So, I’ve reintegrated myself and moved this blog to my hosted domain. You can now find me here.

Life’s been busy and hectic. I’ve been too busy actually doing work at work to blog. In fact, that’s one of the biggest changes I haven’t blogged about. I’m working away from home again. My boss wanted me closer and more accessible. He also wanted 100% of my attention. So, for June and July, Red was alternating between being watched at a neighbor’s house with their son and being watched at our house by himself. The sitter for both can be seen in last week’s photos. Today is Red’s second day at group day care.

I miss seeing him all day, but I don’t miss the tantrums and other unpleasant distractions. I think I’d still put up with them, though, if given the choice.

“So, what’s new with Red?”, you might ask. Take a look:

He's walking!

Daddy expanded my play area. Woot!

There must be *something* good in here.

Hi, cousin!

Hey! You're not my daddy!

This is a really big bathtub, Daddy!

May I play through?

I know this is a few days late, but this meditation has been brewing all weekend through my busy, hectic workdays and my dear husband’s slow ones. But this is not for him – he already got the Star Wars trilogy for Father’s Day and one custom card complete with a hand-drawn Darth Vader from our six-year-old.

No, this is for the Fathers that probably don’t get many chances to go fishing or get pancakes in bed or have grand cookouts for Father’s Day. This is for priests.

This is for the priest at my grade school who always made time to play basketball with the guys during recess.

This is for the African priest at my parents’ parish who, while he wore turtle necks and sweaters in the summer, was so on fire with the Holy Spirit that he got all those white folk to shout out things like “Praise the Lord!”

This is for the little priest at my first college who walked around in his socks was, in his quiet way, so persistent about seeking vocations from our freshman class.

This is for the little Scottish priest who taught me that smoking is not a mortal sin.

This is for all the priests of the Pittsburgh Oratory whose prayers, guidance, debates, example, and fellowship helped to save my husband’s soul and set us both on the path towards truth.

This is for the priest who was only assigned to our current parish for nine months, but in that time showed my children more love than they’ve seen from many of their extended family members. And who still remembers our family every Christmas.

This is for the blind priest at our parish who knew when the tabernacle was opened before his corrective surgery and dropped immediately to his knees. His holiness and profound teachings have done wonders for our family’s spiritual growth.

This is for the Chaplin at the hospital who so lovingly offers the sacraments, not only to the patients, but also with special fervor to the employees. It’s not everywhere that the Mass is offered at 11:30 PM routinely on Saturday nights.

This is for the priest who introduced our family to another family in our parish who homeschools. Our friendship with them led to my dear husband’s new career as a firefighter.

This is for the priest at the parish where we sing who is now struggling with his vocation.

This is for the pastor who was only at our parish for about three years, whose aloofness taught us something of the transcendence of God.

This is for the Filipino priest at our parish who had never seen snow and wondered how he would ever cross the twenty feet from the rectory to the church.

This is for our associate pastor who has devoted his pastoral career to spreading the teachings of John Paul II; who has restored reverence and softened hearts; who has constantly given of himself for the good of his flock; who has taught countless boys how to be real men.

In this world where the most holy priesthood is bashed from left and right, inside and out, your efforts have not gone unnoticed. Thank you for bringing heaven to us.

Tu es sacerdos in aeternum secundum ordinem Melchizedek.

Braaaaaains!

Some day we'll slip past them...

1...2...3. Pinned!

I'll just take her frog while she's not looking...

They're legs men.

There must be *something* cool in this purse...

Game 6

I went to the grocery store to buy ingredients for my wife’s Mothers Day dinner. Since the store is just a block or so down the street and I only needed a few items, I took Red and used his stroller as a cart. Taking him also gave Mommy time to relax by herself.

Shortly after arriving, Red started to have a meltdown. He’d been fed and changed before we left, so he was most likely tired. Not good. Red’s generally a pretty happy and sociable baby, but when he’s tired he can be a little demon. So there I am with a screaming 8-month-old in the middle of a grocery store and still needing to pruchase several items. Thankfully, I’ve gotten fairly good at holding him in one arm and doing other things with the other, so that’s what I did. Once I picked him up he calmed down. That worked just fine until I had to go through the check-out. For that I had to put him back in the stroller. Uh-oh. This greatly displeased him and no doubt half the store could hear him screaming bloody murder. I tried to check out as quickly as possible so as to keep the embarrassing attraction of attention to a minimum. Once we were making forward progress again, he mercifully relentented.

By now you might be wondering what was so irritating and insulting. Well, it was simply that both times Red melted down I got odd looks from customers like I had abused my child and comments from employees asking, “What did you do?!”

