20 Week Halftime Report

We're halfway there!!! (Whoa-oa! Living on a prayer!)

I've been enjoying Mama Holi's weekly pregnancy updates. I'm using her format to do a little halftime analysis of this pregnancy.

How far along? 20 weeks.

Clothing? Maternity on the bottom, half-and-half maternity and regular on top.

Stretch marks? No new ones, anyway...

Sleep? Don't talk about sleep today.  Waking up to pee, but waking up due to Katie Rose more often.  Molars are coming in, her blanket came off, she fell out of bed, she wants to come in my bed.

Best moment of this week? Pregnancy related?  When Katie Rose kissed my belly and said, "I love you, baby!" Also the get-together last Sunday at our friends' house in the country, and just the gorgeous fall weather.  And taking the children along with us to the mall to pick up my birthday present and they thought we were at the airport.

Worst moment of this week? Just being tired all the time.

Miss anything? Sleeeeep.

Movement? Yes!  First kick this week that I was absolutely sure was the baby.  A few other kicks since that first one.  All of them seemed surprisingly high up.  Is carrying high supposed to mean you're having a girl or a boy?  I've had one of each and other people claimed I looked very different, but I never really noticed other than I got a little heavier with Anthony.

Symptoms? Sleeeeep.  I've noticed my varicose veins showing up already, although I haven't had any pain from them.  I got them for the first time at the end of my pregnancy with Katie Rose and they HURT!  My mother and grandmother both have/had them terribly.  I also had a random bout of morning sickness this week after having had none of that for a couple of months.  Also Christmas planning.  A bit of early nesting?  I usually never even think of Christmas until, "Oh my gosh, it's Advent?!?"  I don't have much nesting to do directly for the baby, because really I already have a spring girl and a spring boy, so clothing=done.  We've got all the gear.  It's too soon to set the crib up so...  I did find a Moses basket at Goodwill and was stoked all day.  But we've got away from symptoms, so moving on.

Food cravings? Cheese and bacon.

Gender? I've felt boy all along, but we're planning to be surprised.  At my last ultrasound (~14 weeks), the tech said, "If you want to know the gender, I think I can give you a pretty good guess."  That confirmed my boy suspicion, because that's kind of early, and wouldn't a boy be more obvious?  Then a friend of mine said that another tech told her that it's easier to identify a GIRL.  So who knows?  We're still calling the baby Daniel until further notice.

Labor Signs? Nope.

Belly button in or out? It kind of doesn't exist.

Wedding rings on or off? On!

Mood? Pretty great.

Rituals? I don't really have any, other than praying for the baby every day.  Anthony has made a ritual of saying good morning to Daniel, though, and gets upset if he should forget.

Looking forward to? Seeing my midwife tomorrow morning, so hearing the heartbeat again! Halloween on Friday!  Still racking my brain for a middling-pregnant, last minute costume for me, that preferably requires little to no shopping.  Any ideas?

7QT: Braggy mom post alert.

I'm narrating photos from my phone today, something of a slice of life that other people would put on Instagram but I've not joined it.  Why yes, all my photos ARE of my children!  What do people without kids take pictures of anyway?  Food, I think.  Also the occasional house project, but this time that's for the children too! 

1) They've shared a room for a few months now, and at last I've moved out the bookshelf from this spot.  I really liked the reading nook, but truthfully it was a perpetual mess because the books were seldom properly put back.  So now Anthony's stuff is where the bookshelf was:

And Katie Rose has the other side:




Not pictured are all the out-of-season/soon-to-be-grown-into things hung above.

2) My child wants to be a CHICKEN for Halloween.  So here's what we came up with:










My favorite is the feet.  Thanks, Pinterest!  I think we will leave off the beak.

3) We went to the dentist.  All of us, while I got my teeth cleaned and they talked off the hygenist's ear about trains and how numbers go on forever and personal discussions like, "Do you have cavities? Do you floss your teeth at home? I don't floss, but I don't have cavities so I think it's okay," while all I could add was, "Ahhh-ah." Anthony had his cleaning last week so he was quite at home. Katie Rose very bravely had her teeth inspected.  My dentist is a great sport.




