Answer Me This: On Sunglasses, Cheese and Boycotts

This may be the last installment of Answer Me This and so I just couldn't miss it.

1. What is your favorite picture book?

I have so many favorite kids books that it's just about impossible to pick an actual "favorite" but I thought I'd share this particular book that is definitely worth reading if you have a wiggly kid who loves to move.  I think Gina first suggested it to me and I went right over to Amazon and ordered it.  And while it doesn't have enough mermaids to hold Maggie's attention just yet, Sadie loves it. Press Here doesn't have spectacular pictures.  It starts with a simple picture of a yellow button.  But as you press, shake and slide that "button," following the author's instructions, giggles are almost certain to follow.


Be warned though.  It is definitely a book that you may find yourself reading again and again and again... even with a child who doesn't usually make repeat requests to hear the same story repeatedly!

2. Are you a boycotter?

Only about one particular topic.  Abortion.  If a company gives to Planned Parenthood we don't shop there or buy their product. And yes, that means that there are lots and lots of things that we don't buy.  I'm not big into talking about it or convincing others to do it.... but I just haven't been able to get past the lump in my stomach of buying something from a company who I know donates to support the major abortion provider in our country.  I don't do it for any other topic, but giving to PP is too big for me to ignore.

At the same time I respect other people's right to boycott stores they disagree with, and am more likely to drive a couple extra miles to pick up the craft supplies that I need at Hobby Lobby, instead of the other two major craft stores that are closer to our house, because they've taken a stand that I agree with and I want to support them.

And of course over the years I've had plenty of people point out that such a small number of people boycott the things that we do that it doesn't make a difference to the company, so why do it?  The answer is that it makes a difference to me because I know that I'm doing whatever I can to spend less on companies that are using their funds in that way and so I personally can't in good conscience make any other decision.  And believe me... I've tried... and just felt sick about it.

3. How do you feel about cheese?

So ever since Patch came along with his dairy allergy and I had 16 months without any sort of dairy my already probably-not-entirely-healthy love of all things cheese has been intensified.  I think I can probably blame it, at least in part, for my current gigantic pregnant size, because I keep thinking that I should eat all of the cheese (or ice cream) that I possibly can because with two out of three kids unable to eat dairy what are the chances that this next kid won't follow his older siblings example and have some sort of allergy by two months old?  By the allergist's laughter when I asked that question I would say "not very good."

Already allergic at this point...

And so at the moment I'm kind of obsessed with cheese... and I'm really hoping that this next kid loves it too (and can eat it!)!

4. How many pairs of sunglasses do you own?

One pair that has not been broken by a) being dropped on the ground by my own clumsiness or b) been pulled apart by twp cute little sun glass destroyers in my life.

Especially this one.  He's developing a special love of stealing sunglasses and putting them to the test:

And I hate it when my sunglasses finally do end up breaking.

When Paul and I were dating I once mentioned how almost completely impossible it is for me to find sun glasses that don't look totally ridiculous with the shape of my face.  He didn't really believe me. Then he was with me when I tried on sunglasses and was rather surprised how pair after pair looked so very wrong.  So when I find a pair that works I hope that it lasts for a very long time.  Although Patch and/or Mae almost always ensure that that doesn't happen.

5. How long has it been since you went to the dentist?

Back when Sadie was this little.

Is it bad that I can only figure this out because the last time I went to the dentist they didn't do x-rays because I was pregnant and I happen to remember which pregnancy that occurred during.

And it wasn't this pregnancy.  Or the last one.

And Maggie is four years old... so... yeah.

One of these days we'll either have dental insurance or extra money lying around to go to the dentist, but until then four years and a half years (and counting) it is.

6. If you could visit any religious site in the world, where would you go?

Lourdes. Sadie has made me watch The Song of Bernadette many, many times, and read her little book about Bernadette nearly as many times and so it's the first place that comes to mind.

If I was returning somewhere we've already visited I would have to struggle to narrow it down between Mount Tabor, Gethsemane and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

At Mount Tabor shortly after finding out we were expecting Sadie.

For more Answer Me This head over to Catholic All Year!

