Heart in My Throat

Have you ever had one of those parental moments when your heart jumps to your throat because one of your children may be in danger? I've had a couple, like the time when Maria decided to hide silently under the desk in C's room and I couldn't find her for a few minutes, or the time when C was a toddler and climbed on top of his dresser/changing table and it tipped over. Those were scary moments, but I think that what happened yesterday was perhaps the most dramatic yet. Here's what happened:

We had gone to the neighborhood playground with a couple of other families, both of whom have kids that are just slightly older than C. Usually, C will spend the entire time hanging from the monkey bars or climbing on the jungle gym, but yesterday he spent most of his time following "the big kids" around. After a few minutes, one of the 6 year-old girls suggested that the kids go for a nature walk on the trail just behind the playground. She had gone on this trail just last week when her cousins were visiting, and her mother seemed confident that her daughter knew the way and that the trail was harmless. From the beginning I felt nervous about letting C go, especially because I wasn't going to be able to see him from the playground, but I told myself to relax and let him have this adventure with his friends. I was able to hear the kids laughing and talking, which made me feel better about the situation. However, after about 10 or 15 minutes I started to worry; while some of the other kids had come back for a drink of water or a snack, C hadn't checked back in with me. 

Feeling silly for being "that mom" who is overprotective, I decided to follow my intuition and go looking for C. I handed Maria off to one of the other moms and started up the path. That's when one of the kids came running up and said, "C is stuck in the water and he's calling for help!" I of course ran ahead as quickly as I could, and finally saw a soaking wet, covered in mud from head to foot C walking towards me! He was crying and looked so pitiful, and all at once I felt a huge wave of relief and a terrible feeling of guilt come over me. C was safe, but I hadn't been there when he needed me! Praise God, some older kids just happened to be on the trail as well, and they pulled C from the muddy creek that he had fallen into. Apparently he slipped on the trail and slid all the way down a hill into the creek, and then got stuck in the mud and couldn't climb out. Of all of the things that could have happened, we are very blessed that C walked away with no injuries - his Guardian Angel was watching over him indeed! And those kids who helped C were incredibly wonderful - they were very worried about him, and told him stories of when they were little and had had similar accidents on the nature trail :) C was a little bit embarrassed and very upset about being all wet and dirty, but he felt much better after a warm bath and a talk with daddy about his "big adventure"! As for me, I think that we'll stay away from this particular nature trail for a little while unless an adult is along for the adventure!

Last night, as I reflected on what had happened, I realized that situations like these are only going to continue as my children get older. Sometimes, it will be very clear to me that there is a safety issue involved and therefore I will be confident in saying that a certain activity is not appropriate at this time. Yesterday, for instance, I should not have let C go on the nature walk without going along myself. However, there will be other times when it will be appropriate for me to let my children participate in certain activities - being on the football team, for instance, or going away to camp, or getting a driver's license :) I may worry at first, but I know that it will still be important for me to allow my children to take controlled risks. 

I know that you mothers who have older kids have faced these types of situations a million times before. Do you have any nuggets of wisdom to share with us mothers of younger children?

Pray for Fr. Neuhaus

NRO reports that Fr. Richard John Neuhaus is very ill:

His friends and family are keeping vigil and he was administered last rites shortly after midnight. Fr. George Rutler, who gave him the Catholic Sacrament, says that “he is not expected to live long” and suggests “that it is appropriate that prayers be offered for a holy death.”

Fr. Neuhaus has come close to this moment before and been back. If it’s his time: Go in peace. He's a man who has loved and served His Lord. When he leaves this world, his vast intellectual and spiritual body of work will have a long life here.

For those unfamiliar, Fr. Neuhaus is the editor and founder of First Things magazine, and a very important proponent of religious values in the public square. I received word of his health from a friend today and I know he would appreciate your prayers.

Tackling Mount Washmore

A long time ago, a reader asked about our system for dealing with clothing. Ours is an elaborate one, and will take several posts to fully explain, but I wanted to begin with something that we are focusing on at home right now: the laundry system.

One difficult thing about laundry, like other housework, is that it never feels "done" -- you can get all of your clothes put away, but unless you are naked while you do it there will be clothes in the hamper again before you go to sleep! I find this very frustrating, and I cannot be thinking about needing to do laundry all the time, so I have limited laundry to 3 nights a week. On the other nights I know that I am "off duty" for laundry, and I don't give it another thought.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights after dinner my children have chores. (Tuesday and Thursday afternoons we are out of the house, so this works well for us). While some empty the trash cans and diaper pails around the house, others bring all of the laundry from the various hampers (one in each bedroom) to the laundry room. Ideally, they use a laundry basket for the gathering so that the hampers stay in their places.

Once the children are in bed, I sort the laundry into three piles, whites for bleach, lights and darks. When we are in survival mode I often don't sort, but right now we have several new, bright red articles of clothing, so it is well worth the effort. With all of our laundry, I usually have enough for one white load, and three or four color loads. I use ALL Free and Clear on everything, so I do not need to wash baby clothes separately. Diapers do get their own load, though, usually last! Our washer and dryer are pretty fast, so I just start doing a load at a time while I clean the kitchen and do the rest of my evening routine. I pull out a few things to hang to dry but most of it goes in the drier. I try to be as non-anal as possible while still doing the job properly, it is all about getting it done! Once the kitchen is all cleaned, I put on the TV (reruns of John and Kate plus 8 are a favorite for this) and get folding. As I fold, I sort by owner so that I end up with 8 piles of laundry as well as a pile of kitchen linens (we use cloth napkins, dish towels and rags, so there is a fair amount of kitchen laundry).