Excuse me?! What did I do?! I’d bet dollars to donuts that a mother wouldn’t have been asked that question. Instead, she’d hear something like, “Aww…What’s wrong with the little guy?” Apparently, having a Y chromosome makes me a meany, an idiot, or both.

What the hell? Why must Mr. Grumpy Pants’s fit be my fault just because I’m not Mommy?Am I overreacting? Am I imagining the sexism? Have I been reading too many daddy books and blogs? Can someone enlighten me?

I am not one of those baby-crazy women whose biological clock ticks so loudly that her husband smacks her in the morning when the alarm goes off. In fact, I never really pictured myself as a mother at all when I was growing up – I shelved dolls in place of snuggly, cuddly stuffed animals and dreamed of being a veterinarian. In high school, my career choice shifted, but not my interest in children – I rarely babysat and wasn’t sure I’d ever really marry. After a relationship with a really bad-for-me boyfriend, I felt sure I’d either be a single missionary or a cloistered nun. Sometimes I thought I’d be a concert pianist. The only thing I was sure about was that I wanted to serve God. Of course, if, by some act of God, I ever did get married, I knew I would want to bear my husband’s children.

Enter Squat. The man who turned my world upside-down, taught me what love was and that yes, men were really capable of it, and eventually took me as his bride. We did NOT conceive on our honeymoon, contrary to popular belief. It was the week after we got home.

Now, I had always been pro-life, and supported the Church’s teachings against contraception and whatnot. But at this point, I was scared $#!%-less. I understand how women can be talked into abortions. I was in my 5^th year of pharmacy school, freshly married, and dirt poor. And as the youngest of five children in a family that puts the FUN in dysfunctional, I wondered what God could possibly be thinking giving someone like me something so fragile and impressionable as a baby. To top it all off, I was turning my stomach inside out and scraping the contents on the pavement on a regular basis. More than once someone who “knew me when” has told me that if SHE had been as sick, she would have stopped after one.

So how does someone like me end up actually desiring a bunch of babies? How did I go from feeling sure I would turn into my mother and leave my children requiring lifetimes of therapy to trusting that my little ones will probably be OK? How did I go from wishing I were dead to accepting “morning” sickness willingly?

To put it simply, I prayed.Now, I did not have some overnight conversion. But I begged for God to pull us through, and He did – with flying colors. The maternal instinct I feared I wouldn’t have kicked into overdrive the moment I first saw my son. The amazing parenting book I had found as a prego helped me to counteract all the mistakes of my parents that had become an inherent part of my person, though I still battle my past every day. And then God brought our little family to Bethlehem to learn just how to be a holy family.

I’ve also never been one of those people who talk like this: “I just felt that God was Calling me to [fill in the blank].” I prayed about where to take my first pharmacy job out of school, then allowed myself to be sweet-talked by a headhunter into moving to the Lehigh Valley. It was one of those coin-toss types of decisions, not any sort of definite call. But it was here that I learned the difference between Mommy and Daddy. Since a doctorate generally has greater earning potential than a GED, my husband and I decided that I would win bread and bring home bacon while he stayed with wonder boy.

In a nutshell, it didn’t work out. My heart ached to be with my son, who constantly told his daddy in a number of ways that he wanted me home. My heart and womb also ached for another child – both to give wonder boy a playmate and so that I could have yet another chance for head over heels love at first sight. Everywhere I looked, my most trusted Catholic writers were telling me that my place was with my children. And I believed them. I still wanted to serve God, but I didn’t know how. We were, we felt, trapped in our situation. There was no way my husband could afford our bills if I took maternity leave.

I now realize how much God loves it when we beg.I begged Him to show me where He wanted me – serving the sick in healthcare or serving the precious family He gave me. It was around this time that I first met the Godfather. I joined our church choir and became most impressed with an extremely talented bass, who always wore a suit and knelt at the consecration. One day I looked down and saw his family taking up an entire pew to themselves. The boys all wore dress shirts and slacks, the girls all wore skirts. They all assumed a posture of reverence. Talk about coveting your neighbor’s wife!

I realized that I wanted to be that wife with all those kids.

Now, at that point, my motives weren’t exactly pure. I was still working with a pre-conceived notion that to be a good Catholic family, you need to be a large one. I know that this is not necessarily true, as I have also befriended smaller families who are truly holy. Nevertheless, I confided to my husband that I thought we should start “bumping into” this family of 11 after mass. I wanted to get a better idea of what life was like for them, and if it might be a possibility for someone like me. I think that in my heart of hearts I still expected to max out at about four or five children.

