Babies are Powerful

Last night, my husband took all the kids to the playground after dinner. He ran into a neighbor whose son loves to play with Hannah. "We haven't seen you in a while," he said in a cheerful greeting. "Oh my, you've had another baby!" she exclaimed when she saw Mia Bean sleeping in her stroller.

She skipped over saying how cute Maria was, and instead launched into this long, tortured explanation at all the reasons why she couldn't have another child, none of which I'll repeat here other than to assure you, gentle readers, that none of them involved the physical inability to bear another child.

After fifteen minutes of explanation, Jon was so unsettled that he took the kids home early. "I don't know why she would get so agitated and feel the need to take me into her confidence like that. I never suggested that she should have another child," Jon said.

"You didn't have too!" I replied. "Maria did all the work."

I truly believe that. There's all this talk about children growing up to change the world. Maria's already this powerful force- a gorgeous third child when everyone else in America seems content with one girl and one boy. Our neighbors knew that we are struggling. There's no secrete suitcase of money stashed away under our bed. Yet there is my husband, at the same apartment-complex playground that she shares, hanging out with yet another newborn.

Oliver Hill Farm is Saved!

Hurrah for prayer intentions! I got my thank you note from my donation last night, but no word on the mortgage status. I was so concerned that I looked up Molly's blog this morning. Looks like everything will be paid off by the Sept. 29th deadline. Thank you all for your prayers, especially the dear Steubenville grads in my rosary group.

Here's a quote from Molly's blog,

"I am so completely overcome with feelings of gratitude. First to Our dear Mother, then to all of you faith filled and faithful friends. We may not be friends in this life, but I am most confident we will be in the next.

Having said that let me explain. We have had such generous offers and benefactors that it has already left me numb. Now today we have someone call and offer to pay the remaining balance if any after all the donations are in. How does one begin to say thank you? How does one tell you of the relief and security you all have given to our family? I do not pretend to know, so I will offer my most humble and pitiful thank you. Please know we are offering our communions and rosaries for all the intentions of our benefactors.

Gratefully,

Bill and Molly"

Divorce

I'm in the midst of watching "The War," Ken Burn's new documentary on World War II. Within these tales of soldiers facing harrowing experience, the central importance of family comes back again and again. A son writes home to his worried mother and promises to come home again to eat plates of her Italian cooking. "Keep the ovens roaring for me. When I get home I'm going to eat plate after plate." A POW survived almost five years in an awful Japanese Prison Camp. His simple & yet profound explanation of his survival: "There was this girl I met right before the war. I just had to get out to see if that girl was still alive." I wrote earlier about this family who sat down for dinner each night using their traditional tablecloth and china, even though they were in the midst of yet another Japanese prison camp & only have a few grains of rice to eat.

It seems that family can survive the onslaught of any outside force against it. Yet how can it survive the forces that threaten to rip it apart from the inside?

We live in an age of divorce. When I was in middle school, (I'm 32), divorce was so rare that my guidance counselor interrupted class to lead a discussion on the subject when one classmate's parents announced their separation. That act just couldn't happen today.

I'm working on a long divorce post based on my rather odd experiences. My parents are not divorced nor am I. But I went to law school with the intention of becoming a divorce attorney. I even wrote my senior college thesis on how to restructure child custody cases to get a more fair result. As a Legal Service Attorney, I handled about 10-20 divorces a year for four years. Because there was such a demand for our services, I only handled the divorces for domestic violence victims who wished to leave their abusers. These divorces were supposed to be "good moves" to help women live safer lives with their children. Leaving an abusive home and obtaining a domestic restraining order is a positive act. I always felt so grateful & hopeful after every civil protection order hearing. So it confused me when the later divorce trials with the same clients were so miserable. My experiences with woman after woman left me with a heavy heart.

I think living a "good" marriage, and building up the institution of marriage is the most important thing we can do as Catholic laity to help the church. The church needs more priests, and those in religious orders. It also needs a lot of ads in the Catholic paper congratulating couples on making their 50th wedding anniversary.

While I'm working on this next piece, I'm throwing open the discussion on marriage.

