Living a Lenten Season with Kids

Each year Emily’s and Leo’s understanding of Lent takes deeper roots into their faith life. In the past we’ve helped them to realize Christ’s ultimate sacrifice for us through meaningful ways. Here are some of our favorite traditions to help the kids:

We start on Ash Wednesday. I love Ash Wednesday because it is such a great sign of hope and peace in the world. As a child, I remember feeling very self conscious about receiving ashes and going out in public so everyone important in the universe could see that I was a Christian! Gasp!! Last year Emily went around pushing up her bangs everywhere we went saying to anyone who would listen “can you see my cross? That means I love God!” I wish we could retain the innocence of small children forever! As an adult, so often I just want to blend in and not be noticed. (ok…ok…going around with 3 banshees isn’t exactly the best way to “blend”). Yet it’s amazing how many people are eager to receive the ashes and show an outward sign that they too are turning away from sin and returning to the Gospel.

Fasting--this year we’ve decided to fast from sugar. It’s important to note that this is not for a dietary reason, (as in, hey! Let’s give up sugar so we can all be skinny!), but rather because our favorite well deserved treats in this house are usually involving sugar. (no mom of the year award…but a m&m here and there ain’t gonna kill ya!) We like to take this sacrifice and offer it up for Jesus. This is great because it really teaches your little one self-control, patience, and how sacrifice is needed in a world of sin.

Sacrifice Tree
This is a tradition that we had in my house growing up which I always loved. You begin with a child selected bare branch and small tissue paper leaves. Not only do we fast during Lent, but also we can do small acts of kindness for each other. Each little sacrifice is signified with tying a leaf onto the tree--not to brag but to encourage the beauty of sacrifice. I love this idea because it plants the seeds of teaching the Theology of the Body at a very early age. Kids can clearly see that self-donation and self-sacrifice is awesome and necessary in a loving relationship.

Here's a picture from last year to get the idea:)


Stations of the Cross
Eli and I like to take the kids with us on Friday evenings to say the stations of the cross outdoors. Beforehand, they can color printouts of the stations, and match their paper to the station. Since we’re outside, they can really enjoy themselves as loudly as they’d like. Heehee. I also printed out a calendar for them that they can color one day at a time and really look forward to Fridays. http://catholicicing.com/2011/02/printable-lenten-calendar-for-kids/

I encourage you to make Lent more meaningful for your family. These are several ideas our family does, but we don’t do them everyday…the point is we *try.* Try This is such a great time to stop and reflect on how we’re living our life, and devote more time to God. Can you give Him 1% of your day? 24 minutes is not a lot considering He died on the cross for you. Maybe you could start by reading the Bible for a couple minutes during breakfast. Could you take half your lunch hour to go to daily mass? What about singing the Divine Mercy chaplet for 15 minutes at 3pm? If a rosary seems too hard a commitment with your spouse, how about a decade? How about 5 minutes on Sunday morning to read the gospel before you get to mass? The possibilities are endless…get started today!

Let's get the show on the road!

I didn’t think I’d be ever saying this, but miraculously we’ve made it to full term on the longest pregnancy known to man. Yeppers, you read that right. This baby could be born today and (crossing fingers) would go home with me tomorrow! But let’s not jump the gun here.

As a typical hormonal pregnant mommy, I’m actually feeling pretty darn emo. I guess when I went into labor at 23 weeks, I assumed that I would be meeting this bambino a lot sooner than now. The past 14 weeks have been rough. I’ve seen a 1.5 lb baby, and that’s rougher. The shots, bed rest, meds, compression stockings, dr. appointments every week, diet, inability to exercise, heartburn and nausea, 1000 daily contractions…they all did their best to bring us down. But God’s grace held us up. Our little family of 4 is stronger thanks to the presence of another human being who has yet to show his face.

So what’s next? I know it’ll be hard. The kids will be jealous and vying for my hugely sleep deprived attention. Our house will be in shambles and we’ll eat pizza every night. The TV will replace me on the floor, playing and breaking up fights over who gets which toy. Eli will come home after work to start his second job of picking up my slack. I’ll be sore, cranky and relearning how to nurse and get a baby to sleep. However, pulling together as a team, each one of us will learn how to adjust and enjoy the new family dynamic. Even though these are small sufferings, they'll still bring us closer to Christ. We look forward to giving more of ourselves and become servants, just as Jesus called us to do. Our kids are especially blessed because from such a young age they naturally learn the virtues--Faith, Hope, Charity, Fortitude, Justice, Temperance, Prudence.