Answer Me This: On Summer, Sleep and Pie

I was planning an Answer Me This/What I Wore Sunday link up extravaganza post today, but by the time I thought about taking a picture of the outfit I wore to Mass it was already covered in some mysterious food that I think we can probably blame on this person, although I don't actually remember it happening:

 

So I'll stick to questions and answers today and throw in a few of the pictures that I snapped this weekend to keep the grandparents happy!

1. What do you still want to do this summer?

Today's bit of summer fun
involved running around
campus with Patch trying to go
over and play Frisbee with
the college kids.

When I read this question I feel like a list of fun things should pop into my head, but in reality it reads more like a list of What-I-Desperately-Think-Should-Be-Done-Before-This-Baby-Decides-It's-Time-To-Show-Up... which includes things like purging our basement of all the things we don't need (and maybe having a garage sale), deep cleaning every room of the house and hearing the happy news that Paul has gotten a job (he's applying all over town at the moment). 

Still, since the bar has ended, it kind of feels like summer just got started and we're finally getting to go out and do fun things with Daddy without worrying about getting home to study for some horrible test that's looming on the horizon. 

It's sweet, sweet freedom. 

So finally going to zoos and parks and museums without the Bar looming over our heads is high up on the list right now, for at least a portion of our days, slipped in between Mae's daily therapy sessions and sewing and that check list that I just can't seem to put out of my mind of things that I'd like to have done. 

2. What's your favorite kind of pie?

I love just about any pie that involves berries... especially raspberries. 

Since 3 out of 3 kids in the house can't have wheat or dairy of both, however, I usually get my berry pie fix with berry cobbler.  Somewhere around here there's a recipe, but basically I make a berry base with berries and a little bit of sugar and then make a topping by mixing almond meal, shredded coconut, brown sugar and that vegan butter that really, really tastes like real butter.  I bake it all until it becomes wonderfully mess cobbler goodness that can ruin a toddler shirt in about ten seconds flat!

3. How much sleep do you need each day? How much do you get?

Right now I need a ridiculous amount of sleep... like ten hours.  I suspect that the anemia I had for the first time in my life during my last pregnancy has returned, and have boosted my iron and vitamin D (because I definitely notice I have more energy when I take extra vitamin D, which is among the things I found while convincing Mae to take her vitamins), and I think that totally unreasonable number is finally sliding back into the realm of normal again. 

When I'm not pregnant, seven hours from bedtime to morning time is okay (although let's face it, that usually involves getting up at least once, or when co-sleeping, half waking up a number of times).  When I'm pregnant eight is the bare minimum to keep me from falling asleep during the day in the middle of the play room floor.

4. Do you prefer to swim in a pool, lake, river, or ocean?

I am definitely a pool girl at heart.  I have an over active imagination when I'm swimming in lakes/rivers/the ocean and always imagine an alligator/shark/lake monster about an inch away from my toes.  Living and surfing in South Africa and seeing so many alligators out the window of our car in Florida probably didn't do much to help my paranoia.  Nor did a particularly memorable surfing trip in San Francisco where a bus pulled up and I read the side that said they conducted shark watching tours as tourists began to pull out their binoculars and stare in our direction. 

I think that was actually the last time that I went surfing...

On the other hand when we were at the fish hatchery a couple of weeks ago Mae tried to rip her hand out of mine and throw herself in to just about every single fish holding tank that we saw.  So she apparently has no problem swimming with large numbers of not-so-little fish.

5. Do you know any poems by heart?

Finally!  Someone who likes memorizing poems
as much as I do!

Dozens.  I'm pretty sure I've annoyed the majority of my friends over the years with my love of poems.  And one of the things I love about doing school with Sadie is that the program that we're using has room for daily memory work and one of her strengths is definitely her memory so we've spent quite a bit of time this year reciting poems.  My favorite poem to hear her recite at the moment (which I've memorized too after hearing her repeat it so many times) is "The Mountain and the Squirrel" by Emerson. 

6. Do you use the public library?

We do!  Although I haven't been nearly as often in the last couple of months as I had been before the final semester of law school arrived.  For quite a while Sadie and I were making weekly trips after her ballet class on Saturdays.  Hopefully we'll be able to start those trips up again now that things are a bit less hectic!

