Pictures!

Aha! I did it! I've been trying to figure out how to put pictures on this blog without them distorting ever since I started the blog. This is certainly not perfect, but it is a good start.

I think I'll quit while I'm ahead, tonight. :)

Christmas and the mess we live in

There’s this really annoying pharmacy ad that plays at this time of year that starts, “It’s that special holiday feeling that happens every year.” Every time I hear it, I want to throttle whoever wrote it. Why do we set up these expectations? Why should we expect Christmas to be so much better than any other time of year? Life is a mess, for everyone, at almost all times, and when we set up these ridiculous standards for the Christmas season, it just makes us dissatisfied, like we’ve somehow been gypped of something we have a right to expect.

The mess is all around me these days. In my life, and in the lives of those close to me. Illnesses, hospital stays, death and loss—in some cases, the complete upheaval, the overthrow of all carefully-laid (and very reasonable, I might add) plans.

It’s the first time in quite a while that I’ve questioned God as to why. For those going through these frustrating, difficult and downright terrifying times, it helps not at all to hear platitudes like “God has his reasons.” Yet platitudes are all we have to offer. I want so desperately to be of use to those I love, and I keep butting my head against the brick wall of my own ineptitude and helplessness.

This morning, the priest talked about the contrast between the expectations we have for the season and the images presented to us in the readings for the 2nd Sunday of Advent, year A. You know the expectations: peace on earth, silent night, the angelic little baby (blond, of course) lying in a manger. And then there was today’s Gospel: “Repent, you @$!& brood of vipers!”

His take on the matter was that we often think we can’t be witnesses to the Kingdom, to love, to goodness, to the Gospel, unless our lives are in order, and we have things under control. Otherwise, who would ever listen to us? And yet, God often uses the messiest, most chaotic times in our lives to teach us and everyone else what He has in mind.

I suppose it’s just more platitudes, but it really struck a chord with me today.

Right Brain, Scatter Brain

"Cleaning and scrubbing can wait for tomorrow,
For babies grow up, I've learned, to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust, go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby, and babies don't keep."

(Ruth Hulburt Hamilton)

When she’s at home, my mother-in-law is a consummate housekeepr. Her trash cans are emptied daily (at least), her dishes are washed, dried and put away after each meal, and each night she straightens whatever mess her kids, grandkids, husband and in-laws have left.

My cousin Becky managed to design and build a house and parent two elementary age boys while living in a two-car garage for a year. She’s organized, calm, and her boys are well-behaved, all-around good kids.

My friend Tricia designs a summer-long program of chores, activities and recreation, down to daily menus for a balanced diet.

And then there’s me.

My laundry grinds to a halt mid-cycle and lays in piles of madness that grow every time I throw a dirty bib up the stairs.

I stick up my nose every Thursday, thinking, Aw man, it’s been a week already since I cleaned the house?

The dishes get washed at least every third day. But not necessarily put away.

And last week I took the kids up to the farm for a daylong outing, and I left the diaper bag at home.

My friend Jim chuckled when I related that. Then he quickly curbed it. “Well,” he said graciously, “you’re one of those creative right-brained people.”

Scatterbrained is more like it. And the more I think about it, the more I think he’s right—only there’s more to it than that. I’m scatterbrained because my attention is split in too many directions. School liturgies. Weekend liturgies. Music projects for publishers. New music projects. Novels. Short stories. Articles. Reading about writing. Reading in general. The kids. NFP recertification.

Oh yeah, don’t forget the housework.

Last weekend the readings at church said, “From those given much, much will be expected.” I guess that’s me. I just wish part of the bequest had been a brain capable of keeping it all straight.

Alex's First Halloween

Nov. 1, 2007
All Saints Day

Last night, Christian and I took Alex trick-or-treating for the first time. He was Bob the Builder, outfitted in blue plaid and too-big jeans that fell down around his tool belt, exposing gray big boy briefs. He wore his yellow construction hat perched at a rakish angle on his head and completed the outfit with light-up Star Wars tennis shoes (garage sale special, 50 cents).

I enjoyed Halloween in a whole new ways last night. We stood back and let him go to the doors and ring them, and every time we had to tell him to say thank you. After 45 minutes of “Ooooh, how cute!” from every woman who answered the door (yes, OK, he’s adorable, I admit it) he was ready to stop “getting more candy” and to go eat some. We went home and turned on our own lights.