What is the best piece of marriage advice you've received or discovered?
What is the thing you love most about your spouse?
How are you encouraging your children to view the vocation of marriage?
Share the source of your perspective. Let us know if your single, engaged or married when you comment. I look forward to hearing from all of you!

"The War"- Episode Four

I've really got to hand it to Ken Burns. The interweave of the stories of soldiers from four US towns seemed clumsy at first. It took me a while to get the hang of making the dramatic transitions between people and places in the massive theater of this war. Now that we're in the fourth episode, I find myself really appreciating the brilliance of this structure on its own terms. WWII is such a huge war to get you head around. Knowing how things interrelate, and returning again and again to individual families, helps the viewer gain perspective on the full scope of the war AND emotionally feel the human sacrifice involved. I really encourage anyone who missed this series to check it out on Netflix once it become available.

To wet your appetite, here are a few highlights from this episode:

A paper boy talks about the shock of seeing the blue service stars hung in the front windows of the houses in his home town suddenly turn to gold stars whenever a death in the family occurred.

The combat pilots over Germany faced such terrible odds, it makes Heller's Catch-22 seem rather Pollyannaish. One fighter pilot described how one mission was so awful that on his way back to the airstrip he suddenly lost control of his right hand. The right hand started involuntarily shaking so hard that he had to land his airplane using his left hand on the control stick. He continued to have terrible nightmares of this mission after the war, for over 50 years. Whenever he dreamed of this mission, when he woke up his right hand would be shaking and virtually useless. Those mornings he would go downstairs for breakfast, and his wife Jackie would see his right hand shaking. Without a word being said, she would always hand him a cup of coffee in his left hand. I can't quite explain it, but that silent communication of handing a cup of coffee sensitively to your husband's left hand seemed sort of the essence of a good marriage.

One more story, which actually comes from episode three. An American family with three children (the youngest being only 3 months old) is swept up in an internment camp after the Japanese invade their home on the Philippines. The parents do their best to provide a stable home life in the midst of this chaos. The mom said "for as long as possible, we are going to eat our dinner (a simple meal of rice & fish) at our good wooden table, with a table cloth and on our colored plates." Something to think about as we go about our common tasks of preparing & eating our daily bread with our families.

Kids + Art

How to get a child to love art

It’s okay for kids to listen to classical music on the radio instead of the concert hall. To watch movies instead of live theater performances. Yet, if you want to truly nurture an “art-art” lover, skip the mumbo jumbo of Baby Einstein painting books. Head right to the art museum.

This is impossible you say! Just a few pointers to encourage you to branch out from the Natural History Museum to take in the Hirshhorn & National Galleries during your stay in D.C.

Babies love art museums. Put the baby in a sling and as long as you go at a gentle pace, you can stare at pictures to your hearts content. Jon and I trade off baby duty + the hand of a relatively responsible older child. The other parent gets to hold the hand of the squirmy toddler.

Kids love sculpture. There is something really cool about being able to examine a life-like thing up close. Take a long stroll through the 18th sculpture hall which you usually brush past.

Spend time in the pre-Renaissance Galleries. The focuses of these paintings are almost exclusively religious. I use this as an opportunity to quiz them on their saints & bible stories. It’s truly inspiring to see how many different versions of our Blessed “Mama Mary” can exist in the same room.

We’ve had wonderful luck at the Black Box video installation at the Hirshhorn Museum on the Mall. One video showed 99 of the Guards at Buckingham Palace march in interesting formations. Another was a ballet of trucks. (Lex’s favorite!) This month is a highlight of
wolves.

Keep the visit very short with kids (under 25 minutes). It helps that in D.C. all of the Smithsonian art museums are free. When I visit art museums at other cities, we usually get a two-day pass. We plan for four hours over two days, rather than one massive time block. That way we can see what we want, without risking a toddler meltdown. We also take the kids to the Museum cafeteria for treats. That way one parent can handle three kids while the other gets some quiet gallery time.

Why go through this added hassle? It’s really beautiful to share a passion for art with your family. The kids talk about what pieces they like, and many times it surprises you. You and your spouse can take in a new painting (even if its at different times, holding the hands of different children) and you’ll have something exciting to talk about over dinner. Your family will make tired Museum Guards smile. And someday, hopefully, your kid will unconsciously feel happy and at home while staring at a new acquisition at the Louvre.