For more Answer Me This head over to Catholic All Year!

Also, this post needs a picture of Maggie and so here it is!

Maggie doing what Maggie does best!  Climbing!

Music, Aisle Seats and Loving summer because I remember winter!

1. When driving, are you more likely to listen to the radio, to CDs or an iPod, or nothing at all?

If anything is on in our car it's usually the radio.  However that doesn't always work.  I'm not sure if there's some dramatic generational gap that occurred between Paul's birth in 1978 and mine in 1982 (which pretty much means he always dodges being called "millennial" while I don't... sigh...) or an east coast/west coast thing or just dramatically different tastes (or a little bit of all of the above) but apparently most of the music that I like just about makes Paul's ears bleed and most of the music he likes (and plays way too loud) make me want to turn the radio down so it's barely audible. 

Sometimes country (which is what I grew up listening to) works as a compromise.  Sometimes.  But most of the time it just ends up turned down so low that it can't compete with the conversation that's going on in the car at the same time. 

2. Do you prefer window or aisle?

Aisle.  If having children, particularly a sick child on this last plane trip, and having to take aforementioned child to the bathroom approximately every ten minutes on a turbulent cross country plane ride, has taught me nothing, it's the importance of aisle seats.

Round two of the flying fun...

The other thing that this past trip taught me is to try to get a seat in the very, very back, right next to the bathroom, so that 150 people don't glare at us when we have to walk past... again. 

Also, if no one ever in our family ever gets sick while traveling on an airplane again it will still be too soon.

Mae on the other hand definitely prefers the window.

3. Do you fall asleep on your side, back, or stomach? What position are you in when you wake up?

Right now I look like this:



Now usually, when I don't look like I'm carrying a basketball under my shirt, I'd say that I fall asleep on my back and wake up on my back and that's how I like to sleep.  But these days I sleep on one side, propped up by as many pillows as I can fit around me, until my arm falls asleep and wakes me up and then I roll over and sleep on the other side until the same thing happens.  Exciting, I know.

I think we have officially crossed into the officially uncomfortable stage of pregnancy... full speed ahead!

4. When is the last time you attended a zoo, circus, carnival, county fair, or parade?

We have a membership that we've been given as an Easter gift for the last two years and so we go to the zoo a lot so that would definitely be the most recent stop we've made.  The last time we were there was for Mae's birthday, since the zoo has sort of become the thing that we do on birthdays.

On the last trip Mae and Paul almost fell of the camel (the saddle started to slip off) and Patch enjoyed his always-favorite-thing-at-the-zoo-activity of riding the train:

5. Do you have a favorite quote or inspirational saying?

Too many to really pick one favorite.  But this is one of my favorites.  And I even looked took some inspiration from this post by Kendra and tried my hand at making my own little graphic using a picture I snapped of Sadie today during a particularly hectic Sunday morning:

6. What's the best thing about summer?

Remember winter?  Six months of this:



And this:



And let's not forget this:



Our street.  Ice storm 2013-2014.  8 days without power.

There are so many things that I love about summer.  I was a lifeguard from the summer after my freshman year of high school until after I graduated from college and I love being out in the sun and enjoying the water.  I am not such a fan of not-so-dry heat and places-that-don't-think-they-need-air-conditioners-but-do (at least those particular places that don't have them when they need them... like 90% of our house), but when I think about this past winter and shoveling snow when it was -15 degrees outside I have to say... I love summer. 

Because I would much rather sit outside with my feet in a baby pool watching this:

than waking up to icicles everywhere!

And now for a little last minute What I Wore Sunday.

Today I wore one of the outfits I could still squeeze my bump into before heading off to Mass with the entire fmaily.  It came out looking like this:

For more WIWS and more question and answer fun at Catholic All Year head over to the link ups! 

Questions, Outfits and the night I heard the words: "Run, run so I can shoot you like a dog..."

Happy Sunday!  I just had to join in the link up fun!

1. Have you ever walked out of a movie? 

Nope.

We almost had to walk out of Brave because a certain four year old was terrified of the bear (the fact that I'd agreed to sit in the front row of the theater probably didn't help)... but we made it through and it became one of her favorite movies!