Christian served the first several trick-or-treaters, and then I took over till time to put Julianna to bed. Then…“Wanna give candy to the kids!” Alex said in his slow, deliberate way. Christian let him do it up till 8:00, which is bedtime, and then began a 45-minute pitched battle between the parents and the overexcited 2-year-old.

When at last he was ready for bed, the late rush—all the big kids—started. So we let him come downstairs. By this time we just wanted to get rid of as much candy as possible, so we let him take whole handfuls and put them in kids’ bags & buckets. He was in Heaven. But the part that made me really proud was that he was taking all the pieces of candy that he thought were the best ones and giving those out. He wouldn’t let me give out the cheapie eyeballs that I bought because they were cheap. He thought they were gross, and he wasn’t going to let me give them out. No, he was going to give away all the Kit Kat, Mounds, and Milky Way.

Christian tells me I shouldn’t read into that, but it seems to me that selfishness is so innate that even a 2-year-old ought to be well-versed in it. I’m so proud of him for giving the best to others.

Communing with Calm

This afternoon, at last, I went down to the creek behind the house. I’ve been putting it off until the weeds die back, so I can clear a path, but today, somehow, sitting on a picnic blanket in the shade of the deck just didn’t cut it. I wanted to be down in the woods, in the midst of the wild trees. So I tromped the short distance down to the creek in my dress slacks and platform slides (great gear, Kate), and there I stood on the bank above the creek, surrounded by trees swaying from tip to root in this crazy wind that blows through Missouri, trying to cool down the Earth to a proper temperature for late October. I remembered Alex yesterday, sitting on the deck eating his macaroni and cheese and pointing with his fork. “The trees are dancing,” he said. (Did I teach him that?)

My moments of communing with nature are few and far between, and all too short lived these days. I used to drive out to Rock Bridge, or the Stargazer, and take a walk to the edge of a cliff and perch there staring into open space, for an hour or more. I always knew when it was time to go—it happens without my being aware of it; suddenly I find myself on my feet saying goodbye to the view. That moment comes when the “hurry, hurry, hurry!” in my heart relaxes and goes to sleep.

I don’t get to that point very often anymore. Most of my communing times are stolen outside our house, within the noise radius of I-70 (I don’t bother going outside when the wind is in the south). And inevitably I hear, “Mommy!” from the window upstairs, or a long, A-a-a-a-a-a-aaaaaaah” over the monitor, long before I get to the point of calm.

But there are Julianna’s smiles to compensate me, and the occasional giggle, and Alex’s snapping chocolate eyes and impulsive hugs. They don’t take away the need…but they do ease it.

Field Trip

There is no machine cooler than the combine.

I’ve known that since I was a very little girl, and I’m delighted that Alex is now old enough to agree with me. Ever since wheat harvest ended (in mid-July), he has been asking when Grandpa would get the combine out so he could take another ride. The combine came out last weekend; we have been counting the days all this week. And today was the day.

It was a beautiful drive from Columbia to Moberly, a drive lined with cornfields half-harvested and soybean fields spangled with gold and red. When we rounded the last corner on “the bumpy road,” there were the two grain trucks and a tractor and grain cart lined up along the edge of the “hundred acre” field. Alex could barely contain himself. It was everything a boy of two could ask for.

Autumn is my favorite of all the seasons. It’s the colors, the bracing air, the sense of fulfillment—“the crowning of the year.” Although I know this every day, every fall the wonder overtakes me again as if I’ve never felt it before. The air today was cool, filled with the smell of corn stubble—sweet, in a way that you can’t equate with food. I got Alex out of the van, and he shrieked as the big red Case 2100 came toward us, chewing up the rows with a roar and spitting out chaff behind it. He fairly danced in place, giggling without self-consciousness or self-control.

We rode (and played, while Grandpa fixed the combine) for nearly two hours, all three of us, with my dad. Alex loved it. Julianna looked around with placid disinterest at everything but me. (I got smiles.) After lunch, Alex went for a solo ride with Grandpa while I nursed Julianna. As the combine slowly sank over the hill, the incessant bellow faded to a muted roar, and then to silence—a brief, perfect stillness. Up sprang a tricksy little wind, and a funnel of long dead leaves and stubble went swirling into the air. A miniature tornado, there on a perfectly clear September day, whirling its way across the cut rows, then spinning over the tassled heads still standing.

And then came the subsonic rumble, and the outermost row of corn at the top of the hill began to thrash. A moment later the dark fork point of the header emerged, then the Big Top riding above the brown rows, and at last, the cab clearing the tall stalks.

