Daybook for the First Week of November, 2014

Outside my window... it has cooled off significantly.  Rainy here and there in the past couple days, but beautifully sunny today, although still windy and chilly.  The kids have been enjoying the back yard this afternoon despite the cooler temp - the neighbor's cat, Tarsus, is out there visiting with them. Such a sweet cat - he even lets Lucy pick him up under the arms and try to lug him around.  

I am thinking... about the media's depiction of the Catholic Church and how that must influence public opinion.  I think there is so much that could be misunderstood about Catholicism - it really requires a very deep look to be fully understood (and even then, we have to take some things on faith because they surpass understanding).  The latest thing was how the media responded to Pope Francis's comments regarding evolution... we had the "progressive" people on the one hand declaring they were glad to see that Catholicism isn't so backwards and stuck in the dark ages and anti-science as they thought (and that the current pope is teaching things that go against what the previous popes said), and then we had the "fundamentalist" Christians on the other side saying isn't it awful that the Catholic Church no longer believes in a literal seven-day creation, some even going so far as to say that Catholics are removing God from creation (not true) and that this is further proof that we are followers of Satan and certainly aren't real Christians (they apparently have no background in history if they don't see that the Catholic Church was the first Christian religion).

Anyway... all of this confusion would be lessened if the media didn't jump on stories like this and act like it was something new.  There are those in the media who, whether intentionally or not, want to present our pope as breaking with long-held Catholic teachings.  They don't get that it doesn't work that way - the Catholic Church cannot just change doctrine.  If we believe it was divinely revealed to the Church through the Holy Spirit, then how could a pope just say, "Oh, we're not going to believe that any more."  The Catholic church has always been a friend to science, and it was a priest who came up with the Big Bang as a theory.  Pope Pius XII actually stated that theories of evolution can be compatible with Catholic beliefs way back in 1951.  So this is not some new thing, not a break with traditional Catholic beliefs.  We believe that faith informs science - they are not at odds with each other.  Ultimately, it is not important how we began other than we know it was because of God.

So... the Church is not changing, the Church doesn't hate science, the Church does not state that a literal seven-day creation story is the definitive way to explain how we got here.  The Church does believe that God made us.

It's the same story when it comes to the Church holding a synod on the family.  Certain media outlets were acting like the Church was about to change the definition of marriage.  Not going to happen.  And it isn't because the Church is backwards and stuck in the dark ages, either.  And it certainly isn't because of a hatred or intolerance.  It is out of a deep respect and love for humanity, and I certainly cannot do the topic justice myself - but the Catholic teachings on marriage, the family, and sexuality are beautiful.  Trust me if you don't think so and do some digging.  There is a reason why, when all other Christian denominations have okayed contraception, the Catholic church remains steadfast in her teachings against it.  All in beautiful love, and not always communicated clearly, unfortunately.  I know it took reading and searching on my own, and with my husband, to gain a deeper understanding of all the whys of Catholic teaching.    

   
I am wondering... if the things I have been saying/writing in the past week have made sense, ha.  I am losing words; I try to say something and can't find the right way to express it.  My brain is just sluggish lately.
 

I am praying... for all who have died.  November is the month dedicated to All Souls.  This morning, we walked through the woods behind our street to the cemetery that is at the other side of the hill we live on so that we could say a few prayers there for the deceased.  Visiting graves and praying in a cemetery, especially on this feast of All Souls Day, is an act of piety.

Our All Souls mantle display... all family members who have died are pictured here so that we can remember them during the month of November, especially when we pray as a family each evening.

I am thankful... for a special new blessing.



I am hearing... the wind.

Learning at home... we are planning a mix of things this week... a visit to the aquarium, a couple of art projects, a nature hike one day, along with some of our regular reading and such.  Last week, we had some nice outdoor time at Berry.  I would love to come back to this specific spot with a larger group of kids and some open-ended materials and tools like rakes, buckets, ropes, old sheets, and just let them have at it:

 

From the kitchen... my chicken broth gelled!!  Well, it was really just the liquid in the bottom of the crock pot when I cooked a whole chicken, but my plan was to save it and use it in a soup the next day... and look how beautiful it was!
   