4) This is what Anthony made to welcome Daddy home from a business trip to Geneva.  There are some lowercase letters in there, and I didn't even need to tell him how to write them. See? We really are homeschooling! I had no idea.












5) This happened.




6) Obligatory playing in the leaves photos:






7) Last and most certainly not least:  20 WEEKS!!!  And I felt the first definite kick!  Hooray for Daniel!

 

Liebster Award! Everyone's a Winner!

Christine at Splendor in the Home tagged me for the "Liebster Award," reminding me that oh yeah, I have a blog! And she's right, it's exactly like what we used to write on Xanga back when that was a thing.  So here goes:

1. What's one thing you do really well?
I'm really proud of my quilting.  I don't do it nearly enough because it is so very time consuming and there is always so much that seems more urgent, but I love being able to make something beautiful.

2. What's your favorite blog post you've written (include link)? 
Snappy Comebacks on Family Size for the Rest of Us: Because the big families aren't the only ones who get comments in public!

3. What is one blog post or article by another writer that has stuck with you for a long time (include link)?
 In which Auntie Leila gives me permission to do "an hour a day".
 So, I may have interpreted this in a different way than intended, but I would get majorly stressed out if I couldn't end a day "ahead" of where it began.  Also I had this feeling that since I was home I had to be working all the time, to earn my keep or what have you.  If a room was dirty, I wasn't doing my job.  But reading this I was like, "An hour?  That's it?  That's good enough for the day to day cleaning?"  What a relief!

4. Are you a "cat person" or a "dog person"?
Neither, really.  I've never had a pet.  I would like to have both, but the dog would be more for my son and the cat would be to keep the mice away from the coop!  I expect I wouldn't be the type to ever let a cat or dog sleep in my bed.

5. Show us your favorite internet meme or cartoon.
I don't have a favorite, but I made these recently as my contribution to an e-mail discussion among friends.  It started out with sharing an article and asking for responses.  It predictably became a very long exposition on the nature of equality among persons, feminism vs. chivalry, and blaming the whole mess on the French Revolution.  So summing up:

6.  Do you subscribe to any publications?
Urban Farm magazine.  I doubt we'll keep renewing it after this year, because my sister Teresa is about to graduate from high school and won't have to sell magazine subscriptions any more.

7. If your house was on fire, and you had time to grab ONE object to save (assume all other people and pets are already out safely), what would it be?
Probably this painting we received as a gift from our wedding party:

They commissioned another friend to paint it for us.  It's derived from a photo Katie took of us on Piazza Navona in Rome.  That's a very special place for us, and we simply have to go back there some day. Piazza Navona is where St. Agnes's church is, and she was patroness of our courtship, along with St. Raphael.  That's also where I first felt sure that I would marry Ryan.

8. Are there any kids' toys that you suspect you might enjoy playing with as much as/more than the kids?
When I get into it, I really enjoy figuring out the Brio train setups with Anthony.  It's a puzzle to figure out how to make the track as elaborate as possible while also making sure all your male/female ends match up, AND that your train is capable of accessing all parts of the track smoothly, without turning around or getting stuck in one loop.

 9. What kind of candy will you be handing out for Halloween?

Reese's for Ryan and that mini Hershey's mix for me. Because you know we'll be hoarding a few! (I pick out all the Special Darks.)

10. Have you ever seen or experienced something you suspect was supernatural?
Something I KNOW was supernatural.  When I was a teenager I had a fainting disorder, POTS.  (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, if you care to know.) You know how if you get up too fast you might get a bit dizzy for a moment? Yeah, well POTS was like that, but on bad days if I got up at all I'd pass out completely. I was on all sorts of drugs to keep my blood pressure up enough to keep me conscious, but it wasn't easy to live with.  I would still have dizzy spells and pass out on occasion. I was miraculously healed of it my freshman year of college.