We got back on the road about 2:30, and the first time I turned around to glance at my children, they were both fast asleep. If only naptime were this easy every day.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter

At the National Down Syndrome Congress convention in Kansas City at the beginning of August, we had the opportunity to hear Kim Edwards speak about and read from her book, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. Afterward, she signed books, and we bought a copy and had her inscribe it to Julianna.

Christian read the book the week following the convention, while he was on vacation. “This book is really depressing,” he said at least three times a day. And yet he devoured it. He read at every moment—an hour at a time, lounged across the couch, sitting at the table, bringing it with him wherever we went.

At the end of the week, Christian was a new man. Relaxed, settled, back to his old self—he hadn’t been himself in so long, I had ceased to notice it. And he knew it, too. He was the one who pointed it out to me. During that week, he began laughing at Julianna, playing with her, calling her “cute” for the first time—he’s not a baby person; it took him months to admit that Alex was cute, too. He has been a wonderful father to our daughter, but that week, he bonded with her.

Probably it is coincidental that he happened to be reading that book at the same time.

But now I’m reading it. And from the moment Phoebe was born, with her black hair and her delicate skin, in my mind she had Julianna’s face. Phoebe is Julianna. The shock of discovering that your newborn child has Down Syndrome, the terror, the revulsion you don’t want to feel at the idea that it could be true— I recognized all of it. But when the father told his wife that their daughter was dead, my psyche reared up in a white-hot blaze of grief, of outrage, even though I knew it was coming.

I ran to my daughter, swept her up, hugged her as close as I could, and I said, “Oh, my darling, beautiful baby girl, how could anyone give you up?” And then I started crying.

Forgive me if I ramble a bit today. I try to stay brief in my blog, but I haven’t reflected on our experience as parents of a child with DS in a while, and I finished my first draft of my new novel yesterday, so I think I have earned a little diversion.

Sunday on the way to the band concert, Christian told me to expect that lots of people he worked with would want to see the kids, particularly Julianna, who hasn’t been shown off around campus as much as her brother was when he was born. (For several reasons—hospital and doctor visits, plus the general unwieldiness of having two kids along, the move, etc.) People keep asking his boss, “Is Christian really doing OK?”

I found these questions confusing. Then I realized that people have been asking me, too. And I realized, too, that they’re asking because they don’t realize that we have settled into normal life. I think that for a lot of people, the idea that life could ever go on as usual seems impossible. I remember one exchange in particular, with a wonderful woman I know, who spoke of a family member with DS—a family member who is now deceased. I came away from that conversation with the knowledge that many people are deeply, deeply uncomfortable around people with disabilities, conditions. I say that completely without malice because I was (and remain, to a certain extent) one of those people. It’s a long-standing shame of mine that I lived my life unable to look past a person’s disability.

Because of that, I am supremely grateful to have been given the opportunity to love–passionately, fiercely, and in awe–a little girl named Julianna Margaret. A baby who insists upon rolling onto her tummy, even when she knows perfectly well she hates being on her tummy. A little girl with the goofiest smile I have ever seen, and a sparkle of mischief in her eye. A beautiful, drop-dead gorgeous, baby girl with a heart-shaped face, long eyelashes, a rosebud mouth, and long dark brown hair that gets into impossible rats five times a day. Who won’t go to sleep during the day, and rivals her big brother for loud vocalizations. A baby so determined not to miss a single one of life’s experiences that her little thumb migrates to her mouth even while she’s nursing, and then gives me the innocent look that says, “Hey, what’s up with this? Why isn’t it working?”

Yes, we’ve been in crisis mode this year, hopping from one hospital to the next—four hospital stays! Heart surgery! A new house! Selling an old house! Toilet training! But Christian and I toss the baby back and forth across the dinner table when one person needs both hands. We dissolve into laughter when she sticks her feet up in the air. We make complete bumbling fools of ourselves, mimicking her silly baby noises. We live for making her smile, and keep a sense of humor when she’s overtired and fights going to sleep.

In other words, we have a baby. And that, in essence, is the point that I believe Kim Edwards was trying to communicate in this book. And the writing truly is spectacular. I’m only 90 pages in, and I have a feeling that I, like my husband, will be changed by the reading.

Back to School

I am so glad that I am not in school anymore…but there are times when I miss the excitement of it all.

Last night, Christian and I took the kids out to the Quad at MU for Marching Mizzou’s “concert on the quad.” These sorts of things are much more fun with kids than without. Alex wanted to run up and down between the circles of band members warming up in sections, shouting, “Tuba! Tuba! ’Nuvver tuba! Dums! Dums! Eveywheah dums! Foots! Foots!”

