Saturday, January 10, 2015

Happy Heritage: Moving into our Joshua Home

Our new house is big enough to make a baby monitor feasible. So we dusted off the one we still owned from nearly 8 years ago when our firstborn joined our family. Back then I registered for one because "everyone" told me I'd still want one to hear the little one even in our tiny house and because I had the idea that I'd carry it with me into the garden while she napped. RealLife: I could hear her quite easily throughout our house and when she napped, I napped. I was too spent to "waste" her naps on our garden. Now the monitor allows me to leave our 7mo old in his crib on the 2nd floor while I have the freedom of roaming the house (and maybe the garden...). Side benefit: it entertains the 19mo old beyond reason as she screams into the walkie-talkie receiver, every fiber of her being vibrating with the effort, barely maintaining her balance on her tippy toes, excited ecstatic to hear her brother (or sister, playing in the other room) through the receiver and making every effort possible to respond.
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The biggest incident that came from our move was my husband's smartphone falling from his pocket and being run over by a truck. Essential to his business, he had to spend more time than he would have liked finding another phone. But, he has a replacement now, and it really wasn't the most terrible fallout imaginable. We greatly appreciate our friends and family members who helped us out, by moving our stuff, by watching our kids, by painting or cleaning or wiring, by helping in the food prep, by assembling furniture, by remodeling our new home, by lending us tools, and in every other way we were supported in this move.
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Since I gave up on intensive Bible study, I've been a little bit at a loss on what to read during my daily prayer time. I've been reading the daily selections used at Mass which has its merits and some people find very satisfying, but I don't really enjoy. Mostly I find it difficult to delve very deeply into the verses chosen when individual verses are omitted (albeit for valid reasons) and the Responsorial Psalm almost always has verses omitted. I just don't enjoy the style for my personal Scripture study although I highly recommend it for those who do enjoy it and I do read the selections most Sundays in preparation for attending Mass. With the beginning of the new year I have settled on reading through the entire Bible, for the first time using a plan that includes the entire Catholic canon. I plan to read the chapters designated for each calendar day, skipping chapters that I simply don't get to rather than trying to play catch-up. I had been often playing the daily Mass readings podcast and found my children listening in, so I looked up an online audio Bible resource to play my daily readings on, so they will continue listening in.
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I am being outdone by my children in the area of piety. My 7yr old Maria says openly that she wants to be a saint. My 19mo old Princess includes angel, Mary, and AMEN! in her limited vocabulary and loves to blow goodnight kisses to a couple different religious pictures regularly. My 6yr old Reese is more pragmatic but refused a few months ago to be left out when my husband began taking our oldest to a weekly Mass. She may not always enjoy Sunday Mass, but at her insistence always goes with Maria and Daddy to Wednesday Mass. Lest anyone think we are too holy though (HA! That would not be RealLife!), I frequently overhear statements like "Sister, I will let you have the honor of serving me now." Besides the far-less-than-holy fights that take place multiple times every day.
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There are no pictures to accompany this post because I haven't unpacked my camera yet. Nor am I the least bit discouraged by that. Even with so much still hidden away in one box or another, and even with not knowing which box holds what I need in order to ____ nor where to put what I do find, the extra space makes such a positive difference. Maybe I should write a post on the problems I see in the fad movement toward tiny houses and why I am eagerly moving in the opposite direction.

2 comments:

  1. "Maybe I should write a post on the problems I see in the fad movement toward tiny houses and why I am eagerly moving in the opposite direction."
    Yes! Please do, we are among those who see down sizing as a wonderful relief to all the stuff our society says we "need" and I would love to hear the other side because frankly I just don't understand it. I grew up in a huge house of 3600sqft and we currently moved from an 2400sqft house to an 800sqft apartment(with 5 children under 12). For me 2400sqft was a huge waist we had more closets then I knew what to do with and I often just felt overwhelmed with trying to figure out where to put things. I like to have a place for everything and everything in it's place and I found in a much larger home things often just got shoved somewhere because there was empty space and then we were always searching for things. In a smaller area you don't have that you have to put things back just right or your tripping over them. My idea home would be between 1000 sqft and 1200sqft, and most people consider that small for our size of family but I believe it is quite perfect. I would love to hear your pros and cons to big and small houses and what you consider a large and small homes.

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