelling is atrocious, and it probably always will be, but it does sloooowwwwly improve. Her grammar and punctuation has improved the most. She has done really well in Latin and in grammar. My favorite program for her this past year has been the Great Editing Adventure. Painless, just a few minutes a day, but it drills grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. At the beginning of the year, I had to really hold her hand and help her with it, but now she very often doesn't need any help from me at all to find the errors.

So, in the coming weeks we will be swimming, going to the lake, going to the library for the summer reading program, and going to vacation bible school. I will be purging and painting our school/play room, yay!!! And with that, I will abruptly go. I am being climbed. I promise to post again before two more months go by.

Am I the only one to see a resemblance?

Because we also love Chick-Fil-A

Hi, I'm here and alive and well, but just busy...I'll be back tomorrow for a much needed quiet day at home. In the meantime, watch this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsJHqstPuNo

Fortuitous Fotos Friday

Don't you love alliteration?

Ok, so, my camera has gone to that great photo booth in the sky. The official word is that the repair would cost almost as much as buying a new camera, and that Canons usually only last around 3 or 4 years anyway. Is anyone else aware of this little piece of information? Still, I like Canons, and more importantly, I already have some accessories and such that would fit another Canon. So, in short, I've decided to get another Canon, but a much cheaper one. If I'm going to be replacing it every three or four years, I'll not be buying the $350 model, thanks so much.

And all of this was to bring me to say that I've cleaned out some photos from just before my camera died and wanted to post a few here. These are from Christmas. Christmas in April! Yay!


Before mass on Christmas Eve. Notice that Jack is already untucked. Aren't my babies pretty though? I think I should have some more.

Oh, and you may be wondering why Kain is dressed like a cow. Well, that is simple. Our parish has a pageant on Christmas Eve. Kain was cow #2.




The church nativity after Christmas Eve mass.


On the altar steps.


Maria and Tess in new Christmas PJ's.


The backside of Tess's PJ's.


Tess didn't last long into the evening.



Our family New Year's Eve party. Jack missed most of it. Lightweight.


Happy New Year's girls!


Kain on a ham dinner high.

Also, Fortuitous Fotos Friday will be an ongoing feature. When we were moving things around to make room for the piano, I found a stash of over a dozen rolls of film! Combined with film I've used in the last few weeks, I now have 15 rolls of film to be developed, and I have no idea what is on most of them. So, I'm having them developed a couple at a time and I'll post the fascinating results here!

Yay!

I should have kept reading before I posted. Check it out! Very cute.

Still, a bit pricey for my blood. I wish I could sew worth a darn.

Aren't I just the bloggingest thing you ever did see?

I just had to stop in for a laugh, because I have been trying to catch up on my very backed up google reader and read this post at Testosterhome, and see, I have also been pining away for a fanny pack.

For different reasons though. I am constantly writing notes to myself, and I am also constantly needing something to write notes with and finding myself without the necessary materials to do so. It occurred to me that I need a giant dry erase board tied around my neck, or at the very least, something that I can use to attach a post-it pad and a pencil to my body. A little pouch of some kind, something that would hang from the neck, or maybe from the waist,,,and then realized I was thinking of a fanny pack.

Think they will make a come back?

What about something like a chatelaine? You know, those things that housewives of the past used to carry around sewing needles and such? Someone go invent something....

The Kain Update

It's been a while since I posted a Kain update. That's because life with Kain flows with the tides. Some weeks he is doing very, very well. Other weeks are absolute hell on earth. There is rarely anything in between. That's because Kain has been diagnosed bipolar, we've been told. See, read this here...Kain has pretty much everything on this list, with the exception of self-mutilating behaviors and cruelty to animals (THANK YOU LORD). The child described at the beginning? That would pretty much BE Kain.

I came up with a good metaphor for life with Kain. You remember the twister scene in the Wizard of Oz, right? Ok, work with me here...Dorothy is skipping home to see Aunt Em. The winds are picking up though, and so is the music. Trouble's brewing, you know it. She runs for dear life, looking for shelter from the storm.



