Where Did My Fairy Princesses Go?

Yes, it's another tiresome post detailing my disbelief that I no longer have babies.

Above you will find Ramona -- eight years ago, at age one -- when she was a fairy princess for Halloween.

This year my 9-year-old baby will trick-or-treat as Professor Trelawney, and my 15 and 18 year old babies (Eighteen! Anne-with-an-e turned eighteen last week!) will dole out excessive amounts of sugar (dressed as Gothel and Eponine ... they do still love Halloween).

Sigh.

I should start a new blog post category: "Tiresome Karen, Who Still Can't Believe Children Grow Up."

Have a blessed All Hallow's Eve!

Poetry Friday: Ancient Egypt in Verse with Ramona

A recent library find: The Tomb of the Boy King: A True Story in Verse by John Frank. I haven't read it with Ramona yet, but I really enjoyed this poetic version of the discovery of King Tut's tomb. The illustrations are lovely, and the book is full of heiroglyphics for Ramona to try to decipher. The epilogue plays up "the curse" quite a bit, but that will afford us a great chance to discuss such things. It will be fun, too, to see where this little rabbit trail takes us.


Visit Random Noodling today for a great Robert Frost poem and the rest of the Friday round-up.

Remember the Spoon Saint Gang?

Was it really back in 2006 that we first did this craft? It was such a terrific and easy idea from Alice Gunther. Here's the original post about it:

Thanks to Alice the Amazing Craft Mom, we got ourselves to Hobby Lobby, bought some wooden ice cream spoons and spent our day in the company of the saints.

We had such fun, and I know the creating isn't over yet. Thank you, Alice, for yet another wonderful idea that I would never have thought of on my own!

Hmmm, let's see. When that post first ran, I had daughters who were 12, 10 and 4. Things have changed a bit around here, but I still have one who's always ready to get her hands into the Cupboard-o-Crafty-Things.

I think our All Saints Day art project will be some new spoon saints.  I'll keep you posted on Ramona's creations.

Keeping God in My Planner at Faith and Family Live

This one first ran awhile back, but if you missed it, it's up again today at Faith & Family Live -- Memo from God.

This subject has been on my mind again lately because our parish is in the midst of the annual stewardship drive (probably happening in your neck of the woods, too?) And, although I don't want my pastor to throttle me, I have to confess that I've been known to encourage other moms to just say no.

Not to everything, of course. (For example, if we all tithed, we'd need far fewer volunteers for all those fundraising events, which would no longer be necessary.) But I know that I need to regularly and honestly assess what I'm capable of. And I have to factor my vocation as a mom into the equation. Raising my family is part of my stewardship -- trying to do it well is an enormous part of what I give to God. Stretching myself so thin that I end up shrieking at everyone and everything around me including the cat is not good stewardship. It's just ugly.

So, I try to combine prayer with planner and see where they take me. Perhaps the result doesn't always appear that I'm doing as much as I could, but that's okay. Genuine stewardship isn't about how things look to others, it's about prayer, discernment, and then doing what God says.  A list of committee commitments may not be part of my life right now, but closely examined stewardship is.

And by the way, I'm not being flippant about the "committee commitment list" ... in certain seasons that's exactly how faithful stewardship will look in some lives. It's just not the only or main measure. Stewardship is about using our gifts for God, but gifts come in a wide array of wrapping. Some are elaborately packaged, visible to many. Others are humbly stuffed into a bag with some crumpled tissue paper. And some gifts aren't visible at all.

It's up to us to discern, and if we're doing that honestly and prayerfully, I don't think we need to worry about how it looks. The point, finally, is that we're giving it all to God.

(Photo from Stock.xchng)

Poetry Friday: Go Visit the Incomparable Jama

You need nothing from me today, and that's a good thing, because I have nothing.**

Jama, however, has it all. She's hosting Poetry Friday today, and she's kicking things off with perfection from Barbara Crooker. Go read it. Then linger there for other golden offerings from around the blogosphere.

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**Now, however, that my sister and brother-in-law have gone home, and I have conquered Mt. Laundry, I will soon be back to normal and start posting again.

Bits and Pieces of Our Days

I missed mentioning St. Teresa of Avila's feast day on Saturday -- we were busy giving our friends backaches by asking them to help move a free piano to our house. It was free! Free, I tell you! And Ramona is in a little bit of piano heaven. True, you can't turn the volume up and down as you could on our old electronic keyboard, and true, you can't play that d.j. sound effect (a huge checkmark in the "pro" column for me) as you could on the old keyboard, and true, it doesn't play "Fur Elise" on its own while you are dancing in the living room wearing a tutu, but Ramona can forgive it all of that. And so can I. It's a real piano! And it was free! 

