Quick Takes (with a giveaway!)

Joining Jen with a way too long quick takes today.

-1-

Would you like to join me for an exercise in self control? Go get some of this. Then set it on your counter. And tell yourself to only eat one slice per day. Can't do it? How about one slice per hour? No, that's too hard too? Then just do whatever you can to keep from eating the entire bag in ten minutes and reward your amazing iron will by....finishing off the entire bag. Then feel really guilty because that one pound cost five bucks.

Dried mango. It's so freaking good. A story to illustrate:

A few months ago Karen and Lauren came to visit. Funnest. weekend. ever. To divy up the food responsibilities, Karen offered to bring the alcohol (naturally) and Lauren offered to make a "decadent dessert". Well, since she has two kids and had to drive three hours to get to me, the dessert didn't get made. What did she do instead? She picked up three bags of dried mango. And then told me and Karen that it would be one of the best things we'd ever eaten and that we wouldn't even mind that she didn't make double fudged stuffed brownies with oreo topping and caramel sauce from scratch. And we looked at her like she was insane.

And then we ate the dried mango. And now we call it mango crack. And now I trust anything Lauren says.

-2-

Speaking of mango, can we talk about food allergies for a second? Or sensitivities would probably be a better word if you care about which words I use to describe food allergies sensitivities. I admit, I was one of the top skeptics when it came to the everyone-is-allergic-to-something-and-gluten-is-killing-us-all world we live in now. I honestly just didn't believe people when they told me their kids had all these allergies and that such and such food would make them sick. Now that Hannah and Paul both can't have dairy (which means no dairy for me while nursing. None. Not even a food with sodium caseinate listed as the 19th ingredient.) I'm obviously a believer. But now, it's gotten even worse.

I've jumped on the gluten bandwagon. And I don't know if I'll ever be able get off. To make a long and boring story short, I can't eat gluten if I want to feel decent. Now, if I want to feel bloated and miserable and lethargic everyday, then I can chow down on those cinnamon rolls and even allow a little flour in my soup as a thickener. But I don't want to feel like that. So I can't eat gluten. Or dairy. And that sucks.

I remember (this is where the mango comes in) a friend I used to work with (who had Celiac, thus couldn't have gluten) told me that after so long without it she could actually find pleasure in just smelling a loaf of bread or a brownie. That she didn't even have to taste it to enjoy it. She also thought frozen mango was about the best "dessert" on the planet. Holly, I admit I thought you were a bit crazy. Now I totally get you. Brownies smell great. And smelling them is way better than eating them and feeling like crap. And well, I just devoted an entire quick take to mango. So I guess that makes me a food sensitivity loser.

-3-

While we're on the topic of food, could you sweet readers help me out? I've been pretty much perpetually hungry since Paul was born. Nursing a 19 pound five month old and not being able to eat 80% of the food on the grocery store shelves will do that too you. I need snack ideas!!! And I need them bad. I might actually die if I eat any more almonds. Or peanut butter straight from the jar. Or hummus. Please, please, please! What else is there?

What are some snack ideas that fit all of the following categories?

a) Does not contain any gluten or dairy. Not even a trace.

b) Is edible (preferably yummy, but I'll settle for edible).

c) Will help me actually feel full/Is high in protein.

d) Doesn't involve more than six second of prep time.

e) Doesn't cost the equivalent of an entire bag of dried mango.

What's that you say? It doesn't exist. Well I guess I'll settle for 4 out of 5. Just help!

-4-

Is this post already too long? I better skip #4.

-5-

How about some Hannah quotes? Our best friends in town just had their first baby, an adorable and precious and sweet little girl named Ruth.

Hannah's in love. She talks about "Woof" all day long. Like yesterday, for example:

H, while crawling around and roaring: I a lion. You a tiger.

Me: And what's Paul?

H: He's baby Woof!

H, while watching two squirrels run around the backyard: Mommy look ("yut")! Two squirrels!

Me: Wow! I see them. Do you think they're friends?

H: No mommy. Not friends. Just squirrels.

And her response when she saw Paul's spit up all over the kitchen floor?

Mommy look! Paul made a smile face!

-6-

In a slight change from pictures of breast milk vomit, How would you like to completely change someone's life for the better and win a free purse while doing it? I've talked about my talented sister-in-law Kate on here before. She really is amazing. Better than Martha Stewart (and without that awkward topless sketch she did for Saturday Night Live. Or the jail time.)

She can do everything from flowers to party decorations to interior design to sewing. And man can she sew. Take a look at some of my favorites from her Etsy shop.

And she does custom bride and bridesmaid stuff for weddings. Like this.

Because she's amazing.

And she's offered to give away one of her purses from her K8 Made shop just because I asked her to! And now the life changing part. Kate entered a contest (by none other than Martha Stewart herself....) to try to win $10,000 to be used to grow her business. She wants to turn her hobby into a full time job and I really, really, really want her to get this.

So follow the rafflecopter rules below and enter to win the purse of your choosing (excluding diaper bags, but they're awesome so you should just buy one). Setting up an account to vote was fast and easy and I haven't received one single piece of spam. You're not obligated to vote for K8 Made, obviously. Vote for anyone you want. (But seriously, her purses are the best, soooo......) Then go back and vote six times a day to help make someone's dreams come true.