It was at a praise-and-worship night at Franciscan University of Steubenville, not far from my school in Pittsburgh. I was praying for my then-boyfriend to be healed of his chronic Lyme disease. A girl went up to the stage and said she'd felt the Holy Spirit was asking us to pray for ourselves as well as others.  Well, I'd never prayed for my own healing before!  I don't know why but it just never occurred to me to do that! So I did, very simply, and immediately I was "resting in the Spirit." I had a vision of myself as the woman in the Gospel who had hemorrhaged for twelve years.  When I saw Jesus passing through the crowd, I knew what I was supposed to do.  So I reached out and touched the hem of His robe.  He turned to me smiling and said, "Daughter, your faith has made you well."

The next morning in my dorm room, I prayed the Rosary standing perfectly still in front of the full length mirror.  I was watching for the blood to pool in my hands and feet, as it always did if I stood still for any length of time. It never did.  My blood pressure was about 150 instead of it's usual 90, so I didn't take any medicine that morning.  I never needed it again.



So there you have it folks!  Some random things I bet you were all dying to know.  Part of the Liebster thing is you have to tag more bloggers to answer some questions.  I'm tagging:

Emily at Mama Holi
Stacy at My Life is a Comedy Show for God

It's taken me a week just to answer these myself, so rather than come up with new questions at this point, just answer the same ones!  If you haven't been tagged yet and feel like playing a long, go ahead and I'll add you to this post.

Hermione's Day Out and WIWS

I hope everybody had a happy feast of St. Francis of Assisi yesterday! The parish in our neighborhood had a blessing of the animals yesterday morning, so we loaded one of our chickens into the wagon and headed down!

This may sound simple, and in principle it was.  But what a spectacle we made. Our progress was rather slowed by Anthony wanting to pull the wagon all by himself, and tell everybody we met all about our chickens for a half a mile each way down a very busy street.  And it was COLD!  Two days before we'd been in shorts at the zoo, and yesterday it was in the 40s and windy.  Welcome to the Midwest.  But it was still a lot of fun, and I suppose a chance to evangelize our kooky Catholicism and crunchiness.  Because of course everyone was rather interested in why in the world we had a chicken in a groundhog trap in a wagon in the city in freezing wind.

At the pet blessing, there were about 20 dogs, a few cats, and us.  The Keanes and their wagon attracted a lot of attention, to put it mildly.  Much of which was from the dogs who might have liked to eat the chicken, but the human reactions were all delighted.  We learned there are more chickens and even some goats and pigs in the neighborhood!

Hermione about to receive holy water, blocked by excited child.

On the way home, we treated the kids to some clearly necessary hot chocolate, and parked the wagon outside.  When we came out we were talking to another family we met there, answering all their questions about backyard chicken-ing.  In the few minutes we were chatting, we'd gathered a small crowd of 15 or so people who'd stopped to listen and gawk at Hermione!  At last we made it home for a hot soup lunch, and some excellent naps.


For today, I offer you to this fabulous mirror selfie for What I Wore Sunday:

 

Sweater: Motherhood via Goodwill

Pants: Motherhood

Jacket: Ann Taylor via Goodwill

Scarf: Goodwill!

Bump: 17 weeks

A bit more casual than my usual Sunday attire.  Pants!  Eek!  My leggings were dirty and I haven't found the maternity (aka cut waist) tights yet.  And we were seriously late.  The scarf is one of my favorites for fall and winter, because it is big and soft but not bulky.  It makes a great headcovering for Mass that doesn't fall off all the time.

Happy Sunday and don't forget the feast of the Most Holy Rosary on Tuesday!

Daniel Keane?

 Yep, it's a baby bump!

By now everybody in my life already knows and has for some time, but I haven't officially told the internet at large, so here's the pregnancy announcement post.

Estimated date of delivery: March 11, 2015, which puts us at about 16 weeks right now.

I'm feeling good now.  Some minor morning sickness early on, then some very scary bleeding that landed me on quasi-bed rest for about three weeks.  The whole experience was rather horrible, although I was well aware throughout how much I had to be thankful for. The baby looks absolutely perfect and our friends really came through for us with helping with childcare and just getting through.  I did get pretty depressed because of the inactivity and feeling so useless and burdensome to everyone around me, and of course the lingering fear of losing another child.  I wasn't even fully aware just how down I was until about last Sunday, some days after being cleared to do normal activities again.  We had some good friends over for dinner, and even though I'd been having friends over constantly to help out, the contrast between that simple enjoyment of friendship and all the horrible feelings that marred all of those other "play dates" was so obvious.  I'm so thankful to be back to normal.  It all seems like a bad dream now.  Now I'm finally able to enjoy this pregnancy!

