7 Quick Takes: The Hodge Podge Edition

It’s been a slow blogging month. It’s not that I’m in a writing rut. I’m replete with ideas, but I really just haven’t felt like diverting my limited energy stores to fleshing out meaningful posts. Every day I jot down thoughts here and there in journals, but nothing seems to go beyond the embryonic stage. I’m also in the editing process for my book, and it feels a bit like repeatedly severing my limbs; it’s been a more painful process than I expected.


Thank goodness for Jen’s QTs. I have a good excuse to just put a bunch of random thoughts out there.


So here’s my mental hodge podge for today. Enjoy (or not).

My 22-month-old’s leg is healing well (despite muddled me putting her boot on the wrong leg yesterday), and she’s completely back to her spunky self. In fact, she’s figured out how to remove the boot, so I’m constantly putting it back on her. She’s also now sporting a nice abrasion below her nose. This happened under a babysitter’s watch, so I’m freed from any responsibility whatsoever. Poor Rachel endured an injury this week as well. She tripped and fell and her mouth hit a decorative table and she scraped her gum up so badly, it looked like bone was poking through. An emergency trip to the pediatric dentist diagnosed her with a bad gum injury. I’ve been praying to my girls’ guardian angels with increased fervor lately.

Madeline: Just because. It’s really hard to explain.


My kids say funny things all of the time, but the seriousness of my daughter when she said this struck me as hilarious. But I do get it: Certain songs really move me, too. Maybe I’ll share a list of some of them next week.

Today the older girls and I are taking Gaba (my mom) to the Baron York Tea Room. We’re so excited for the all-girls’ outing even if it’s sleeting again in Georgia. Madeline and Rae have been planning what they’re going to wear for weeks (pretty, smocked dresses that were Christmas gifts from my parents), and we’ve been practicing our best manners during our tea time at home. Stay tuned for a report on the girls’ day out!

 

The same day I published this post, David Mills published an excellent piece on the antidote to being an anxious parent.

An excerpt: “I didn’t pay much attention when John Paul II was elected, nor to his first sermon as pope, but some years later when I first came across his declaration “Be not afraid,” I thought it a pretty lame declaration with which to start one’s work. It seemed to me a platitude like “brush between meals” and “eat more fiber,” not a call to arms. Yeah, sure, whatever, I thought. Biblical slogans are a dime a dozen.

But I was still young then and had not seen how many ways the world has to make you afraid. Just have children and a world of imagined and unimaginable horrors will present itself to you, and minor inconveniences or hurts will appear to be losses from which your child will never recover, and every decision and choice one that can lead as easily to misery as to success. Oddly enough, affluence does not necessarily make you feel more secure, but usually just multiplies the reasons you can find to be afraid and increases the triviality of the results you fear.

I had not seen how hopes quickly become fears, and how the deepest hopes become the worst fears, and how the fallen heart can manufacture reasons to be afraid even from blessings, like education. You might believe, sincerely, when your child is eight or ten that the only education you want for him is one that will teach him what he needs to know about literature and art and history, which can be provided at any number of schools, including the cheap and unknown ones.”

Do read all of it, especially the last paragraph. Be not afraid, my friends. Be not afraid!

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