No Place Like Home

Rachel Whiteread'sGhost is currently on display on the second floor of the Modern Art Building at the National Gallery, in Washington D.C. Click on the above website to explore this amazing highlight of negative space. A few weeks ago, I took in this sculpture with Hannah. It's amazing to see up close. When you look at a room "opposite" you suddenly start to notice things like the ashes from the inside of a fireplace grate, or the odd hole that a door nob leaves in a door after its been removed.

This sculpture keeps coming back to me as I go about my basic housewifely duties. How much do I focus on the exterior surfaces of my home -- of the place mats that need to be laundered after jelly drips from a messy four-year-old-prepared peanut butter sandwich and the stain on the carpet from the dog who lost the cheerios that she was never supposed to be fed?

Meanwhile, my main importance as a mother is this "spiritual" force filling up the negative space with love, compassion, and copious acts of patience. Some days I'm more successful at this than others. (Today's bad allergy day being an example of "less successful.") But I'm rarely MINDFULL of how my spiritual energy is filling the house. I count my success as a mother by the tangible, clean laundry, and relatively decluttered floor. This sculpture shows me in a tangible manner how little the surface stuff is in relation to much larger, open, spiritual space.

I remind myself to be more faithful in my home by staring at sculptures on the weekend & writing during the weekdays. What unusual things do you do to remind yourself to practice your faith at home?

Prayer for Jen

Poor Jen at E Tu Jen has got a shark feast going on in her comment section from her latest blog post. I thought I'd send over some love since my spiritual works of mercy, (patience with those in error,) so far only extends to errant two year olds and not angry atheists.

Here's one of my favorite Irish Hymns "Be Thou My Vision." The second verse from my old Methodist Hymnal seems very fitting:

Be thou my wisdom and thou my true word
I ever with thee and thou with me Lord
thou and thou only, first in my heart,
great God of heaven, my treasure thou art

Listen to the tune
here

High Praise Indeed

Today is an awful allergy day in D.C. I have, unfortunately, moved an Upstate New York man and his children into a Southern Swamp. In New York & Wisconsin, the four seasons were "winter, winter, a brief glorious summer, and then winter again." Here in D.C. the temperature is glorious in the Spring & Fall. Unfortunately, the allergens are so awful we now mark the calendar with "Pollen, Grass, Ragweed, and Mold."

Yesterday, I took the kids out for a play date & picnic at Fort Ward Park. I'm sad to report that the toy cannon, which my siblings & I played on thirty years ago during visits to my grandfather's house, was unceremoniously dragged off the playground yesterday. Some expert has deemed the cannon "not playground safe." The tractors and other digging equipment made a noisy accompaniment to our picnic, but the three boys were in heaven.

Despite making sure that everyone was dosed with Claritin before the play date, we are now all languishing in allergen fatigue & irritability. I broke my newly instituted "no TV before 3 PM" rule to give the baby & me some much needed nap time. (That sort of sums up my inconsistent nature. My argument to myself to enforce rules goes something like this "The best thing about enforcing the TV restrictions with regularity is that you can break them when you really, really need to. Then the kids will be so happy to be watching TV at an odd time they will give you peace for two hours!")

So it's been a hard, hard morning. Then I find a quote like this to give me a good shot in the arm. Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty on motherhood:

"The most important person on earth is a mother. She cannot claim the honor of having built Notre Dame Cathedral. She need not. She has built something more magnificent than any cathedral—a dwelling for an immortal soul….The angels have not been blessed with such a grace. " HT My Journey to Faith, Wheelbarrow Manor

Such a lovely thought three days before the Feast of Angels. I'm inspired now to turn off the TV, get lunch together for a group of sick patients, make myself some strong, strong coffee.

"The War" #2

Some soul scorching footage tonight:

1944, Battle of Anzio (Italy)

During fighting so fierce that soldiers received additional shrapnel wounds while getting their initial wounds stitched up on the operating table, an American Mess Officer falls to his knees and offers the following prayer "God Help Us. Come down yourself. Don't send Jesus. This is no place for children."

