Through her Eyes: Christmas Gift

The days from the Solstice to Christmas Eve were among the darkest and coldest of my life. Tears were shed, apologies said. Hard won peace felt fragile. I stumbled into Christmas Eve morning in a typical melancholy fashion. I set about making the customary magic happen, all while feeling like an utter failure at just about everything that mattered. It was not a pretty place to be.

Our plan was to accompany Mike to Midnight Mass at the Basilica. Karoline had chattered all day about the "big church."  Earlier this season, we had received a letter from our pastor encouraging us, among other things, to attend Mass at noon on Christmas Day in order to make Christ the center of the Christmas celebration. We've opted for Midnight Mass for several years now and one of the great blessings of that is that it brings the reason for the feast into sharp focus. We are Midnight Mass people. Karoline and Katie talked all day about going to the "big church."

I was exhausted. Sarah Annie has some wicked virus that sounds suspiciously like bronchitis. We're sharing it. My throat is sore. I've slept and eaten very little since that dark settled at the week's beginning. We hosted brunch for 18 people Thursday morning. I caught a quick nap putting Sarah to sleep. At dinner, just an hour before the pilgrimage was to begin, Mike said again that he could just take a few children with him (they'd be just fine while he worked) and I could stay home with the little ones.  Michael, looking green around the gills, contemplated staying home as well. Maybe this just wasn't the year to do this big midnight thing.

I waffled. Katie cried. She wanted to go and she wanted me with her. Karoline announced she was going. We went. It is an hour's drive to the church. Mike needed to be there 2 1/2 hours early. Mass was two hours. Then it's an hour home in the wee hours of Christmas morning. This trek is a huge commitment. On the way there, I discussed strategy with Christian. We decided that I'd take the little girls and visit all the small chapels before Mass began, then I'd duck out with Sarah Anne and not even attempt to sit through Mass. He'd keep Karoline under his watchful care. Michael would take care of Katie. Paddy would be in charge of the little boys. I would spend Mass sitting quietly with my baby in the lower church. They would be together upstairs in the pew.

From the minute we arrived, Karoline was stuck to me like tenacious tinsel on tree. We went to the large nativity, where just an hour earlier, her Daddy had climbed inside and tenderly moved Joseph (to get  a better shot--but still it touched me somehow that he was worried about Joseph). Been a rough week--doesn't take much to make me cry. At the sight of baby Jesus, Karoline's eyes grew wide. She dropped to her knees.

"Hi, Baby Jesus! It's me. Thank you for all the children in our family. Thank you for making Sarah Annie my little sister. I love you!"

And she was up, leaving the strangers who witnessed the moment with me to wipe their eyes.

It's Christmas.

I decided to try to stay in the upper church for Mass. Karoline wanted to be with me and I wanted her to see the beauty that is Christmas Eve with the Papal Nuncio. She was awed and both little ones were hushed for the candlelit procession. She knew the hymns and sang along. Paddy made sure she didn't catch her hair on fire with the candles. It was a bit stressful. Then the lights came up. And she and Sarah Annie chattered away while they took all the donation envelopes for the rack on the pew and "organized" them. We made it to the Kyrie. And then we walked that very long aisle from our reserved seats in front  to the back of the church. Karoline wasn't leaving me for anything. Now I had them both.

We made our way to the crypt church. I knew I'd hear the music and know when to go back upstairs for communion. Slowly, I walked Karoline around the church, stopping at each mosaic to tell her about the saint depicted there. She spent a long time at the nativity, patting the nearby sheep and begging to touch baby Jesus. We saw St. Elizabeth. And St. Anne holding the Blessed Mother with a book to read. We stopped to say a prayer with St. Joseph. Then, we were at the center of the back of the church. "Jesus is here too, Karoline," I whispered, "really here in the Tabernacle."

"In the gold box?" she asked.

I nodded.

She dropped to her knees. I stood in awed amazement.

Thank you Jesus, for Sarah Annie. And especially thank you for giving me to my mommy. I love you, Jesus! Bye bye.

She was off to look at the next mosaic. I was rooted to the spot right there in front of that Tabernacle where the Baby and the King had just touched the tenderest part of my heart and healed the wounds He knew were there.

Yes, thank you Jesus. I love you, too

Happy Birthday Nicholas!

Sweet Nicholas,

You've heard the story so many times, the tale of God's gracious blessing the night you were born. You know all about the date and the time . Ever since you were very little, you've been a bit obsessed about dates and times. I wonder if you didn't orchestrate the whole thing yourself;-) You were up early this morning, just like every morning of your life. I tried to beat you out of bed and downstairs to prepare your traditional hot chocolate in bed. You granted me a little grace when you saw me on the stairs.