I was bummed, though, that the big pot of stock I made from two chicken carcasses plus veggie scraps didn't gel at all... boo.  so now I have a theory... the raw backbone may be what helped the stock in the crock pit to gel.  When I make a big pot of stock from leftover bones, they have already been cooked when I cooked the whole chicken.  I have one recipe I like in which I have to cut a whole chicken into pieces, and so that leaves me with a raw backbone section.  Maybe if I save two or three of those in the freezer along with additional bones, I can get better gelling results by using them all at once.

I am reading... Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education.  Also, the latest issue of Family Foundations, the magazine of the Couple to Couple League.

To live the liturgical year... about two weeks ago, we celebrated the first-ever feast day of Pope Saint John Paul II.  Being a quarter Polish myself, and this being the pope I was born under, we had to do a little something to celebrate now that he is a saint!  On Facebook, my brother posted a photo of JPII when he was the pope that I had taken myself, and it made me realize - wow.  I took a photo of a saint!  It was when I was 16 and we were visiting Italy while my dad was there on business for about a year's time.  We visited Italy for ten days and toured around the country, including a stop in Rome, where we heard Pope JPII give his Wednesday audience and then, as he passed by us on an open cart (not the actual Popemobile, more like a golf cart without a roof), my brother Stephen touched his hand as he passed by, and I took the photo just before that.

So, to celebrate a special pope who is now a saint, we made a Polish apple cake.  I used the recipe found on this awesome blog of an old childhood friend of mine from Girl Scouts... she decided to cook foods from each of the 195 countries in the world, one country a week!

One of my favorite things... fall weather, fall scents, fall cooking.  And a fire in the fireplace. 

I am creating... I am filling a few jars for a Guess How Many game for our homeschool group's All Saints party.  since All Saints Day fell on a Saturday this year, we are having our party the following Friday after noon Mass.  I helped the girls create their costumes this past Friday, and they will get to wear them again for the party.  I spent a few evenings sewing some "armor" for Joan of Arc. 

Around the house... I need to straighten up some areas, clean some things out... after we went camping with friends last weekend, this past week/weekend was spent doing a little laundry catch-up and some much needed sunroom sweeping (me) and vacuuming (Chris).


Pondering these words... "Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon them.  May the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.  Amen."

A few plans for the rest of the week... 
* Trip to the aquarium tomorrow along with lunch with an old friend and his son!
* Gran comes to visit for a few days on Tuesday!
* Date night on Tuesday - Gran with the girls and Chris and I out to dinner and whatever else... maybe mini golf?
* PSR Wednesday evening
* Nature hike one morning
* Dance classes on Thursday
* Noon Mass and homeschool All Saints party on Friday - lots of fun saint-themed games and snacks that my girls are really looking forward to!

A picture thought I am sharing...

What homeschooling looks like... Caroline helps cook while watching her Math-U-See lesson on DVD

 

 

 

Dressed up as saints at the All Saints vigil Mass... more pictures of Halloween, All Saints, etc to come soon!

Daybook for September 29, 2014

Outside my window... cool temps and humidity.  We had rain this morning.  It is damp, but I think I will get the kids outside after rest time is over so they can enjoy the cooler air.  It will be back in the 80s tomorrow, supposedly.

Look!  Jeans and light sweater-type thingies are possible now, because of the cooler weather!  And Lucy can wear her favorite fall outfit (the one that 2 year old Caroline referred to as "my ensemble") that I have been finding her wearing at least three times a week for the past month... finally, she might even be comfortable in it most mornings!

This was outside my window last week... Chris's homemade ham radio antenna fell out of the tree.  See the pine tree behind my hand?  If you look closely you can see the rest of the rope dangling from the tree up there.  We don't know if a squirrel chewed through it or what...

 
I am thinking...  how Cecilia is learning her father's sense of humor.  Those of you familiar with Kerrygold butter may get this joke.  We had recently also had packages of the salted variety, and the one she is holding here is the unsalted.  She picked it up and said, "Hmm, shouldn't this kind be called Kerrysilver butter?"