Just after the four month battle of Anzio ends, Babe Ciarlo, from Waterbury, CT is killed. He's 20 years old and the second son of a large Italian American family. In his pockets are found the following: 2 rosaries, 1 letter, 16 photographs of family members and $1.61.

During the battle of Anzio the documentary should this awful footage of the Allies bombing Mounte Cassio. That would be THE monastery where Saint Benedict wrote the Benedictine Rule in 529 A.D. which became the founding principle for all western monasticism. To read more about the two German officers who saved the priceless library of over 70,000 ancient books, go to this site

Upcoming Kennedy Center Events

Three weekends ago, we were lucky enough to hit "Circus Underground," the annual Kennedy Center Open House Arts Festival. The entire festival is a seven hour free event that brings together all kinds of family friendly preforming arts activities. It was hot, and we had a tiny baby, so our main focus was on the National Symphony Orchestra's "Petting Zoo." This was a fun event where little kids could get their hands on real instruments and receive tips from musicians. My heart melted to see Hannah play a kid size cello. Of course, Lex's favorite was the percussion table with all types of unique noise makers.

I picked up dozens of handouts. Check out a complete list of events on the Kennedy Center website. Here is the upcoming events that I've place on our calendar.
"Family Look-in Don Giovanni," 1 hour condensed version of Mozart's Opera
"Hansel & Gretel Opera Presentation," December at local libraries
"Bring Your Teddy Bear," Kid-friendly NSO concert
"The Lion King," Original Broadway Presentation

Dangerous Blessing

St. Frances of Rome,

Help us to see the difference between what we want to do and what God wants us to do. Help us to discern what comes from our will and what comes from God’s desire. Amen.

HT: Jen@ e tu jen for introducing me to this new favorite saint

Made from Scratch: Martha Washington’s Shortbread Recipe

This original colonial shortbread recipe comes from my four year old’s “Lady Washington’s Bake Set” purchased at Mount Vernon gift shop by a generous grandmother. I made it one day when we were bored. Now it’s my favorite cookie recipe. The dough is super thick and easy for preschool kids to handle. Without any raw eggs, impatient kids can munch on the dough. The end result is so yummy that only a few lucky cookies make it until Dad returns from work. These cookies are perfect for tea time, especially topped with whipped cream & fresh strawberries.

Ingredients:
4 cups flour
1 cup light brown sugar
1 pound of butter

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Mix flour and sugar; add butter. Place on a floured surface and pat to a 1/2 inch thickness. Cut in desired shapes with cookie cutters. Bake 20-25 minutes.

Placing Stickers Over The Truth

From "Mondo Donatella", by Lauren Collins, featured in Profiles, New Yorker, Sept. 24, 2007 (about Donatella Versace)

"Donatella repaired to the outdoor terrace to smoke. Seated at a wrought-iron table, she thumbed open a pack of "special DV Marlboro Reds," (so called because her staff in Milan is instructed to cover the customary "Smoking Kills" label on every pack with a sticker bearing a DV monogram in medieval script.)" pg. 152.

Disability Rights

Read all about the challenging IEP Process here
This post brought me back to my many, many IEP meeting experiences as an Education Law Attorney for Legal Services. God Bless you all who are in these sticky mediations. (I found that domestic violence hearings were less tense than facing an irate second grade teacher who was fed up with the ADHD kid in her class.)

Here's are ten tips for surviving IEP meetings.

1. BRING FOOD to the meeting. This starts everyone out on a good note. The adage "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach" also applies to IEP team members. It also lets you say, "Oh I didn't realize that there would be 15 staff members here today. I only made brownies for five." Next time, they will make sure to give you an accurate count of IEP members in advance.

2. If the meeting is going to ugly (not always easy to predict in advance like 'Lissa's post shows), shake things up by sending in the other parent. For example, if Mom is the one who usually goes to the meetings. Shake things up by sending in Dad to sign the final IEP. The teachers will fall all over themselves trying the help the "new" & "lost" parent.

3.Every family should own a copy of "From Emotions to Advocacy" available here. Read it cover to cover. Highlight it. Sleep with it under your pillow before each IEP meeting.

