Another Cousin!!

It's not every kid who can say that they got two new cousins in three weeks' time, especially when it's a kid with just two aunts! Our nephew John Charles was born very early this morning, weighing in at 4 pounds 11 ounces, 17 inches long. He's doing well, but please say a prayer for his family since he'll be in the NICU for a bit since he is a preemie. The girls are excited to have another new cousin!

Cousin Julianne is doing well also, and gained over two pounds in two weeks - wow!

Hooray for new babies!!!!!

Daybook for Sunday, April 11

Outside my window... the garden is planted! All we need is to get a few more tomato plants and some cilantro. Chris did an awesome job putting up the fence to keep the neighborhood cats out!

I am thinking... that I really need to get myself kicked into gear on homeschooling prep. Yes, we're going easy-does-it and gentle and slow with Kindergarten - because it's Kindergarten! - but I would really like to organize my basic plans ahead of time, as well as get the house as organized as possible and purge as much as possible. I think I need several large chunks of time to devote to this... without children around. Or with other adults helping, at least, with the kids around. I may need to commit to doing this on some weekends while Chris takes the girls outside, or maybe I will get our teenage neighbor to come play with them on weekdays once school is out while I do some organizing. I think a well-ordered, non-cluttered home will assist with a peaceful home learning environment.

I am wondering... if one is expected to tip the carhops at Sonic and if so, how much. I have noticed that if my drink total is $1.06, some of them will keep the whole dime, and others will return my change of four cents. Four cents is a pretty lousy tip... as my mom would say to my dad regarding his tips to the bag boys at the grocery store, "I'd rather you give them nothing than a quarter - at least then they think you just forgot!" Anyone know if you should tip the Sonic carhops? Hmm, maybe Wiki Answers knows...

I am thankful... that our chickens are apparently done molting now. We have been getting four or five eggs each day over the past week! The sunshine and warmth are doing good for the hens. :)

Learning at home... We planted our garden on Friday: three types of tomatoes, crookneck squash, basil, dill, fennel... and our strawberries have been coming up and spreading like crazy. We also have our blueberry bushes and fig tree looking good with blossoms and buds... We will also add some rosemary, another variety of tomato, and maybe some peppers and green beans.

And the girls' marigolds are coming up nicely... at some point, we will transplant them into our Mary garden.

From the kitchen... we'll make some loaves of oat bread on Tuesday to take to a friend who had surgery last week. One night, we'll have bratwurst in celebration of Pope Benedict's birthday this Friday. Caroline has said that a trifle sounds good for celebrating her baptism anniversary (once I explained to her what a trifle is, that is!).

I am reading... Along the Alphabet Path lesson plans from Serendipity. And the latest New Beginnings from LLL.

To live the liturgical year... we are into the 50 days of Easter now, and we are using theGarden of the Good Shepherd sticker activity to mark each day until Pentecost. We read a relevant Bible verse each day along with it, and I would love to do these "Good Shepherd's Garden Parties" each week, but I think overall, I will save them for next year. We did make a snack last week that was listed for one of the parties, and the girls thought that was neat. We are singing Easter songs and rhymes at Circle Time (including our hymn of the month, Jesus Christ is Risen Today) and will continue through Pentecost.

One of my favorite things... Can I do two instead of one? Here are two things that I think, if combined, would result in mellow loveliness:

Wine and Emerson Hart

I have not tried them in combination yet, and cannot, as you can see that the wine bottle is empty (although I did drink a Guinness while listening to it the other night...). I swear I did not set up this photo... I just saw them sitting together on the kitchen counter and thought, "Ahh, now that would be good!" and so I took a picture. The CD case is laying there open because the CD was playing in the kitchen CD player, and the wine bottle... well, it has been sitting there for a week now, because the recycling won't take glass anymore, and so there it sits until Chris gives up and throws it in the garbage, I guess. The CD has been traveling with me from the car to the stereo to the kitchen CD player all week (as Caroline says, "Do we have to listen to that in the van every time we go anywhere? It's a nice song, but you listen to it every time!"). I bought it online and have been listening to it since it arrived in the mailbox. Yes, I bought a music CD... I really don't remember the last time I did that. 1999, maybe? I have not been disappointed with my purchase. While the whole CD isn't exactly mellow - some of the songs are pretty upbeat in their rhythm - it has a mellowing effect on me. Cecilia and Caroline can be screaming at each other, Cecilia hitting Caroline (her new favorite thing to do) and having a tantrum (her other favorite pastime), and if this CD is playing, I'm just in a bit of a trance-like state, nice and relaxed. Must be his voice. Or maybe if I play it backwards I would notice subliminal messages about relaxation ;). Anyway, what prompted me to buy this album was hearing an old song on the radio a few weeks ago, If You Could Only See by Tonic. I hadn't heard that song in awhile, and I looked it up on Youtube and was listening to it repeatedly (although not quite as obsessively as I was with Cry for Help). Am I the only one who uses Youtube to listen to songs? I was honestly surprised with myself for not recognizing the music video, since I watched waaaay too much MTV back in the 90s during high school... I guess I had gone off to college when this one was popular. So I started listening to a few other Tonic songs there on Youtube, and then came across a solo song by Emerson Hart (he was the singer in Tonic)... and there you go. I liked his songs enough to buy the CD. Here's a sample song to show you how awesome it is (warning to people such as pregnant moms with those hormones that make you cry easily - you'll bawl, so listen to it another time! It is a beautiful yet depressing song that gives me chills each time I hear it - I have managed to not cry, though!): I Wish the Best for You. And now I'll stop rambling. Maybe I should go write a review on Amazon or something.

I am hearing... Um... Emerson Hart. What else would I be listening to? ;)

I am creating... hate to say it, but not much right now. A garden, I guess? I'd like to start creating some rough lesson plans for next year.

Around the house... laundry, as always. And I really would like to organize some closets and shelves and such. Having nine closets in the house plus cabinet space in the laundry room has its disadvantages as well as its advantages...

We also rearranged the little play kitchen area. It is now more like a "home living center" in a preschool or Kindergarten classroom. My idea is to keep all the kitchen stuff in there along with the other make-believe house stuff, like the baby dolls and their clothing, the doll cradle and doll high chair, the dress-up clothes... I may put the doll stroller and toy shopping cart in there as well, although I don't want it to be overcrowded. Already the new presentation has encouraged the girls to play there more frequently.

A few plans for the rest of the week... La Leche League meeting on Monday, volunteering at the Mother's Morning Out on Friday. Friday is also Pope Benedict's birthday, and then Caroline's baptism anniversary is on Saturday. There is also a family "lawn party" event at Chris's work on Saturday, so we will take the kids to that. They have a dinner program also, with child care, but it lasts from 7-10, and I don't think the girls would last that late...

A picture thought I am sharing... what, the empty wine bottle and CD case weren't enough? ;) Okay, so here's some cute ones of the kids and the chickens!

Sally and Chicken looking a bit evil... "Let us oooooouuuuuuuut!"

Cecilia eats her "gate" snack - the gate was a symbol on the Garden of the Good Shepherd this past week

Caroline makes a "word bird house" - this is a book from the library that suggests making your own house to keep spring words in. She decided to do this randomly, and so we went with it. More learning at home!

Random Bits

A week or so ago, I overheard Caroline saying, "Cecilia, you're Catholic." Cecilia responded, as many two year olds would, with "No!" followed by, "I'm Suh-see-uh!" "Yes," said Caroline, "your name is Cecilia, but you are a Catholic." "No!" "Yes!" Then Cecilia came running to me and said, with the upset tattling voice of a toddler, "Mommy! Caroline called me Catholic!" (Many days later, Cecilia acknowledged that we were all Catholic, as we attended Easter Sunday Mass with my parents: "Gramma is Catholic, and Grampa is Catholic, and Caroline is Catholic...")

Caroline was also explaining how Mary was assumed into Heaven (the Assumption) to Cecilia recently. I heard her saying, "Cecilia, Mary was consumed into Heaven. That means she was taken up body and soul." I can only picture these huge clouds coming down and swallowing the Blessed Mother in one huge gulp.

Cecilia used to say "taptism" instead of baptism, and she is still sometimes saying "tajamas" for pajamas. Cute pronunciations don't last long with her!

Recently, when Caroline was at her Mother's Morning Out class on Wednesday, Cecilia was playing on her own, and she looked up at me and said something she'd never said before (as evidenced by the fact that she couldn't get it said correctly): "Mommy... will you play with... us?"

A few nights ago, we made pizza for dinner. Cecilia asked for another piece, so Chris took a piece and cut it in half horizontally, so that we wouldn't waste a whole piece in case she only ate a little bit. He gave her the bottom piece, the point. She looked at its lack of crust and then said disappointedly, "It not have a stem."