It probably helps that I usually get a chance to go to a movie roughly once every 2-3 years... and so they tend to be carefully chosen because they are so, so rare!

2. What do you most often use for blogs and blogging: desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone?

 The only device I have that works for blogging is a laptop and so that's where all of my posts come from...  but I really can't imagine trying to type a post on something that didn't have a keyboard.

The laptop in question...

3. Have you ever had anything stolen from you? 

I could chose so many different instances for this one.  There was the time when I was working for a non-profit in Berkeley and someone smashed my car window and stole my rugby bag which had socks and a sports bra in it, waiting to be washed.  There was the time when I forgot my purse in the car (right outside work during the middle of the day) after flying back from the polygraph/psych exam right after I'd been hired by the CIA and someone smashed my car window and stole my purse and the six hundred dollars cash for travel expenses that I'd been given at the end of that particular exhausting trip, that very, very unfortunately was in it... The person then used my credit cards to go to Jack in the Box in the minutes before I managed to have them cancelled.  There was Paul's bike which was stolen out of our garage a little over a week ago.

A trip to Cape Agulhas during my semester abroad.

The time that stands out though had less to do with what was stolen and more to do with what came after and comes from the semester I spent at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.  One night my roommates and I saw flashing lights outside and walked out onto the deck to find out that someone had broken into my boyfriend at the times car.  They'd stolen his rugby cleats, some other shoes and a pair of my sandals that were super old and rather gross since I wore them after I took my cleats off at rugby practice.

At first I hung back out of sight.  I was already in my pajamas and there was a huge group of security people and police officers who had responded when a neighbor heard the breaking glass and hit the panic button on their security system.  But there was so much yelling that I could't understand (because they were yelling in Afrikaans and my Afrikaans was mostly limited to our coach yelling at us when we weren't playing well... I can still say "you played like @#$#" in Afrikaans...and know a handful of other colorful phrases that I won't repeat here for the sake of my readers... which is especially funny to me now since we only had one loss the entire season.) that I went down the stairs (as everyone told me to "Get back inside!") and stopped at the landing in my flannel embarassingly floral PJs and asked loudly over the shouts: "What's going on?!?!?"

I just had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that couldn't quite be ignored.  Something was off.  Something just didn't feel right.  They'd caught the man and had him there, first pinned up against the fence and then at the center of a group, although the picture in my head is blurry now, eleven year later and I don't think I could really see through the crowd of people from various security companies and police who'd arrived, although I thought that he was begging them for something.  Still maybe I only remember that because of what I found out later.

When I came outside and asked my question, they quickly loaded the man into the police car and all the cars with their flashing lights drove away, leaving our street in darkness again.

The next day I pestered my boyfriend until he told me what they'd been saying. He didn't want to tell me.  Finally I found out that they'd roughed the man up, slammed him against the bars of our driveway gate, and then they'd let him go and were yelling "run, run so I can shoot you like a dog!" when I'd come down the stairs and asked what was going on... all over a few pairs of worthless old shoes.

4. Do you identify as a member of a particular ethnic group? 

Not really.  I'm a little bit of this and a little bit of that, with parts of my Dad's family being here since the revolutionary war, with stories of an Indian princess that I was raised on (and a faded name on a very old family tree) thrown in.

Since I have blue yes and I can get very, very tan (even with sunscreen) and was a lifeguard through high school and college I got lots of "what exactly are you?" questions in college (which to me always seemed like such a weird question to ask a complete stranger).  I could say "Irish, Scottish, English, German" which would sum up most of my background, with most of the other countries in Europe thrown in if I go back in the giant geneology binder with information my great grandmother passed on to us and that my Dad put together for a family union over a decade ago.

But usually I just think of myself as American.  Since I'm a little of this and a little of that it seems kind of silly to try to claim to "be" anything else!

5. Do you abstain from meat on Fridays? 

Usually.  In other words, when I wake up and manage to remember it's Friday before we preparing something that involves meat (or eating something that has meat in it... usually involving leftovers) than yes.

However on days when I end up stumbling around the house not remembering it's Friday and eat meat before remembering I do something else instead (usually involving a rosary).

