Gloria in Excelsis Deo: {SQT} The Week of Arctic Water

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1. "May You Life in Interesting Times"

This was an exciting week that involved my husband traveling on business Sunday through Friday night, two kids catching a cold that caused them jointly to wake me up and get me out of bed TWENTY TIMES in one night and FIFTEEN TIMES another night, a toddler clogging a toilet badly enough that I wondered if I'd have to call a plumber (I didn't), and the water heater breaking, so that I did need to call a plumber and we had only ice cold water for five days. Washing dishes with boiled water and taking showers at the neighbor's house got tiresome pretty fast. While my husband was gone for such a long stretch and I wanted to use the Electronic Babysitter more often, our TV went on the fritz and I couldn't access any of Netflix or Amazon Prime. My school computer had problems connecting to the Internet and then, even when I got that fixed, wouldn't print, all of which made doing school exasperating as well.

All week, I did not set a Christian example to my children about how to handle stress. I was an embarrassment, and that's the plain truth.

2. NCMTA 2018

But, before my husband left town . . . last Saturday was a bustling day for our family: Chris escorted John and Mary to the NCMTA piano competition, I dropped off Margaret at her First Holy Communion retreat, and I took the little boys to the Nature Museum!

You can listen to John and Mary's beautiful music pieces here. They both got Highest Honors Gold, and John (because of his age) advances to state competition!

3. First Holy Communion Retreat

Because our dear Margaret is a third child, I didn't even take a photo of her at her First Holy Communion retreat, which was also her first-ever drop-off event. Yes, I'm apparently that distracted mom, and I'm embarrassed.

The experience of the retreat was fine, but Margaret, who had said the night before that she was very excited to finally do a drop-off event just like her big siblings, was quite homesick for her family and spent the latter half of the event repeatedly walking to the window to watch for me in the parking lot. She complained that she had "none of my brothers or sister with me!" and later told her daddy that "the best part of the retreat was when Mama came back."

4. Nature Museum

Meanwhile, I had to occupy my two- and five-year-olds for a couple of hours, so we went to the Nature Museum a half mile from the church. In a large family, it is so hard for the younger set to get one-on-one attention and little adventures like the first children experienced. (And how humorous that I now think my solely taking care of children 5, 2, and 6 months is "one on one attention.")

I was delighted to take my boys alone to the Nature Museum where I could give them my full(er) attention to see butterflies, snakes, turtles, and other small critters. The bee hive was particularly thrilling for them.

5. More Outdoor Time

We visited the playground, where David (6 months) enjoyed his first swing. He was looking merely perplexed . . .

. . . until a big sibling began pushing him higher than Mama felt comfortable with. That was fun!

6. Scholastic Scenes

My children, ages 2 to 11, are all loving the 12-CD set of Maestro Classics they received for Christmas. These are also available individually and I recommend them heartily! As of late, my 5-year-old has been checking out one of the CDs from my library each day for Quiet Time, and he pulls up his little antique chair adjacent to his CD player and listens intently. I'm not kidding: he sits still in his chair for an hour listening to the CD. When was the last time you saw a five-year-old boy sit still for an hour?

I don't currently have time to do workbooks or direct teaching of music appreciation, but the Maestro Classics CDs are so excellent in explaining what the orchestra is doing and why the composer wrote what he wrote that even my tiny tots are learning much. Plus they simply enjoy them tremendously! The kids are listening to them at Quiet Time, at bedtime, and on our car drives.

This week, I tried moving our school computer into a new location: Daddy's home office!

We want greater supervision over the computer because children can sometimes drift off into taking too long at their computer-based subjects (e.g., math), instead re-arranging the icons or changing the background, or drawing pictures in Microsoft Paint that I later find . . .

. . . such as this beauty of the twin hearts. Oh, what's a Catholic mama supposed to do? Hug the child or scold him or her for failing to be diligent?!

Having the school computer in Daddy's office will also help by it being a quiet study area, and a place with closing doors so that the two-year-old is far less likely to rip the keys off of this computer like he did the last one.

7. Miscellaneous

My oldest and youngest beautiful boys . . .

Speaking of my youngest . . . I set David sitting on the kitchen floor while I was cleaning up, then turned around to find he had pulled to standing on his own at six months old!

One day Mary did her violin practice while wearing her big brother's Airsoft gear, which made for a disconcerting sight.

I had just been asking my husband to let me know if he knew of ways I could connect with and bond with my five-year-old son, who right now isn't getting enough of my loving attention. Well, lo and behold, Joseph came to me on Thursday asking me if he could light Wikki Stix on fire. I told him no three times--because obviously setting fires should never be done from a 40-year-old mom's perspective--before the light bulb went off in my head that stopping what I was doing and saying 'yes' to my five-year-old wanting to set a supervised fire WAS a way to bond with him.