After much anticipation, I am elated to share the news that our son has entered the world! Jameson Elliott was born to us on Tuesday, May 14th, at 10:09 AM weighing 6 pounds, 11 ounces and measuring 19.5″ long.
Surprise, Mom! I have thick blonde hair!
Headed home the next day
Thank you Lord for a healthy pregnancy, an easy and uncomplicated birth, and for the joy of bringing one more soul into the world. How blessed we are to be co-creators with our God!
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I’m officially in my second trimester of this pregnancy. Yesterday I had my 14-week appointment and everything continues to look well. I took our older daughter Abigail to the appointment with me so she could hear the baby’s heartbeat on the doppler. As we were leaving, she looked at me in amazement and said, “That baby is alive in there.” To see my daughter, completely unprompted, recognize the undeniable fact that her unborn sibling was a living person, was my most incredible parenting moment to date. God knew I needed that!
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After this week’s election, I’ve spent quite a bit of time pondering the poll results and the implications for the nation in coming years. In just 48 hours I’ve gone from despair to anger to sadness to…relief. If I’d heard a liberal say this after an Obama loss, I’d have thought they were just trying to make themselves feel better. And maybe that’s what this is – trying to feel better. However, I can’t shake the feeling that this next four years will prove to be a trial that will bring America to a better place, specifically the American Catholic Church. The fact that nearly half of Catholic voters did the unimaginable and voted for Obama is a sure sign that change must happen, and it must happen now. (Heh…change…unintentional humor for you.)
I saw this quote on a fellow Catholic’s Facebook page yesterday:
“The age of casual Catholicism is over, the age of heroic Catholicism has begun. We can no longer be Catholics by accident, but instead be Catholics by conviction.” –Fr. Terence Henry, TOR
In other words: be convicted or leave.
Before becoming Catholic, I knew the Church was known for a liberal bias. It confused me, but I figured it was because the Catholics voting Democrat suffered from conscience malformation. I was right. I wouldn’t call any of the liberal Democrats I know to be evil or even bad people, but some of them have really blown my mind in the past few days. Something has happened. Something has gone wrong. I’m suddenly inspired to be a part of great change in the Church. Be convicted or leave. I look forward to both being further convicted and to helping others be convicted too. The re-election of an anti-Catholic president is not the problem – it is the symptom. The poll results are not the fire alarm, but the fire itself.
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One more election comment for today. On Tuesday, I voted in my hometown where I had most recently registered. I also could have driven to two other nearby polling locations to vote with two other ballots waiting for me in former hometowns. That’s right – I’m registered to vote in three places: my parents’ hometown (from my very first Presidential election in 2004), my college town (election 2008), and where I live now. With each new registration, the person in charge of removing my previous registration failed to do so. After calling the County Clerk in both counties where the duplicate ballots were waiting, I am still registered to vote in three places! And here in Illinois, land of Obama, we don’t need to show identification to vote (something about that being discriminatory, yadda yadda).
At this point I have plans to blow the lid off this somehow. I’m very upset and we all should be! My mom has some connections to area reporters and we are considering making this public knowledge. Of course, I would never vote more than once…but can you imagine how many people did?? I don’t care who you’re voting for – that is just an abuse of your American rights, and we need not make it so easy for fraud to happen.
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On a lighter note, here are two pictures of my daughters in their Halloween costumes. Abigail was a horse and Madeline was a little pink owl.
She didn’t let this costume’s uh, cumbersome nature slow her down!
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Another free parenting tip: It is a terrible idea to both wean your toddler from nursing and transition her to a toddler bed in the same week. We’ve been averaging about four hours of sleep per night. I have no idea how this happened, but it did.
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Saw this a few years ago and still love it.
I disagree that broccoli is tasty and that celery is not. I’d flip-flop their locations on this chart. What do you think?
