Seven Quick Takes Friday

Seven Quick Takes as hosted by This Ain't the Lyceum, linked up correctly this week!

1.

I am being reminded of just how difficult it is to homeschool children when there is a two-and-a-half-year-old in the mix. Just this week, Joseph pulled a chair over to the cupboard, got out a jar of chocolate kisses (used as bribery treats around here), opened them, and ate half the jar before he came to me grinning and covered in chocolate, leaving behind his silver glittering bits of evidence.

That was the only such photo I took because the incidences this same week when he coated himself thickly in toothpaste and the day he spread a jar of peanut butter all over his body were less cute and more urgent to clean up. And I was shouting too loudly to take a photo yesterday when Joseph purposefully dumped out an entire paper grocery sack full of snotty tissues (from his sick sister) and threw them all over the bedroom as if they were confetti. Nor did I grab a camera when Joseph wrote with black permanent marker all over his hands and arms. All this week.

Let's just say it is a good thing that I'm so enamored with two-year-old boys. Mine, at least, has no 'attitude' or bratty behavior yet, which I find typical of two-year-old boys at least, but not their female counterparts. Joseph has those gorgeous curls and he clutches his red plastic pistol wherever he goes. He wakes up each morning and comes running to find me first thing where he announces, "I want to hold you!" Every time I return home, he runs to me, arms outstretched saying, "You're home! I love you!" Throughout the day he affirms to me, "You're my best friend."

And lastly, I get to peek in on him at night after he's fallen asleep playing with his bin of plastic animals and soldiers by flashlight, and he's clutching his favorite stuffed mouse and sleeping on his beloved caterpillar pillowcase.

Keep up the sweet moments, buddy, because they're going to be what saves you!

Sleeping toddlers are so precious that we let them keep living in our homes

2. 

This week illness struck our family for the first time of the season. Just a cold but still caused cancellation of events. Welcome to September.

3. 

We are enjoying CCE on Fridays very much and the children love doing the memory work during the week, which is less onerous than I thought. So far, we've memorized the various facts in all manner of ways: listening to the CD in the car, sitting around as a family while I chuck out chocolate treats for those who get the answer right, having brother and sister quiz each other without my involvement, and singing our facts while we go on a family neighborhood walk.

Memorizing CCE on our walk

4.

This week I baked my first muffins since probably early pregnancy . . . nearly a year ago since I've done any baking at all (and that includes making pancakes from a mix).

When I listen to mothers telling me about all their homemade adventures in the kitchen and pantry, I remember a bit sorrowfully how I used to be Suzy Homemaker who made as much as I could from scratch, from sewing the girls' clothing to concocting my own the laundry detergent, but I haven't been able to manage that since having four kids and certainly not now. It's a success if there is hot food on the table that was heated up from the frozen section of the grocery store.

I'm starting to think of the frozen moment in time of having three kids as 'halcyon days' because I was a Good Mother, Wife, and Teacher then. I still had a lot of flexible time, actually: homeschooling took all of an hour to do, I had two early readers which made me look like a rock star, I could go on all manner of field trips, and I could cook most food from scratch. The current phase is demanding so much more of me but without having truly older helpers yet. Never have I so yearned for a 12-year-old daughter.

We have been so blessed by receiving many, many postpartum meals from parishioners that I'm now being brave and signing up again to take meals to other mothers. I promise they will be quite simple, far from gourmet, but I appreciated even the simplest food gifts and I hope they will too.

5. 

Brothers are cute

6. 

This week was Chris' first business trip since I had the baby. I handled it so badly that let's just say Chris changed his flight and came home two days early. Not one of my proudest moments, not that I've been having many of those lately.

7.

This weekend we gear up for John's soccer game, an exciting piano play-a-thon (fundraiser) on the Horowitz Model D piano for which the children raised money for Ronald McDonald House of Charlotte, and a fun social event on Sunday.

This blog post was written courtesy of Chris taking two of our children to soccer, Saturday morning cartoons babysitting two other children, and the baby napping on my chest.