Our latest sonogram measures the baby to be 7 lbs, and I’m fully effaced and dilated 2 cm. Let’s get this show on the road! We can't wait to meet you baby and find out if you're a boy or a girl. But baby, could you just wait until after this Thursday? We're a bit busy this week:)

Subordinating

I've been following this great Catholic-mom-blog for some time now, which is written by a group of young Princeton graduates. The posts range from all sorts of different mom topics, and I had to share this article commenting on Ephesians (5:22-25)...
Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives,even as Christ loved the church...
It addresses a few important tips on how to have a wonderful marriage. In such an anti-family society plagued by divorce, it's crucial that we have our marriages in tip top shape for the benefit of our children. I think we could all add a few onto this list...tithing...practicing NFP...check it out.

http://buildingcathedrals.blogspot.com/2009/09/submission-as-good-as-it-gets.html

27 weeks and going strong

Sorry...this apparently didn't post last week like I thought it did...

Well we made it! After seeing the Perinatologist yesterday, I'm 27 weeks pregnant and wont be delivering anytime soon! The doctor did an ultrasound to measure the cervix and there are no signs of oncoming labor. Since I have seen her every month, she'll hopefully be able to tell if there are complications early and administer the steroid shots to strengthen the baby's lungs if need be. Eli is still giving me my progesterone shots weekly (God bless him!!!) and apparently they're working...which is great because those suckers hurt all the way up until the next week's shot. It's kind of cool now knowing exactly what my baby looks like inside, since we saw Emily develop on the outside when she was born at 27 weeks. We still don't know the gender and are keeping the names a secret...but I will say that the names we chose are after great saints! This little squirmy wormy should get nice and fat and stay in the oven until mid July.

Emily is keeping very busy and is ready to go swimming in my parents pool. San Antonio heats up really fast in the summer so I'm trying to keep her entertained outdoors while the weather is still nice. Today we went downtown to mass at St. Joseph's, a beautiful old German church, but it was closed because of carpet installation. Disappointed, we walked down to grab some lunch and take it down to the Alamo where tons of people dressed patriotically for the Tea Party! Emily just sat in her stroller watching all the commotion while I ate my lunch (this is an extreme rarity...she is notorious for leaning so far forward in her stroller that it tips over...like every toddler I'm sure). Afterwards we went to the zoo--it's a fabulous 75 degrees and breezy day--for a few hours. I love our membership pass because I can go once a week until I get too tired, and not feel guilty about never seeing the whole zoo at once.

Eli and I are in the swing of San Antonio life. Eli's job is going great and his calendar is pretty stacked with projects and such. It's so nice to have him come home for lunch and have his help after work!!!! I don't know how we did it back then when he left at 7am and wasn't available until 11 each night because of grad school. Poor guy, but now he's getting in his relaxation time before the new baby comes. I'm feeling a lot better physically than I had been the first 5 months of this pregnancy. Even though I'm much more exhausted and rarely get to sit down, I really feel like God is giving me a lot of grace to stay positive and gracious. I'm able to take Emily to mass everyday and I'm trying to grow deeper in my faith life. Eli and I have joined a church ministry called Covenant of Love, a Catholic marriage enrichment program which focuses on ways to strengthen your relationship with each other and allow your marriage to be more Christ centered. Recently we've been working very hard on our budget for the year so that we can hopefully buy a house by December. We follow Dave Ramsey's total money makeover baby steps, and are almost completely out of debt (from medical bills)!!! We are pretty good savers and always try to keep the virtue of temperance in mind. So keep us in your prayers! And pray that we'll find a house close to where we live now!

