Proud of Luke...

It's been a good week for Luke.

He's picked up a couple lessons with some different skating coaches. Something just is "clicking" -- maybe it's how they are explaining things? I don't know. But he's doing fantastic. There is a competition next month in Wilmington and he wants to do the dance events. Of course, the two that are on the schedule are the two he hasn't tested yet. Until two weeks ago, he had never seen them before! He's picking them up really quickly, and I think he'll be in good shape. He also is entering the Footwork Event. His program is choreographed to Phineas and Ferb's "Backyard Beach." He's got some great choreography, and it's nice to see him having fun with skating again.

Luke came home today and announced he was invited to be a member of the Quiz Bowl team. Apparently, it's for 6th-8th graders, involves going to The Prep for competitions with other schools, and that's about all he knows. But he's puffier than a peacock...he's saying "This means I'm smart, right?" It's interesting trying to find the balance between saying "It confirms what your mother thinks -- that you're an outright genius," and "Well, at the very least, they think you're smart enough to be an asset to the team and represent the school well."

Yay Luke!

I'm FREE!!!!!

Has anybody else noticed how the "must have" gear list grows over time, and how companies always manage to create "things you can't live without." Yeah, well, maybe life could have been easier (or at least my bank account that much further depleted), but since most of this stuff didn't exist when a) I was a child and b) my own young 'uns were teeny, and somehow we're all still alive, I think the universe is doing fine without the stuff. I mean, we got a perfectly good stroller for half price because the navy fabric on it was LAST YEAR's navy blue. Um...isn't navy blue pretty much "standard?" Whatever. The exception: light-year-caliber strides in breast pump parts. For my last two kids, I have struggled to eek out more than half an ounce at a pumping session. I thought it was the pump, until after three or four different pumps determined it was "me." God bless the engineers at Medela -- they must have gotten a mother of twelve in their department. Who has had her chest expand with each kiddo. Who tried desperately to pump enough to go get her hair colored because her other kids were turning it gray. Who had the brains to say "Let's make parts in multiple sizes. And not just 'average' and 'slightly bigger.' We need one that fits wumbo-boobs." I ordered a pair of pump flanges, in size "wumbo." And when they came, blessed that person for using the brains God gave her, because I got THREE WHOLE OUNCES pumped.

So now that I have the capacity to pump more than three sips of milk, we get a bottle together. Usually we have given first bottles just before baby's Baptism, so we could give a bottle of milk in church if kiddo was really squawking. Jude's Christening was long ago, but hey...he's not starving or anything. Considering he gained 3 pounds in his first month, I think he's not going to starve if I'm stuck in the grocery line for an extra minute. But I'm sure the UPS guy would like me to slow down a little bit. He comes about as often as the US mail...but has to drag bigger boxes. The tradition in our family has the next-youngest giving the first bottle. We settle Damien into Jude's lap, convince Jude the bottle is for Damien, not him, and pop it into Damien's mouth. He slugs down three ounces in about as many minutes. My mother in law proclaims, "You're free!! Leave an extra bottle, and I'll babysit." In case it was a fluke, Luke gave him a bottle in the car one morning on the way to school. Damien drained it before we were out of our driveway. I took a bottle with me to Luke's doctor appointment, and Damien slurped that one down in record time, too. Yahoo!!

In honor of the Mama Engineer...I think I'll go get my roots done.

Welcome to the Church, Damien Neal...

Yesterday we celebrated a wonderful day. It was Damien's Baptism day. The Lord works in His own way, in His own time. If there was ever proof of that, it was yesterday.

It took us almost until Damien was born to decide on a name for him. We don't have "impossibly high" standards. We're just picky. Names just have to work with the other kids' names/our last name, be traditional sounding but not trendy, be easy to do a Patron Saint project on (my minimum requirement), and have a meaning that we like. (After having meanings of "light," "gift of God," "from heaven, and "praised," something like "tree" wasn't going to work.) We had shortlisted a bunch of names: Noah ("comfort"), Levi ("joined"), Elias and Joel ("the Lord is God"). We just could not decide. And every time we thought "Yeah, that's it," we would think of something else and say "Oh, I like that!" and be back at square one. Then, one night, while chaperoning Luke's school dance, I got a text message from Neal: Damien. Damien? Interesting. Followed by: means Spirit and St. Damien of Molokai, became a saint October 11. More interesting. Meaning works, and October 11 is our wedding anniversary. This has potential. When Luke wandered by I asked him what he thought. He looked at me, and said, "Wait." Then his eyes rolled back into his head -- the kind of look children have when they're trying to read their memory. "I think...no, I'm almost positive...we got our new Catholic IQ homework today, and St. Damien of Molokai is the saint on the back of the handout." Sure enough, when we got home he got it out, and there it was -- St. Damien. What were the odds? Damien this boy was going to be. After months of back-and-forth, he had a name almost within an hour.

Of course, we spent the last few days running like mad trying to organize everything for the Christening. By yesterday morning, neither grown up really wanted to pick our heads off the pillow. Celia wandered in, and asked if she could hold Damien before the others got up and asked. I pried one eye open far enough to settle them, and decided I might as well get the day started. As I started to turn the water on to brush my teeth, I heard her say, "Today is your Baptism day, Damien! Baptism means 'Welcome to the Church,' and is when you become a Child of God..." I know last year in school she started learning about Sacraments, and I could almost hear her kindergarten teacher's voice giving the lesson. It always amazes me the simplicity of a child's faith, and how they simply accept faith as it is -- "the evidence of things unseen."

