{7QT} Wait...these are always Random Edition

Joining Jen as always...head back there for the real stuff ;)

1. I mentioned before that Marie was coming.
Well, she did, and it was lovely!  We had great times catching up on our reflective converstations and corralling the boyos into some semblance of normal (ha!). Daniel chose this week to be extra...off his game. Teething? Growth spurt? Both? Yes. All that aside, we'll be missing "fwiend Mawie" now...and our applications to the Royal Geographic Society for the Switching of the States Placement in the Continent has grown again (Ohio-Maine-Washington-NH-Indiana...party over here!). 

2. One of the fun things we did was to go see "Star Trek: Into Darkness" with Steven.
Steve's parents watched the boyos (I *actually* got Daniel to take a third nap to prep for a late night! Wow! I get a prize for that, right?) It was so much fun! Plus there is a dollar theater here...so we all got to go for $3. Yup. True dat. (Any takers on visiting Ohio now?!). Also there was this guy:

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A'int nobody hating on a movie with Sherlock. Nope.

3. After sitting on this post for a while, I finally published it today. Reflections started from hearing Mackelmore's 'Same Love'. I hope it's received well; I AM talking about getting along! : )

4. Did you see this?!
Our dear Sr. Agnes Therese Davis (the artist formerly known as Emily), made her First Profession of Vows on Tuesday with the Franciscan Sisters TOR. She's been a novice and postulant there for...three (?) years now, and this is a pretty big deal. 

Also, she is just emits joy, doesn't she? And if you didn't see this from me earlier, check it out as well. This is a song that Sr. Agnes Therese composed. Simply lovely.

5. #35K4SMA
So, I've been trying to get back into running regularly. It is HARD to be disciplined! I went for a week...and then petered out. BUT, I saw this post today from Kelly over @ This A'int the Lyceum. She is a funny and cheery mom of five kids, TWO of whom have Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), which is basically NOT a walk in the park. Anyhow, she's committing to 7 5K runs to add up to 35K For SMA. It's a fund-raiser-awareness campaign...should I hop on the wagon? :D

6. We went to visit some dear friends last night, and had a blast. We got to see the lambikins that our ram (Mean Black Sheep himself) fathered earlier this year. SO CUTE! Daniel called them "baby". And Leo played outside w/ the boys. In the rain. Basically little guy heaven.

two little ramikins

don't let the face fool you. he had a blast.

7. For those of you who know Davy Crockett personally, and remember (how could we forget?!) that Leo wore this hat constantly (to church. to bed. all. the time.) for about 3 months this past winter/spring, will be happy to know that there is a new sheriff in town. 

Introducing...Daniel Boone!

Common Ground: Mackelmore's 'Same Love'

I don't have cable or satellite TV, and the radio time I do manage to get, I'm mostly listening to NPR or the local Catholic station. I could write posts on those radio stations alone. I could write posts on all the posts I haven't written...I have done that. 

But what I'm getting at is this, perhaps I have been living under a rock, and all y'all have heard this song on the radio/iTunes 5 million times already, and it's just me standing out here outside the bubble...humming...

It's called 'Same Love' by Mackelmore & Ryan Lewis, but I like this cover/version by Paradise Fears:

Find it here.

It's catchy. It's memorable. It's even poetic. And also wildly inflammatory.

Let me be straight with you (ha.ha.), I don't support gay marriage. But this song has made me think a lot, which is probably one of its aims.  All too often in these heated, no-holds-barred debates on the BIG issues, we forget with whom we're fighting. We focus so much on the lines we have to hold and forget that the people on the other side are people too. 

This holds true for both sides (I'm an equal-opportunity chide-er!). I mean, even the song couldn't refrain (ha.ha.) from painting the opposite view as:

The right wing conservatives think it's a decision
And you can be cured with some treatment and religion
Man-made rewiring of a predisposition
Playing God...

Excuse me, but that's actually *not* what I think. (But that is probably a whole 'nother can of worms.)

I don't agree with the lifestyle this song promotes.  I don't think there should be homosexual marriage. I don't like the picture the song paints of those who feel the way I do. BUT, it does teach me something. We could all get a little further in life, in loving our neighbors, in getting our points across, when we take the time to put faces on the so-called other side. 