Easter was great and I'll be posting about that next along with some pictures. We're headed to Dallas tomorrow for Eli's conference so I'm about 5 loads of laundry behind:) Dying easter eggs

Pooped out after Easter mass

Sleeping with her baby

Wearing the bunny ears from Danze grandparents

One Year Ago Today

Today, All Saints Day, marks the anniversary of Emily's homecoming from her 3 month NICU stay. Last halloween was spent for the first time as a family without supervision by the nurses and doctors. The hospital allowed us to "room-in"--sleep in a special room in the NICU with Emily not connected to all of her monitors. Essentially it served as a practice run with her new take-home heart monitor and also the first time I was able to nurse Emily in the night. The nurses still came in every 4 hours to take her temperature, blood pressure, check the heart monitor, and weigh her diapers, but to Eli and I it didn't matter.

It marked a whole new set of freedoms which we hadn't ever experienced before in the past 82 days of her life:

-I decided when to nurse her, rather than following her rigorous feeding schedule which entailed nursing every 4 hours for 20 minutes max and then following it with a bottle of fortifier from the nurse.

-We decided when her heart monitor alarmed, whether she actually stopped breathing and her heart rate dropped, or if it was just a false read.

-We bathed her, we dressed her in the most snuggly pj's, and we tucked her into bed with a prayer and a song.

-We held her, kissed her, loved her when it was not her touch time (45 minutes every 4 hours we were allowed to hold her)

When we came home I knew that our lives were about to be flipped upside-down, but I had no idea how great things would be, nor how hard things would be. Emily, to say the least, flourished unbelievably. The first few days she slept all the time, and I remember waking her up to feed her. Shortly thereafter, she started nursing every 30 minutes, around the clock. We had one great day as a family at home, and the next day Eli started his new job, and we barely skipped a beat.

God gave me so much grace those first few weeks because I was terrified like every new mom with her baby, but times 100. Emily was on all sorts of meds, her heart monitor was confusing with false alarms, and she still needed a certain number of bottles of 34-calorie fortifier. To top it off, like all newborns, she barely slept! I got to a point that I was so sleep deprived that I was literally a zombie, and I didn't know if it was day or night. I had to write down what time I gave her her medicine, if I fed her, and if she slept. In my off time, I argued with insurance companies about coverage for her RSV shots ($2000 each month that was finally covered after hours of negotiations).

By thanksgiving I was an absolute disaster. But somehow things got easier, and we all adjusted, and were always so thankful for our little miracle. I think God was working though me to help me understand how precious life is, and how much we take for granted. Emily has grown into a unique, creative, funny and caring little girl, and it all happened in a blink of an eye. Since that day she came home, one year ago today, I haven't spent more than 10 awake hours apart from her, and she still amazes me. So in today's crazy world, take some time to love one another and be amazed in God's creation!

#1 Rule

Keep your faith. It's that simple! Life is a roller coaster of ups and downs which you cannot control, leaving you helpless and frustrated sometimes. All the more reason to let go and let God take over. He will ALWAYS provide, and he has a plan for you. We've all had many times when things didn't go as planned, but in the end it turned out for the better.

For example, Eli and I had planned for an easy, natural birth with little intervention. After all, I'm young and healthy, had no problems during the pregnancy. I followed every nutrition and resting suggestion, and exercised practically everyday. We got wrapped up in preparing the nursery, washing the little clothes, and reading about how babies are wonderful.

Then one day Eli's company started to go under, and he was laid off along with half of his coworkers. This made two unemployed people, as I had resigned as a teacher at the end of the year. Two weeks later my water broke, randomly when I was 6 months along (now they think it was due to infection). When we went to the hospital, I thought we would be going home in a few hours after they gave me some medicine to fix the problem. Boy were we wrong! 48 hours of labor later, our beautiful Emily Beatrice was born. The labor as you could imagine had a lot of intervention, and things were out of my control. This was not the way I envisioned it!

Emily was swept away before I could even see her. We held her for the first time 7 days later. Again, not the way I thought it would be. Leaving her at the hospital for 82 days was not what I had in mind either. Of course we could have said "God, why me?" and probably did a few times.

But look at the result: the sweetest little miracle there ever were. And since Eli was unemployed, he was able to visit Emily in the hospital everyday for the first 3 weeks until we started temp jobs. He was also able to dedicate more time to studying, as he was taking 13 hours of grad classes at the time. To top it off, Eli found a job through another parent whose daughter was in the NICU. We relied on God to get us through, had to let go of control, but he had a better plan for us in mind.