Seriously, I cannot recommend this website enough. Wrights law is founded by a severely dyslexic student who went on to break all odds and become a lawyer. (His wife is a counselor.) Mr. Wright performed a miracle intervention for one of my middle school classmate's brothers. The Wrights truly know of what they speak, and they are very, very encouraging. The Wrights lead IEP trainings all over the country. Go to one in your area. Immediately! You'll learn all kinds of valuable tips and make alliances with other parents and "friendly" experts.

4. Pay to have a neutral assessment of your child. Even though the school must provide free assessments, at least one comprehensive exam during your child's school career should be on your own dime and with the very best "expert" in your area. Even if you have to save up for three years for this exam, it is worth it to have at least one person without an agenda give you medical advice about your child's personal strengths and weaknesses.

5. Start a huge binder filled with every single examination ever given to your child. (Kids tend to float up and down, even on supposedly stable things like IQ scores.) Pull out the six pound volume during IEP meetings. This highlights how knowledgeable you are about your kid and gives a quick double check to see if a disputed test result was a "fluke" or ongoing trend.

6.Always, always take a 10 min "clear your head break" before signing the IEP. I used this time to go over each option with my client. If your alone, you can call your spouse at work- have him remind you what your initial goal was and double check your rational for any compromises.

7. You can LEAVE an IEP meeting without signing a new form. An unsigned IEP is better than a signed, less than 100% agreeable one, for the reasons explained above.

8. Remember, never lose your temper! (You will need to cultivate heroic examples of
"meekness"as explained below.) The most important thing to maintain during the IEP meeting is the good relationship between your kid and his teachers.

9. Think like a lawyer. Build up your case. If you've reached a logjam with the school system, calmly end the meeting. The old IEP will stay in place. (IEP's never "expire" they only get updated). Start getting the proof that you need to support your position. Schedule another IEP meeting when you have the proof you need to add weight to your proposed changes.

10. Get support. School politics are a local beast. You'll need to know how to navigate inside your kids individual school system. A great reference can be the district's IEP parent support person. If this post is vacant in your area, volunteer to fill it. A ten minute monthly chat with a new parent in your area will be a life saver for her child for the entire school year!

Watering the Seeds of Faith-Meekness

I'm currently on a major prayer quest to add the virtue of meekness to my life. In mid July, in the midst of yet another "I lost my temper with the kids X number of times this month" confession, I just broke down and asked my priest "what can I do about this?"

The priest said that it is not enough to just attempt to resist my ingrained "sin" pattern. Instead, I should also try to strengthen the corresponding virtue to that sin. I got the mental image of going to physical therapy. Because I am now lifting the weight of three children & have a natural tendency towards anger, I need to do some serious stomach crunches with the virtue of meekness.

Of course, I'd NEVER heard of the virtue of meekness. Who trains themselves to be meek in today's world? But after some Internet research, I stumbled onto this

valuable Beatitudes site

Now my working definition is "restraint of anger in the event of provoking circumstances." Here I am, in the midst of some very provoking circumstances and practicing trying to get a handle of that whiplash of a temper and angry tongue of mine.

I'll keep you updated on my inchworm slow progress on this matter. Here are the few pitifully slow measures I've been able to implement over the past six weeks.

-If I do insist on fighting with my husband (wrongly) over whether I, as an anemic breastfeeding mother, still have to take my yucky tasting prenatal vitamins, I can at least force myself to sit down on the floor when I hear my voice starting to rise in anger. This is my physical cue to stop arguing and start implementing meekness.

-I've discovered that praying to the child's guardian angel when a kid is on a disobedience kick really helps. This changes the discussion from "WHY AREN'T YOU LISTENING TO ME" to, "Guardian angel please help (said child) to learn skill of following directions." (As a former Protestant, I didn't even really register that kids had guardian angels until I noticed this month that their upcoming feast day is on October 2. I'm still feel pretty awkward praying to them, but am going with the mantra that practice makes perfect)

-If I'm losing the battle to control my temper, it is possible to take a break from the family, stare at a tree, and remind myself that I have just taken the Eucharist. (Done today at a Sheetz Gas Station on I-79 in the midst of a five hour car trip.)

Have you successfully conquered a frequent sin like gossip or losing your temper? Do you have any insights on the importance of meekness?