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I’m very excited for tonight as we get ready for the annual banquet for our local pro-life pregnancy center. I volunteered as a client advocate there for two years and was so blessed to be a part of their life-saving ministry. The annual banquet is always a highlight as well as a great fundraiser. As an added bonus, they offer childcare for the kiddies! My Abby is already talking about how excited she is to play with the other kids in the church nursery. As for me, I plan to eat a hot meal without having to cut someone’s food or wipe up disastrous spills. :) It will be grand!
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It’s high time for me to jump back into the swing of things in 7 QT world. This week’s quick takes will be all about excuses for why I’ve neglected blogging our third addition on the way!
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This baby is due in the beginning of May, 2013. I am ten weeks along. He or she will have a four year-old big sister and a two year-old big sister. We learned we were expecting on August 28, 2012. We kept it a secret from almost everyone except our oblivious kids, our closest friends, my brother accidentally, our priest, and our parents. We announced the news to our friends on Facebook yesterday, October 11, and I hope you saw the post. (Did you look closely?)
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Yes, we know what causes this! ;) We are blessed with the means to welcome children with eagerness. When people ask if this was “a planned baby” (someone always does!) we can laugh and say “Psh, we’re Catholic, what do you think?!” When that comeback wears off I’ll say something like “We just really love hosting baptisms.”
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Baby’s first photo:
This was taken at six weeks along. So tiny, but so full of life!
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Despite two very, very easy pregnancies with our first two babies, this pregnancy has been quite textbook in the misery department. I secretly thought women were exaggerating about the nausea associated with the first trimester, as I’d never experienced it for myself. This multipara stands corrected. When you get it, it’s awful. Not only has nausea been a factor, but the familiar fatigue is back too. I don’t mean “Oh, I feel sleepy” fatigue. It’s exhaustion to the point where I wonder if my lungs and heart will continue on without me while I crash into sleep of epic proportions. Thankfully, my husband regularly accommodates my need for rest and even occasionally checks my pulse for me. In sickness and in health!
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We would love a boy, and we would love a girl. And we would love a boy. ;)
Yes, we hope to learn the baby’s gender before birth! I’m a type-A planning type, so nobody will talk me out of it. We’ll learn the news in early December.
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I had my ten week appointment yesterday and baby’s heartbeat was heard through the hand-held doppler loud and clear. Please keep our little child and me in your prayers for the next thirty weeks as he or she develops (and I figure out how in the freaking heck I’m going to fit three car seats in my van). Jesus, I trust in you.
For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!
(These aren’t usually pregnancy-themed.)
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(No children were harmed in the production of this photo.)
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I’ve been paying extra attention to the whereabouts of my cell phone these days. Its never beyond reach and never without a charged battery. Sometime in the next couple weeks, my best friend is giving birth to her first baby, a little daughter who I just know I will love with all my heart. My own girls are very excited for a new playmate in the “family” and I couldn’t be happier for my friend and her wonderful husband. That phone call will be the highlight of the month, that’s for sure!
We had a garage sale this week. At the time of writing, it’s been a great success after the first morning. We’ve already recouped all the money we blew at the fair on Wednesday. And my garage can actually house cars now, too. Don’t tell anyone, but we’d have given most of that stuff away just to be rid of it!
The fair was great. Highlights include:
- My older daughter (3) loudly proclaiming “We’re going to eat healthy food at the fair!” shortly before arriving (what noble intentions!),
- both my children receiving a lesson in What Farm Animals Actually Sound Like (which is generally terrifying), and
- our younger daughter (1) falling asleep on the walk back to the car, face planted on the stroller tray in a display of absolute kiddie exhaustion.
“Annnnnd she’s out!”
Fairs remind us parents that life is so much harder with kids. Fairs also remind us that life is so much better with kids. The looks on their little faces as they pet ponies and rode a train and ate a corn dog and got cornered by a deranged rooster are just moments I will never forget. Life is good.
Ahem. A rant.
I am growing increasingly weary of a certain brand of whininess on Facebook. The whine itself is taking the form of pseudo-pacifism and sounds like this: “I’m tiiiiired of the political posts on my news feed. You’re not going to change my mind about political issues with your posts!”