-7-

If you want an extra 5,000,000* chances to win, leave a comment with a snack idea that meets all my above criteria. Come on, do Ted a favor and help me stop complaining about being hungry all the time.

And dangit I can't figure out how to do the links in Rafflecopter for the life of me. You'll have to copy paste. I'm a blogging giveaway failure.

*those are just pretend entries.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Hannah's Five Favorites

Linking up with Hallie with a little twist on Five Favorites.

-1-

Fishing with Daddy. 

Ted took her out on the boat for the first time to catch some bluegill ("boo dill") and she loved it. We packed tons of snacks but she hardly touched them. She was that excited about fishing. They fished for about an hour and a half. She handed Ted worms, held the rod, and even reeled in her own fish. I'm not sure which of them had more fun.

Come to think of it, I had the most fun. An entire Saturday morning in the house with a napping baby and time to do whatever I wanted. I think Saturday morning fishing trips need to be a regular occurrence.

-2-

This:

Making a bed for a statue of Mary out of our box set of Lord of the Rings. Very weird. But she loves it.

-3-

Her brother.

Yes, she still kicks him in the head occasionally, but for the most part she really, really loves him. She tells him what she sees out the window while we're driving. She makes him laugh just by looking at him. When her leapfrog laptop asks her, "Hannah, who is your best friend?" she almost always answers, "Paul," and I melt every single time with the adorableness of their sibling love. I think she generally enjoys having him around. Maybe "favorite" is a strong word, but he's definitely loved.

-4-

Her turtles.

Obsessed. They were a shower gift from some sweet Mississippi friends and she has loved them since she first laid eyes on them. They snap together and play music. When she was younger she would make us chase her around the house with them over and over and over again. They kept getting "lost" to give us a needed turtle respite, but somehow she always manages to find them. They make a reappearance every few weeks and she enters back into turtle heaven. This week's game is to try to pull them along the top of the couch without them falling off. As you can see, she's super successful.

-5-

Laundry.

This favorite really should occupy all five spots of the Five Favorites post. She loves to fold laundry. Loves it. "I dold yawnee?" she asks all day long. And she's actually quite good at it. She knows what clothes goes in which piles and she's very picky about laying them out flat and in the proper direction. Putting them away isn't so much a favorite, but we're working on it. She even requests to take all the clothes out of her and Paul's drawers and sort them.

And if someone sends some hand-me-downs over? Well she'll be busy for a good forty minutes.

Pile of clothes sitting by the door for Ted to take out and put in storage? Don't worry, she'll make sure it's neat and organized before being thrown haphazardly into a giant tub.

Those are Hannah's five favorites for this week. Who knows what she'll come up with next though.

Death at Walmart

Our morning trip to Walmart was eye opening. The kind of eye opening that you wish you could un-see. Because my eyes were opened to a world that I wish didn't exist.

After grabbing a few midweek groceries (and spending a lot of time watching Hannah show me how to put the limes in the bag sloooooowly) (the limes are for margaritas, definitely worth a mid week grocery trip) we headed to the other side of the store to get a few random items. Tissue paper, aluminum foil, eye drops. And that's when I saw it. Right next to the eye drops on the second highest shelf amongst the pregnancy tests and ovulation predictor kits.

Plan B. On the shelf. Just waiting to be picked up by some poor, desperate woman trying to escape her pain.

I mean, I know it's available over the counter now. I've known this for a while. But reading a news article (how many years ago did I even read that?) is easy to forget. It's easy to be outraged at what I see on the screen, but then eventually I have to go about my day and I sort of just forget about it. But this was the real thing, right in front of my face. At eye level and dressed up in a pretty pink and purple box.

After the eye drops, we went back to check out the prices on bikes. Hannah's been watching the bigger kids ride bikes on our street every night with a look in her eyes that says, "they must be having more fun than I could ever imagine having!" Of course she found one she loved and of course I let her try it out and of course she threw a fit when I tried to get her back in the cart. So ya know what? I just bought the bike. Ted's been asking me to keep my eyes out for a cheap one at a consignment store or Craigslist. But sometimes you just can't wait for the deal. Sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet and fork over 40 bucks for a bike. (40 bucks, am I the only one who thinks that's a helluva lot of money??)

The bike went into the cart. The girl happily skipped beside me for the rest of the trip. And on the way home she said repeatedly, "We buy a bite! I yite (like) my bite!"

Paul, well he got nothing. But look how happy he was about it!

To think that "emergency contraceptive" (read: death pill for an itty bitty baby) is sitting on the shelf at the Walmart just down the street makes me sick. To think that I, a Walmart shopper armed with a little bit of cash, could pick up that pretty pink and purple box and kill my newly conceived child is mind boggling. Only myself and some clueless Walmart checker would know. It would be so easy. So cheap. So "painless".

To think I could have snuffed out these little lives with the swipe of my card and washed them down with a glass of water. A precious little baby, who won't ever get to ride her first bike. Or turn heads with his adorable smile. A mother who will never know her baby. And who probably needs a lot more help than that little box could ever offer her. A father who doesn't even know he could be a dad.