Recipe-Tourtiere

I first tasted this delicious French Canadian meat pie during the St. Nicholas festival at my husband's childhood church. (His hometown in Northern New York is just 30 miles from Montreal). I finally taught myself how to make it last week. Here are my notes to share.

This meal passes my "can be cooked with a colicy child on my hip" test. If you have any similar recipe gems please leave the name of the dish on my comment section!

Tourtiere (meat pie)

Notes: Serves 8, easy to freeze, easy to save for leftovers

Ingredients
1- 1 1/2 lb ground pork
1 large potato
1 large onion, minced
1/2 t ground cinnamon
1/2 t ground cloves
dash of all spice (optional)
1/2 cup of water

9 inch double pie crust (I buy mine frozen since arrival of newborn)
1 egg (optional)
dash of paprika (optional)

1. Bake potato in microwave or oven. Peel & Mash.
2. Place mashed potato, ground pork, onion, spices and water in frying pan. Stir at a simmer until very thick. Traditionally this takes one hour, but I cheat and just do it until the pork is dark brown (15 mins.)
3. Spoon mixture evenly into pie crust. Cover with top pie crust. Brush with a beaten egg and sprinkle paprika if you have time.
4. Bake for 50 min in a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees.
5. Serve with a dish of formerly frozen peas for a complete meal.

Questions from "The War"

I'm just beginning the new Ken Burns saga on PBS. (How nerdy is it to have opening night stenciled on my calender for over three months?) I'm sure I'll have a lot of questions which arise from this journey. Here's my first one.

One of the featured veterans describes himself as raised in a Christian home. He said that he struggled over the question of whether he should join the army before 1941 because he was taught "that it was wrong to kill." He lived on one of the Pacific island's attacked early by Japanese war planes. A friend was horrifically killed in front of him. As the plane cleared away from the blast, the veteran said "I could see the pilot smiling and then I didn't have any trouble killing Japs . . . It was my job to kill as many as I could a day."

Leaving aside the whole fighting a just war philosophy (which I'm pretty sure WWII neatly qualifies into), is the veterans response truly "Christian?" It's a natural human response, but aren't we called to go beyond revenge killing? Christ's urge to forgive our enemies also happens to apply to those who directly kill, even our dearest friends.

I'm not for one second suggesting that as a Christian nation we should not have gone to war against the Japanese, or Axis powers. It just troubles me in this individual story that a Christian boy who struggled with his conscious against killing had one horrific act of sin done to a dear friend, and this suddenly "flipped a switch" which powered his to feed his revenge for four years of fighting.

My husband's suggestion is that the boy's parents stressed "Don't kill" but didn't explain "why." Some examples of the "whys" would include, Christ admonishes us to be the peace we seek in the world, we must master our emotions for revenge, and the familiar line "turn the other cheek." Any killing in the army service of a just war should be done with great regret and be motivated from love rather than hate. (This is sort of hard to qualify, but makes sense to me intuitively as a mother. I'm extremely strict with an abrupt & immediate discipline with my older children when one of them does something dangerous around the baby. My motivation is never out of hatred of the offending party, but rather out of concern for a helpless newborn.)

Does this line of thought makes sense to you? Or is it too Ghandish to be Catholic? What would your thought process be as a Catholic before signing up to fight in a war? Has anyone faced this issue directly with the Iraq War?

The MovieGoer-The War, Ken Burns

If you're not currently taking in Ken Burn's new documentary about World War II called simply "The War," here's is how to repeat episodes on PBS:

Sept 23-26,30, Oct 2 at 8 PM.
Repeat 23 & 26 at 10:30 PM, Sept 24 & 25 at 10 PM, Sept 29 at 5 PM-2 AM, Sept 30 at 11 PM

Tune in a few nights and get a new appreciation for the WWII veterans in your family.

Oh Baby!

You were born on the feast of the Visitation (May 31)

We made you a member of the Catholic church

We covered you with hugs and kisses

Now you are so big that Mama had to retire all of your newborn clothes to the storage closet for the next baby. Time is passing too fast!

Blessed Be Our Feet

May the Lord guide our feet into the way of peace