And the best part was that I got to go wandering in among the band members without feeling silly or out-of-place. I started feeling nostalgic for my two years in Marching Mizzou (one of which, incidentally, I detested). As we watched the concert on the Quad, I remembered, and missed, the silly cheers we used to pass the time. Not much has changed in the fourteen years I have been away from M2. The band plays the same arrangements of the same fight songs, and does almost the same dances.

As the freshmen pelted through the Columns toward the free Tiger Stripe ice cream waiting at the south end of the Quad, kicking up grasshoppers and mites, I thought for a moment or two how much fun it would be to be back in college again.

And then I regained my senses.

A review

This review came to me weeks ago. But in my defense, I have had an infant who had heart surgery since then. And I am toilet-training a two-year-old.

"The story took on a life of its own and pulled me right in. This book turned out to be a wonderful surprise. It is a must read for anyone who loves historical mixed with a little romance, lots of action, and a whole lot of mystery."

Check out the full review at

http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookReviews/Thebeggarsqueen.html

In praise of a good pen

These days, I do a lot of my writing longhand.

Yes, like all the rest of you, I prefer to write on the computer. But with a 2 year old and a 6 month old (who goes to the doctor a lot), computer time is at a premium. So I have broken out the 3-ring binders, the college-rule notebook paper and the pens.

And I have discovered that Anne Shirley was right: the pen makes a difference in what you are able to write. It's really hard to concentrate on a good story when the pen grates along the page, bumping and vibrating the hand.

A good pen warms the creative juices and helps the words to flow. A good pen makes the writing experience enjoyable. It keeps your hand relaxed and lets you write longer. It doesn't give you something to say, but it removes one of the barriers to getting what you have to say out of your head and into the greater world.

And it's really not any slower to write longhand than it is to type one-handed with a crying baby on your shoulder!

(Which, incidentally, is a far more formidable barrier to creativity than lack of a laptop, or a bad pen!)

Perfect moments, and not-so-perfect moments

Last night, the kids went to bed by 8:30. Yes, that was a plural: KidS. For the first time in recent memory, Christian and I had the chance to sit down—together!—on the couch, turn off all the lights, and watch a movie. (Well, part of one, anyway.) I reveled in the sensation of reclining in my husband’s arms with my head resting on his shoulder, having some time just to be lovers instead of parents. It was a perfect moment. How many of those do you get?

We went to bed at 9:50. The light hadn’t even gone off when Julianna began crying. That was how it went for the next hour: three minutes of crying every 20 minutes. Just when we would almost fall asleep, off she went again. We tried everything we could think of, beginning with Infant Tylenol and ending with the carseat. At 11p.m. I gave up and went downstairs with her, bracing myself for a night of stolen seconds of sleep.

The way the night went isn’t really the point (in case you’re curious, I ended up with probably 5 hours of sleep, in bits and pieces). The point is that the awful night came right after the perfect moment. And this reminded me of something I’ve noticed before: it’s as if the universe prepares us for the hard times by giving us a single beautiful moment—to fortify us for the journey, as it were. To show us what’s waiting on the other side. To let us know that the fight is worth fighting.

When I write it, it sounds very over-dramatized, but I think that the universe displays the same lessons and tendencies over and over again—sometimes in big ways, but more often in the everyday occurrences.

There is a spiritual dimension to this reflection, but I’m going to bypass it today. I didn’t intend for this page to become a religious blog, yet every entry seems to express some way in which the divine touches the ordinary.

Today, however, I am fuzzy-brained with a building cold bug and lack of sleep. I could spend all day revising this, but that wouldn’t be the best use of the baby’s nap time, now would it?

Rainbow

“O Lord, our God, how glorious is your name over all the earth!”
-Ps. 8

When the first hint of color, little more than a sun dog, faded in, way up in the clouds, I was probably the only one who saw it. But soon it slid upward over the hump and planted its opposite foot in the south, an image of God’s hands extended in blessing over the earth.

A few short miles later, the southern toe of that arch had expanded into something voluptuous and solid--as different from the average rainbow as skim milk is from cream--glowing bright enough to slice a piece to wrap around my neck like a scarf. By Warrenton, it was saturated with color, and the excess was spilling over into a halo of a second. By the time I passed the weigh station at Foristell, barreling eastward at 70 mph, it had lost weight and turned wispy.