That's me. I'm Dorothy. Kain's the storm. You follow? Come on, think the music from that scene in your head, "Duh da duh da duh dum, duh da duh da duh dum, DUUUUHHHH!" The house is spinning, the winds are howling,,,



this is Kain during a down cycle...raging tantrums because we aren't having pancakes for dinner even though it's Sunday, screaming at me because he thought I was teasing him when I hummed a song under my breath, yelling names at Maria during mass because she walked too fast on purpose. Then, the house lands. Thump. It's suddenly, shockingly, over. Even for Dorothy, she says, "Oh!", in this surprised little voice, remember? It's over. She opens the door in Munchkinland. "We welcome you to Munchkinland, tralalalalalala!"



And now Kain's in an up cycle. He's happy. More than happy. He's giddy. He feels good, after weeks of feeling bad, and he can feel the difference right away. He literally wakes up singing, "I feel so HAPPY today Aunt Mel", and I'm floored, because, I'm sorry, weren't we all mixing up the cyanide Kool-aid like 12 hours ago? WTH?

And that is life with Kain. Typically, anywhere from a weeks to a couple of months goes by before we get a twister, and then the giddiness which is accompanied by very good behavior. The behavior slowly becomes more balanced and normal again. He may have another giddy episode here or there, but eventually the twister comes again.

They (the psychiatrist/therapists) have been discussing this with me since the beginning. I have waffled back and forth with my acceptance of this over the last couple of years. Kain, after all, is not a child that woke up in an Ozzie and Harriet kind of environment with these symptoms. He's got a lot of reasons to be a bit, as my mom says, "Not Right In The Head". I'm not unfamiliar with bipolar disorder. There is a pretty extensive family history of, as the article stated, depressive disorders, alcoholism, and bipolar disorder. I'm not personally affected, but several close family members are, and I pretty much grew up with this. I'm very aware of how devastating it can be for both the person with the disorder and their families. So, in short, I don't *want* Kain to be bipolar. Accepting this means living with it long term, you see, and I would much prefer the problem to be a little more fixable, thank you very much. Plus, I figured it was a moot point. Whatever the cause of his behavior, whether it be chemical or environmental (bipolar disorder is actually thought to be both), we still have to deal with the behaviors. Does it really matter what the cause is?

Yes. Turns out, yes, it does matter, because we are much better able to handle his behaviors if we understand the cause. If Kain his hoarding bottles of maple syrup under his bed because of the carb-cravings and impulsiveness related to his disorder, we will deal with that quite a bit differently than if we think he's just being a defiant pain in the can. I handle his stream-of-consciousness 12-hours-a-day rambling conversations a lot differently if I know he is in a manic phase right now and just has to let some stuff spew out of his head than if I think he's just being demanding of my attention and getting on my nerves. Having a diagnosis doesn't make the symptoms easier to deal with, but it makes them easier to understand, and that, in turn, makes me more understanding.

It also makes me more proactive. Accepting a diagnosis gives me something to focus on, something to work with. It's something I can research, something I can learn about and gives me concrete things to help him with. This isn't going away. But I know what bipolar disorder looks like in adults. I know it is devastating. I also know that the symptoms CAN be managed, he can grow up to be a good person and functioning adult. In fact, some of my favorite adults in the world are bipolar. :)
And it gives my family somewhere to go. This disorder is very difficult for us to handle. When he is in a down-cycle we are all under enormous amounts of stress. We are, for example, starting Gregory Popcak's telecounseling service this week expressly for the purpose of help the rest of the members of our family deal with this disorder, because frankly, dealing with Kain's moods is enough to make us all feel pretty bipolar. Ironically, knowing this isn't going away is forcing us to find concrete and permanent ways to cope.

Instead of letting him feel shamed and despondent over behaviors even adults struggle to manage, I can let him know that I do understand how hard he has to work and actively help him find better ways to function. I resisted the diagnosis because I thought it would mean giving up hope for his future. Instead I find just the opposite. It's not his fault, and it's not my fault, that we haven't "fixed" him in the two years he's been with us. We will never "fix" him, and that was a pretty unrealistic goal. But we can help him. It gives me hope. We can help him. We can do this.

what part of spring are you?

You Are Blooming Flowers

You are an optimistic person by nature. In even the darkest times, you are hopeful about the future. You feel truly blessed in life and can sometimes be overwhelmed with emotions. You have an artist's eye. You are always looking for beauty in the mundane. You have a good sense of aesthetics, especially when it comes to shapes and color.

What Part of Spring Are You?

This was a fun one, give it a try! I am definitely an optimist, thank you Lord for that one, and I do have an artist's eye, if not an artist's talent, heh.