   
I am wondering... why Lucy gets colds so easily... she has the first one of the season already.  Warning - discussion of childbirth ahead, for those who don't like to read about that (I know you exist, even if I don't understand, ha ha)... Here's my possible theory... based on what I know of childbirth, the baby gets colonized with the mother's bacteria as it passes through the birth canal.  Since Lucy was still enclosed in the membrane as she passed through, I am assuming she had less contact - or no contact - with any of that.  Here is just one example of an article about how c-section babies miss out on these microbes.  So could it be that a baby whose face (and Lucy's whole body was encased still!) is covered by the membrane also misses out on these beneficial microbes?  I want a study on this!  Then again, I am going to guess that babies born "in the caul" used to be far more common... many OB/GYNs and even more naturally-minded midwives will sometimes prematurely rupture the membranes on purpose.  Eating lots of protein during pregnancy is said to create stronger membranes, and I have experienced that myself.  I tried to eat at least 80 grams of protein a day while pregnant, and my membranes did not break until I was pushing hard with the first birth, and then not at all with the third birth.  Keeping the membranes intact as long as possible makes for a smoother birth because the contractions are less painful - you still have that cushion of fluid.  So, all that leaves me wondering... which is better?  And could Lucy have benefited from being colonized?  Of course, she has also been getting all the good bacteria and living enzymes in breastmilk for three years now, so I know that is helpful.  Her colds are always very mild... she just always seems to have a runny or stuffy nose every few weeks unless it is summer.

I am praying... for this family.  Such a beautiful story, such a positive example of the beauty and value of every human life.  They need prayers as their daughter is moving towards the end of her life.

I am thankful...  that I have a handy husband.  He can fix so many things... like our refrigerator/freezer.  It has been having issues and he has been able to fix them all.  Plus car issues he has recently fixed, and the blender, and several other things.  Good for money-saving! 

He was doing work on this computer for somebody last week... so it was sitting here by the door for him to take with him to get it back to the owner.  Lucy came up to it and said, "Mommy, what is it?"  I asked her to guess, and she said, "I don't know!!  It's Daddy's."  Cecilia guessed it was a printer.  Then she said, "It's a computer case."  As in, a case in which to carry a computer.  When I told her it was itself a computer, she said, "Where does it open?"  She was thinking laptop.  I had to explain that it has a separate screen and keyboard that are not attached to it.  I guess these things are rapidly becoming dinosaurs...

I am hearing... Lucy moving around in her room over the monitor... she is having rest time in her room, and I am just hoping when I go get her in a moment that she will not have emptied out every drawer of Cecilia's side the dresser again...

***She was wearing a pair of leggings and a long-sleeved shirt under her short-sleeved pajamas, but those were the only things she had taken out of the dresser.  Yay!  She loves to dress up!***

Learning at home... we are studying birds in-depth this year and have been reading through the Burgess Bird Book for Children, which we all love (free version online here!).  I have saved some old milk jugs to make into a few bird feeders to place around the backyard, hoping to attract more of whatever birds may be migrating through the are this fall, so we will probably get those made and hung up this afternoon.  This weekend, Cecilia and I noticed two birds we had never seen before, but by the time we got the camera, they were gone, and we were unable to find them in a bird guide.  We thought they looked like woodpeckers, but one had yellow on its breast (but no red head), and the other had red on its breast (again, no red head), so maybe they were females, or juveniles?  No woodpeckers in our field guide looked like either one.  Maybe I will do an in-depth post about our bird studies this year at some point... 

From the kitchen... made kale chips yesterday, and some of this coconut flour pumpkin bread.  I told Cecilia we'd make peanut butter balls since we are learning about Georgia and which of her relatives were born/lived here... but I might not have all the ingredients right now.  This weekend, we had this chicken enchilada soup, except I made it by using the broth that was made in the crock pot from this recipe and the extra shredded chicken from it as well... both were winners, and a great way to use one whole chicken to make two meals, including the broth for the soup.  Yum.  The soup was great topped with sour cream and guacamole.  

I am obsessed with grilled eggplant.  This was our dinner last week - very Italian.