Eventually we bought a fixer-upper with a lot of acreage to cut down bills and give the chitlens running space. Next came the fat, happy boy baby that wonder boy had been praying for. Once again, we weren’t “ready.” My husband still didn’t have any definite career goals or options and I had a limited amount of paid time off. But we were committed to cutting my work time (and pay check) in half. God really tested this resolve when I ate up a bunch of my sick time on bed rest, then delivered two weeks before my due date. Squat scrambled to find two of the most craptastic minimum wage jobs in the world in a feeble attempt to make ends meet. Somehow they did.

It started to dawn on me that I never really had been in control. God truly was running the show, knew exactly what we needed, and gave us just that – no more, no less. I had just never trusted Him enough.

In getting to know the Godfather’s family, I found out that they had had similar trials. This was not a wealthy doctor or lawyer’s family. He has been an employee of the Church and her schools, the Boy Scouts, the Blue Army, and occasionally unemployed. In fact, shortly after we met, he lost his job and was unemployed for over a year. His wife occasionally confided in me of her concern for him and the family, but there was a difference between her practical concern (including whether she, a stay-at-home mom homeschooling the youngest 5 of their 9 children should seek employment outside the home) and the worried feeling I had become accustomed to from most of society (secular and non alike).

This family was also not unique in other challenges they have faced, from potty training to discipline to school and housework. In all honesty, however, instead of their 9 children creating 9 times more work, they estimate the workload to be doubled at best as compared with the standard 2-child family. These are not religious fanatics, but well-balanced, down-to-earth people with an unshakable faith that allows them to live out their vocation in peace and joy. And I have learned from them that they have not always been perfect nor are they perfect now, but are constantly willing to allow God’s grace to reign over their imperfection through prayer and frequent reception of the Sacraments. I hang out with them in hopes that we can encourage each other toward sainthood.

I now embrace my own marriage and parenthood fully as a vocation – a true calling from God toward holiness. I work to live and not the other way around. True, the work I do is important and fruitful and touches people’s lives, but it can be done just as well by any number of other pharmacists. God has entrusted my husband and me alone with the care and formation of our three (so far) beautiful children, and even though I don’t have an advanced degree in motherhood, I can honestly say that this is the only area in my life where I cannot be substituted by anyone else, even my own husband.

In deepening our friendship with the Godfather and other large families, and also through studying the works of the late, Great JPII regarding marriage and sexuality, Squat and I have learned that our vocation to family is never threatened by greater numbers, but only strengthened. Every time we consummate our marriage vows (including the one that said we would be open to receiving children from the Lord) with true openness to the workings of the Holy Spirit, Who is the Lord and Giver of Life, whether we conceive a child or not, we are blessed with grace upon grace. This does not mean that life is easy or that morning sickness goes away; it just means we are better able to bear our crosses alongside Jesus.

It seems to me that the biggest obstacle today’s married couples have to opening themselves to a big family is fear. It comes in many forms, and I have already faced most of them. Financial fears top the list from what I can see, but are not to be outdone by social pressures. People say the darnedest things: “Are these all yours?” “You know what causes that, right?” “Well, you certainly have your hands full!” Many of my friends admit that the greatest pressures they face are from their own parents: “You can’t even afford the kids you have, and you want another one?” Many also fear that it will be too hard: “I just don’t have the patience and/or [fill in the virtue].” Well, to quote the Godmother, neither do I! But I have so many opportunities to improve my patience and/or [fill in the virtue]. Some fear the prospect of bringing innocent children into such a corrupt world. Some fear their own aspirations will go unfulfilled.

The quickest answer to all these trepidations comes from the greatest lesson our late Pope gave to us: Be Not Afraid. Ha! You say – easier said than done! And it is easy to say and not always easy to do when you are faced with losing your house, car, job, friendships, etc. There is nothing we sacrifice for the sake of the Lord that He does not repay many times over. I have no other proof than my own experiences to show that God loves and cares for His big families in a special way. And my experiences have taught me that this corrupt world needs my innocent children, that having my hands full is better than being left empty-handed, and that having children is a blessing and a privilege, not a choice or a hobby. Best of all, though faith be a gift, it is also like a muscle: the more you exercise it, the more it grows.

I do not know how many children we’ll be blessed with. I hope it’s a lot. I do know that the more we have, the less likely we will be to have wealth or even a stable retirement. But I hold fast to the promise that when I seek first His kingdom and righteousness, all these things will be added unto us. My children are my treasures, and my heart is with them, not my car or house.

My reason for writing this post was not to list advantages and disadvantages to having a large family (I don’t think we quite qualify as experts on that yet), but to share a conversion story and to inspire joy in the vocation of marriage and parenthood. Not all couples are meant to raise a dozen kids; I just pray that more of us are brave enough to let God decide.

Who knew carrots had tryptophan?