That would have been enough, but before the rainbow had disappeared altogether, there came a magical sunset hard on the heels of the storm. A sunset of molten golds--rose, yellow, and white--tinted the air, making it a living thing, finding nooks and crannies in the clouds and coating each leaf with fairy dust. As I barrelled eastward I could only watch in my rearview. But over the Missouri River bridge, I had to act. I pulled off at the first exist and took a picture back across the bottoms, through a set of fat black power lines draped next to the road. Not a picture I will print, but one that needed to be taken nonetheless.

Night Terrors

Last night, 1 a.m., and the house is quiet. The windows are open to let the evening breeze cool the 2nd floor where we sleep. I am half awake, and I hear a little electronic "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" from across the hall. I wonder if Alex is awake and playing with Fredbird or if he somehow hit the stuffed animal by accident. Then I hear footsteps in the hallway. "Alex?" I say.

He is standing next to the vacuum cleaner when somewhere outside, someone sets off a bunch of noisemakers. Pop! Pop! Pop! Popopopopopopopop!

Alex wails. It is unbelievably loud in the quiet house. Christian rises up roaring--and I mean roaring. "It's okay, it's okay!" I say, trying to keep my voice down, but they can't hear me. They're both completely freaked out, and feeding each others' terror. Christian and I both fly out of bed to comfort Alex, who apparently thinks the vacuum cleaner has come to life and is going to eat him. Christian gets there first and won't let me have Alex, because he's terrified, too, and he wants to cling to Alex for comfort. But Alex is having none of it. He wants the parent that didn't scare him! He lurches into my arms, and we lie on the bed together, his toddler heart doing a veritable drumroll against my chest.

I spend the next hour lying in Alex's bed so he's not scared to go back to sleep. But I can't get close to going to sleep myself.

Who needs sleep anyway?

Empty House, Cluttered House

So tonight is our first, official, “we’re-moved-in” night here at our new house. We slept here last night, but today we spent most of the day at the old house cleaning. It was a weird experience, cleaning my way through that hollow, echo-y space that had all the right paint colors, all the right contours, but somehow seemed suddenly not home anymore.

When it was all over, we somehow managed to smoosh all four of us into the van—Alex with his legs hanging over a full-length mirror, me with a 3-foot jade plant on my lap—and crisscrossed town for the last time, to bring home the last of our Stuff (including the crib sheet that we couldn’t find last night at bedtime!).

And tonight, Alex christened our new house by spilling root beer on the floor under the table (and chicken, and cheerios, and raisins) and then crowned it all by running away from me (naked, of course) and making the most horrific chocolate handprint on the wall right inside the front door.

After cleaning THAT up, I sat down to blog. Then Alex promptly picked his sister up by the dress—a big honkin’ fistful of spring green in that little hand—and dragged her across the floor and ran her into the spindles of the staircase railing!

After sorting out THAT mess, I brought Julianna safely back beside me and the next thing I know, I hear water running. NOW he decides it’s time to wash his hands.

You can’t write stuff this good.

(Written 6/14/07, but posted 6/15 b/c we don’t have internet service yet!!!!!)

8 things you never knew about me

I've been tagged by Michelle Chambers to tell you 8 things about me you never knew before. (Check out Michlle at miwi-carpediem.blogspot.com!)

So, here goes:

1. I teach Natural Family Planning.

2. I am the only scrapbooker I know who is caught up with her pictures.

3. I actually enjoy action movies. And superhero movies.

4. I have played my flute on Circular Quay across from the Sydney Opera House.

5. My grandparents know Madonna’s parents.

6. I have 34 first cousins, and we actually visit each other fairly regularly.

7. I can drive a tractor and back up a livestock trailer. I worked for my dad as a farmhand for two summers in college. Best summers I ever spent.

8. It’s hard to come up with 8 things you never knew about me, because I tell everyone everything about me all the time.

I'm supposed to tag 8 people, but I don't think I know 8 people with blogs, so I tag: Cecelia Sander!

The Everyday Environmentalist

With gas prices at the level they are, everybody’s thinking about the environment these days. And that is a very good thing. Whether or not you believe in global warming isn’t really the issue: as Christians, we are called to be stewards of creation. Here are a bunch of everyday things that we can do to preserve our beautiful Earth.

And conveniently enough, caring for the environment *usually* saves you money, too!

In the Kitchen:
1. Take your own bags to the grocery store. Cloth is even better than paper or plastic.
2. Buy fresh, not prepackaged. Mac & cheese from scratch really doesn’t require more time, and veggies you cook yourself lose less nutritional value.
3. Buy organic.
4. Buy local.
5. Grow your own vegetables.
6. Compost.
7. Recycle.
8. Wash and reuse Ziploc bags.
9. Wait to run the dishwasher till it’s full.