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Speaking of the feast day I neglected to mention, here's a favorite St. Teresa of Avila quote:

"God, deliver me from sullen saints."

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Ramona and I have continued looking into Ancient Egypt. She really enjoyed traveling there with Ms. Frizzle. We made papyrus -- soaked plain white paper in tea and came up with  fun stuff for practicing our heiroglyphics:

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We made the requisite autumn visit to an apple orchard to make up for the fact that I usually don't make the requisite visit to an apple orchard. It was lovely -- the weather, the free apples, the purchased apples, the time with friends, the requisite apple crisp that came out of the oven at the requisite later time. Also lovely was the requisite chatting with other homeschool moms and the fact that from one of those conversations came a phone call the next day informing me that someone was giving away a piano. Free, I tell you! Beaten up, yes, but free.

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Pianos make me happy. Free makes me happy. Heiroglyphics make me happy. And today my sister and brother-in-law are coming for a visit, and that makes me even happier (and explains the silence that will ensue on this blog for the next couple of days.) 

Poetry Friday: Rilke

Beautiful and harsh, lush and barren, this sonnet by Rainer Maria Rilke is gorgeously translated by Mary Kinzie:

Day in Autumn
by Rainer Maria Rilke

After the summer's yield, Lord, it is time
to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials
and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.

As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.
Direct on them two days of warmer light ....

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The final five lines of the poem take a jolting turn -- read the rest here, at The Poetry Foundation, because you really have to read the whole thing. You do.

Read the translator's notes here, and read more about Mary Kinzie, here.

And, if you should even for a millisecond believe that a translator of poetry need not be a poet herself, read various translations of the poem here.

The Poetry Friday round up is at Fomagrams.

Our Coats of Many Colors

Awhile back, I did a post about Our Coats of Many Colors, a small costume business run by a mom (and amazing seamstress) in Kansas.

With All Saints' Day and Halloween approaching, I thought I'd throw out another mention. A longtime pal of mine, Maria Rioux, helps out with the design and sewing, and when I think of Maria, the words strength and integrity come to mind. And these costumes are things of strength and integrity. They are expensive, yes --  and you should know that when I first reviewed them (as I mentioned in that original post), I received two "review copies" so that I could offer my opinion. My opinion was, and still is, that these are gorgeous saint/religious costumes, they are beautifully made, and they will not fall apart, even during bilocation (although I must confess we haven't actually experienced that here, though on many a day I wish for the gift of being two places at once.)

They certainly seem pricey, I know, but for large families who will see them passed from child to child, I imagine they would become something of a dress-up investment. The two dresses we received three years ago are still in terrific shape and Ramona foresees getting many more years out of them. Here they are:

(Please note: I have no stake in the Our Coats of Many Colors business. I'm simply grateful for the dresses we received for review, and I'm happy to help friends spread the word.)

Okey-dokey, Let's Talk About Mass, Part II

Part I is here.

Last time, I mentioned a few other things I wanted to touch on. One of them was:

"Letting go of an ideal about what I should get out of Mass when I'm there with children."

When I first started exploring the Church and attending Mass, I went alone. Atticus didn't want to go, and Anne-with-an-e was not quite a year old. So I left her home with her daddy and went to Mass and RCIA by myself.

I fell in love with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in a quiet, private, peaceful, prayerful atmosphere. I had time to meditate, and to listen. I had time to think. I had time to be.

I was later received into the Church and little by little things changed. I began to take Anne to Mass with me, because now I was raising a Catholic. Then we had Betsy. Suddenly I was raising two Catholics.

And, though I longed for us to be "one of those families" (the ones who are together at Mass), I had to admit that I loved the experience of worship without distractions.

But more and more often, I had company. I took my little girls with me, and finally, one year, Atticus agreed to go with me every Sunday in Lent. One of those times, when Anne was about four, and Betsy about 18 months old, we were at Mass and I hoped to be a glittering example of faith to my reluctant, "I'll never become a Catholic" husband. But I found myself getting impatient, annoyed and frustrated with my very active little children and with my husband, who didn't seem to notice their level of activity. I suddenly found myself tempted to impatience with the very thing I longed for with my whole being: my husband's conversion.

His conversion would translate into family togetherness at Mass, right? But, umm, it would mean this? Irritation, distraction, impatience, anger? It would sharpen my desire to be at Mass alone?

Wait, what?

I remember that realization and the way it gobsmacked me -- that my desire to become "one of those families, together at Mass" meant giving up my treasured spiritual experience of entering into the Mass alone. Just Jesus and me.

