Do you make New Year’s Resolutions? I usually come up with a few every year. Sometimes, I actually keep them … at least for a month or two.
Here are three that I’ve got in mind for 2010.
1) Exercise more regularly. Yes, this is stunningly unoriginal. I think I make the same resolution every year, which should tell you how good I am at keeping it. I’ve got a Y membership, and yet somehow, ever since the school year started, I rarely manage to get there. Teaching and grading have totally swallowed up my workout time. The other day, though, I took the cost of my monthly membership and divided it by the number of times I actually go in a month, and found that it’s currently costing me about $20 per visit. That is appalling. It is extremely bad financial management. It means that I must either cancel the membership or start going more often. So look for me on the treadmill starting January 1st. (Okay; January 2nd.)
2) Win the battle of the toys. We have a teensy house and two active boys and a whole slew of toys, with many many small pieces. Our living room very often looks like this:
Actually, this is the living room on a good day. As you see in the photo, the toys are actually in the hugely ineffective storage bin. Usually they are not, thanks to fifteen-month-old Luke. He’ll pick up a toy, walk for a few steps, then pitch it back over his shoulder, like a picnicker tossing a beer can. Most evenings I am literally demoralized by the mess. A chaotic house seems to make my mind chaotic, too. Something has to change, for my sanity’s sake.
So I’ve rallied my husband, and we’re exploring storage solutions for Matthew’s room and the living room. We will probably implement some draconian new rules about putting-toys-away-before-you-take-another-one-out-of-the-bin. If any of you parents have suggestions about how to combat the toy problem with a one-year-old and a three-year-old, please share them. I’m all ears.
3) Do more spiritual writing. Blogging is good and spiritual, but I miss the days when I would sit down with a blank notebook and a pot of tea and just write about faith and see where my thoughts lead me. It’s really my favorite form of prayer, and I don’ t do it often enough. Once again, grading is to blame. I’m going to have to implement some sort of new change — maybe declare every fourth day a grading-free zone and write instead. Or something. I’ll ponder it some more. Again, I’m open to any ideas you can toss my way.
At any rate, I hope you have a very happy New Year’s! May 2010 be a year of peace, happiness, and the achievement of your own resolutions & dreams.
I dropped a large hint, and my husband obliged by giving me this for Christmas:
I now have three new BBC dramas featuring plucky women in poke bonnets and brooding men with Victorian sideburns. Huge sigh of contentment. Life is good.
Now I just need to find fourteen free hours so I can watch them all.
“Why does Mary go to visit her cousin Elizabeth? It doesn’t make sense for a pregnant woman to make such a long journey.”
Honestly, I could write volumes on this! I love the Visitation, mostly because of the role it’s played in my own life at a crucial moment (I go into detail in Mary and Me), and also because of what I learned about it while talking to other women. The Visitation is more than just a nice subject for artists to paint; it’s a powerful statement of the way we are called to support each other in good times and in bad, in joyous times and in confusing times, and, frankly, in every kind of time there is.
Do you know the artist Thomas Kinkade? You’ve surely seen his landscapes of idyllic semi-rural settings, with cottages and lampposts and lots of shades of pink. Lots of people find him too sentimental and precious for their taste. He’s not really my cup of tea, exactly, although there is a little part of me that sort of wants to crawl inside his paintings on stressful days.
Anyhow, a few years ago, Matthew’s godmother gave him a book for Christmas. It’s Silent Night, illustrated by Thomas Kinkade. The text couldn’t be simpler — it’s just the lyrics to the carol — but when paired with the paintings, it’s really gorgeous. Even if you wouldn’t hang a Kinkade painting on your wall, I’m guessing you’d love this book, because there is just something about the winter landscapes he paints … scenes of quiet forests, of village streets at evening, of stone churches under a cover of snow … that is absolutely magical.
Maybe I love it so much because as a California girl, I have limited experience with snow. Over the years, I’ve been fortunate enough to have two White Christmases (one in Germany, one in Colorado), and both made me as thrilled as a little child would be. There’s just something about that beautiful hush that descends when snow falls; it’s a kind of quiet unlike any other. It’s totally magical. And when I look at Matthew’s book, I get exactly that same thrill: the wonder of a muffled, glowing, gorgeous world.
Last week, we got out the Little People Nativity Set for the boys.
I love this set, really. It’s incredibly sweet, and the boys were beyond thrilled to see it. The problem is that it’s slightly disconcerting to see Biblical characters subjected to the same rough treatment as all the other toys in our house. Neither boy is particularly gentle with his things; they’re only three and one, so I guess that’s to be expected. But often it ends up looking more like the Nativity Story meets Old Testament Pestilence, with wise men strewn around the room, sometimes lying partway under the furniture.
Just the other day, I looked over after Lukey had been spending a few moments playing with the stable, and realized that Mary was in quite an unusual attitude for a woman who has just given birth.
