Seven Quick Takes: Post-Halloween edition

1.

We had such a fun Halloween this week! The kids were bouncing off the walls by 3:10, wanting to head out trick or treating then.

They each wanted to be the specific costumes you see here photographed, and I was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, we had the added bonus of my parents being here the previous week to help out (my Dad made the Mary Poppins hat out of an empty flat of Perrier; I just painted it and added the Dollar Store flowers.)

So, without further ado, I give you:

An adorable baby bear

Mary Poppins

(You should hear this girl sing "Feed the Birds, Tuppence a Bag." 

She has a beautiful singing voice.)

Thorin Oakenshield

He was perturbed when I googled Thorin costumes that each example looked like the movie version. He was quite adamant: Thorin had a red beard, wore a sky-blue cloak and had a golden helmet. 

So this is our Tolkien/Jemima Catlin tribute to Thorin.

Kraft Dinner

I loved this costume idea! And it's so him, to do something silly, imaginative and unexpected. 

At nearly every house we went to, if the person didn't comment directly on his costume,

 he'd proudly announce "I'm Kraft Dinner, if you can't tell!"

2.

After our trick-or-treating, we took the kids home to quickly change their costumes into saint costumes and head off to Madonna House for their All Saint's Day gathering. I don't have a photo, alas, but Noah "recycled" his Thorin costume to be St. Olaf, Anna wore a princess dress from the costume box and carried a basket of homemade rolls as St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and Isaiah clearly couldn't go as Kraft Dinner, and he was determined to be St. Jean de Brebeuf, so he wore a cassock that mom had sewn for Noah when he was TWO and had black pants and a black shirt underneath to cover the exposed legs and arms from it being too small.

The gathering was fun: the kids paraded around in their costumes and then had to give a clue to the Madonna House staff in the dining room for them to guess. Afterward each kid got a cupcake that had a smiley face with a halo on top.

Patrick and I were so BEAT when we got into the car that we said we were heading straight home. But the boys protested vehemently that they wanted to go visit the Companions of the Cross and I'm so glad we did. They had set up a bunch of sheets to make a tunnels in the Catacombs and hid holy cards in them to be relics. Each child was given a flashlight and sent on a mission to discover the saints. It was so creative and fun.

3.

And now that Halloween and All Saint's Day are over, we're truly into November now. It's not a month I relish in general, as it's rather grey, the temperatures drop, and my beloved fall leaves have almost entirely disappeared off the trees. Yet there is a certain beauty in this month, even in it's quiet desolation.

As always, I "hear" each month as a song.

{September, for me, is "Why Georgia" by John Mayer -- warm, golden, and reflective. October is "Mushaboom" by Feist because it's colourful and whimsical and carefree.}



My November song this year is "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" by BNL.

"The hours grow shorter as the days go by...

Gotta kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight."

November much?

Even the mournful and beautiful cello riffs sound like November to me.

So... there's a weird fact about me: every season, every month, has a song. I have "being hugely pregnant" songs, "missing my kids while they're at school" songs, and everything else in between.

4.

I read a lot of mom blogs and even if I don't follow "parenting pages" on Facebook, I regularly see memes pop up on my Facebook feed that relate to motherhood. A common thread is a certain level in detached snark in talking about the weirdness that is child-rearing. I get that. It is weird. But what I have noticed is that this "snark" has effected my own internal monologue. I caught myself thinking the other day as I rolled my eyes "I love these kids, but BOY, am I ever looking forward to bedtime." In fact I say this to myself with some regularity.

It wasn't until recently that I realized that saying "I love them, but" is problematic. The goal of motherhood is to love unconditionally. Adding the word, "but" sounds like a condition. Of course it's "just" a word, but words matter. The language we use to narrate our lives to ourselves frames it for good or for ill.

The words of St. Jane Frances de Chantal come to mind:

"Oh Jesus, I surrender to you all my will. Let me be your lute. Touch any string you please. Always and forever let me make music in perfect harmony with your own. Lord, with no ifs, ands, or buts, let your will be done in this family... and especially let your will be done with me."
"No ifs, ands, or buts."Amen.

5.

Meanwhile, as it pertains to language, too, my husband's cousin wrote a great blog post on women's bodies after having babies. She is a bodybuilder who very recently gave birth to her third child. Here she questions the modern parlance of "getting your body back" after giving birth.

To fitness professionals, we need to stop saying “let’s get your body back” and start asking “so what would you like to accomplish with your body now?

I appreciate this way of reframing our language because it honours the fact that we already accomplished something monumental by growing an actual person inside of ourselves.

6.

On a different note, guess who is sleeping like a champ?! 

My four month old, that's who! 

He actually slept for 10 hours straight this past week, and has been more or less as good since, except for a few nights when he wakes up around 3 to nurse. We bought a white noise machine from Amazon and it's been working wonders to keep the background noise of the three bigger kids down to a manageable level. The weekdays are okay, when the boys are in school, but there is quite a noisy ruckus on the weekends to cancel out.

I may have just cursed my good fortune by blogging about it, but I wanted to remember it, especially if it all goes to pot again.

7.

Happy weekending, people! We have big plans to fold laundry and batch cook meatballs. The glamorous life, I say!