Vehicles and driving:
10. Slow down! The faster you drive, the more gas you burn, and it doesn’t save any significant time anyway.
11. Make one trip to the grocery store for the week—IOW, plan and shop with a list.
12. Combine trips & walk from errand to errand when possible. Not when convenient, when possible.
13. Take advantage of public transportation.
14. Carpool.
15. Make sure the tires are at the proper pressure (you get better gas mileage).
16. Change Your Air Filter.
17. Make your next car a hybrid.

Around the house:
18. Buy refills on cleaners instead of a new squeeze bottle every time
19. Buy used, and don’t buy things you don’t need.
20. Use Compact Fluorescent Bulbs.
21. Turn the lights off.
22. Turn the computer off, or at least to standby
23. Unplug Electronics. They draw power even when not in use.
24. Use Recycled Paper.
25. Print on the back sides of used paper for rough drafts.
26. Turn the thermostat up a degree in the summer and down a degree in the winter.
27. Seal doors & windows with caulking or weather strips.
28. Get double pane windows.
29. Replace old appliances
30. Set the water heater no higher than 120.
31. Take Shorter Showers.
32. Dry clothes on a line instead of in the dryer.
33. Use a Push Mower (the kind without power.)
34. Plant a Tree

For the Family:
35. Use cloth diapers. There are diaper services that can do the cleaning for you.
36. Toilet train early.
37. Practice Natural Family Planning. No plastic, no chemicals, no waste.

Today my novel, The Beggar’s Queen, was released. Check it out at www.thewildrosepress.com!

The Beggar’s Queen not your typical romance novel. For one thing, it’s longer, and there’s a whole lot more to it than the romance. For another, there’s no sex. I don’t write the formula, because I don’t think the formula reflects what true love really is. To me, sex is trivialized and cheapened when it is laid out on display. So instead, I focus on how Hero and Heroine (Phillip and Cecily, in TBQ) come to grow to love each other over the course of time. I believe that’s more realistic, and as such, a richer and more complex story.

Of course, The Beggar’s Queen is a medieval fantasy, so who am I to be talking about reality? :)

A good week

It’s been a good week.

We listed the house, sold the house, found a new house we wanted, talked to the bank, and are getting ready to put in an offer. I received the galleys for “Beggar’s Queen,” an email asking to write an article for a magazine, and a letter asking to submit hymn texts. Alex had his second birthday and made good progress on the toilet. Julianna started paying attention to toys at midline. A good week.

Today I went to critique group. I’m surprised by how much I have come to value this group of women. They could not be more different from me. We could not see the world from more opposite points of view, in many cases. Yet there is respect and goodwill, and I am discovering from them that in spite of our different world views, we agree more than we disagree.

Perhaps that is a hopeful sign for the state of the world.

Kids in Church

April 2, 2007

So far, my blogging has mostly been about Julianna. Which is unfortunate, really, because Alex is a riot. He’s always doing unbelievably adorable things, like falling asleep with my old First Communion prayer book clutched tightly in one chubby little hand (and I do mean chubby!) It’s enough to make me wonder if he really will be a priest someday. That, and the way he squeals with delight when he sees church—any church!

Then again, maybe that’s just the drums talking.

For months, Alex has been fixated on drums. He associates drums and church, which is really funny considering how rare it is to actually find drums in use at church. Every time we go to church, he runs for the music closet. The drums have to be the first thing we set up for contemporary group. Then he bangs happily on the trap set until we are done. When the pastor came to visit us in the ICU, Alex took one look at him, shrieked ecstatically, and then began miming every kind of drum he knows.

The former pastor of a local church used to have an announcement read every week, essentially telling people to remove their kids from church if they grew “restless.”

Now, I imagine if you asked, he would have insisted that was not his intention—his intention was to remove children who were screaming and causing a disruption. However, every single parent I know heard that announcement exactly the same way: KIDS NOT WELCOME.

Every parent has to juggle parenthood, ministry and personal spiritual development. When I worked for the Church, it used to annoy me that young families didn’t volunteer more. Then I gave birth to an angelic first child. Even now, in the terrible twos, he’s pretty good at church. And that made it *possible* for us to continue in music ministry—but not easy. We had to be very committed.

Alex was the first “choir baby,” but now there are more like five. A few months ago, a parishioner complained that it was distracting to have kids being “passed back and forth” in the music area during Mass. Lectors and Eucharistic ministers don’t get to have their kids with them when they serve. Why should musicians? If there is a better way to make families feel that their contributions are unwanted, I don’t know what it is.