Yesterday also was my sister's 36th birthday. It was also the anniversary of her death -- Melissa was born, baptized, and died within moments. And yes, the question that has followed for this long time has been "Why?" and nobody has ever had a good answer. It is almost to impossible understand that God has a greater plan when faced with such a huge test of faith. But when we had the opportunity to have another child given to God around the same time, it was obvious that it had to be on this day. Yes, it was a bittersweet day, and both happy and sad tears were shed. But it reminds us that God does have a greater plan -- He took one child back, and gave our family another with his own Guardian Angel. And Aunt Missy could never have been Damien's guardian angel if she was still here -- she had to be in Heaven waiting for him.

So welcome to the Church, Damien Neal. I pray you find a deep faith that understands that God is not only in a Church or a classroom. He is with us in all things, if we only keep our hearts open and patient.

Ever feel like the water in your duck pond is suddenly molasses...

And instead of being a Ming-Ming, you now are a Tuck?

That's kind of how our day went yesterday.

Since I was on "restricted activity" for the last two weeks after Damien was born, we've been taking it pretty easy. Only going where we had to go. Except by the time we got to the end of this week, a "had to go" place was the grocery store. All the food I laid in, thinking the baby would be born around when his brothers/sister was, got eaten. I guess that's what happens when baby comes two weeks later than you expect. You run out of food at the same point on the calendar, but it seems sooner. Plus, school starts in 18 days (not that I am counting or anything) and we needed more school supplies. We had a field trip to Target on Wednesday night and had gotten pens, folders, etc., but left without the mandatory per-kid pallet of hand sanitizer and Chlorox wipes. And oh, yeah, they all still needed school shoes. So like a good little elf, I made my list, checked it twice, herded my ducklings into the car and we were off. Like a herd of turtles.

Part of it was I had forgotten that newborns like to eat so much. After every other stop there was a pause for refreshment, and then we were out long enough to need to feed all the bigger people, too. But mostly everything just took far longer than I thought it would. I don't know WHY -- it wasn't because my herd kept trying to wander. They were all really pretty well behaved, stuck close, etc. They even were pretty helpful at getting things. Just that everything I thought took two or three times longer than I thought. Like I thought the Staples Stop should have been 10 minutes, 15 tops if there was a checkout line. It took close to 35. Shoes usually are an hour of torture. But kiddos needed to try on multiple sizes, and so that ate up more time. But by George, we managed to complete The List. Without adding back onto it. I'd call it a good day. The speedometer was just stuck on Turtle.

Ho-lee smokes...it's sorta been a while...

Maybe I'll start blogging again. Cause you know, with five kids now (yeppers, Jude's no longer the baby, that role is now being played by Damien), I've got more time than I know what to do with.

On the other hand, I'm thinking that as much as I adore telling funny kid stories to our family and friends, it's probably a whole lot easier for me to write everything down, and they can decide if they want to be amused by the kids' antics or not. I think my darlings are cute and amusing...but then again, I'm their mama, I'm supposed to think that.

I think by way of 'What we've been doing," we'll just leave it as "Since I've last blogged, all heck has broken loose, we've given up on getting it under control and are just going with it, and eventually it'll calm down...when we die."

Kiddos in five sentences or less (per kid! cut me some slack here...)

Luke is starting 7th grade next month, is still skating, and still likes us. But he's only 12, so that'll change soon enough. He's pretty darn smart, but don't just take his mama's word for it -- he's in the Advanced Math program at school (skipped 6th grade Math and hopped up to the equivalent of 7th, so this year will be "8th grade" Math) and was accepted into the National Junior Honor Society. He also won 2nd place in his division (Middle School Chemistry) at the local County-College sponsored Science Fair. He's a good big brother who loves his sibs but not the laundry they create.

Matthew is entering 4th grade...the last year for him at Newfield campus. When did my baby grow up?? *sob* He's ice skating, too. His big interests are video games and Pokemon/anime; a trip to Disney and the Japan Pavillion in Epcot was sort of like dying and going to heaven. Surprisingly, he's almost become my "quiet one."



Celia is...Celia. Not one to let a tubey slow her down, she's starting first grade this year. We survived Pre-K and Kindergarten (or perhaps more likely they survived her). Yep, she's a figure skater too (sense a pattern?) and has no fear. Good for her, bad for mom watching from the stands. We call her "Miss Thang" for a reason.







Jude is making leaps and bounds. His speech still is terrible, but his vocabulary is exploding -- muchas gracias to Miss Ellen and a year of speech therapy. He's happy to be a big brother, I think; at least he's not intentionally clobbering the baby, but just trying to hug him. He's now 3 years old, and I think Miss Ellen is right that "Threes are just twos with experience." He wants to skate like the others; Miss Denise took him out on the ice a few times and created a monster.






And to debut Damien to the blog world. He's our "early Santa gift" -- born on "Christmas Even In July." He does NOT skate...yet. Thankfully, he's a pretty good baby and just goes with the flow. Not like he has much choice.

And this is all of us. The plan is to try to update more than every couple of years. We'll see how this goes. You know what they say about making plans. Make them, and then sit back and watch God laugh. He's laughing pretty dang hard right now, methinks.