When death can be purchased over the counter off a Walmart shelf for $49.95, well that's just the end of moral civilization as we know it. And if it's not, then I'm absolutely terrified of what's still to come.

The Assumption, Seven Years Later

Seven years ago today, on the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, I underwent my first surgery in St. Louis. I went to Mass the night before, since I wouldn't be able to attend on the feast day, and then asked the priest if he would hear my confession. When I told him about the surgery, Fr. Mike asked me if I also wanted to be anointed (known more commonly as "Last Rights"). I didn't really understand that the sacrament could be used for healing, not just on your deathbed, and kind of freaked out on him and declined. The next morning, Ted drove the three hours to St. Louis at 5:00 in the morning to take the first big step in our struggle with my health and fertility.

My doctor prayed with me before the surgery. Everything went fine, except my oxygen levels were dangerously low for hours and hours after I woke up. I ended up having to stay overnight and felt pretty awful the entire time. Ted and I (not married, or even engaged) were being extra cautious about sharing the hospital room together (as if my disgustingly sick, pale, and puking self was some kind of hot temptation) (plus my mom was in the room) and every time I had to get up to pee on my bedside toilet in the middle of the night we woke him up and made him leave the room. Why in the world we didn't just let him sleep through it, I will never know.

The date for the surgery was set by the doctor and was the only day that worked with both of our schedules. The fact that it fell on a Marian feast day meant so much to me. I knew she was with me and that it was going to be alright. And although my first surgery didn't solve my health or fertility problems, it was a step in the right direction.

Seven years later, I wrestled my two year old and five month old through Mass to celebrate the feast. My first time taking both kids by myself! The priest was ten minutes late, so by the time Mass started Hannah had already given me 15 minutes of good behavior. She was bored. She was jealous of Paul's spot in the sling. And she was hungry (her fault, not mine! eat your breakfast kid.) Despite one time-out due to whining and one super fun trip to organize the chairs in the cry room due to falling off the pew, it went pretty well.

And although most of it was lost on her, we talked about what the Assumption means and how today we celebrate Mary going to heaven to be with Jesus. We talked about other people who are in heaven, St. Therese, Mother Teresa. And we visited Mary's statue after Mass. Paul slept on my chest while Hannah and I sang "Abay, abay, abay Mawia" and blew Mary kisses before I handed her the car keys, her reward for kinda sorta decent behavior.

Then it was home to make pumpkin muffins. Which have nothing to do with the Assumption but are delicious. I'm feeling a little crafty for once in Hannah's life, so I think I'll print off a coloring page of Mary and hang it from the fan in Hannah's room. Not my idea, thanks Alisha.

Happy Feast of the Assumption! And thank you Jesus, for my two beautiful children to share it with.

Five Years!

The desire to write a beautiful and eloquent post extolling the virtues of my husband on our five year anniversary is daunting and trying to keep me from writing anything at all. The last five years of marriage certainly don't wrap up nicely for a sweet little blog post. But anything less than perfection seems to come up short to express how grateful I am for my husband.

Five years ago, August 9. 2008, we said "I do" and meant it with our whole hearts. We still mean it. We always will.
We've lived in three states, had two babies, spent 10 weeks without a home, driven home to see family for more hours than I want to count, made countless friendships, joined three different parishes, reworked our budget 476 times, and did a million loads of dishes. And although our marriage is full of big, grand, wonderful things (things like, praying together and mutual respect and never yelling) it's the tiny little things that really make me love him more and more each year. Tiny things that no one else would even notice. Like when he catches me crying and gives me a look that asks, "what's wrong?" and then hugs me when I tell him I was reading Knuffle Bunny Free with Hannah instead of laughing at me like most people would. Or how, when I show him the tiny bobby pins I bought for Hannah's hair, instead of asking how much they cost or giving me a look of and I care, why? he smiles and gushes about how cute they are. Because he loves her. And he thinks she is the best and sweetest and most wonderful little girl in the world and the thought of tiny little bobby pins in her hair makes him melt. And he loves his son. He dances and sings and plays with him like he was born to be the father of this little boy. Like he's spent his whole life practicing to be world's best daddy.

He loves us. His family. He loves us. He gives us everything he has every single day. There are so many days I stand in awe of how awesome he is and thank God silently that I married someone so much better than myself. That's my advice to anyone out there choosing a spouse. Marry someone so, so much better than yourself. Someone who will lead you to heaven. Hold you accountable. Challenge you. Teach you. And give and give and give until you are sure he has nothing left to give. But then he gives some more. Because he's the husband and he's the daddy and he knows he has to.

So much grace.

There is so much grace in the sacrament of marriage. So much grace when you open yourself up to parenthood. We couldn't do this without His grace. And He gives it to us so abundantly.

Happy Anniversary my love. I know you probably won't even read this post for another couple of weeks because your inbox is so full of junk email you wont even see it. (See, there are a few things that drive me crazy about him.....) Here's to the next five years. And the next fifty. I love you and thank Jesus for you every single day. Thanks for choosing me.