After a bath, Chris will wrap Cecilia up completely in a towel and make her into a "baby burrito." She's probably almost too big for this now, at least in the baby towels... anyway, she calls it a "beerowdo" instead of "burrito." And she was calling our Hot Cross Buns "Wash Crosh Buns." That is how she says "washcloth" sometimes. And then she called the Resurrection Rolls "direction rolls." Hee hee.

Cecilia likes to play with dry rice alone on days that Caroline is at Mother's Morning Out. She has some toy dinosaurs that she plays with in the rice. Today she was listing them as we were driving home: "Other-saur and Black-saur and Green-saur and Mommy-saur and Freezer!" Freezer... so random. I think Caroline came up with that one originally. Oh, and we have "Fly-saur," a pterodactyl, but he got lost outside around the sandbox.

When we went to the pediatrician last week, we had to fill out a checklist about Cecilia's development as a 2 year old. It is geared toward 24 month olds, and she was 26 months, but close enough, I suppose. Anyway, one question asked if your child spoke in phrases which put two ideas together yet, such as "want cracker" rather than something like "red ball." I remember that Caroline just started doing this around 25 or so months, but Cecilia has been doing it for months now, well before age 24 months. Then it asked for the parents to write down an example of what the child can say... so Chris and I both went blank, since she says so much... and we decided to just write, "I like Dr. Howard," since Cecilia had said it earlier that morning. Kiss-ups, huh? ;) There are lots of detailed ones we could have written but just couldn't think of any when put on the spot. Like yesterday, Cecilia was in her swing outside and said, "I want to get down and do my pink slide with the ladder." Today in the van she said, "Will you get a paper towel and wipe off the wetness when we get home?" According to the developmental info given to us at the ped's office, by the end of the child's third year (just before she turns 3, that is), she will be able to speak in 4-5 word phrases. Yeah, okay. I love those info sheets, ha ha... they also say that she should already be able to lace beads onto a string. What's funny is even the ped says those sheets are not exactly right - and of course, each child is different.

And you may have noticed that Cecilia ends lots of words with "ness" lately. She is experimenting heavily with that suffix - there's hotness, coldness, warmness, wetness, messiness...

So, today Caroline picked up a holy card of St. Francis of Assisi at prayer time, and she asked me who it was. I told her, and she said a few things about him, referring to him as "the original St. Francis." LOL!

Randomness (as Cecilia might say!) of the day: when driving along a side street near the hospital today, I noticed a man walking along the road wearing a white t-shirt, khaki pants, and playing a bagpipe. At least, I assume he was playing it... it was in his mouth. I had the windows up and music playing so I couldn't tell for sure. There was no parade with him, so I don't know what he was doing...

And last night, it started raining while we were asleep (okay, so technically it was early this morning, then)... we weren't sleeping well anyway; Cecilia was up for over an hour for some reason, which is not like her lately. Anyway, restless sleep plus rain equals screwy dreams for me, apparently. I dreamed that our chicken tractor was in a ditch that was filled with water from the rain, and Chris and I went up to it and were trying to shift it so that it wouldn't be under as much water... and then the motionless chicken bodies floated to the surface of the water, and we sighed and said, "Aww, man - they drowned." So, a little while later I looked out the window, and the chickens were sluggishly moving around the yard, to my surprise. I said, "Chris, they're not dead!" He kind of glanced out and said casually, "Oh, yeah, they have been slowly coming out of it and getting up, " as if this was no big deal, the chickens coming back to life. Crazy.

Easter Sunday

He is Risen! Alleluia!

Just an advance warning... there are tons of photos in this post, most of egg-hunting. So I will try to keep the words to a minimum. If you are interested in seeing what we ate for Easter dinner (as that would be the first thing I would want to see - the food! ;), then it is toward the end of this post!

We made resurrection rolls on Holy Saturday (you may have noticed there were no photos of the making process this year... it is hard to take pictures when you are supervising two children and have butter and cinnamon and bread dough-covered fingers yourself!)... if you are curious as to how to make them, you can see last year's Easter post. We make them with a basic whole wheat dough recipe, but I have heard you can use something as simple as a tube of crescent rolls. Any basic bread dough will work.