Easter quick takes

Best Easter Moments---

- Removing our crown of thorns and purple altar cloths and placing lilies and our tall white Easter candle in its place.

- "Unburying" our Alleluia. I had snuck out the unfinished wood letters, painted them white, and added glittery pink and yellow flower stickers. I unwrapped the purple tissue paper from our makeshift candelabra we'd been using for praying the stations during Lent, and then rewrapped it in gold wrapping paper leftover from Epiphany. It came out quite pretty. But no pictures to share until I get my "old school" film developed.

- My baby girl, frilly and pink, in her very first Easter dress.

- My tiny boy in his first tiny tie.

- My first attempt at "Easter Pie", a recipe from this book. It was a bit complicated but very rich and very yummy. I love old recipes full of tradition, and this one is wonderful...33 layers of phyllo dough, one for each year of Jesus' life, 12 eggs, one for each disciple. I think we have a new official family tradition.

- Maria, singing the "Hallelujah" in the choir at the mass on Easter morning. She got to be at the microphone, and she did great!


Regrettable Easter moments-

- Kain's constant tantruming over one thing or another. Holidays don't really bring out the best in him, and he was in a "down cycle" anyway, so it was especially rough sailing.

- The vigil. I love the Easter vigil mass, but it is now officially too long and too much. We won't do it again next year.

- The announcement our priest made at the end of mass,,,he is being moved to another parish.

Funniest Easter moments-

- My first attempt at egg bread. I let it rise too long the second time around, so it was comically huge and not very wreath-like, but it was still pretty and very good!

- Kain coming into the kitchen at the moment of frantic-pitch meal preparation involving many layers of phyllo dough in the above mentioned pie, swinging his Easter basket over his head, and knocking the globe out of the ceiling fan onto the ceramic tiles where it smashed into a billion shards. Ok, it wasn't funny at all at the time, I just remember shrieking, "OUT! GET OUT!", but it'll be funny someday.**

- John sitting on Jack during mass. Not starting to sit on him or almost sitting on him, but full on sitting on him, which caused everyone to collapse into fits of hysterical giggles in the middle of a very long Easter vigil. John has a history of sitting on crazy stuff. He never, ever looks before he sits. That's not really a good habit to have in this house.

**Note to self, buy new globe for kitchen ceiling fan. Also for living room ceiling fan which broke in a similar Kain-related incident months ago.

Hope you all had a Happy and Blessed Easter. And remember, it's not over! It's not a day, it's a season!

Wrapping up Lent

Ok, gang, Lent's just about over. We are starting the Triduim today. For my separated brethren, that means the last three days before Easter--- Holy Thursday (the Last Supper and institution of the Eucharist), Good Friday (Jesus' passion and death), and Holy Saturday. We are scrambling to come up with some last minute plans. John's car has sustained an $1100 repair and is at the dealership this week. Since he is working today and tomorrow, he has the van and I have no transportation to Holy Week services. :(

So, here are our plans---

Today, Holy Thursday- We have been watching Jesus of Nazareth this week and will continue it today, and we will keep working our our Lenten Bible readings. We are behind on them and so we'll be pushing to catch them up over the next couple of days. We will have a washing of the feet at home too.

Good Friday- Hot Cross Buns! More Jesus of Nazareth! I'd like to do a Veneration of the Cross here as well, and we will observe a silence (as best we can here) from 12-3, then say the Stations just before 3pm.

Holy Saturday- Coloring eggs and other preparations for the big day. Our plans have changed because rain is forcasted on Easter, so we will be home for Easter Sunday instead of at my mom's. I find myself suddenly needing to come up with an Easter dinner. We will put resurrection rolls in the oven and then go to the Easter Vigil mass.

Easter Sunday- Maria and I will return to church for a very early mass. She is singing in the choir. John and the littles will probably stay at home. We'll come to do egg hunts and baskets and brunch.

Ok, that's the gist! My camera is a bust, so I am cameraless...I've ordered a replacement. In the meantime, I'm going to try to hunt up my old school camera for Easter. I've been interrupted 247 times during this post. Oh, these fun, fun school-free weeks! haha!

friends, real and virtual

Beck wrote a post on friendship and posed the question, "Is it easier to make friends as an adult than as a child?" I started to leave a comment but realized it would be really long and border on hijacking her post, so I moved here instead....

