Gloria in Excelsis Deo: Self-Isolation Day #20

Thursday, Self-Isolation Day #20

Please continue to pray for my husband's mother D. on a ventilator in ICU with confirmed COVID-19. We very much appreciate it, even though we are choosing not to give detailed, blow-by-blow health updates in this public forum.

Joseph had his interview with our parish priest--over the telephone!--and was deemed well-catechized and approved to receive his First Holy Communion, which is planned for May, but God is the only one who knows when it will occur! We do our catechism at home instead of in parish classes, which is why the priest interviews children doing so before Confession and before Communion.

I taught school in the morning . . .

Kids played outdoors for about an hour and a half . . . They're planning and executing some elaborate Olympics game and sometimes I get called out to adjudicate fights over the judging of an event.

Sweet moment . . . I looked at David (2-1/2) and he whispered to me, "Me talkin' to birds."

Two-year-old visiting birds

I haven't updated yet, but I used this lockdown time to potty train sweet David day and night (I do both simultaneously). He's so proud of himself and says, "Me a super big boy!" Now we are a diaper-free home--unless God has different plans--which is very bitter sweet after thirteen years. For anyone interested, after my reading a half dozen books on diaper training and training six kids, my hands down favorite method (used for my last three kids) is from the regrettably named Oh Crap! Potty Training Book.

At noon, Mary joined in a combination No Sweat Nature Study (on the subject of rabbits), art lesson (painting rabbits with an artist), and author interview with one of her favorite authors, S.D. Smith of the Green Ember series. She joined in the event over Zoom with 1,000 other fans while the spillover of thousands live-streamed on Facebook. She said the leader of the discussion called out Mary by name (due to her chat comments) three separate times--what a fun time she had!

In the afternoon, I swapped out Joseph's closet from size 6 to size 7, did a bunch of attic organizational work, and washed, folded, and put away six loads of laundry. Four kids' closets swapped over, two kids' closets to go . . .

After an early dinner, we went to outdoors Confession in the evening. At any given time, only one person was out of his car and he stood 6 feet away from the priest outdoors, not so much as sitting in (touching) a chair. Safe for body, safe for soul! We are so grateful for the priests of this diocese who are making Confession widely available. In some dioceses, Confession and Baptism are being suppressed, which is grievous and religiously criminal, actually far outstripping the problem of no public Masses being held.