But it would also mean gaining a new way of experiencing the Mass: as a family. A loud, messy, imperfect, distracted, sometimes-frustrated family.

And so, as I grew into my role as a Catholic wife and mother, I grew into a new phase of what I expected to "gain" from the Mass. I approached it very differently. It was no longer about what I felt (though I'm not disparaging what I felt in my days of solo Mass attendance -- those feelings played a beautiful role in drawing me into the Church.) Mass was now also about my vocation. Being at Mass meant giving myself up to my role as a mom: teaching my children, forming them, whispering little instructions during our highest form of worship ("Look, honey, it's not bread anymore -- it's Jesus!") It was a sacrifice of sorts -- I gave up my quiet, meditative Mass in order to give myself to Jesus in a new way: as a mother.

I knew this sacrifice wouldn't last forever (or so I pep-talked myself on the toughest Sunday mornings). And it didn't.

Yesterday, as all three of my daughters sat and sang with the choir at Mass, I sat in the pew with Atticus and remembered that day so long ago when I realized I had to give up my contemplative Masses. I worried back then that I would lose something by entering into the messiness of the family at Mass.

But, as is true with all the sacrifices we make for God's sake, I learned that I didn't lose a thing. Jesus, in His boundless generosity, has given the Mass back to me a hundredfold, helping me to see it through the eyes of my daughters as they have grown up and into it over the years.

Exchanging magical, meditative Masses for distracted, messy ones was a gift I couldn't fully grasp when I initially resigned myself to it. Jesus has been there -- Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity -- in the Eucharist, at every Mass, at every age, and even at that daily Mass when a seemingly nice lady turned around to me and my then-very-bouncy preschoolers and said with pursed lips, "Oh, my, did we have red juice this morning?"

Ouch. Yeah, He was there. And He kept me going, no matter what I heard (or didn't hear) of the homily, no matter how many times I had to take a fussy child out, no matter how many readings I missed or moments of solitude I longed for. He was there for me.

So, hang in there, mommies and daddies of noisy little people. Distracted or not, you're at Mass, and you're not alone. Jesus is there.

And I'm there, wondering how my noisy little people changed so alarmingly quickly into something else. Sometimes I actually long for the red juice days.

So, let's pray for each other and we can all try to remember together that "what we get out of Mass" is the unspeakable privilege of Jesus.

October -- the Month of the Rosary

And today is the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary! 

"The Rosary taught Bernadette everything … The Rosary was her dictionary, her spelling book, naming and explaining the mysteries of God’s kingdom; it was a map guiding her to the heart of  God’s love for humanity."

-- Fr. John Lochran, 
The Miracle of Lourdes

And, although it isn't May, this is a great month to rerun "May Feelings", a video that makes me want to grab a Sharpie and a t-shirt, a set of beads, and set the world on fire:  

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And, speaking of the Rosary, I'm sure the topic will come up this morning with Sean Herriott, when I'm on Relevant Radio, at 8:35 (central time) this morning. You can listen online today as they offer their annual on-air Marian retreat all day. Visit their website here for more details.

Ramona's "Miserable" Version of Facebook

Ramona hasn't seen Les Miserables, but she's heard enough of the story (and she's heard the music again and again and again ....) from her sisters to get a pretty good idea of what's going on.

Yesterday, she wrote this:


LES MIZBOOK

Username: 24601
Password: i.hate.Javert.

ENTER

Welcome, 24601. Not you? No problem. Click here.


Recent posters: Eponine, Javert......


Javert:
Oh, how I hate you, 24601!


Visit Javert’s page


Eponine:
Eponine changed her relationship status from “Single” to “It exists in my head.”


Visit Eponine’s page


Marius:
Marius changed his relationship status from “I’m looking, stop pestering me!” to “Walking on air.”


Visit Marius’s page


Javert:
Javert changed his relationship status from “Dumped” to “No time for girls.”

Why I Still Love Reading Aloud

Reading A Little Princess to Ramona:

Anne-with-an-e and Betsy also listen in over breakfast reading with Ramona, and we all totally get this quote:

"Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage."

And, how delightful was it to hear this from Ramona the other day: "Mommy, did you know that reading A Little Princess makes me realize all the things I take for granted in my life! Like having clothes that fit me! And food! And a heater!"

I love sharing books with my favorite people in the universe.

(Will I be 92 years old, doddering in a nursing home, and inviting my 59, 56 and 52-year old daughters to drop by for a rollicking read-aloud of Deathly Hallows? "Bring the grandkids! And the great-grandkids! Have some pumpkin pasties! Someone find my dentures -- I can't do Snape's voice without them!" )