Then, shortly after Christmas, Alex was banging happily on the toms and a man began complaining that he came to church to pray, and he wanted it quiet. No matter that it was 20 minutes after one service and 25 before the next began—church is supposed to be a quiet place. Fortunately, our parish priests are wonderful men who know how much we put into our service to the Church. They told us that we should celebrate the fact that our son loves to be at church, making a joyful noise to God.

I sympathize with the desire for a distraction-free environment to worship in. But children are the future. And children are children. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me,” and I highly doubt that he added, “As long as they are quiet and don’t bother anybody.” If we make kids—not to mention their parents—feel unwelcome, we are sabotaging the future of the church. Yes, children need to learn how to behave in church. But the only way they learn is by being in church. And that means that they’re going to act fidgety, restless and yes, probably disruptive before they learn to sit still and “behave.”

In the meantime, we ought to be looking for ways to encourage young families to participate in ministry, not looking for reasons to be annoyed that they have their kids with them. Kids who are involved will become adults who are involved. The more people who are involved, the richer our Church will become.

OK, I’ll get off my soapbox now. It’s taken me all day to write this blog, anyway, and I need to be mom now!

The eyes of God

For the first four and a half weeks of her life, Julianna woke up slowly, her eyes slitting one at a time, and only after a long warmup did they open all the way. At times, I felt a little shiver when I saw those eyes on me. Such a frank gaze, so uncomplicated—and so piercing, despite its gentleness. More than once I thought they were God’s eyes staring straight through me, down to the core of my being.

It is a totally different sense than what I experienced with Alex when he was her age. For Alex and I, looking in each others’ eyes was the long gaze of lovers memorizing the contours of each other’s faces. With Julianna, it is humbling. Unsettling. I squirm as her gaze lays bare my selfishness, my pettiness, my unwillingness to suffer. I recognize my own failings when I look in the eyes of this child who has endured more in her first month of life than I endured in my entire childhood.

During her week-long stay in the ICU, she was drugged, and we barely saw her eyes at all. But since she came out from under sedation, my daughter is like a different child. A few minutes ago, Julianna woke up and started crying. I went to the blue-barred hospital crib and started patting her little bottom to try to lull her back to sleep. Instead…POP! Those little eyes snapped wide open, and she stared fixedly at me out of deep charcoal-gray orbs. It was shocking to see how round those eyes are…how alert she is at six and a half weeks old, after sleeping for a whole week. And for one fleeting moment, it was like looking in a mirror. I saw myself staring back at me from those eyes, those eyebrows.

And still, they were God’s eyes.

God’s eyes, staring out of my eyes.

After all the curses I have flung at Him in the last few days, still He gives me this beautiful gift.

Clearly, I still have a lot to learn about God.

Apropos of nothing

For all you medical types out there, can you tell me why you need the words “intubate” and “extubate”? How much harder is it to say “Remove the tube”?

Julianna and I left the Pediatric ICU yesterday. In the last nine days I have learned a lot of new terms. Sats. Leads. PEEP. Pressure control. Room air. Correlating. Nobody should know as much about their child’s respiratory rates, heart rates, oxygen saturation and chest X rays as I have learned.

On the plus side, however, I now can write about hospital stays with some authority. I know that’s going to come in handy.

It really stinks in here. Stinks, I mean, like sewage. I thought it was diapers at first. But no, it’s not. I think we have a plumbing problem in the building.

I’ve spent this time doing what may be the last edits on my novel, The Beggars’ Queen. (It’s up to my editor.) My husband rolls his eyes when I tell him I’m “done,” because he knows better by now. This novel began as a pretty silly fantasy written in high school. I always called it a “story,” and I was very self-conscious about it. I still am, truth be told. But over the years it has grown into a very involved, complex plot with many subplots. And now that someone else has deemed it worthy of reading, I’m growing more confident.

I started a new book a couple of months ago, and after 5 chapters I ground unceremoniously to a halt. It took a couple of weeks before I realized why. I hit a scene involving a character I don’t like. With The Beggars’ Queen, I finally learned to understand all my characters—even the villains—and that allowed me to enjoy writing about them as well as my protagonists. With this new work, I don’t know the secondary characters yet.

Since I no longer have the luxury of spending 15 years writing a book, I have to do some character study before I get back to writing. But then, I’m a little preoccupied at present.

So...

