Quick Takes

1

Er, Tuesday. Moving right along...

2

Jesus was fully God and fully man, so obviously he had a fully-functioning digestive tract. Yep, guess where this is going...  Something tells me that Iain might be among the first to delve into this particular dimension of Christology, without a hint of disrespect. He just headed for the bathroom chanting, “we are going to the Potty of Christ.”

3

To cure the “I have nothing to wear” disease, I’m thinking of creating my own Look Book by taking pictures of each of my wearable outfits. I guess that reveals that I don’t have many outfits. I’m okay with that, especially since I’m in a balloon-up-’n-down family-growing season of life. But seriously, when I’m drawing a blank I could look through the pictures, pick something, throw it on and run out the door to whatever event I would’ve otherwise been 20 min late to. It would also enable my husband to give an opinion when I desperately plead “what should I wear?”

4

I love to sing. I was in choir from 5th-12th grade. I’m humble enough to know that I don’t have a stellar voice, and being twelve years out of practice has taken its toll. However, it wasn’t until Mark and I decided to do simple recordings of our favorite Advent songs that I fully realized that I have a vocal range of only about 8 notes, with an ideal range of maybe 4 notes. On top of that, my vocal control and ability to find and stay on pitch are all but gone. It was a depressing revelation, but it has also prompted me to sing more, hoping that I might retrain this warbley little voice of mine.

5

Iain loves being involved in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program at our parish. We were out of town for the orientation, so I’m pretty clueless about what goes on in the Atrium. I get little glimpses during the course of daily life: “Mom, that angel’s name is Gabriel!” or he’ll sing lines from a song he’s learned.  Today’s glimpse was prompted by the Christmas song “Mary, Did You Know” which I can almost guarantee they haven’t sung at Atrium. He stopped singing mid-verse to ask me, “What are the actions for this song?”
Glad to know that he’s internalized that every song has actions.

6

Speaking of “Mary Did You Know” here’s an awesome Star Wars spoof on it:

7

On a different note altogether, fellow parents, I have a question: What non-corporal forms of discipline do you find effective for getting-out-of-bed and don't-want-to-clean-up types of infractions when the "go to your room/time out" is not an option because a) they're supposed to be in their room or b) that would let them off the hook from cleaning up.

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Just Because...

Because it's now the middle of December, I thought I'd share a video from the summer...remember the summer? Those 3 warm months when the sun shines past 3:30 pm? Yes, someday it will return to Minnesota. In the meantime, enjoy the memories.

We took a little family trip to the playground:

In other news, Mark helped me pick out a beautiful wool winter hat. It's quite feminine and goes well with my dressier winter coat. On the long walk to Mass (ahem, across the street) I suddenly felt foolish wearing my beautiful winter hat, dress coat, pretty scarf, skirt and heels...as other women jumped out of their cars in their khakis and jeans. Now, I'm not at all against wearing pants, but I generally try to wear skirts to Mass.

In that moment of feeling silly, I made the decision that I would try to banish the silly feelings and instead try to adopt the humility and grace which should be the attire of my soul regardless of my appearance. I may be the sore-thumb dressed-up lady, but if I do it reverently and kindly, perhaps I can be a silent influence on others? (Except on those days, esp. Saturday Vigil Masses, when I literally run across the street, and fling my children and pants-clad-self in the pew as the Responsorial Psalm is beginning...really there is no excuse, I mean, we live across the street!)