Let’s zoom in on that, shall we?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think postpartum rooftop acrobatics are found in any of the Infancy narratives. As I was snapping a photo of this pose for posterity, Matthew came up behind me and surveyed his little brother’s handiwork.
“That’s not right,” he said. I moved out of the way, and he made a few adjustments.
Thanks to my Christmas Music radio station, I’ve found a fabulous new carol. Actually, it’s an old carol; my cursory Internet research says that it’s a Basque song from the thirteenth century. But here’s the thing: it’s about Mary and the Annunciation, which is intensely cool. There are not a lot of Christmas carols that focus on that moment, at least not that I know. Really, when you think about it, there should be. After all, that was the first moment of the Incarnation.
I also like how the song is in a minor key, which is (I am supposing) typical of the period. Really, though, the Annunciation was a pretty serious thing … it makes sense that the song wouldn’t be all happy and light and la-la-la.
Anyhow, here’s the video, replete with little kids dressed as angels. I think you might know the singer. In addition to Mary, he once sang about a very different woman named Roxanne, and how she doesn’t have to put on her red light …
It’s really no secret that I’m a serious fan of Christmas carols. At home, in the car — it’s all Christmas all the time these days. Some may call this overkill, but the way I see it, the holiday season is so short; really, I need to get my fa-la-la-la-las in while I can.
This love of holiday tunage inspired my latest column Do You Hear What I Hear? Praying the Carols. It’s a little homage to religious Christmas songs, and the way that they help me pray and center myself during this always way-too-busy month.
I’m curious, too: how do you feel about Christmas carols? Are you a junkie like me? Are there certain favorite songs that always get you in the spirit of the season? I’d love to have you share below!
Ooof. Tonight has been one of those nights. Both kids got to bed far later than intended, due to a variety of factors beyond our control, including (oh, this was horrible!) inadvertently nicking Lukey’s thumb when we were trimming his nails. It was not a large cut — in fact, he did not even cry — but it would not stop bleeding. I sat there applying pressure to his little thumb while distracting him with a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD and spiraling into wild fears that my younger son was a hemophiliac. (I specialize in wild fears.)
While Scott and I took turns tending to our wounded little soldier, older brother Matthew was in full ramp-up evening mode, taking running leaps onto the sofa, deliberately stepping ON the children’s books that were lying on the floor in his way (one paperback is crumpled beyond recognition), and otherwise straining the outer limits of my patience. You would think we force-feed him soft drinks and candy, the way he acts in the evening lately. Is it normal boy energy? Do little girls act this way, too?
Once Son the Younger was no longer bleeding profusely and was tucked into his crib, and Boy the First was in his pajamas getting his teeth brushed by Daddy, I looked around the living room and my frustration tripled. It looked as if a tornado had hit the local Toys R Us and dropped the contents in our living room. To make matters worse, it seemed as if every toy that I picked up played music at me. That is irritating in the best of times, and tonight was anything but. “If one more &$#! toy talks to me, I’m going to go ballistic,” I said aloud. Thankfully, Matthew was in the bathroom and did not have to hear Mommy lose it.
It was not my finest hour.
Anyhow … deep breath … as Scarlett O’ Hara once memorably said, Tomorrow Is Another Day. Or, as my grandmother used to say, This Too Shall Pass. And I think this is a clue to me: I need to stop, slow down, and take a few deep breaths. I need to do exactly what I’m doing: sit here and write it out and listen to soothing music, in this case the Celtic Woman Christmas CD. Most of all, I need to remind myself that every mom has days like this, and we all survive, and we all get through them by remembering the good times: the baby smiles, the little hugs, the sweet unexpected observations from the backseat, the way our hearts constrict with love when we creep into our kids’ rooms at night and stare at their sweet sleeping faces and just want to hang onto these days with every ounce of our strength.
I looooove rainy Saturdays. It’s so nice to feel cozy and warm inside, to get up and linger over cups of warm coffee. It always tastes better when I can drink it at home in my pajamas rather than out of a commuter mug as I race to work.
To make today even more lovely, it’s also the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe — one of my favorites. Check out my latest posting on CatholicMom.com for my musings on Our Lady, a little homage with a San Francisco flair.
I'm a formerly lapsed Catholic who likes to write about faith, real life, and how the two intersect. Oh, and I love Mary -- check out my book Mary and Me below!
Anyhow, a few years ago, Matthew’s godmother gave him a book for Christmas. It’s 
Ooof. Tonight has been one of those nights. Both kids got to bed far later than intended, due to a variety of factors beyond our control, including (oh, this was horrible!) inadvertently nicking Lukey’s thumb when we were trimming his nails. It was not a large cut — in fact, he did not even cry — but it would not stop bleeding. I sat there applying pressure to his little thumb while distracting him with a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD and spiraling into wild fears that my younger son was a hemophiliac. (I specialize in wild fears.)
To make today even more lovely, it’s also the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe — one of my favorites. Check out 