All of the leads on all of my daughter’s monitors—heart, respiration and oxygen saturation—have ceased to function in the last hour. An hour, mind you. And the nurse hasn’t come in yet. Now I would like to know…why do we bother having the blasted cords hanging off her if the staff doesn’t care when they stop functioning?

Of RSV, VSD and UMC

Do you ever feel like you are crisis-hopping?

Since Julianna was born, that’s all we’ve been doing. We kept thinking things would settle down once we got home from the hospital, once we got past the specialists’ visits, once Alex got used to sharing the spotlight.

But around the first of March Alex came down with bronchitis. We groaned and hobbled our way through four horrific nights of wheezing, crying and waking every hour (plus the two night nursings), and thought OK, this is it, we’ve hit the worst, it’ll get better now. But then he woke up better one morning—well, with a horrible cold instead of a wheeze—and Christian and I promptly succumbed to the bad cold.

And then, last Wednesday, Julianna started coughing. We went to the doctor, who said it’s a virus, and it may get worse before it gets better, just keep pumping to keep your milk supply up and let her rest, yada yada.

That worked until Sunday morning, when we landed in the hospital at UMC with a positive blood test for RSV. First we thought it was just for observation overnight…she has a VSD (a hole between the lower chambers of her heart), and so they didn’t want her heart to be strained by the breathing issues.

Her oxygen was good, and she nursed well till midnight, when she was too tired to nurse. At 2:08a.m. she woke me up coughing and wailing, and the nurses descended. She had a 103 fever. Then it was IV and catheter and blood draws and arguments between Pediatrics and Family Practice about whether she needed a spinal tap, and I thought, oh Lordy, it just can’t get any worse.

But it did. At 7 a.m. they woke me up and said we were going to the ICU. “Step-down” status only, they assured me, just in case. And they sent me home to rest.

No sooner had I gotten home than the phone rang, and it was a ventilator and a feeding tube. Oh God, it just can’t get any worse.

Christian left work and took up residence in the ICU, so I stayed home with Alex. Along about 2 in the afternoon the army of medics told Christian that she was going to be in the hospital for perhaps as long as three weeks. It was the last straw. Surely, surely there was nowhere to go but up!

Then, last night, I got a sinus infection.
****************
Last Saturday afternoon I had reached the point where I was refusing to ask God for help. I was sending some pretty vitriolic thoughts Heaven-ward, let me tell you. “Every time I ask you for help, you sick bastard, you send me something ELSE to deal with! Fine! I’m not going to talk to you anymore, then!”

At urgent care on the way to the hospital, it suddenly occurred to me that maybe it’s not God who keeps sending more and more for us to deal with. Maybe it’s the Devil instead. At any rate, a person of faith can’t keep screaming at God for too long. It shakes the whole foundation of what keeps you going.

And today (Tuesday) the news is better at last. Chest X ray looks “better,” they are steadily weaning her off the oxygen and the ventilator, and she’s holding her own.

And maybe…just maybe…when this is all over, and our beautiful baby girl is back at home where her brother can love on her (and lay on her, and bounce her till I cringe, and run toy trucks up and down her body)….just maybe, things will settle down at last.

Where to begin?

I’m five weeks postpartum, and I’m wearing my own jeans.

There, that’s a good crow to begin my blog. I’ve been procrastinating for weeks, simply because I couldn’t think how to begin.

So I might as well begin by introducing myself…we are, after all, the product of our many influences. I hail from a little town called Moberly, Missouri, where I grew up on one of the few family farms that survived the 1980s. There were 4 girls and one bathroom. (My poor dad.) My dad is still a farmer, and my mom has now entered the political realm.

I’m a Virgo, not that I put much stock in that sort of thing.

I am the proud mother of a 22-month old boy named Alex who is absolutely perfect (except of course when he’s not), and the mother of a 5-week old little girl named Julianna, who is perfect in a whole different way, being a child with Down Syndrome. And no, we had no idea before she was born. It makes for a different birth experience than you dreamed of.

Christian and I have been married for 7 years. We met in a music group at the Catholic Student Center at the University of Missouri, and now we lead a contemporary music group across town. I write music (check out World Library Publications and GIA Publications...eventually--they're still in process) and I write fiction and nonfiction. (Check out www.thewildrosepress.com --also in process.)

I am passionate about music, good food, reading, writing, true Christianity (as opposed to pious platitudes), children, family and friends...to name a few. And I have opinions on everything else.

But I don't have a lot of time to write them.

That's probably plenty for now, since I don't imagine anyone else finds me quite as interesting as I find myself. :) So join me next time while I pull out one of my passions--food!