Finances are often the same. Some months we are in the red, but some months we are able to save. No matter what though, we have faith that God will provide, and He ALWAYS pulls through!

Do you have a similar story of learning to trust in God's Will when everything has gone wrong?

Big News!

Drumroll please...we're moving here! Can you believe it's going on 7 years that we've lived in Dallas? A lot has happened here...college, meeting our best friends, falling in love (well, really that happened in Rome), getting engaged, our first home, our first baby, our first salary jobs. I could go on and on. We plan to make the move after Christmas and are excited to be closer to family, but are sad to leave our good friends behind. We had already looked into moving down and Eli had started to send out resumes, when a change in his job position encouraged him to resign and move on at the end of the year.

I thought that finding a job last year would be difficult, but this year's recession has us worried about how much hiring companies will be doing in the future months. Eli is the hardest worker I've ever known and scarecly takes even five minutes for himself to relax. His capstone class is very labor intensive, but also interesting and well worth the hours he puts in each night. In December he will graduate with his MBA and take a break from school for awhile (but seriously, who knows what he'll do next!). At TEMSCO he is the marketing director and at his previous job he was the marketing manager, so naturally he will be looking for a marketing job in a large company.

I wish I could bottle Emily and save her in this age forever. What a sweetheart! Apparently she had been going through a phase of being a little difficult (not sleeping through the night, not letting me put her down or leave the room, fussing all day, and not playing by herself) for the last few months. I chalked it up to sleep deprivation and severe stranger anxiety, and am pleased to say she has moved miles this month!! Oh I wish you could see her crawling and cruising around the room. She plays independently for a good portion of the day and rarely cries! Finally she is going down for 2 naps easily and bedtime is 1000 times easier than in the past. I'd like for her to sleep past 5am (since she goes to bed at 7), but I'll take what I can get! I think she's used to going to mass with me and although she still wants to talk and play, she has shown a great improvement in her patience. Emily still eats like a champ, eating everything I put in front of her--all vegetables, fruits, meats, beans, breads and pastas. I tested her dairy allergy yesterday with a pinch of cheese and she still got hives, so we'll continue to wait. I've begun to wean her (those top teeth are vicious) and she likes the soymilk and is learning how to drink out of a sippy cup. The cloth diapers are still easy and are better for her diaper area than before. We have a pedi appt on Friday to see if the medication is helping her condition, and we may do an ultrasound as well. Keep our little trooper in your prayers:)

I realized that I never really talk about myself, and so I thought I'd take this chance to update on what I've been up to. Besides taking care of Emily all day everyday by myself, I've been working on my faith life. I enjoy reading about saints' lives and am strengthening my devotion to Mary. When I was having a hard time with Emily in the hospital and when she was such a high need baby, I was able to put my life in perspective with remembering the seven sorrows of Mary. To keep the faith during hardship is nothing but an extreme necessity for us all. I also spend a lot of time reading about strenghening my marriage and family in the Catholic faith. It's tough having just a few hours to spend together as a family a week, and even tougher on a marriage if you never see each other! We know that full time school and work are what allow me to stay home with Emily, and it's worth it. I also spend my time doing marriage counseling and teaching about Natural Family Planning. This weekend we're starting up our pro-life involvement with the life chain and 40 days for life vigil in front of the abortion clinics. Of course for fun I recently taught myself how to knit and sometime soon my cousin will be teaching me how to make bread from scratch.

Love never fails

The first reading from last Wednesday's mass is one of my favorites. Each time I hear it, my heart jumps to 5 years ago while Eli and I listened to our professor recite the beautiful verses in Corinth, Greece. Centuries ago, St. Paul went to the town only to encounter dozens of citizens living in deep sin, disrespecting all of God's gifts. In dire need of help, St. Paul encouraged them to live by these very inspiring words:

Love is patient, Love is kind, It does not envy, it does not boast,
It is not proud, It is not rude,
It is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered,
It keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
Love always protects, always trusts,always hopes, always perseveres.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. Love never fails.
Corinthians 13 : 4 - 8

Emily's Baptism

The day had finally come for Emily to be introduced to the Catholic Church community! Emily was Baptised on August 15th in an obvious emergency situation by Father Maguire in the NICU.