One of the best things about this pregnancy has been Anthony.  For a four-year-old, he seems to be extremely aware and he already loves this baby so much!  He figured out I was pregnant when I was about six weeks along.  We had been careful not to say anything in his hearing just yet.  My belly was ever-so-slightly bigger, maybe. But it's right at his eye level, and he noticed when he squeezed in to give me a hug when I was standing in the kitchen! He asked point blank, "Hmm, is there a baby in your tummy?" He's named the baby "Daniel" and it seems to be sticking. If I'm still in bed when he wakes up in the morning he'll climb in with me and with, "Good morning, Mommy!  Good morning, Daniel baby!" with a hug to my belly.  He's been enthralled by all the ultrasounds we've been to, laughing with delight when the baby on the screen moves. Now that we don't need to go every week he wants to know when we're going to see the baby on the big computer again.  He's asking all sorts of questions about how the baby knows it's time to come out, why does it take so long, why are babies born in a hospital, why can't daddies have babies in their tummies, etc. Katie Rose follows her brother's lead in talking to Daniel and stuffing her baby doll in her shirt but I'm sure she has no idea what's really coming!

Open to Life, Open to Loss, Open to Love

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear." ~1 John 4:18

A lot of wonderful things have been written this week in the Catholic blogosphere about childbearing and the culture at large.

It occurs to me that the very root the issue of family size and motherhood even being an issue is that of fear.  We're afraid of having too many children.  We're afraid of the very process of childbirth.  We're afraid of infertility.  We're afraid of losing control.  We're afraid of what people will think of us.  We're afraid of losing our figures, our sanity, of having less money.  We're afraid of anything and everything connected to this great mystery of bringing new human life into being.

We all know fear is from the Evil One.  The book The Apostolate of Holy Motherhood is on my desk as I type this.  There is a lovely painting of the Madonna and Child by Murillo on the front cover.

Beautiful, isn't it?  You know what is absent from their faces?  Fear.  Mary knows that "a sword will pierce her heart." She knows the ultimate sacrifice she will be asked to make.  Jesus knew from all Eternity that the moment of His Passion would come.   They know that mankind would so often scorn that sacrifice, and return love with hatred or indifference.  Yet they possess a perfect peace, born of their perfect love.

Love simply doesn't have any room for fear.  It gives without thought for the suffering, or if it does think of the suffering, it sees past it toward the good to be obtained by it.  Love can look at the cross and see beauty, not merely ugliness and pain.  We can talk about the sufferings of motherhood and still find joy in it.

For us in our fallen human condition, there is inevitably suffering.  For the sufferings particular to the vocation of marriage, only love can cast out the fear of that suffering.  That's really the answer to the anti-child culture, is the need for love to counter the fear.  Love is fruitful of its very nature, flowing out from itself.  The greatest and most perfect Love is that of the persons of the Trinity.  The love of the Father and Son brings forth the Holy Spirit.  The love of God brought forth all of creation.  The love of husband and wife is ordered toward bringing forth children.


Love is not afraid of suffering.  On our human level, even though it is natural to not wish to suffer, we open ourselves to it any time we allow ourselves to love.  Our family and friends will hurt us at times.  People we love will die.  People we love will have sufferings of their own and we too will feel pain out of compassion for them.  Our anti-child culture is afraid of suffering.  And fear will always shrink away from love.

When a married couple simply allows God to send the children as He wills it, we certainly do open the floodgates to a whole new level of suffering.  Whether our particular cross is the pain of many miscarriages, of infertility, of having a child with special needs, of losing an older child to illness or accident, or the pain of seeing a child reject God, or whether it's simply the day-to-day sufferings of family life, we opened themselves to all of it when we made the choice to love each other and fully give ourselves to each other until death do us part.  There is no going back.  And we will find there is nothing to fear!