"I'll just go to the bathroom and go back to bed," you offered.

I'm pretty sure this was a huge sacrifice on your behalf because the computer was screaming your name, all fat and happy with Fantasy Football stats as it is on Monday mornings. I merrily made hot chocolate and went to "pretend" to wake you up.

You had made a discovery in the bathroom mirror.

You were mad. Really mad. Across your forehead, in big green letters, I read "Kiss Me" and on your cheeks, "I'm 9."

It was really, really hard not to laugh.

Oh, dear boy! This IS your life.

You are the youngest of five brothers. 

Just remember, one day, you're going to be bigger and stronger than all of them.

(Pssst, after analyzing handwriting, I'm pretty sure it was Paddy. And I've got an idea;-)

I love you so much!

Mama

Nick (on the left) with "big" brother and best friend, Stephen, in Seattle last month.

Happy Birthday, My Mary Sunshine!

Dear Mary Beth,

I remember that sonogram so clearly. The doctor pointed to what he called a "butterfly" and told me that our boy streak was a thing of the past. I fairly flew down the hallway to the office of his physician's assistant--something in me knew that I needed a female to celebrate properly. I carefully carried my black and white photo home and showed it to Daddy without a word. He took one look and said, "It's Mama's best friend!"

Truer words were never spoken. You are growing into the finest friend I could ever hope to have. You are faith-filled and cheerful, idealistic and optimistic. You have a sparkling sense of adventure and a ready laugh. And you care. You care about important things and you think deep thoughts. We laugh about your overuse of exclamation points, but, really, I know they suit you well. You seem to exclaim over life in happy wonderment more often than not. Ordinary periods just don't suit you; you need exclamation points.

I asked you to choose the pictures for this post and you loaded them up and saved them in draft before I even began to write. It doesn't surprise me one bit that you chose pictures with Sarah Annie in them. You are the sunshine in the world of three little girls. Rarely, are you without one or all of them. They are blessed beyond words to have you in their lives, sprinkling creativity and good cheer on their sweet childhood days.

Here we are, my precious little girl, at the end of your little girlhood. Thank you for granting me the great gift of growing alongside you. I was ever so blessed to share your sunny, wonder years with you. Today, you are a teenager. I'm looking forward with delight (and a little trepidation;-) to the days ahead of us. And I know with all confidence that my Mary Sunshine you will always, always be.

I love, love, love you!

Mama

 

 

 

Credit for all photos: Nicholas (who isn't allowed to use the camera without permission, but I'm glad he did just this once)

In Real Life...

We rarely follow the plans as written. In real life, my days look nothing like my iCal pages. Oh, I love the plans. They are like good recipes. I gather the ingredients, tinkering a bit to take advantage of what looks freshest and best at the grocery store. I glance through the directions and do what seems best at the time. And usually, whatever we're cooking comes out well. Cooking is an art, you know, with a little science sprinkled in with love. So, too, raising and educating children is an art. When it comes to our homeschooling days, I write the plans, but I don't become attached to them.

Because I do become attached to the children.

On Monday, iCal called for Outdoor Hour. Have you tried these? What absolutely wonderful gifts they are! We're on a roll with them this fall. Barb makes the Handbook of Nature Study come alive for us and graciously offers free guidance that is priceless. Everyone is enthusiastic.

We headed out to our new favorite, very local spot (we walked) and spent a pleasant time drawing. I had to drag the boys away because of an urgent girl potty issue. On  the walk home, the littlest girls each fell asleep in a stroller. We wheeled both strollers into the house and let them snooze. I seized the quiet opportunity to read William Shakespeare and the Globe to all children still awake. [Note to those who have followed my iCal plans previously: "School" didn't happen in any meaningful way on Friday of Birthday Week and I slid last Friday's plans to Monday. ]

My plans called for children to create a diorama of the Globe Theatre. Somehow, in my keeping room, those plans morphed. Big boys became team captains; teams were picked; cardboard, duct tape,  craft paint and glue guns were sequestered to opposite corners of the house. Daddy was named Judge. A deadline of three weeks hence was set. One child was frantically researching on his iPod Touch. Another was printing madly from the computer upstairs. A hush fell. And then the man arrived to deliver the dishwasher.

The man barely stepped from his truck before competing teams of children were begging for appliance boxes. Wise man, he gave them the box from our dishwasher and then stripped the box from another. More quiet.

Big boys left for soccer. I slipped out with a lone ballerina. I left her at dance and spent 33 minutes alone, in the quiet, at Adoration. Not that I was counting minutes or anything. What a beautiful gift quiet with Jesus is!

