Belated Birth Announcement

You're going to want to see the pictures in this post, so please open in your browser.

She's here!  She's been here for a week, having arrived at 11:53pm last Tuesday evening, which was also the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, which is also a solemnity so she'll have Meat Friday birthdays whenever her birthday falls on a Friday.  Sometimes, God's plan just screams to be noticed.

I'm not big into birth stories.

But in a nutshell, after fearing repeats of Jill's 20 hour ordeal, we came into this with a lot of anxiety.  A few weeks of prodromal labor, one wasted trip to the hospital the previous Friday, a thunderstorm, tornado sirens, and less than 4 hours of active labor brought us one brunette baby girl WITHOUT pitocin, or any of the other labor speeding up things we needed last time around.

Also, this time: water birth.  Loved it.

We're all pretty excited she's here.

She's named after lots of people.

This lady hangs in our parish church.  The plaque reads "St. Margaret Mary" but we know her as St. Marguerite Marie Alacoque.

My sister Mary was named Mary Margaret after the same lady.

Patrick and I had a completely different middle name picked out.  Every time I said this other name, Patrick corrected my pronunciation.

Tuesday evening, while walking through the endless hallway to the silver elevators to get to the labor and delivery floor, it occurred to me that my mother and the saint of the day share a name, in French.

Before the beheading, before the Crucifixion, they had some nice times together.

Unlike the previous selection, he needed no convincing.  The real miracle was that she was actually born on Tuesday, or she might have ended up with a name her parents can't agree on how to pronounce.  As it stands, her middle name rhymes with Bean, which is one of many nicknames she bears.

Had she been a boy, her bloggy name would have been Eustace, of course, because Eustace's story is my story, and yours...and it's wonderful.

Her bloggy name could have been Daisy, seeing as how her first name is the name of a variety of daisy, but we're sticking with Clive's characters for the duration.

So we will refer to her in this space as Polly.

Or Sleepy Kitty.

Or Mrs. Eyebright.

Blessings without number.

Deo Gratias.

Giveaway Winners and Due Date Predicting Losers

Congratulations to MOB, Lauren, and Joy who won the Children's Activities Bundles!  I sent each of you links and access codes.  Please let me know if you have any problems with the downloads.

To all those who guessed I would have had this baby by now, I really really wanted each and everyone of you to win.

To all those who guessed I would deliver late for the first time ever, you're still in the running for Most Clairvoyant Baby Predictor.

Those people include:

Colleen 6/26
Kathryn (who didn't choose an exact date, just guessed late)
Catherine 6/24
Charlotte 6/24
Isabel who guessed one day over, so if she is to win, I must deliver before midnight tonight.

Now, I get to annoy everybody around me by saying, "This is the most pregnant I've ever been."

7QT: Still Pregnant.

1.  Forget Anna and Elsa.  Jill is only interested in Leonor and Sofia.  She's been asking repeatedly who the Real princesses are, and I was finally able to deliver some names and images besides Princess Kate.

They are lovely little girls, and they have silver shoes just like Jill's.

Also, they are Catholic.

2.  Father's Day was super lame around here.  I thought I'd have somethingone for Patrick for the big day, but it he/she has not arrived as of yet.  

I keep checking my email for tracking info, checking those baby apps hoping to see "Today you will have your baby." but nope.  Nada.

Patrick spent most of Fathers' Day re-creating our Korean Barbecue experience. Food is his recreation and his love language. 

These are Korean dumplings and the traditional 12 side dishes at the authentic restaurant we went to when our kids were out-of-town.  We don't know what most of those dishes are, and neither did our server.

His Father's Day gift to himself.  Omelet thingies here ^.

He made the Galbi beef short ribs, sauteed bok choy, pickled kimchi cabbage, Asian cucumber slaw, and those little omelet roll ups with the green onions served room temp.  Those omelet bites are incredible with a little soy/chili sauce mixture drizzled on them.  Everything was scrumptious.  Even Jill cleaned her plate, eating mostly omelet bites and beef.

Korean beers and water.  I'm pretty sure the water is Gangnam Style.

Some of the credit for that feast goes to Micaela for inspiring me to seek out the mysterious flavors of Korean cuisine.  Go check out her series of interviews with homeschoolers, including one with yours truly.

3.  Run out of summer fun yet?  Multiple rainy days in your part of the world?  

Enter the giveaway for hundreds of pages of Childrens' Activities here.  Also, check out some of the links for free downloads of dot-to-dots, coloring pages, mazes, and more!

4.  

Yesterday, I got a package from my sweet sister-in-law, Adaire.  A care package! With chocolate, and lip balm, and hair ties, and jewelry, and the cutest mug you ever saw!  The hair ties and lip balm are going straight in my birth center go bag, should I ever need to actually go there and birth someone.  The chocolate might not be with us very much longer.

The whole kit and kaboodle was adorably packaged.  You really made my day, Adaire. The package and the prayers.  Thank you!

Go check out Ruthiebox, and send someone some love in a care package.

5.  Speaking of surprises and prayers, sometimes you find things where you least expect them.

My kids know their phones are subject to random checks.  Technically, their phones are our phones, since we pay for them.  

Earlier this week I found someone's phone surreptitiously peeking out from under a sofa cushion and decided to take a peek at what she's been up to.

She had been texting a male acquaintance the usual, "hey"  "what's up" stuff.  He asked if she was going on the upcoming group trip to a theme park this weekend. She replied, "Idk.  My mom is due any day."

His response, "Oh, that's right. I've been praying for her."

Some kid who likes my daughter is praying for me?  

Sigh.  

Tears.  

6 & 7.   How to Cope with Being 40 weeks Pregnant at the End of June when Temps are in the 90s and You Don't Have Central Air Conditioning

Aside from window units, box fans, ceiling fans, and plenty of Red Raspberry Leaf Tea (iced), I rely on two very important products.