We had these for Easter morning breakfast before Mass. Cecilia remembered putting the marshmallows inside the bread dough the day before, and she was quite amazed that they were gone! Caroline was Miss Smarty-Pants and was telling Cecilia that they'd be empty before we even put them on the table... that's what big sisters who remember last year are for!

Caroline shows her "empty tomb." Note that she is wearing one of my brother's t-shirts from 1994 as a sleep shirt. Do you recognize it, Mike?

Here is our Lent calendar, completed. We counted items each day and put the pennies in a sugar bowl (since I never use sugar in the sugar bowl, or, for that matter, much at all anyway... when I sent Chris to buy sugar at 9:30 at night on Saturday since I ran out while making the lamb cake, he commented, "There's our sugar for the next year!"), and we need to deliver those to church the next time the collection goes to the poor. Caroline pasted images to the calendar of Jesus on the cross on Good Friday and of Jesus being laid in the tomb to show that he was in the tomb all day of Holy Saturday. When they awoke on Easter Sunday morning, they were surprised by the Risen Jesus image coming out of the tomb on the calendar!

We attended Easter Mass at our own parish for maybe the second time ever... my parents came up and met us at church and then came to our house for the day. It was nice to have the extra two sets of hands during Mass... I could actually sit next to my husband without a toddler all over me for part of the time ;) ah, one day I will be able to do that every time and will miss the little ones.

When we returned home, the Easter Bunny had apparently hidden baskets in Mommy's craft closet, ha ha. I didn't put the baskets out the evening before because it would have delayed our getting to Mass on time. For Easter, you have to get there early to get a seat, particularly if your husband is the lector that day and you are hoping to get enough space for six people!

Cecilia sems hgappy to have gotten some Reese's eggs in her basket!

The girls got the eggs, chocolate/marshmallow crosses, sidewalk chalk, some holy cards, a couple books, and a new Glory Stories CD in their baskets. They have been loving that 50 pack of chalk! Just $5 at Wal-Mart!!

And after emptying the baskets, it was on to... the egg hunt! We hid both the dyed eggs and the Resurrection Eggs.

This Eatser basket belonged to me as a child, and to my mother as a child before that!

No captions needed on most of these now:

getting her hands wiped off with a rag... the dye was running on the eggs due to their being refrigerated and then being put out in the warmth outside!

just thought this photo was funny... Cecilia looks grumpy and Caroline looks like she is defending her eggs from my dad or something not in the frame...

Opening the Resurrection Eggs and retelling the story of the crucifixion and resurrection

That's one happy kid!

For our dessert, I made a coconut lamb cake. I had never made a coconut cake or a lamb cake before. I used the coconut cake recipe from the King Arthur Whole Grains Baking cookbook to make a 9 x 13 inch sheet cake, and I copied a basic illustration of how to cut it into a lamb shape (freehand) found in this handy little booklet. My mom asked if I had a template, and I said I'd just wing it based on the drawing in the book... and it worked out pretty decently. So this is what it looked like before the frosting.

My mom commandeered the handheld mixer and we worked on making the frosting with some trial and error. The cookbook said to use a can of coconut milk, poured into a fine mesh strainer lined with a linen towel, and let it sit for two hours to drain all the coconut water off and then use the chunk of coconut cream. How obsessive! Luckily, I found a little package of coconut cream at the health food store the day before, so we used it - a little at a time, tasting frequently until we got the right consistency and flavor. Soooooo yummy!!! Sooooo rich!!!

The girls had changed out of their Easter dresses into play dresses. Good thing, since they licked the beaters!

Just an intense close-up to show how thick and creamy the frosting looked...

Here's the cake, all done!

Yet again, I found cake photography to not be my strong point. White on white on white didn't help, either. We sprinkled coconut over it to make it look even more wooly. The eyes are chocolate chips and the nose is a pink jelly bean... a really old one from Greenlife in Chattanooga!

Our paschal candle centerpiece along with our crown of thorns turned Easter wreath

Our table, all set and ready. One day we'll have a table that will fit both the food and the people on it, I tell myself! ;)

The dinner menu: ham glazed with a brown sugar/mustard glaze from Whole Foods (brought by my parents), roasted asparagus, potato salad made by my mom, fruit salad, and deviled eggs. We had some yummy appetizers too... a cheese spread and crackers, and a crawfish appetizer my mom makes that is excellent!

Hope everyone had a blessed Easter Sunday and that you enjoy your leftovers as much as we'll be enjoying ours!