First of all, I think it is wonderful that people are talking about politics. In an age where apathy is truly the largest political party (as evidenced by ever-decreasing voter turnouts, to our shame), it gives me hope to see people engaged in conversation about politics. I’d rather read ten status updates about a candidate I can’t stand than one status update about Snooki’s baby or a picture of somebody’s cat. Politics matter, and its about time we started making it a part of our everyday lives. It’s about time we start caring about what is going on in this world. Politics not your thing? Fine. But to get all indignant about an abundance of political commentary during a critical election year is as counterproductive as criticizing a person for their passionate posts about sports or their career or their degree of study or their upcoming wedding plans. This election matters at least as much.
And where did this notion that “posts don’t change anybody’s mind” come from? Social media has never been responsible for a person’s evolving and ever-maturing world view? This charge sounds like more of a nose-thumbing maneuver (akin to “You can’t make me listen!”) and really exhibits a sad lack of intellectual honesty, if you ask me.
Then again, I love posting thought-provoking political things, so you probably didn’t ask me, huh?
My business website is LIVE (and not a day too soon)!
Each pixel represents an hour spent in tears of frustration over the web design process. I’m only being a little bit dramatic.
Ignore the brunette hair in the website pictures. As of this week, I am in the land of the blonde once again. I feel like “me” again! I’ll show up in a decent photo soon, I imagine.
I found this really strange website this week called The Last Meals Project. My inner pro-life self cringed at the overall concept, but there is one “last meal” that made me smile… can you guess which one it was?
Have a great weekend!
For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!
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Be on the lookout for a post this weekend with more Facebook cover photos of the Catholic variety. I made two more and hope to have four total in one post for easy find-ability. :)
After writing my post on John 6:63, I’ve been further pondering the verse and its implications in light of the rest of the text. I’m beginning to think this verse may be my favorite support for the Eucharist from Scripture. If Jesus is not talking about His flesh in this verse (which He isn’t, because that interpretation is blasphemous), what is He talking about? The only satisfactory answer points to a literal interpretation of Christ’s words in the rest of the passage.
Utter mayhem is about to descend upon our little hometown. Every September, we are home to the largest fair in the state (larger than the state fair, actually). We live four blocks away from the fairgrounds, so close that we can hear the tractor pulls and the concerts. It’s really quite fun if you don’t have to drive anywhere. We’re planning to take the family on opening day. I anticipate being broke for the rest of the month.
Thanks for your prayers regarding the big ministry opportunity I (vaguely) referred to last week. I was asked to fill a pretty important role at a pro-life ministry in my area. I was so honored to be considered. In the end, however, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to balance this new opportunity with the commitments I already have on my plate. I was so sad to turn it down, but I am confident in God’s guidance in the decision. Maybe someday the door will open again.
I almost never watch talk shows, but I caught the beginning of a Dr. Oz show yesterday. It was about infertility and fertility treatments. As Dr. Oz was describing the process of conception, he referred to the fertilized egg as “the child.” I almost spit out my coffee. The rest of the show was just awful in the moral bankruptcy department, but I do wonder if the good doctor will receive backlash from his comment (which definitely granted personhood to the tiny zygote on his uterus diagram). Gosh, you forget to be politically correct for just one moment and all this logic starts coming out!
Would you stop reading my blog if I wrote a political post? Just one. I didn’t want to, but as this election season progresses I’m finding it harder and harder to shut up. And it’s only August. Yikes. A rant is forming in my head and it needs a place to land…
I’m participating in Support a Catholic Speaker Month 2012! The top 100 Catholic speakers have been named over on Brandon Vogt’s blog and I was able to “claim” a speaker to feature here in a blog post. Don’t worry, I got somebody cool. You can either wait until September to find out who it is or go here to search the list for The Recovered Catholic. ;)
By the way, there appear to be more speakers available if you’d like to participate. You can fill out a form at the above link to jump in on the fun.
For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!