I am reading... Sweet Sleep, the latest book published by La Leche League.  I bought a copy for our Group library and am pre-reading it before sticking it in there for the moms to check out.  I have also been reading the Couple To Couple League magazine, Family Foundations, that came in the mail several weeks ago.  And I have a stack of books I need to skim through that I got for Caroline... she will be ten in March, so that means we have to start having certain talks soon.  There are a few Catholic resources on these "growing up" topics: Wonderfully Made - Babies, All Things Girl, and The Joyful Mysteries of Life.  I also got a copy of the American Girl book The Care and Keeping of You, and will look through it as well, in trying to decide what to read with her and when.  And I have also been reading through Tea and Cake with the Saints, which is such a sweet, fun little book - a generous friend sent it to us a few weeks ago!  It had been on my wish list for the girls for awhile, and it is even better than I had hoped!

To live the liturgical year... today is the feast of the archangels, so we are having angel hair pasta for dinner, along with carrots (because St. Rafael is the patron of eyesight, and carrots are supposedly good for vision), and a chicken and apple dish.  Later in the week are St. Jerome, St. Therese, and St. Francis's feast days, as well as the Guardian Angels - Lucy was baptized on that day, so I am going to make angel food cake with whipped cream for her baptismal anniversary.  St. Jerome's symbol is a lion - so we are going to make pita pizzas for lunch tomorrow to look like lion faces and read St. Jerome and the Lion, which we reserved from the library.  And we will have Swiss cider fondue for dinner on St. Therese's feast day... isn't fondue French?  It sounds French.  Boom - feast day incorporation.  I want to also do meat fondue... where you put the raw beef into the boiling broth to cook it.  I need to figure out which cut of beef is best... I have a rib steak and a loin tip roast.  Not sure which to use...

One of my favorite things... hmm... coffee.  Now that Lucy is three, and not a baby at all anymore, the possibility of another baby is on my mind, and so I have thought about how I would want to decrease my caffeine consumption if I am pregnant again.  And apparently my emotional response has been to drink MORE coffee than usual, and black tea, to get it while I can!  Oh, and more beer, too.  I guess I will end up going cold turkey if I become pregnant again.  For now, I am thoroughly enjoying it all.

I am creating... I need to be creating a few checklists... I need to pick some poems for Caroline to learn this year and make a list of them and a checklist for her to keep track of them.  I tried letting her choose her own this year, and she picked three and then asked me to pick the rest for her.  We use Favorites Poems Old and New and The Harp and the Laurel Wreath to choose most of their poetry work... both have a wide selection of classic poems.  They have also learned poems from The Child on His Knees and When We Were Very Young by A. A. Milne.

Around the house... almost time to put away summer clothes and get out fall things.  I hate doing that - and now I don't have an extra bedroom to stash the winter clothes boxes while we are in transition and the weather is still fluctuating.  I will have to get out about four fall/winter outfits per child and then switch everything else once cold weather is here to stay.


Pondering these words... "Even when children go to schools taught by qualified persons, some insight on the part of fathers and mothers is useful as hindering the teacher from dropping into professional grooves, valuing proficiency in this or that subject for its own sake, and not as it affects the children." - Charlotte Mason

A few plans for the rest of the week... 
* No PSR at church on Wednesday - fall break.
* Dance class on Thursday.
* Celebrate Lucy's baptismal anniversary on Thursday with angel food cake and the relighting of her baptismal candle.
* Noon Mass followed by lunch and October Homeschool Group at our church.
* Moms' Night Out on Friday evening - going to meet at a restaurant for drinks and maybe snacks/desserts with a few other Catholic homeschooling moms from our group!
* Mountain Day at Berry - BBQ lunch on Mountain Campus and then Marthapalooza Faculty/Staff Family Hour... they didn't do this when I was a student, boo.  I would have LOVED it... they bring in carnival rides and open them up for students from 10-2am... and they have funnel cakes and that kind of junk, and games, and one year Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell made a guest appearance (weird, right??)... anyway, for $5 each, we can go for an hour in the afternoon, since Chris works on campus.  Anyway, Mountain Day is Berry's big thing every fall, and it really isn't as exciting as it sounds (my friends and I actually skipped it most years because we were antisocial, ha), and this year is the 100th Mountain Day... so, that is pretty cool, so we figure we should go to part of it, anyway, seeing as we still live nearby. 

