The Feral Cat stage of life right now.

Believe it or not, after I posted about Collin’s grand front teeth busting, and everyone getting sick, both Collin and myself got sick– again. For 2. more. weeks.  So that was fun.  And I’m gathering from my social media outlets that 90% of America and their children were sickly too, so I hope everyone else is on the mend.

This past weekend was the first time we exited the house as a family and the sensory overload sucked the life out of me, so I spent all of Sunday like an 80 year old woman bent over her yarn and crochet hook.  You can bet Mass was extra exciting for everyone sitting near us. I’m a really fun person, I promise, but mostly when I’m not in the third trimester, and more when I’m at Hobby Lobby in the pen and ink aisle, alone.

Aside from wishing I could take off my legs and put them somewhere until I give birth in April (Maybe Easter Sunday!), everything’s looking good, baby-wise.  I’m in the irritated feral cat phase, and being pleasant is just hard to come by.  My children want in my personal space and I’m like GERROFFME!

It’s a great spiritual failing on my end and when I try to read some of the lovely, uplifting Christian books and posts on focusing on Christ, and contemplating Mary’s journey through her pregnancy, my eyes pretty much roll out of my head, up the street into a body of stagnant, muddy water because the fluffiness is too unreal for me to glaze over.  I usually settle for some to-the-point Peter Kreeft because feral, irritated cats DON’T WANT TO READ METAPHORS ABOUT DEEP VALLEYS AND ROLLING FLOWERY HILLS AND DOWNY PILLOWS.  Feel sorry for Craig, guys.

There’s also Jen Fulwiler’s recent talk she gave at the 2015 SEEK event.

She distracted me to think about times when I’ve tried to avoid my own, authentic self in attempts to fill what I perceived was the ideal Christian woman, wife, mother, or PERSON in general; and of course after failing to fill those ideals, I’d become frustrated and perhaps bitter or resentful towards those who look like the sun shines from their every pore –and they’ve got checklists and goals and cute little knick-knacks hand-made for every milestone, hour, and quarter-birthday that each of her 27 children celebrate each week (Total made-up person, fyi. I don’t know anyone with 27 kids.).  Jen Fulwiler reminds us in her talk that without the diversity of each person, the Church would not be perfect.  That when we stop and look in the mirror and accept that this reflection could be just like Mary, the mother of God in the world today, we only need to choose how to move forward embracing our own unique gifts and talents, we are fulfilling precisely what the ideal Christian woman should be: YOU. ME.   Such a powerful talk- and boy, the weight of feeling like I have to fit into plastic pants is totally removed.  Shew.  Here’s her 30 minute talk, if you’re interested: Girl on Fire

That’s it. I’ve been working on a mountain of a post about Emmett (just turned 4, a year after he was diagnosed with Autism), but it’s so long, no one but my own mother will read it, so I’ve got to figure out how to break it up and make it readable. And yes, he put these words together without seeing them somewhere else in the room, and without my help.

Until then, happy days to you.
OH! Also, if you’re looking for new blogs of varying styles to read, go visit Bonnie right now.  She’s got a wonderful list of Catholic bloggers (and a few non-Catholic) that I delight in exploring every year. It’s also kind of a blogger award thing, too.  And you can vote if you see my blog listed and are feeling nice. If not, no hard feelings- I’ll never know, and I’ll keep on clacking away at my keyboard regardless :)