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Last Friday my husband and I left the kids with Grandma and Grandpa and went to see For Greater Glory. I don’t even know what kind of sentence to type next. It was well-produced and fascinating and pretty darn scary all at the same time. If you haven’t heard of it, the film is about the Cristero War of 1926-1929 in Mexico. The Mexican government basically tried to eradicate the Catholic Church by means of extreme persecution. The Church fought back and proved again that “the gates of hell would not prevail.” But oh, the violence and terror those Christians faced. So many martyrs. That could never happen here….could it?
On a much lighter note, I learned this week that my grandparents have sold their house and are moving to live closer to us. What used to be a 60+ minute drive will now be a mere 15 minute trip. We are really excited about this, as we’ve always wished to be closer to them. I know they’ll be sad to move away from the place they called home for over forty years, but hopefully the excitement of seeing their super adorable great-granddaughters more often will help ease the transition. My husband is excited to help them shovel their driveway in the winter. What a guy. :) They close on the new house in August!
In other family excitement, my brother just returned from Europe this week after a six-month stay in Linz, Austria. He is studying music and is now home on break. My family was so thrilled for his homecoming. Not only did far too many people accompany my dad and me to retrieve him from the airport, but we also had a huge lunch at a fun restaurant on the way home followed by a massive steak dinner that night at my parents’. We ate European chocolate and drank Austrian beer and watched my daughters show off for their uncle with visible excitement. It’s been really fun and I thank God for his safe return home. He’ll be with us in the States until September.
I’ve been learning about the Liturgy of the Hours (it’s also apparently called the Divine Office). At first I looked at it and thought “Oh no way. I am just too busy for that.” But the more I learn, the more I’ve begun to seriously consider making it a part of my daily life. I love the idea of praying with millions of fellow believers as one Church, one body. I really liked Simcha Fisher’s thoughts on the subject over on her blog at the National Catholic Register website.
You might be thinking, “Well why not just start doing it then?” Because I’m type-A, that’s why. I either do things or I don’t do them; “go big or go home.” Its just how I am. I have a feeling I’m going to choose to do it, though. When I do, I want to be committed and actually pray with consistency. Anyone else pray the Divine Office? Is it a difficult discipline? Do you recommend it? (I don’t really expect anyone to answer “no” to that last one.) I’m especially interested in tips from fellow mothers of one or more human cyclones adorable young children who might find themselves short on time as it is.
It was the Fourth of July this past week and the first year that I didn’t see any fireworks. :( My excuse: it was too darned hot! The Chicagoland area has been experiencing a terrible heat wave and temps remain in the nineties well after nightfall. The lack of rain has not helped. More fireworks were scheduled for Sunday night but have been canceled due to fire hazards. I am thanking God for air conditioning and have on several occasions said to my husband, “Remember when we almost bought that one house without central air?! What were we thinking?!” (It’s true. At one point during our 2010 house hunting adventure I fell in love with a house without a/c. What a short-lived love that would have been!)
My last post about sola scriptura was fun because I received some interesting feedback from a few readers in the comments section. It is neat to encounter such a diverse range of Christian perspective in one place. Anyway, as much as I enjoyed the comments exchange, I found myself feeling really stressed out about responding in a timely manner. I felt like if I didn’t sit down and respond this very second, I could think of little else. I hereby give this disclaimer: I do most of my blogging on the weekends while the kids are in bed and my husband is at work (he works third shift). So if I don’t get back to you on a Thursday morning, just check back with me in a few days.
There. Now that I’ve said this, I won’t feel nearly the pressure I did before. :) (I’m one of those people who invents her own stress. Can you tell?)
This week’s Blog Better Than Mine is not actually a blog, but a website that has a blog. It’s a new project called 1Flesh.org and is aimed at addressing the pitfalls of contraception use in marriage. Your reaction will be either one of two varieties: 1) “What the hell? Who on earth is against contraception? Is this a joke? ” or 1) “Awesome! A hip, attractive media outlet for young married people to discover the beauty of sex as God designed it!” Whatever your reaction, I hope you’ll follow the link to this very cool and very informative site.
