Mother's Day 2010

We celebrated Mothers' Day a little bit early. On Saturday afternoon, I got to go to a movie by myself (something I really enjoy doing and get to do once or twice a year). While getting some time away from my babies, I got to see . . . "Babies"! The trailer is delightful:

Then I came home to cards and gifts, among them a delightful book of the liturgical year within the Catholic family by Maria von Trapp. Then my family took me out to dinner!

On Sunday morning, we went to Mass. Afterward, John lit a candle for me (with Daddy's help) and prayed to God, thanking Him for his mommy. He has lately become aware that not all children have mommies and daddies. Then after a relaxed day of visiting the neighborhood playground, playing in the back yard, and taking naps, we rode the train downtown. What a blessed mother I am!

John is becoming such a well-behaved three-and-a-half-year-old "happy helper" as of late. Within the last week, we were at a restaurant and, when the family at the table next to ours got up to leave, the gentleman came over just to say that we have "such well-behaved children." Then we were at the grocery store and the clerk said that she was so impressed with how John was helping me that she gave him a balloon . . . not one of the free kiddie balloons, but a $3.50 helium balloon!

'Who are you and why are you sitting next to me?'

Some quotes on motherhood that my mother-friends might appreciate:

"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 tiny perfection of her baby's body . . . . The angels have not been blessed with such a grace. They cannot share in God's creative miracle to bring new saints to Heaven. Only a human mother can. Mothers are closer to God the Creator than any other creature; God joins forces with mothers in performing this act of creation…What on God's good earth is more glorious than this: to be a mother?" -- Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty

"To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheet cakes, and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness."-- G.K. Chesterton