A picture thought I am sharing...

I still haven't put photos from our beach trip on the blog... only on Facebook.  I hope to get a post done one day with them... this was way back at the beginning of August!

Lucy is Three!

Lucy turned three on September 12, and we celebrated her birthday the following day with family.  I can't believe my baby is three - she is not a baby any more! ;(

The birthday banner... I made this for Lucy's first birthday and have added a section with each girl's name, so it has gotten plenty of use and has been a very versatile decoration!

I typically ask my children what kind of cake or theme they want to have for their birthday... both Caroline and Cecilia have had a fairy castle cake, Caroline had an Irish "Lucky Seven" birthday since her birthday is right after St. Patrick's Day (her due date was actually March 17th and she has a semi-Irish middle name... and she's about 1/16th Irish, ha)... Cecilia had a "Favorite Things" Sound of Music birthday that I copied the idea from another blog since my girls were obsessed with the Sound of music at the time...

Well, I usually don't ask my three-and-unders what theme they want for a birthday because they just don't quite get it yet.  When Cecilia turned three, she requested a "candle cake," so I cut it into the shape of the number 3 and told her it was a candle shaped like a 3.  I think Caroline had a cat-shaped cake when she turned three because she liked animals a lot at that time.  So, I was thinking of what things Lucy is interested in when trying to decide what kind of cake to make for her.  Since I figured nobody else would really be up for a strip-off-all-your-clothes-and-run-naked-in-the-yard party, I decided to focus on another interest of hers.

I bet Lucy is the only child who has had a One Morning in Maine birthday party.  I actually looked online for ideas, and apparently if somebody has planned a party with this theme, it was never shared on the interwebz.  We discovered this book several years ago when Caroline was a Kindergartener and were checking out library books from a list that corresponded with the alphabet.  One Morning in Maine was one of the M books.  We had checked it out again at the beginning of this year when Cecilia was doing M week in Kindergarten.  I bought us a copy of our own finally, and Lucy - quite to my surprise - has requested it to be read to her again and again.  It is quite a long book for a two year old to sit still for - it probably takes a good 15 minutes to read the whole thing through.  But she sits attentively for the whole book every time (and that is saying something for this firecracker of a toddler!).  I guess that is a mark of good children's literature!  If you are not familiar with the book, you probably know the characters from the book Blueberries for Sal.  The author, Robert McCloskey, also wrote and illustrated the classic Make Way for Ducklings, which I remember enjoying as a child.

I loved how easy the cake was for this... no cutting it into a cat shape, making castle turrets out of ice cream cones... In the book, Sal and her father are digging for clams on the shore.  They also take a boat ride across the harbor to the local store, where they get ice cream cones - chocolate and vanilla.  After contemplating how I was going to turn a cake into a boat, and then being unwilling to use nasty blue dyes to make the icing look like water, I had an aha moment of simplicity: a chocolate cake, with some mini chocolate chips and cacao nibs sprinkled on top to resemble the rocks they were digging in... and then a printout of an image from the actual book.  Then, serve it with vanilla and chocolate ice cream cones.  What could be easier?

The cake... with the ubiquitous coffee maker in the background.  I think that thing has been photo-bombing since before the term was even first invented.

I scanned in this illustration from our book and then printed it at high quality on cardstock.  After cutting it out, I taped some craft sticks to the back and stuck them in the cake to make it stand up.  It is fun to sometimes make elaborately decorated cakes, but this one was perfect for Lucy when done in this simple way - it was something she instantly recognized!

Super-amazing tutorial photo: tape on three sticks.  Insert into cake.  At least I didn't share 83 different angles of the same thing like some of those annoying recipe blogs do.  Just get me to how to make the food, is what I say!

Lucy was ready to dig in, with her cousin Julianne looking on!  But first, we had...

CLAM CHOWDER FOR LUNCH!!!

Just like in the book.