I think the feature that I most appreciate about this new project is the total absence of faith affiliation. Of course, everyone would expect a site like this to be run by crazy Catholics (and for the most part, it is!), but you won’t find any talk of religion here. The developers sought to focus on the practical and universal benefits of rejecting contraception. (And as I learn time and time again, Catholicism and reason are usually on the same side of any controversy.) Anyway, at least check out the graphics. Some of them are hilarious. I hope to snag one of them for this blog to help spread the word.
For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!
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I’m officially in “I have a blog and don’t care who finds it!” mode. Feels good. After sharing the link on Facebook last night, it appears I’ve only lost two friends. We’ll call this a win.
Oh my goodness, have you heard of Lighthouse Catholic Media? They are purveyors of fine Catholic audio talks and other teaching resources. My husband and I have benefited greatly from their materials over the course of our conversion. Anyway, LCM now has a youth-oriented “download of the month” club called Truth Be Told. I subscribed this week and I’m a very happy customer! The first download I received was a three-part homily series by Father Mike Schmitz titled “True Worship.” Its about the Catholic perception of worship and why it is so distinct from other Christian worship. I was absolutely amazed by what I learned. And if I hadn’t known otherwise, I’d have thought I was listening to a passionate Evangelical speaker the entire time. (I guess his fervent love for the Eucharist gave it away too.) GREAT STUFF. Download this immediately! And if you do, let me know what you thought.
I don’t have an interesting recipe story this week because we’ve been living on leftover food from the baptism party. We’re all very sick of macaroni salad, but it is what it is.
I feel its necessary to mention that my husband and I got new cell phones this week. Normally not a big deal, but for us it really is. We’re still feeling a bit battle-fatigued from cellular drama that almost involved lawyers a couple of years ago (long story), so when contract renewal time came around we were mighty nervous. I’m happy to report that we switched carriers and got new smart phones, and all with minimal checkbook assault. The phones are pretty cool too and definitely a step up from our old 2007-era Rumors which were being held together by tape. Oh, and these phones work in our home too. What a remarkable feature. Technology these days, I tell you.
Yesterday kicked off the Fortnight for Freedom, a two-week event called for by the USCCB. The Fortnight for Freedom is to be a time of prayer, fasting, and public witness for the cause of religious freedom. I’m seriously concerned about the threats facing the Church in coming years should the current administration strong-arm the HHS mandate into law. Regardless, I’m proud to be part of a Church that doesn’t take these threats sitting down. Its been a pretty neat display of unity thus far.
As far as I know, my diocese isn’t hosting any public events that I can participate in. There’s going to be a Red Mass sometime this week and is open to public officials. I wish I could go. Maybe I can sneak in? Maybe that’s totally inappropriate? I have so much to learn. Somebody clue me in.
Funny story time. So I had a very difficult time choosing the text for the girls’ baptism cake. For some reason “God Bless Abby and Maddie” wasn’t exciting enough for me. I joked with a friend that I’d just have the cake artist write “Rome Has Spoken, The Matter Is Settled. –Saint Augustine” I was definitely joking but oh, how funny that would have been. Instead I settled on this:
Little Ones To Him Belong (like the song, get it?!!)
Abby and Maddie
So my friend was going through my Facebook photos and when she came to this one she said “You spelled ‘Rome’ wrong.“ I almost died laughing. We apostates get to have all the fun, don’t we?? 
This week’s Blog Better Than Mine is actually a friend of mine! He is a Catholic deacon, avid traveler of the Holy Lands, and a really great writer too. His blog can be found here at Deacon Dale’s Blog. Be sure to check out his pictures from a recent pilgrimage to Poland. I hope I get to go on a trip like that someday. Maybe Shannon and I should start a fund now…
(I’d really like to have a running list of blogs I love, but WordPress doesn’t seem to give me the option as a sidebar widget. Maybe it’s an issue with the Pilcrow theme? If you have information that might help me with this, please share!)
For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!
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I am holding Madeline (1) and my husband Shannon is holding Abigail (3). Both girls were welcomed into the family of God this past Saturday (and nobody cried)! We praise God for a day that was so long in the making.
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