This is Culver's Lemon Ice.  Culver's Lemon Ice is my very best friend.  One scoop is 100 calories and zero fat.  For $1.99, I can face another day.  Cue One Day More theme music...

This is Dr. Teal's Lavender Epsom Salt Soaking Solution.  I put about a cup or more in my bath before bedtime and I not only watch my cankles disappear, but I can sleep comfortably until the birds start chirping at the buttcrack of dawn. The 4 to 40 bathroom trips don't even phase me.  Grace told me about this magic brew, but my midwives recommend it too.

That wraps up another whiny week with Jessica.  Go see Kathryn for people with better quick takes and better attitudes.  Do I dare to hope that I'll be in a better mood next week with better news?

How many cars will you own in your lifetime?

Cari, of the 11 Things post, also wrote a beautiful post on generosity called On Being Open to Life.  Cari writes lots of beautiful posts.

"The point of re-running this article isn’t even to add to the NFP discussion, per se.  It’s more meant to explore an aspect of being open to life: namely that being “open to life” means all life- not just the the possibility of new life.  NFP certainly helps us connect reason to biology in the area of fertility, but it is, in and of itself, a neutral thing.  It is not a virtue, nor is it a vice.  The real virtue lies in learning how to trust God’s plan for our lives, and agreeing to participate in that plan."

She says it so well.  And that's just part of the intro to the real article.

The Chef used to answer the question, "How many kids are you going to have?" with the perfectly just answer, "None of your &*$% ing business."  But he has since tempered justice with charity, and has crafted a more creative response, by responding with a question.  "Do you know how many cars you will own in your lifetime?"  We don't know the answer to either one of those questions.

But when it comes to the question of roller coaster or merry-go-round, we agree with Grandma.

What's the deal with pre-cooked bacon? and other FAQs

The pre-cooked bacon thing became a joke with some friends of ours. We discovered the big bag of pre-cooked Kirkland bacon tastes great and is cheaper than real bacon. My husband figured out the weight of raw bacon and the cost per ounce and the number of slices in a pound and did some math magic and worked out that the pre-cooked kind is a time and money saver. I think that the price has gone up, so it's not as great a deal as it used to be. It's not going to be an integral part of my blog.

When I was expecting No. 5, my husband nuked some pre-cooked bacon and made me 2 fluffly (but not wet) organic scrambled eggs practically every day. This is why I love him. He didn't always have time for breakfast but practically every day I would wake up to my plate of bacon and eggs. Except Friday. Which was a let down. Bacon and eggs could be why Baby J is so fabulous, and why I had to buy all new jeans.

After giving this post a preview read, The Chef has requested that I inform my readers that the Bacon and Egg breakfast took less than 2 minutes, start to finish. And he pre-heated my plate.

Some article floating around Facebook at the time confirmed my bacon and egg habit, touting that bacon and eggs make unborn babies smarter. No. 5 could end up being the smartest one of all. Also, in previous pregnancies, I had trouble with pre-term labor and other complications. But after taking a Bradley childbirth class and learning about the Brewer diet, I have since been super-conscious of my protein intake during pregnancy, and have not experienced pre-term labor since.

I also use the pre-cooked bacon in soups, stews, pasta, salad, sandwiches, and lots of recipes have cooked bacon in the ingredients list. But do not be mistaken and think that pre-cooked is the only kind of bacon we use. My husband (and I need to come up with a good moniker for him.) accused me of LYING ON MY BLOG after he read my last post. He misinterpreted the part where I said, "They have the BEST pre-cooked bacon and I never buy any other kind." He was outraged that I WOULD LIE ON MY BLOG because we have two other kinds of regular-make-you-smell-like-bacon-at-Mass bacon in the fridge right now.

That's quite enough about bacon.

Where did you get "Housewifespice?" It's a name my brother-in-law, the rock star came up with a long time ago, when email was invented. Ok, so maybe email had been around for awhile, but it was new to me and I was trying to think up a good anonymous email address that expressed something of myself. We were talking about the Spice Girls (Scary, Sporty, Posh, Baby and Ginger) and he said, "You're like Housewife Spice." I loved it and have loved it ever since.

Moms are Rock Stars. I think of all of my mom friends as rock stars, rockin' through each day, taking what comes and making something awesome out of it.

My mom, mother of twelve, once told me, "It is our apostolate to make the vocation of Mother look good to the secular world."

She also told me that if I don't wear eyeliner every day I look tired. I try to live out these two commandments. She's right. That's what blows people away in the grocery store, when my clean clothes match and don't have food on them, my hair is not in a pony tail under a baseball cap and I'm rocking the eyeliner. "Oh, is she your first?" "No, she's my fifth." jaw drop. "I have two in high school, two in grade school, and her." stun complete. Another victory for Catholic families. Who am I kidding? What really stuns them is this:

What are you going to call your husband? Husbandspice. P-Dawg. Big D. P-Daddy. Joe Camel. The Chef. Lucius after Lucius Malfoy, whose family my blond family was recently compared to. Any other ideas?

I'm not sure I see the Malfoy connection.




So, in the last week, I've learned how to embed a youtube video and how to strikethrough a word. Plans for the future include a better look than the "free with blogger" templates I have always used, and finding out how to allow people to comment who aren't on Blogger. If you tried to comment on my giveaway post and couldn't just email me. My contact info is in my profile. On the sidebar, just click on "View my complete profile."

I will be doing the drawing for the giveaway tomorrow at 2pm. I will write down all of your names on little pieces of paper, fold them into tiny wads, put them in a mixing bowl, and let my favorite child of the moment choose one. Right now, you have a 1 in 10 chance of winning!