Seven Quick Takes vol. 84

Back with some breathtaking takes of the seven type - visit Jen for the best!

{one}

She's a big fan of always being in my arms.

It was a full week around here, if you consider birthdays and lack of sleep and chaos a definition of "full"!

Our sweet baby turned 1 on the Feast of the Annunciation so it was a very happy and fun-filled feast day for us all. It feels weird that a year can go by and yet feel like a blink of an eye but at the same time you can't remember life without that little one-year-old. I love the time bending paradox of parenthood. 

She loved blowing out the candle. It was adorable.

{two}

Almost a smile!

The funny thing about a one year old's birthday is that the day is completely the same as any other day and they have no idea what the fuss is about. So Nora was celebrating with her equal parts of grumpy-ness mixed with happiness mixed with being completely tuckered out by 6:30. Who really needs to celebrate a one year old's birthday is the parents. We're the ones who've made it through that crucially important yet indescribably exhausting first year of getting someone through life. Needless to say, I made use of her excellent choice of days to be born to have a drink and several chocolate cupcakes.

{three}

All five together for the first time since Christmas...a small miracle in itself.

In addition to the happiness of making it another year,  when every birthday of every child passes I always feel a generous warmth of gratitude. Whenever I think that I've been given the responsibility of raising precious, wonderful souls it seems absolutely crazy. Does God really know what he's doing? But the reality of the situation is that his help is evident in big ways, everyday. But each birthday it washes over me just a bit more. So it's good there's 5 birthdays a year to reset my gratitude levels.

{four}

It was nice to have a birthday during this week as it reverted back to winter around here. Too cold to punt kids out of doors for any amount of time Wednesday, I felt the cold grayness of life surround me and instantly was back in the trauma of winter. I hadn't much sleep either because Nora decided waking up at least 5 times was necessary pre-birthday, so my attitude had so many reasons to plummet. But oh, what a plummet. I wish I could say I combatted it, but really, I just wrote Wednesday off as a blur of bad attitude/bad weather. Yesterday I went to confession, a drive, and now the forecast is supposed to pick up so that means my attitude will too, right?

{five}

The Fault in Our Stars took me for a ride this week. I'm not sure if it quite lived up to the hype for me. I always try to read "Young Adult" novels with the mindset of a directionless teen, and by doing so one can see the themes the authors are trying to eek out. The themes they think they're so cleverly not disguising so teenagers don't think they're reading stuff with substance. This book's themes of death, love and eternity had bright spots but then quite a lot of murkiness. I just wonder if many teens who read it come away more or less convinced of the afterlife/love existing beyond our lifetimes. 

But I'll admit I cried a plenty. 

{six}

So you've heard about Gwen and Chris's "conscious uncoupling" right? I have no emotional skin in that celebrity couple game, as I think the marriage lasted longer than I expected because as soon as Gwen's "singing career" happened I thought Chris Martin must be slowly being tortured somewhere. 

But here's the thing I find so terribly pretentious like most things Gwyneth -- the idea that by somehow changing the name of something, i.e. divorce, it changes the consequences of the action. Calling divorce something else do not change the fact that a marriage has failed and a family is now broken. A paradox of humanity is that we crave absolutes while believing them unachievable. Marriage is an absolute. We deny it all the time with divorce, cohabitation, same-sex marriage, but the absolute truth of it cannot be changed no matter how much we redefine it or mistreat it. I always find these attempts to change truths so sad, an attempt to change our own failures or own weaknesses into the ultimate good or absolute. I understand that human need to want to change to not admit our failures is a huge driving force. Paradox.

{seven}

In a Lenten effort to clean out my freezer's we've been having random meals all week by eating whatever I find and heating it up. It's been easy and I feel good getting around to this task I put off for months and months but this morning I found some frozen scones from who know's when, pulled them out took a bite and thought I had just eaten the deepest depths of the oldest, grossest, grimiest, freezer ever. My taste buds haven't yet recovered. I'm the casualty of my own good intentions. But now I know I should probably clean out the freezer more than every Lent.

Hope you all have a sunshine-y weekend!

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