My weekly Radical Life email today emphasized this exactly.  Everyone we hate, each person who views the world differently than us, has his/her own inner battle:

It's probably a quiet, hidden battle that you'll never fully understand or perhaps ever know about. Their cry for help manifests itself as selfishness or closed-mindedness. As anger, defensiveness, ignorance, pride, aloofness, insecurity, rudeness, disinterest or malice.
Let all of that remind you that they are fighting a great battle. Be kind. 

"Be kind to everyone you meet, for every person is fighting a great battle." --St. Ephraim 

  --Matthew Warner, The Radical Life

The right-winged-closed-minded-bigot you hate for hating you...doesn't.  The screaming-feminist-child-murderer...isn't. There is history and hurt behind the eyes of the one whom you think you know so well. That guy with same-sex attraction was bullied for years. That woman with the "my body my choice" sign had an abortion that broke her heart. There are stories behind the slogans.

There is more to this than the cliched, "Can't we all just get along?".  We aren't ever all going to get along if we keep fighting in the same old ways. We have chasms between our worldviews at times, but it's time to recognize the face on the other side.  

He is our brother.

{FF} Toddler Tips Edition

Linking it up with Hallie again!
Make sure to head back over there for the better bloggers ;)

and now...

{Five Favorite Tips for Dealing with Toddlers}

1. Use a Timer. 

No joke, this trick is miraculous. Brothers are fighting over a toy? No problem:
Mom: "It's Daniel's turn, Leo, I'll set the timer, and then it will be your turn!"
Leo: "Awright!"

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I credit my friend Kaylinne for this one. She works at a daycare, and uses her watch all day long to give kids turns. The day she came over and showed me this one, Leo and Gabriella kept taking turns holding a toy. Long after they weren't even playing with it, they kept passing it back and forth when the time was up! This works for everything. Nap-time, bath-time, time to go inside, taking turns etc. I don't even have to have a timer, Leo buys it when I tell him I have a timer in my head and then say "beep-beep! Timer's up!".

2. Bedtime Picture Book.

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Leo was being, shall we say, difficult for bedtimes. My awesome Mom-Mentor friend Ellie gave me this great trick. I made a little picture book from photos I took and a cheap plastic soft photo album. The pictures are of Leo going through the steps of getting ready for bed and being asleep in bed. At the end of the book, it describes how Leo gets stickers for a good bedtime. It took a few days of no stickers, then Leo had the hang of it, and behaved beautifully at bedtime. He's not always peachy, but usually he is brought around by "...oh, I guess you aren't getting a sticker in the morning for a good bedtime...". I don't even have to read the book with him before bedtime anymore...but I have it in case!

3. "When" consequences.

This is another tip that I learned from Ellie way early on, and I love using it. Instead of saying "IF YOU HIT YOUR BROTHER ONE MORE TIME YOU ARE GOING TO TIME OUT!!!", you say "WHEN you hit your brother, you sit on the stairs." It sounds the same at first, but it's ever so subtly different. In fact, instead of threatening your children, you are teaching them that there are consequences to their actions. The results of their behavior are up to them, then, not you. They choose to behave poorly, they get to sit on the stairs, and so on. Also, you aren't threatening them all the time. That is nice too. 

4. Say what you mean.

This one can be summed up b-e-a-utifully by Kendra over @ Catholic All Year in this post. Basically, parenting with authority so that your kids listen and do what you say can be summed up by that one phrase: say what you mean. Always. When kids grow up understanding that you always say what you mean, they understand that you aren't budging, there will be consequences...ba-da-bing, they stop pushing against you (in a perfect world, of course, but hey--this works pretty well;))

5. You don't always have to say no.

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Sometimes we get caught up in saying no. We have to say it A LOT throughout the day, mostly so that our children don't involve themselves in life-threatening experiments with the world around them (no, you may not use that knife; no, you may not run into traffic; no, you may not eat all of the cookie dough...). But I think that we get caught up in saying no so often that we forget it's not going to kill us to say yes sometimes...when he asks you to build him a train track, or to play outside, or to read one more story at bedtime. Don't cave into being the yes-man-mom, but know that you can say yes in a lot of situations, and it just might be easier to play outside for 15 minutes, and have a happier kiddo, than to say no and have to deal with the fuss-fest.

There you have it! Now, head back on over to Hallie's to join in the favorites fun! :0)