“”Parents will remind themselves that it is certainly less serious to deny their children certain comforts or material advantages than to deprive them of the presence of brothers and sisters.” (October 7, 1979 Pope John Paul II)
We have been teaching Karol a few signs here and there. Mostly signs that I remember or pick up from my sister in law. Karol has just laughed at us when we have signed words to him though. Milk, ha ha ha. Eat, ha ha ha. You get the picture.
Today I fed him his lunch (peanut butter on a tortilla, apples and grapefruit juice) and sat down to nurse M and eat my own nutritious lunch of beef flavoured Ramen. K came over to me as I started eating and begged for food. I gave him a bite, then quickly ate about 1/2 the bowl, so I would at least get part of my lunch, the kid is a mooch.
After he was done eating his bite, he signed “more”! While I wasn’t too keen on sharing my lunch, how could I deny him?
I found out earlier this week that our bedroom door doesn’t latch. How did I discover that? I am glad you asked!
Sometimes when Margaret is hungry, IÂ go up to the office and nurse her while checking email and reading the news. When I do this, of course Karol joins us. I close the bathroom door, my bedroom door and put the gate up at the top of the stairs. Karol is free to roam in the office or his room (where he likes to dump out his clothes or all the Legos.) The other day, I heard a door close and thought he closed his bedroom door but after about a minutes, I didn’t hear any noise and a glance over my shoulder told me the door was still open. Off I went to search for him.
Bathroom door still closed, bedroom door still closed, his room empty of human life. Where oh where could he be? That’s when I heard a noise coming from my room. I opened the door and let me tell you that I am GLAD that IÂ sought him out when I did. Why? I am glad you asked. I guess we had a thing of petroleum jelly on the changing table and he grabbed it and managed to open it. Fortunately he only had it on his hand and a little on his shirt when I found him.
Today he rediscovered the bedroom door and let himself in, closing the door behind him, of course. Being hip to his plans now, I quickly followed him. He was “folding” laundry. That is, he was emptying the basket of diapers that are waiting to be folded. Nice.
For a while know, Karol has been folding his hands to pray. He just started one day, probably in the middle of December. He folds them when we pray before eating a meal (and looks to us for approval, very cute). And recently, he started doing it during Mass.
Well today, as we were leaving Mass, he did what appears to be the Sign of the Cross. Well, if you didn’t know what to look for you might miss it, but it was there. What a smart kid!
Saturday morning, at Mass, Margaret smiled for the first time. You can say it was gas all you want, but I know she smiled. It was a big as the day is long. She smiled right at her Papa and he was mighty pleased. I was too, even if I did catch the tail end of it. She also lifted her head up for us the other day. This girl is AMAZING! She taught herself to nurse, sleep through the night (5 hours is what counts as the “night” and she does it most nights!) and she lifts her head all at less then 2 weeks old.
Of course there is a Karol update too. He is handing me a Rosary right now, that must mean I should be praying and not blogging. Other things he has started to do as of late: making monster noises, sharing toys with Margaret, singing at Mass and whining. I hope the whining goes away soon. Any tips to help that would be great! As for making monster noises, he does it all the time and it is quite funny. For sharing with Margaret, the other day, I ran up stairs to get my shoes, leaving Margaret in her bouncy seat downstairs and Karol playing with his toys. (I am sure that I am a bad mother for doing that.) When I got back downstairs, Karol was patting baby Margaret’s head and putting some toys next to her. Good kid.
That’s about it for right now, keep an eye out for new pictures and don’t forget to check out the forum!
We have a little baby! Margaret Thérèse was born at 8:05 pm on Wednesday 10 January 2006. She weighed in at 7 pounds 5 ozs and measured 20 inches. (Just a little bitty one). She is quite beautiful.
The birth was amazing. I had irregular, strong contractions all day long but nothing was really happening. The midwife said I was either on the cusp of having the baby or that I might go on like this for a few days. (Ick, even at 15 minutes apart, contractions are not the way I want to spend my days.) We sent Karol out with Miss Kristine Keeney for some dinner and fun at some friends’ house to see if a little distraction would help things along. It did.
At 7:05 pm, I declared I couldn’t/wouldn’t have this baby. (FYI, this is a sign of transition, that the baby is in fact on its way.)
I showered to see if that would help then Joshua filled the birthing pool up. Our midwife, Mary Ann, arrived shortly thereafter. She was bustling around when I went to the room with the pool in it, leaned against the bed and said “I can’t do this.” After a few major contractions, one right after the other, my water broke and we moved me to the pool (not even half filled, but I wanted the warmth and comfort the water helps to provide). I had a few more contractions, debated again not having the baby when my body decided that pushing would be a nice thing to try. I pushed once (I am willing to say I didn’t even push because, while it hurt, there wasn’t much effort) and out came Margaret Thérèse.
She is stunningly beautiful with dark hair and long fingers. She has Joshua’s colouring but the rest of her features are hard to figure out.