Lucy enjoyed it... she had tried clams at the beach and didn't like them plain... but she had also tried clam chowder at a seafood restaurant and loved it, so I made some for our lunch... yes, I realize it is probably weird to say, "Come to a three year old's birthday party for a clam chowder lunch followed by cake and ice cream cones!"  I cheated and used canned clams since this was my first attempt at making it - and it was very easy.  I followed this basic recipe with some adjustments like some of the reviews suggested - like pureeing a bit of the soup in my blender and then stirring it back in, because apparently a good New England clam chowder is never thickened with flour or cornstarch - according to the internet, that is.  I wouldn't know personally; I have never been north of Washington, DC.

Clam chowder, fruit with dip, sourdough bread with butter, and arugula/fennel salad

Then Lucy opened her presents... she got some new books, clothes, and dress-up tutu made by her Aunt Crystal, some animal finger puppets, a Winnie the Pooh bedsheet for her new bed, and several handmade and found items from her sisters... they even gave her one of their old American Girl mini dolls.  I also bought her the downloadable audio version of One Morning in Maine, which she can listen to while she looks at the book.  it says it costs $4.95, but I was only charged $1.95 when I downloaded it...

And she also got...

...a mini trampoline!  That climber and slide in the background in the first photo has since been disassembled and put away, and the trampoline is now in its place.  She had pretty much outgrown the climber and slide.  The trampoline can hold Cecilia's weight too, so they have both been enjoying jumping.

I have to embarrass my little brother by putting in this photo... Lucy will still jump on her trampoline, a couple weeks later, and say, "Uncle Tim lays on my trampoline!"

And here's a sweet one to make up for the silly one... aww, almost 26 year old boys still love their mommies.

After presents, we served the cake and ice cream!

Happy birthday dear Lucy, happy birthday to you!

Cousins Julianne and Chloe opted for ice cream cones.  The birthday girl had some cake plus a tiny ice cream cone!

Hers was mostly vanilla (so the drips won't spot).  She didn't ruin her appetite for lunch since she had already eaten her lunch - in the book, they have their ice cream cones before lunch and don't want to have more so they won't ruin their appetites for their clam chowder!

Another thing we got out for the party was a basket of items I have collected from around the house so that Lucy can act out the story... I had this idea to let her play with these while I was working on school stuff with the older girls each day, kind of like her own preschool-related book activities.  So I got some rubber ducks with baby ducks for her to play Make Way for Ducklings, and I gathered a bunch of stuff for One Morning in Maine and put it all in a basket... here she is playing with everything a few days before her birthday party:

Sal pushed back the covers, hopped out of bed, put on her robe and slippers, and hurried out into the hall.

Then she squeezed some toothpaste on her own brush and when she started to brush her teeth something felt very strange!  One of her teeth felt loose!

"May I help you dig clams?" Sal asked.

"I found a tiny baby one!" said Sal.  "You certainly did," said her father.  "But it's too small.  We just keep the large ones, like this.  Let's put the baby clam back in the mud so he can grow to be a big clam some day."

"Then I'll make my wish on this feather," Sal decided.  "Perhaps the sea gull has already made a wish on that feather and the wish is used up," suggested her father.

When they reached home Sal's mother and sister Jane were waiting with a box of empty milk bottles to return to the store and a list of things to buy.

Sal was just about to ask how long it would take for a new spark plug to grow in when Mr. Condon reached up on the shelf and picked out a new spark plug, and put it into the motor.  Sal picked up the old spark plug and handed it to sister Jane.

They walked down the path to the harbor and down the runway to the float where their boat was tied.  They all climbed aboard, carrying the outboard motor, the box of milk and groceries, the feather, the spark plug, and the ice cream cones.

I am always on the lookout for ides for self-directed play for Lucy to do while we are reading and doing other school things... especially using items that we already have lying around the house or that are multi-use.  Chris had the old spark plug already, we had the glass jar for a "milk bottle," the plastic rake and the boat float came from our beach and pool toys, the blue water was a large piece of fabric from the girls' dress-up clothes, the seagull feather came from the beach this August... and the slide was the perfect ramp at the boat dock!

Happy Birthday, Lucy Marie!