6. Seen anything weird lately?

Pin pointing one weird thing around here is kind of... difficult.  In fact a week without some sort of weirdness is... weird... so I may not be the best judge of these things.

The most interesting and not quite normal part of my day today came when I had Patrick strapped to my back and was rocking Mae forward and backward in the stroller (which by the way is the best solution we've found so far to keep her happy during Mass) in the narthex and she got very excited and started pointing to the light above us while saying "No rainbow!  No rainbow!  No rainbow!" and making a circle with her finger around the light.  I crouched down next to her and assured her that I understood she didn't see a rainbow and she smiled happily, occasionally repeating the phrase and pointing to the light over the next hour.

I think I'm going to talk to her OT again about getting her vision tested with a specialist after this latest conversation.  We've had some other moments that had us questioning if her vision had some abnormalities.  She likes to stand on books and look down at them and sometimes finds it easier to answer questions about things she's looking at after looking at pictures or objects from across the room... and she refused to watch anything on TV until about a month ago or would only watch Dora out of the corner of her eye (Dora used to be her favorite and could at least buy me half an hour to make dinner) for over a year.

She's really not a fan of screens at all these days, and one of her therapists recently suggested that screens might bother her because she might be seeing the individual pixels.  That added to her comment about rainbows today makes me wonder exactly what her view of the world looks like!

I'm not sure if that qualifies as weird, but it's what's on my mind at the moment.

Speaking of being at Mass it's time for What I Wore Sunday.  Today actually went pretty well.  I had Paul take Sadie in to Mass and stayed out in the narthex with our two youngest and that actually worked out this morning.  Patch fell asleep on my back and Mae didn't have any screaming fits... and that makes today a success!

I wore a very stretchy non-maternity dress that I got years ago at Target to Mass today, with a snood and Patch strapped to my back:

Patch wore a pair of overalls from Thred Up with a Mickey Mouse t-shirt under it:

And what did Mae wear?

If you guessed "the Dora dress that you wash almost every night" you'd be correct.

And this was the best picture I got of her today since she was always headed somewhere to do something:

Sadie wore a hand me down dress that I absolutely love and had a blast playing with one of the little girls she's been playing with after Mass each week at the park:

For more WIWS head over to FLAP!  For more Answer me this check out Catholic All Year!

On Strollers, Mini Buses and Dora's Yellow Socks

It's Sunday, which means it's time for some questions and some outfits!

1. How often do you take public transportation?

Not at all these days.  We are a one car family though, so when we need to go somewhere and Paul isn't here I load the kids in the super stroller and we walk:

Sadie usually walks most of the way, but on walks that are say... three plus miles,
she usually starts to get tired and then I'm thankful for the "extra" seat.

Most of the places I've lived in the US haven't had great networks of public transportation and so, outside of taking BART into San Francisco in college, I have never used it much.

Which means that usually when I think of public transportation I think of my semester at University of Cape Town which involved taking a couple of "mini buses" to get from the house we lived in to school.  This usually involved cramming about 16 people into a van made to hold far less than that amount, while speeding along with a man hanging out the window yelling the bus's destination and looking for more passengers to squeeze in (one of these days I'll have to tell the story of the time my roommates forgot to pick me up from a rugby game and I had to take a mini bus home at night {a no no} and ended up having a guy pick me up and throw me over his shoulder before I managed to fight him off and get away).

When my parents visited they didn't rent a car the first day because they knew I used the buses to get around and had been fine.  After the first day in which the driver pulled out a milk crate for my dad to sit on while we careened through the city, and I counted back change for the driver since his assistant wasn't there, they were ready to try driving on the wrong side of the road in a rental.

2. How many cousins do you have?

Between my parents combined six siblings I have 12 first cousins scattered from one coast to the other.  We've always lived fairly far apart though, so usually at least a couple of years passes before we see each other.

3. Have you ever fired a gun?

Nope.

4. Do you ride roller coasters?

When I'm not pregnant!

So that answer came to mind because there's a Walt Disney World photo contest that Sadie and I entered with this photo:

And even though there's probably a one in million chance that we'll actually win the seven night stay at Walt Disney World I found myself thinking "and I'll be pregnant again!  And won't be able to go on any of my favorite rides!"