We really wanted to celebrate the Renewal Baptism Rite in order to have the wonderful Godparents Uncle Marty and Aunt Olivia and friends and family be present. Father Maguire gave a beautiful homily and ceremony, and Emily was so well behaved throughout the whole day! After Father anointed her forehead with oil, Emily gave him a great big smile. A huge thank you to everyone who came up to partake in the Sacrament!!

Teresa and Kyle were in town this past weekend to meet with UD professors and look at condos. Teresa is looking fabulous and glowing with just a little over a month to go until Emily has another cousin.

Hejjo loved looking out over the mall at UD!

Sheri, Olivia and the boys stayed with us on Friday night after Teresa's baby shower given by Katy and Margo. Hejjo loves to run and Felix loves to laugh...they're both very well behaved and typical active boys!

Hejjo was such a great helper in the kitchen!

He also loves his cousin Emily:)

Isn't Caroline precious! Justin and Katy just moved here from Chicago with Caroline at 3 months.

Here are some pics of Emily playing with her friends Sophia and Matthew. They're getting to the age where they can interact with each other! So adorable!

Spring Break and Happy Easter!

Spring Break and Easter just flew by! We had a very enjoyable stay with the Danzes and the Harkins. On Saturday Eli and I drove to Austin early early early so Emily could hopefully sleep the whole way (which she did!). We went to Lake Austin—it was gorgeous day to walk not only because the weather was perfect, but the trees were in bloom and smelled beautiful. From there we went over to the Barton Creek Resort pool to give Emmy her first swimming lesson. To our amazement, she loved the water and was kicking her little legs.

That night Olivia and Marty graciously offered to babysit for us so we could go downtown with Fred and Cliff…and we had a blast! The next day we all met over at the Marty and Olivia’s for Hejjo’s 2nd birthday. Sheri and Chris came in from the rock and it was so nice to visit with them. Felix is growing so strong and looks like he’s almost ready to start crawling. Hejjo is just as sweet and active as can be, and has learned how to say “Emily”! So cute!

On to Bastrop to see the Harkins—the Hyatt built a resort out there called Lost Pines that is so cool. There was a great big slide that flowed into the “lazy river” which circled the pools. The place was great for kids and adults…we had fun playing water volleyball, roasting smores, playing shuffleboard, and rafting down the Colorado. We hung out until Wednesday and then came on back to Dallas for Easter.

UD had a beautiful Good Friday service with the entire passion sung. On Easter Sunday Emily was so quiet in mass…my heart just melted seeing Eli hold her in her Easter bonnet. The Easter Bunny left Emily some goodies, including a scavenger hunt for eggs (filled with bubbles) and some rice cereal which we’re going to try out this week! We had our first “friends” holiday with a Holy Saturday meal at our apartment with David and Nichole and Easter Sunday dinner at the Kanes. So much fun!

Emily surprised us this week by rolling over! And she’s starting to take the pacifier!!! Good job Emily! This will make naps and going to bed so much easier!!!!!

Prayers Needed

Please say a special prayer for our sweet Emily whose hemangioma on her arm started to bleed today. Since this is a vascular birthmark, it is more tender than other birthmarks and bleeds tremendously and quickly. Luckily the bleeding stopped after a few minutes, but it can very easily open again and would need stitches. Thank you!

Christmas is in the Air

Mom loves to bake, cook, clean and love Emily all day long. We are getting more and more excited about Christmas coming soon and love the holiday season! Emily is all smiles and cries most days now and Kate and I are getting the hang of it (I think). Wrapping presents and baking goodies, changing diapers and washing bottles. It's really turning out to be the best Christmas ever! Emily is pretty much the sweetest, most wonderful girl in the world and thats it. Joy to the World!

First Sunday of Advent

We had a wonderful first weekend of advent! The temperatures warmed up and we were able to take our first family walk around the neighborhood. It's such a beautiful time of year with the trees changing to the fall colors. Emily slept the entire hour, despite the treacherous winds and bumpy cobblestone. Eli can't wait for her to be a little older so she can recognize the ducks and cute little turtles.
I think one of my favorite times of the Christmas season is decorating the tree. All of the ornaments have such great memories behind them--I especially love the ones I made all throughout elementary school! They're hilarious!