In theory, the sorted clothes get put away by each family member first thing the next morning, but this is where our system was breaking down a bit -- if it doesn't get put away immediately, I find a crawling baby quickly knocking over piles of clean laundry, which is just depressing. This week, we have tried to fix this by purchasing eight small, handled laundry baskets. They stay stacked in the laundry room until it is time to fold, and now we fold and sort into a basket, so we wind up with eight baskets of clothes instead of piles. For the little kids, at the end we sort the laundry by dresser drawer so that they can put it away easily. Before breakfast on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday we empty the baskets and return them to the laundry room. If the morning is going to be very busy, we can at least get the basket to the right room and out of the living area, with a plan to put away the laundry at quiet time or before bed.

I will confess that I do not have a regular time for washing sheets and towels, which means that this does not get done as often as it should. I cannot decide whether it would be best to pile this on to one of the wash days or to do it on one of my "off" days. Making up 7 beds feels like a huge chore to me.

Sometimes, like after a trip or during illness, laundry piles up and gets out of control, at which point I don't mind devoting a day to getting back on top of things. If I am folding during the day, I have taught the children to fold napkins and dish towels -- helping with this saves me work and also keeps them busy while I fold the clothes!

So, this is what works for us, we don't own enough clothing to do laundry only once a week, and if we did the task would be too big for me. Doing laundry three days also means that if I miss one day for some reason I am not too far behind, but unless things are really out of control I try to force myself to wait until the next laundry day, I do think that it is important to have rest days set into any system. The kids help at the beginning and the end of the laundry job, and this makes a huge dent in what I have to do, especially when I am pregnant and tired, it is great not to have to carry laundry up and down stairs.

We put away our decorations this morning, and it is nice to be in an uncluttered home thinking about the routines that make our life hum along, using the extra time with Dad (our organizer) to improve the routines, and getting ready to embrace the comforting rhythms of ordinary time!

On Christmas Decor

I've been quasi packing my Christmas gear and wondering how folks out there handle the transition of seasons from Christmas to ordinary time?  As of right now, we are planning to keep up the tree and door wreath until the official end of Christmas this Sunday.  Down went our candles in the windows yesterday.  Down goes the lit garland around our door today.  If you were to look down our street, you'd have a hard time believing Christmas was just over a week ago!  

What do you do?  Do your decorations stay up post Epiphany Sunday?

What I've been doing

Multiple times I have had to explain that I am taking this wallpaper down because it is ugly. Gianna (age 4.5) just cannot understand how anything with flowers and the color pink can possibly be ugly.

Stripping wallpaper is one of the most awful, time consuming home-improvement tasks. In light of this fact, I believe it is sinful to wallpaper your home. Someday, someone is going to have to take it down. It will be a terrible experience for that person. If, in full knowledge of this fact, you insist on wallpapering your home, you should go to confession.

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a wonderful time with family and friends over the holidays. I haven't been online much these past few weeks because, like MaryAlice, we have been experiencing "Saturday Everyday" for the past few weeks. No school schedule, no gymnastics, no morning routine, none of our staples that keep us grounded. We have had some wonderful family time, but I am ready to get our life back in order. It all begins today, the first work/school day of 2009.

As an unrelated, but interesting aside, I saw this piece today at CNN--Baby Born in Midair. I guess giving birth several thousand feet above the Atlantic makes a homebirth look like an unexceptional experience. I do not recommend flying when you are 8.5 months pregnant!

Saturday Everyday

While the Catholic Mom blogosphere is filled with posts about the wonderful twelve days of Christmas, and how Christmas isn't over, and how we can keep celebrating, I am all partied out!

We are so blessed that my husband's job gives him time off ("Paternity Leave") when he has a baby, so he will be home with us for a few weeks. We are also blessed that our new baby has an easy temper and that I have recovered well, so we are more or less up and running, or at least we could be. The thing is, as much as we love having Dad around, as much as we want and need his help right now, it is very hard to get a normal routine going when he is here, so we are living one saturday after another. I know that most families are off of their routines because of the holidays, but I have to remember that I threw up my hands and stopped trying sometime back in early December, so my kids have been unstructured for almost a month now. Some of that time has been really, really fun, but it is time for us to get out of our bathrobes and get going, and we all feel it. The problem is, how can we do this? Do we try to incorporate Dad into the routine, or just pretend that he is not really here? Do I farm out the children to him a few at a time and focus on the others? I would love some advice from anyone who has had the experience of having husbands home for a few weeks. My husband is super helpful, and I have learned that if I ask (nicely) he will happily do whatever the family needs him to do, but I think that both he and I get frustrated by the lack of routine and clear expectations. On a day to day basis the rest of the year, we live happily in our very traditional roles -- he works, takes out the trash, gets the car repaired, changes lightbulbs, I stay home, clothe and feed the family, keep the house in order. Right now, I am slightly checked out, in part because I am interrupted to nurse the baby or fall asleep, but my household tasks are not getting done. I start the laundry but don't finish it, at four o'clock we both look at each other and wonder what to do about dinner. The kids are begging to start school again, so I let them take out some workbooks and get going, but even that needs to be done in a more focused and orderly way moving forward. So, please help us make a plan to get out of fairy land and back to our real life, as great as the sugar plums have been, we are all feeling a little bit of a holiday hangover!