Likely because the last time I was waddling around the Magic Kingdom (before we moved out of the Florida and lost our resident's passes...) I looked like this, which pretty much meant that all the fun rides, which Sadie has been big enough to ride since she was three, were out of the question:

...which meant no fun rides for me!

This picture also happens to be at 24 weeks, which is what I am right now and makes
me feel slightly less abnormal about looking basically full term at this point.

5. What's your favorite flower?

I was going to say something like daisies, but since a new flower store has opened at the end of our street Sadie has been insisting that my favorite flower is roses, every single time she glances over and sees the sign for flowers in the window.  And her reaction to my answer of daisies was that it was ridiculous and obviously my real favorite is roses (preferably pink roses, I think).  So to dodge the outrage of a certain someone intent on buying roses we just won't mention the whole daisy thing, okay?

Sadie in a dress covered with what might be my favorite flower,
which was my very first experimental sewing project when
I started to teach myself how to sew clothing.

6. Are you allergic to anything?

I'm really allergic to penicillin and sulfa.  It's not pretty.  At all.

Once during the time when I worked in an aquarium store I was treating a fish tank (at home) with sulfa because the fish were sick and I reached my hand in to adjust something and suddenly there were hives rapidly climbing up my arm.  That's when I began to realize that the allergy really bad and not just when I took the medicine orally.  So I steer clear and can't handle the stuff at all.

And every time I have anything with aspartame I start to slur my words, half of my body goes numb, I act like I'm drunk and I have a migraine to beat all other migraines.  Not sure if that's an allergy or what but... I'm pretty paranoid about checking for aspartame in anything that might potentially have it. And I'm not a fan of all the new names they're selling it under.  I'm just thankful that so far there's still a PKU warning on products that contain it... so I'm always on the lookout for that.

Now on a totally different note, I did manage to snap a few pictures this morning after Mass for WIWS.

I'll start with Patch who wore the only pair of pants that stays around his waist without his little snappy belt thing (which I put in a "safe" place where I'd always be able to find it and... you guessed it... now can't find it...).  He was a handful during Mass but when Paul whispered to him "Boomer... you be good to Mommy!" he responded with "mmmmkay...." and was better for approximately five minutes:

He did spend a good deal of time giving Mae's monkey backpack kisses:

Mae wore the only piece of clothing that she wants to wear these days.  I'm hoping to steal it away at bath time tonight to wash it again... because she pretty much wants to be in this 24/7 and I have to be stealthy to sneak it downstairs.

She spent Mass in Paul's arms saying the word:  "yellow" over and over and over again.  I think it's because she played with that Dora doll in the picture so much that the yellow socks have now worn off.  When I told Paul after Mass that that was my theory I was rewarded with a huge smile and more talk of the missing yellow socks on the way home in the car:

Sadie wore her new favorite outfit and a pair of shoes that her sister picked out for her and insisted she wear.  While Sadie was putting them on Maggie stood next to her and squealed "Come on!!!!  Come on!  Come on!!!!" impatiently because apparently her sister was not moving quickly enough for her:

I wore a dress from Thred Up that I bought before finding out I was pregnant and that I had completely forgotten about!  And that is our Sunday so far!

For more WIWS head over to FLAP!  To join in the Answer Me This fun join Kendra at Catholic All Year!

Answer Me This: Bathing Suits, Tattoos I Wish I Didn't Have and Communion on the Tongue

1. When's the last time you got a new bathing suit? 

It was 2011 when we moved to Florida and I used all the credit card points that I had at the time to buy a few clearance Land's End suits.  It was a good choice when moving to a place where we were at the splash park as often as not and there was a good chance I'd be chasing someone through the water who wasn't quite ready to go home at the end of the play session.

2. Who made the last incoming call on your phone? 

Everyone wanted to talk to the birthday
girl yesterday!  (A sneak preview
of the pictures I'll get around to posting
later today from yesterday's birthday!)

I am 99% sure that it was my mom after my phone went dead while Sadie was talking to her, and that that call went to voice mail because my not-at-all-new phone was just worn out from all the talking that went on yesterday.

My phone goes dead a lot.  I am just not quite attached enough to the idea of cell phones and having a phone with me all the time to remember to charge it when I should.