As for the name, Margaret Thérèse, we named her after my mother’s mom, Margaret Kress and St. Thérèse Liseaux.
Check out the link to the pictures: http://pictures.catholicmumma.net
Welcome to my blog. The blog of a Catholic Mumma. This blog is part of a whole big website to be called Catholicmumma.net. At Catholicmumma.net you will find a forum to discuss NFP, Home Schooling, Modesty, Social Concerns, Home Birthing (from a Catholic perspective), Pro Life issues and last but not least, issues that come up in every day life trying to live as a Catholic Mumma.
I hope to have the whole website up and running soon. In addition to the forum, there will be pictures of my wonderful children, Karol Jozef (Age:1) and the soon-to-be-known baby, due any day now. But that’s not all! I will also share with you delicious recipes that I find and test out, I will also share with you my daily triumphs and struggles in being a Catholic Mumma. I will also post social commentary about things I hear out and about in the world.
I hope you all come back to visit again, soon. Please email me and let me know if there is anything you would like to see on a webpage dedicated to Catholic mummas.
Beth
Karol got his own room this past weekend. Yep, we moved his crib in to what we have called his room for nearly the past year. He seems to like it pretty well. He has learned how to open the door from his crib, letting me know he is awake. He has also mastered the light switch, quite humorous.
He is getting bigger and tells us what he likes and doesn’t like. He likes egg yolks but not the whites. He likes bread but not bread dough. He likes cookies but not cookie dough. (More for me…) He likes to play in the sunlight that comes in the window but he doesn’t like to have the sun shine in his eyes. He likes to sit and read with Papa at night, but he doesn’t like to sit still for mass.
He has learned who cousin Geoffrey is. If Karol is in the kitchen and you say Geoffry, he walks/crawls over to the picture on the fridge and hits it.
Did I mention he walks? Today he walked from the end table to the entry way to the dining room….about 7 steps. Right now he is hiding under his Papa’s desk, shuffling paper. My kid is a genius.
But now he stinks and needs some lunch, so off I go to change his diaper then to feed him yummy food.
Viva Christo Rey.
Joshua gave me the wonderful idea of writing down all the things that Karol does. Well not all the things but the cute things. So instead of pulling out his baby book that I have written all of 10 things in, I will use my blog!
Today’s addition:
Karol snores. I went in to check on him a little while ago. I didn’t have to walk to far in to make sure he was okay, he let out a big huge honkin’ snort when I walked in.
All is well with the world.
Okay people. Let’s go over this again. No matter what YOU want to believe, life begins at CONCEPTION. Yes. When that little bitty egg is fertilized by that even littler sperm, a life is CREATED. And no, this isn’t wacko Catholic-Girl coming at you, this is scientific proof. When an egg is fertilized, a seperate DNA is created right then and there, got it? When there is human DNA, different from the Mother and the Father, LIFE BEGINS.
So, please tell me how creating a life, just to take it from its mother’s womb for the sake of “advancing” human life is a good thing. Research has yet to show embryonic stem cells healing a person. YET, with ADULT STEM CELLS, there is hope and actual cases of healing.
http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics3.asp
This link talks about embryonic stem cells. I direct you to the last paragraph
where it states:
If scientists can reliably direct the differentiation of embryonic stem cells into specific cell types, they may be able to use the resulting, differentiated cells to treat certain diseases at some point in the future.
You know what this means? That they HAVE NOT been able to use them for the so called greater good!
I now direct your attention to this link:
http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics4.asp
Please note the second paragraph, where it states:
Research on adult stem cells has recently generated a great deal of excitement. Scientists have found adult stem cells in many more tissues than they once thought possible.
I then direct you further to this link:
http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS04J01
This article shows cases in which ADULT STEM CELLS were used to heal spinal cord injuries, heart regeneration, corneal regeneration and so on. Pay close attention to the heart regeneration section, in particular to this paragraph:
The capability of adult stem cells to regenerate a damaged and malfunctioning heart was clearly seen in the case of Dmitri Bonnville. A 16-year-old from Almont, Michigan, he was accidentally shot in the chest by a nail gun while conducting house work on February 1, 2003. The injury was exacerbated by cardiac arrest a few days later.
His family examined the available effective treatment options. Physicians informed the parents of the possibility of a heart transplant or the use of extended medication while noting the risks and failures of such procedures. The doctors also notified the parents of a procedure that involved stem cell extraction from Bonnville’s own body and subsequent transplantation into his heart. Predicting success, they determined to go forward with the surgery under the direction of Dr. Cindy Grines, Dr. William O’Neill and Dr. Steven Timmis at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan. The treatment had never been conducted on a human patient in the United States prior to this occasion. Within a week of the February 21 surgery, Bonnville’s heart pumping capacity had increased from its previous 25 percent to 35 percent.
I guess my question now is, why should we create then destroy innocent lives when we have the real option to use adult stem cells?