On Being a Mommy Tiger

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Someone loves their baby brother a little too hard.  Someone also occasionally turns into a tiger and licks their baby brother clean.  A little tiger mother's job is never done.

On Beaver Dams and Short Shorts

We went to an amazing nature preserve the other day.  It was full of beavers who are pretty much
left alone to do their beaver thing so the whole place is covered in their dams and lodges.  Giant ones.  Also there are frogs everywhere.  The boys were in heaven.

This post isn't about nature though.  It's about how cute Margaret looks in those little puffy bloomer shorts.  I'd say their purchase was two dollars well spent.  Very well spent.

Seriously though, how adorable is she?

Chalk Dust and Personalities

One child is writing various signs all over the play fort a la The Little Rascals and their "he-man woman haters club," one is patiently drawing as many straight lines as will fit in precisely one patio rectangle, one is intently coloring every rock he can find blue and one has dumped the remaining sidewalk chalk out and is generally a hot mess.

There's nothing like some sidewalk chalk to bring siblings together and highlight their differences all at the same time :)

On Getting True Peace

Here are some thoughts on creating true peace for your Tuesday with the accompaniment of adorable pictures of course.  I can't take credit for the thoughts, however I will take full credit for the adorableness......

"St. Augustine describes true peace as tranquility in order, order between God and ourselves, order within ourselves and order in our relationships with others.   If we live that threefold order we will have peace, and we will transmit peace to others."

"Our Lord has entrusted to us the task of bringing peace to the world, starting by having peace in our own souls, and then, in our family and in our place of work.  We should work actively to bring animosity and conflict to an end, to create an atmosphere of cooperation and mutual understanding.  Peace in a family, or in any group of people, isn't simply the absence of arguments or quarrels; that could be a sign simply of mutual indifference.  Peace means helping others in areas of personal or common interest; true peace means being concerned about others, being interested in their plans and projects, their joys and sorrows."Our Lord wants us to foster in our hearts ambitions longings for peace and harmony in this world of ours, which seems to lack that peace more and more, because at times men don't want to have God in their hearts.  God wants us Christians to bring peace and joy with us wherever we go."

"Christ is our peace.  For twenty centuries he has been saying to us:  Peace I leave you, my peace I give you.  He wants each of us to proclaim this to the whole world, by the way we live; to the world in which we live, even if at times it may seem rather small."

"Every Christian has the duty to bring peace and joy to his own surroundings on earth.  This cheerful crusade of manliness will move even shriveled or rotten hearts and raise them to God."

 ~Francis Fernandez, In Conversation with God, volume 2 (pg 480-481)

Peace be with you all and enjoy your Tuesday :)

On Snow Days and Melted Dreams

You might not have heard, but we had a wee bit of snow here recently so naturally I took a ridiculous amount of pictures to document the fun of it all and have lovingly decided to share entirely too many of them with you now.  I hope you like photos of my children and/or winter weather frolicking.  

Enjoy.

There was quite a bit of shoveling, and David was surprisingly helpful in the digging out process.  Henry, on the other hand, well Henry hates to be cold and also to do work of any sort so he was, shall we say, less than helpful.

The government totally shut down so Chris was home for everything, unfortunately the storm didn't exactly take the city by surprise so also home was his work computer and all of this papers so he could keep the office spirit alive at the kitchen table.  It was okay though, I made the kids do their lessons as well because I'm just.that.mean.

Never fear, there was plenty of sledding despite all that.

  


And now, a mere week after the mighty blizzard of 2016 has struck, our temperature in Northern Virginia is a balmy sixty-two degrees...and it's supposed to be even warmer by Wednesday.  I don't even have words.

David, David has words though: "I don't think it's fun." [insert sad face].  My poor, poor children and their melted sledding dreams.

On Having an Immodest Baby

You may want to avert your eyes, this is about to get scandalous....

Margaret spent pretty much the entirety of yesterday performing her new trick.  I think the moment she realized she could actually pull her own shirt over her own head might have been her proudest moment to date.  

Kids these days, no sense of decency.