7 Quick Takes

--- 1 ---

No news on Europe.  There are posts opening in Geneva, but no news on whether an American might be taking one of those either. Je suis calme.

--- 2 ---

Stacy Ann recommended the Duolingo app to practice my French.  I've been using it for a week now and I like it. However, it has you saying smarmy French pickup lines from the very first lessons: "Je suis un homme et tu es une femme.  Je suis rich." ("I am a man and you are a woman.  I am rich.")  What more could you possibly need to know, girl?  Next I need to learn how to say, "He has ten thousand a year!"

--- 3 ---

TMI alert:  Potty Training Bootcamp.  Or Panty Camp.  It's not as scary as it sounds, but today's only day two. Yesterday we had five accidents.  I know Katie Rose is ready. In fact I think I should have done this months ago, but procrastinated.  She was actually doing a lot better three months ago.  Now we've pretty much completely regressed, even doing #2 in her pants which she's told me about beforehand for months!  By the end of the morning she was informing me right before she went, so... success? So far today we've kept the panties dry, even with an hour long walk around the neighborhood!

--- 4 ---

American Ninja Warrior. I just think you all should know that this exists.  My dad introduced us to this on our visit a couple of weeks ago.  This could have only come out of Japan, where it's called "Sasuke" and apparently it's a big deal.  It's as if someone said, "Hey, what if we made Super Mario Brothers real?" The obstacle courses are over-the-top elaborate and even comical, but the feats of strength required to get through are truly impressive.  One woman ever has beat the course.  This video is only the qualifier to do the full competition, but it gives you an idea.

--- 5 ---

Anthony is on his way to becoming an American Ninja Warrior.  We were at the playground with some friends this past week.  Anthony wanted me to give him a boost up to the monkey bars, but I was too busy helping toddlers to come immediately. He decided to climb directly up the pole and do the monkey bars rather than wait around for me.  Then he didn't want to drop from so high up, so he shimmied over to the other pole and slid down.  Then of course it was cool so he kept doing it, maybe about five times before we went home.  Independence win, but dang that's a strong four-year-old.

--- 6 ---

Kendra wrote this morning about how she would fix Frozen.  I've only seen it once, but the messed-up plot really bothered me too.  I totally was expecting Hans to kiss her and it wouldn't work, just like Kendra wrote!  Making Hans into a villian is just so contrived and off-puttingly post-modern.  So, supposing Disney had consulted Kendra and made the plot actually make sense, I have a great sequel.  Because you know there will be one.  My Frozen sequel would be based on Midsummer Night's Dream.   We already have our fairy folk trolls, and Elsa and Anna already have a great Helena/Hermia dynamic.  Clearly the final pairings ought to be Elsa/Hans and Anna/Kristoff.  Olaf and Sven would make a good Puckish team.  Or maybe I should write things that are not alternative universe Disney/Shakespeare fan fiction.

--- 7 ---

While we're being frivolous, what shall I do with my hair?  It's been a year since I've had a haircut, and it's definitely time.  It's not bad or unhealthy, but there's not much shape to it anymore and I'm in a ponytail/braid/bun rotation that's getting really boring.  I like when my hair has some texture to it, and when it's too long it just hangs limp.  Unless I blow dry it, which is never because it takes so dang long with my thick hair.  When we go to San Diego my hair will do waves like this:



Which I really really like.  Doing it in Ohio would require me to, you know, use product and style it in the morning.  Which wouldn't be bad as long as it wouldn't require use of a blow dryer, thus stirring up children before their time. I would also love highlights or even to go a little more coppery in color but let's be real, I would never maintain any sort of coloring.  I guess I'm feeling very pale and Gothic-looking, because even though I'm outside all the time I will always be Irish and my makeup is always pretty much gone by the afternoon which doesn't help matters.

Bonus take:  Katie Rose is suddenly calling me "Mom".  I don't like it very much.  Really I think I would prefer Mama/Mother but I'm not insistent enough and "Mommy" is okay with me.  But "Mom"?  Not from a two-year-old.  Anthony never calls me "Mom" so I have no idea where that's coming from.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!