A THOUSAND TIMES YES. I was painfully shy as a child/teenager. People who know me in real life now may not believe it...but some might. I've had friends tell me they thought I was a snob when they first met me because I seemed standoffish, but I'm not, really...that was just my inner 12 year old showing.

But it's still hard as an adult. I wonder how many friendships we lose out on too due to superficial judging. I've been very aware of this in myself lately. We recently made an unexpected visit to a park...not to meet anyone, it was a "we have to kill some time" kind of thing...and I found myself scanning the other mother's at the park and silently picking them apart. C'mon, man, don't judge me! I don't mean in an ugly sort of way, I just mean people-watching, sizing things up, watching them with their children and the way they interacted, assessing their clothes, their speech, and knowing that I would likely have far more in common with this mom.....


than with this one....

Not only is there the matter of finding someone you click with, there's the time constraints, on both sides, to deal with. Since we're not 12 years old anymore, we all have so much of our own stuff going on...and your expectations have to click too. There is a woman, a real life friend (no she doesn't read my blog, hehe...that would be really passive aggressive, huh?) that I just dearly love to spend time with and have been friends with for years. But we hardly see each other. She just doesn't seem to need to spend much time with people. An introvert, I guess. Or else she hates me and doesn't know how to tell me. Definitely one of the two. There have been times I've really needed a friend and have tried to lean on her more than she seemed to want, and my feelings were definitely twanged by that experience. This happened fairly early on in our friendship. We had been getting along famously, we had everything in the world in common, and then she just kind of pulled back. Around the same time a close family member was dying and I called her, twice, and she didn't return my phone calls. That really hurt. And soon after *that* she had a close family member dying (I know, aren't we tragic though?), and I tried so hard to be there for her and she made it pretty clear she didn't need that at all, and I thought, well, she's just introverted and private and not everyone feels the need for constant verbal diarrhea that I do, and I let it go, only to find out that she *did* need the support, she just was accepting it from EVERYONE ELSE WE KNEW. Like, literally, everyone else knew everything that was going on and was speaking to her on a regular basis but me. So, being the 12 year old that I am, I pulled back too. Maybe that's not fair. Maybe she had her own stuff going on at the time that had nothing to do with me. Maybe she was dealing with a death in the family and was a little too wrapped up in all of that than to worry about my inner 12 year old, but there it is. I felt burned again, and there were a couple of other instances that just made it clear that she probably didn't think we had as much in common as I did. And while we are still friends, and I do love her dearly, and she is really a very sweet woman, we will probably never be any closer than we currently are, because she doesn't seem to need that and I'm not willing to put myself out there to her like that again. And that makes me kinda sad. And the ironic thing is that sometimes when I do see her it feels like the tables have turned, that maybe she is feeling a bit neglected by *me*, which makes this all very exhausting and ironic and....

I did say that this was *easier* as an adult than it was as a kid, right? Ok, maybe *making* friends is easier as an adult, but *keeping* friends was definitely easier as a kid when a love for Cabbage Patch Kids was all you needed to bring you together.

Happy Birthday!

To John, my dear husband and April Fool's baby.

The kids are devastated that John is working today. They consider it absolutely unfair that he would have to work on his birthday, though I've explained the them that birthdays are not considered a national holiday. I've also told them, much to their horror, that if they were in public school they would likely have to go to school on their own birthdays as well.

We had planned to come up to John's work and surprise/embarass him with one of these cakes today. It's a bit of tradition to make a corny April Fool's cake for his birthday. But we are having some trouble with one of the cars at the moment. Unless I want to get up very early, load up the baby, drive for an hour, then come home and do it all again tonight, we are kind of stranded at home until tomorrow. Frankly, I love the guy and all, but I'm not really motivated enough for all of that. So, we are making some cookies for dessert tonight and we will do the whole cake/presents thing tomorrow.

In the meantime, Happy Birthday darlin'. I love you, you are my best friend in the world, and I thank God every day for you. (sorry, old pictures,,,,camera getting fixed tomorrow!)

getting a piano

was totally worth it, even if all I ever can do on it is imitate this guy.

"OH, I'll never get it, I'M SORRY LUDWIG!"

save the date

Maria's planning her wedding...

with an Oriental Trading catalogue that came in the mail today.

So far she absolutely must have one of these,,,


,,,and some of these napkin rings...


And, just for future reference, at her future baby shower she definitely wants to use this set of partyware.