Pregnancy Thought Patterns, Turkey, and an Icon

 

1.) Life of Fred

Little Boy flew through two years' worth of Hooked on Phonics curriculum in a single summer last year, so we invested in a math curriculum for him this summer. It's supposed to be fairly self-directed and story based-- I remember reading the description of it in the Rainbow Resource Catalog as a kid and really wanting to try it (that thing is phone book thick and surprisingly entertaining...or it was for me. I was a weird kid). 

Anyway. We'll see if it's a good fit. It introduces math (and some science) concepts through a story about a five year old mathematics professor at a university, then has the student do a few practice problems at the end. It doesn't seem very rigorous, but since it's something meant for the summer, I don't think that's a drawback. We got a set of the books that's supposed to last "12 to 18 months"...we'll see. 

2.) Hitting the Wall

Pregnancy is very tiring and I sleep a lot more often. And need to sit down more often. 

And pee more often. And wince because the baby decided to do a twist in place and it really hurts because there isn't a lot of room in there. 

This isn't fun anymore, and I want to be done already. 

And then I remember how difficult (and painful) the first couple months of the post partum period were with my first two, and I just feel exhausted and kind of discouraged. That stage isn't a whole heck of a lot of fun either. 

And then I think about a couple women I know who struggle with infertility, and how they've gone through countless painful and expensive treatments to even be able to try to have a baby, and how they express a very real heartbreak over not being able to conceive, and I just feel guilty.

And then, because I've read way too much moralizing literature over the years, I move into becoming slightly paranoid that this kid's going to be born with a third eye or missing limb or die or something to teach me the value of human life and how fortunate I actually am, because THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS TO PEOPLE LIKE ME IN CHRISTIAN MOVIES!!! 

And then the kids have a fight or make a mess and I have to go break/ clean it up. 

Sigh...send chocolate. And wine. 

...

Maybe not wine.

3.) The Everlasting Turkey 

You know what happens when you stick a 12-15lb turkey in an oven at 2:30pm? 

You're still waiting on it to finish at 9:30pm. 

Start your turkey in the morning folks, and make sure the dang thing is fully defrosted. We finally got it all carved up and put away around 11pm. Thank God for the Mexican restaurant five minutes from the house, or supper last night would've been an utter disaster.   

4.) Nesting

I've started the obsessive organizing and cleaning stage of late pregnancy. 

So far, I've gotten the kids' closet cleaned out and organized, the kids' outgrown clothes re-organized (I keep a store of baby clothes up to size 3T on hand), and the baby stuff I need out, cleaned, and where I think I'll end up keeping them once Bitty Baby is born. 

Next I'm eyeballing our ever-cluttered and disorganized craft room and wondering what I can get done in there. That's a much bigger project though, so we'll see. 

5.) Sofia the First

We've moved from ballerinas to Disney Junior princess shows. Thank you public library DVD collection. 

Does EVERY episode really need a song though? Like...EVERY SINGLE ONE. And good grief, why are royalty entering contests against obviously poorer village folk? They obviously have a heck of an advantage (and Sofia always seems to win them), and it just seems in bad taste and bad governance for the ruling classes to let their children enter these things.

I mean, this sort of nonsense is how the Bolshevik revolution gained traction.

6.) I wrote something serious again

Hopefully none of my readers need this information, but here it is if you do...What to Do if You've Been Abused by Someone in a Religious Order. 

With my own experience reporting and dealing with sexual abuse in the Church, as well as the experiences of other survivors I've met, I've noticed that there are certain unique circumstances when the perpetrator is a member of a religious order than make the reporting process a little more complicated, and harder to get justice with, than when the perpetrator is diocesan. 

So I wrote about what I've observed, and put together a simple guide for what to do and how to navigate those differences. Like I said, it's a tragedy that this information is needed at all, but it is, and now it's out there. 

7.) St. Joseph

I made a cool sort-of icon!!

I've ended up with a TON of holy cards for some reason. The flow has finally slowed down a bit, but I have quite a collection thanks to several friendships with religiously inclined people (both actual religious and laity), a stint in Catholic schools that liked to hand out stuff, and a surprise inheritance from my mom's stepmom's aunt who was a nun and evidently had an aversion to throwing out anything even remotely religious from the 1930s onward (I even ended up with a small collection of modern "liturgical art" postcards clearly printed in the 1960s). 

So I've started trying to put them to good use by gluing them to painted-over small dollar-store wall art (the type with trite "inspirational" or witty quotes). I've done similar projects in the past.  This one was one that came with a copy of Columbia magazine that I cut out and painted over a bit. 

I'm not entirely sure what I'll do with them when they're done. My son likes St. Joseph, so I'm thinking of giving him this one, maybe hang it by his bed. We'll see where the other ones end up- possibly in the back of our Church with a "for free" sign. I dunno. 

See the rest of this week's takes here.