Sadie's Saturday Morning Nun Talk: Part 3

Yesterday we were out and about doing errands.  We stopped to grab lunch, because I had a super-awesome-you-just-have-to-use-it-coupon and I added to my justification of having to use it since it was the anniversary of my shop and I'd just found out that I had paid a bill that I thought was still due, and I felt like that deserved a little celebration of sorts (i.e. eating food I didn't make myself from scratch) was in order.

Sadie sat down at the table and announced to to the waiter:  "Hi!  When I grow up I'm going to be a Carmelite nun!"  But did she stop there?  Oh no.  She went on with a smile.  "And my brother, he's going to be the Pope.  And my sister... She's going to be a Dominican."  

The Pope?  I thought.  Patrick you've been promoted since last week when she said you were going to be a Bishop working in the cathedral.  

This week was full of moments that would have been perfect for this post.  My favorite moment of the week may have been last night.  Paul was making a valiant effort to stay awake, but after weeks of not really sleeping at all, he was struggling.  Praying a family rosary when a person is so tired they could fall asleep on their feet is probably not the best idea.  Sadie informed us that it was Friday so it was the sorrowful mysteries.  She took a shot at the first sorrowful mystery and said that it was the carrying of the cross. After talking a bit about the first mystery we got started.  In the past few weeks she's started saying the apostles creed with me.  Sometimes I'll stop and she'll go on.  Once in a while she'll need single word prompts, and occassionally some of the big words get mangled, but she pretty much knows the entire thing.  

I decided to let her go on and see how she did.  And, with prompts for the mysteries, she basically said five decades of the rosary.  She was particularly excited when she got to the end and said the Hail Holy Queen (as with the apostles creed when she got stuck I would say one or two words and then she'd say the next few lines).  Then she dove right in with the one I think of as the "rosary prayer" ("Oh God, whose only begotten son, by his life, death and resurrection has purchased for us the rewards of eternal life...") and basically said the whole thing without me.  Then she said the guardian angel prayer and the Saint Michael prayer (that was entirely on her own), three sets of "Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us"' and one "Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us" before ending with seven sets of "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner."  I thought she was done until she broke out into an off key rendition of The Lourdes Hymn and after several rounds decided to call it a night.

It was a special moment, with Daddy finally getting some much needed sleep nearby.  You see, when she was a tiny baby and I would put her to bed I would rock her in our old glider and nurse her and we would say a family rosary.  During the long hours trying to get her to sleep, I would say the rosary softly, trying not to doze.  Sometimes, when we were alone, I would practice my latin and pray it in latin.  We said hundreds of rosaries that way, probably over a thousand, in the first year and a half of her life when she hardly ever slept and we rocked and rocked in the dark.

Last night after we finished I thought I'd test how much she remembered and I said:  "Ave Maria."  She looked at me, paused and said:  "Ave Maria, gratia plena, dominus.... dominus..."  which isn't bad at all since I can't remember the last time I prayed it in latin with her.

Most nights, the rosary is not like it was last night, with Mae being peacefully quite.  Most nights the family rosary looks like some sort of a battlefield, with Mae trying to race around being wild and Patrick not sure if he wants to be nursing or playing on the floor and Sadie testing the limits and seeing if she can get away with the same things Mae can get away with (um.. no).

So a night like last night is a rare treat, that gives me hope that they really are learning and growing even when they don't seem to be listening and are acting like wild little hooligans.

There was another night, earlier in the week, with a story I just had to add since this is my weekly Sadie post.  We'd just finished eating dinner and Sadie asked me to tell a story Nani had told her, about the time when one of my friends and I snuck down to play at the creek when we'd been told not to and we inevitably got in big trouble.  It happened when I was about eight years old and Sadie absolutely loves the idea of Mommy at some point getting in trouble for something.

"Mommy, can you tell me the story about when you and Adam went to the creek?"  She asks a half dozen times a day and sometimes the answer is "later," but on that night I told it and she grinned because Mommy got in trouble and then she shook her head sadly.  She walked across the room and climbed up on a chair so that she could look at the little crucifix on the wall.  Then she pointed at it and said something along the lines of "Mommy do you know that Jesus died on the cross because you went to the creek when you weren't supposed to?"

She did learn something from the Easter story.

Last night she brought up the story again and lamented how sad my guardian angel, and all the other angels, must have been to see me doing something like going to the creek when my mommy had told me I wasn't allowed there.

She's like a little sponge these days, absorbing every word.  I think I am going to learn far more teaching these little ones than I ever would have learned otherwise, because of the questions that they ask!