After I gathered my dancer and a week's worth of groceries for a family of eleven, I returned home. Globe Theatre construction resumed after dinner and continued well into the night. I went to sleep thinking what a perfect day it was: nature, Shakespeare, Adoration, soccer and dance. A good meal. A quiet night. What more could I have wanted?

Don't answer that. I know there was no math, no Latin, no grammar, no time whatsoever at a desk. But really, truly, it was perfect in my book. A day when seven children from 3-17 are meaningfully engaged and working together all day long? How often does that happen?

The next day, while I hustled three sick children to the doctor, the children at home ignored my plans and kept right on working on those Theatre dioramas. There was a brief skirmish over toothpicks that resulted in my emergency trip to the grocery store, but mostly, work was steady. I thought about the iCal plans. Tuesday is our heavy geography block day.  This Tuesday was about scale drawings, popsicle stick construction standards, and wee felt actors.

Truth is, my days rarely look like the pages of Serendipity. They are not that neat. They are not that beautiful. They are not that full. Well, maybe they are that full but not in the way they look there. We pick and choose from the plans and the books. I hope you do, too, as I think it would be near impossible to do them as written. We change things out and abandon things that don't work and add things that work better. We abandon the plans altogether to binge on a great project.

"Simplicity" seems to be a goaland a virtue in pockets of  the blogosphere. For some people, simplicity is next to godliness from what I can tell. Things aren't simple here. At least, when I put my head on the pillow at night, in the three seconds before I fall asleep, they don't seem simple. There's is a lot going on.

A few weeks ago I read an authoritative email that declared that the secret to homeschooling success was to never, ever deviate from the curriculum as written. This seems foolish advice to me. If you are using my curriculum, please, please consider it in light of your children and your home and your energy level. Please use your common sense and your mama-wisdom. Please don't attempt to do it all. And please, if you find a better way to do it, write and let me know. I might just do it that way, too. 

Along those lines, here are some tweaks I've not yet had time to tell you about:

• Mary Beth abandoned Botany in a Day for Apologia Botany. The new notebooks offered by Apologia are just amazing! She is creating a beautiful notebook and doing all the activities and experiments and thoroughly enjoying Jeannie Fulbright's style. With the addition of the other living books in the Young Ladies' Curriculum and nature study, this is a very full botany course. And yes, Jen has the Ivy Basket all written and ready for you. She's waiting on me to finish my pages before we  post. I'm getting to it, I promise. Pray I get the gift of writing time with Mary Beth.
• Patrick, Stephen, and Nicholas are using Apologia Astronomy. Patrick is reading from MacBeth's astronomy suggestions. And we will also add this very full Teaching Company course to the study. I hadn't planned on Astronomy at all. The boys asked for it when they were unable to answer a trivia question Mike posed at the dinner table just after the school year began.  
• We haven't forgotten about the Writer's Workshop. Esther Hershenhorn, the author of S is for Story, contacted me when she learned of our plans to use her book. She was very interested in our ideas to create workshops using S is for Story. The book arrived just a couple of days after Bryce died. The author, who is just lovely, suggested that I might find these mini-workshops (click on Young Writer Extras) helpful while I wait for Colleen to join me again in writing on Serendipity. I do! Maybe you will like them, too? It's really nice when people who believe in sharing the joy of teaching reach out to each other and help in a time of need. Colleen was touched by the kindness of this stranger and so was I.
• Our Alphabet Path travels this year are mainly focused upon the Author Studies and the Science Trails, since Katie has already traveled the Path twice. However, we are truly enjoying the inspiration of gifted teachers like Jessica and Blair this time around. It's fun to see how beautifully the plans come to life in the talented hands of those ladies. I find myself having to refrain from wanting to do it all;-).
• Speaking of Jessica, we're loving the Little Flowers notebook pages! We use Little Flowers here at home and these pages are just wonderful. We aren't such good Little Flowers crafters and I don't always get to the edible goodies, but I'm sure glad to have Jessica's ideas to add to our days.
• The big boys are doing our geography studies along with us. I can't handle three different high school programs to supervise. I need to keep my boys close. Works better that way. I'm way out of writing time now. Maybe another day, I'll share how it all looks. Basically, we're taking books from the Sonlight high school lists and matching them with the geographical regions we're studying. All the plans are there; it's a pretty simple thing to pull what works for each kid.

And now, I truly must go. Gosh, it was nice to blog again. I had no intention of writing so long this morning. God's good; it's happy to be here.  Thanks for listening.

Blessings on your day!

Dressing Room Discovery

I’m certain I’ve been dreading this event since before she was born.Beautiful girl child of mine — my little dash of femininity wedged between five boys. She has grown into a young woman, curves appearing where once there were straight lines. And now, it is time to go find clothes to fit the new figure.Read the rest here, please.