Although I have gotten better since on any given day there's a good chance I'm going to be getting a call about a doctor's appointment or from a therapist about an upcoming appointment or getting a call from our case worker like we did this last Friday to hear that we may finally be getting in to see a speech therapist (although the words "probably before October" because of paper work needing to go through were mentioned, which would mean altogether a 12 month wait from the time we began waiting, which totally doesn't show how much work has gone into making it happen because everyone has really been working on our behalf to try to get her in... but lists are long and speech therapists have been hard to find!)... so I'm slowly becoming more responsible at making sure it's plugged in at least every couple of days so that I don't miss anything.

The child who finally after
three years of trying to convince
 every priest she meets that she's old enough
to receive has finally stopped
sticking out her tongue trying
to move up her first communion date.

3. If you receive communion, do you receive it in the hands or on the tongue? 

On the tongue.

When I first went through RCIA we were introduced to receiving communion in hand and that's what I did.

Then Paul began receiving on the tongue, but I was too nervous about being one of the only people in our parish (and being a brand new Catholic) to make the switch with him.

Then I realized that having a baby was the perfect time to make the switch because I had no choice, with my always full hands, and could finally do what I'd been secretly longing to do for quite a while.

And now that my hands are always completely full and I'm usually trying to keep Mae from attempting to steal the chalice from the priest it really couldn't happen any other way!

4. Do you have a tattoo? 

Yes.  I have a few (or 23-ish).  I went through a phase.  I think you could probably call it a tattoo addiction. I just liked getting them.  Yes, it's probably weird.

I've had some of them lasered off  a few times (like the one pictured below) but it takes more than a few times for them to disappear and laser removal is expensive so more treatments have been moved into the indefinite future.

Thankfully most of them are mostly hidden.  Except the one on my neck (ek!  Stupid 22 year old mistake) and ankle, most people would never guess...  The one on my neck bugs me the most because... well... it's on my neck.  It's hard to miss.

And I feel slightly ridiculous walking around with "warrior" tattooed on the back of my neck while dragging around three kids.  Hopefully the dozens of students we run into on every single shopping trip who can read it at least get a laugh out of how ridiculous it now looks:

I felt much, much cooler when I got it after getting my black belt.

5. How many dinner plates are in your house? 

Not very many.  My sets of china that we were given at the wedding are still back in California and that's probably a very good thing because plates and cups and bowls have a tendency to shatter around here.

When you have a kid that can rip giant bolts out of walls, destroys metal baby gates like it's nothing, and has actually broken the legs off a metal heater, glasses and plates really don't stand a chance.  My guess would be maybe 10 (assorted) dinner plates are scattered around the kitchen after yesterday's birthday waiting for me to get up the energy to fix the post-birthday mess situation that I was too tired to deal with after cleaning the rest of the house last night.  There definitely isn't a single complete set of anything glass anywhere inside the four walls of this house!

Our destroyer of all things glass.

6. Do you have an accent?

The girls and I drove across
North Dakota by ourselves back in 2012...
It was a couple of months before Patch was born
and was quite the adventure!

I tend to think I don't.  However, growing up in California a lot of people had trouble understanding the way that I say any words with the letters "ag" in them.  So words like bag or sag or hag or dragon or wagon all come out a little bit differently because I tend to (okay I couldn't even pretend to do otherwise even after careful coaching form friends, until at least college) say "ag" words like "egg."  So dragon sounds like "dregg-on."

I had no idea where it came from until I realized that my mom does it, as does my grandpa who's from North Dakota.  And sure enough, whenever I take those linguistic "where is your accent from" tests I get "North Dakota/parts of Minnesota" as the result, despite the fact that I'd never stepped into North Dakota until after I'd turned 30.

And how has it been passed on after all this time?

 The other day when Sadie and I were working on spelling and vowel sounds I carefully sounded out an ag word saying the a sound the traditional way and she looked at me, shook her head and said "I think you meant to say 'bag'" (with the same -egg sound I still use unless I'm thinking very, very hard to be understood.).  So it looks like even though three generations have been born in California there's still a little bit of my grandpa's accent being passed along from his childhood in North Dakota.

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