Try, Try Again
'Tis a lesson you should heed,
Try, try again;
If at first you don't succeed,
Try, try again.
Then your courage should appear
For, if you will persevere,
You will conquer, never fear;
Try, try again.
This is the story of my life- with both spiritual and earthly endeavors. Every day I ask God to help me grow in love of Him and become more virtuous. Every day I try again to grow spiritually. Every day I try to be a better wife and mother. I tried to start blogging a couple years ago and was pretty faithful to it for a while and then it fell off the end of my to do list. I tried starting again and the same thing happened. The impetus of my trying a 3rd time (3rd time's a charm, right?) is my leaving Facebook. There are numerous reasons I left, but the main reasons were to use my time more wisely, to avoid temptation to the sin of curiosity (did you know that can be a sin? You can read what Scupoli says about curiosity and its ill effects here) and to protect my eyes from impure images because of the ads. So in an effort to keep family and friends who live far away still in the loop of our lives (and more importantly the lives of my children) and also for me to have a way to store memories of funny, sweet things my children do, I am going to try to blog again. I hope to post at least once a week. At first, it will probably just be once a week on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. I will post what laughs and lessons we experienced each week in homeschooling or extra-curricular activities. Eventually I would like to post these updates on Friday or Saturday and then on Sunday share a piece of a project that I have been slowly working on since last year. I will share more about that later when the time comes but it has to do with mental prayer for children.
Since this is the first blog post in a long time and because I didn't have time to write a Christmas letter this year, I will give more of a general update on each child. Since my last blog post over a year ago (haha!), God blessed us with the birth of another son, Thomas Joseph who is named after (and in honor of) St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Joseph, foster father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Thomas has had some minor health issues with his kidney and urinary tract that has led to his being hospitalized several times over the first 4-5 months of his life. He also had one surgery done and will need another one done in about a year. However, thanks to the many prayers of friends and family and by the goodness of God, Thomas is doing much better. He is now 6 months old and is a chunky big boy weighing in at 22.4lbs (no, that is not a typo) and measuring 29.5inches at his 6 month old check up. He is sitting up pretty well now and loves to play. It's so interesting how he resembles Mary not only in stature, but personality as well. He's a little yapper like Mary was and studies things like Mary did too. It's so fun. One of the funniest things he does now (I think) is that he'll be busy quietly doing something and then Philip will start crying for some reason in another room and Thomas thinks Philip is talking to him and starts cooing. It's like Thomas doesn't know Philip is upset and just wants to talk back to him. I find it very amusing.
Mary is very busy with homeschooling this year. I am mostly using Seton's 1st grade curriculum with her with the exception of Science and Math. We are doing Catholic Heritage Curriculum's Behold and See for science and Singapore Math. I just have to say, I LOVE Seton. It is thoroughly Catholic and Mary thrives with that. She has always been a religious little girl and she loves the Seton work because it incorporates a lot of prayers, hymns and stories about saints or Bible stories in them. I also am trying to do some poetry with her though from the "Harp and Laurel Wreath." This week we read "The Swing" by Robert Louis Stevenson and I had Mary draw a picture based on the poem. This is what she drew:
Philip has suddenly developed an interest in doing "school." Until now, we haven't done any real school (obviously) but just point out letters and numbers as we go about our day. Mary also reads to him (and Thomas) sometimes about various topics.
I also try to include him when I do Religion with Mary. However, he has been wanting to do school lately, so I just ordered some pre-school books through Seton for Philip so that he has some "school" to do. I'm very excited about these for Philip!
This year, we also are participating in a local CoOp for Catholic homeschoolers. Mary LOVES CoOp. I think it's great because it teaches Mary social/classroom skills and she gets to do more hands on things as opposed to the workbooks (which she loves, but I like her to do other things too). I honestly don't get to do many science experiments with her but she gets this through CoOp. Ironically, I am one of the science teachers. It's hilarious because I won't bother with doing these experiments at home with her, but I try to do a lot of experiments when I teach for CoOp. I think it has to do with the fact that I feel like I'm getting "more out of it" because at CoOp there are like 30 students, but at home it's just Mary so it seems like so much work for very little. Anyway I am making an effort to get more kits to do more hands on science things with Mary. Kits are more expensive, but I think it's worth it to not have to hunt high and low for different things to do an experiment with Mary.
Well, we are about to have some friends over, so this is all I have time for this week. Next week I hope to be more organized and have more time to post a better update. We had 3 doctors appts this week for Thomas, so I had less time this week. So, this is all for now! Hope to post another and more detailed update next Sunday!
Since this is the first blog post in a long time and because I didn't have time to write a Christmas letter this year, I will give more of a general update on each child. Since my last blog post over a year ago (haha!), God blessed us with the birth of another son, Thomas Joseph who is named after (and in honor of) St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Joseph, foster father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Thomas has had some minor health issues with his kidney and urinary tract that has led to his being hospitalized several times over the first 4-5 months of his life. He also had one surgery done and will need another one done in about a year. However, thanks to the many prayers of friends and family and by the goodness of God, Thomas is doing much better. He is now 6 months old and is a chunky big boy weighing in at 22.4lbs (no, that is not a typo) and measuring 29.5inches at his 6 month old check up. He is sitting up pretty well now and loves to play. It's so interesting how he resembles Mary not only in stature, but personality as well. He's a little yapper like Mary was and studies things like Mary did too. It's so fun. One of the funniest things he does now (I think) is that he'll be busy quietly doing something and then Philip will start crying for some reason in another room and Thomas thinks Philip is talking to him and starts cooing. It's like Thomas doesn't know Philip is upset and just wants to talk back to him. I find it very amusing.
I also try to include him when I do Religion with Mary. However, he has been wanting to do school lately, so I just ordered some pre-school books through Seton for Philip so that he has some "school" to do. I'm very excited about these for Philip!
This year, we also are participating in a local CoOp for Catholic homeschoolers. Mary LOVES CoOp. I think it's great because it teaches Mary social/classroom skills and she gets to do more hands on things as opposed to the workbooks (which she loves, but I like her to do other things too). I honestly don't get to do many science experiments with her but she gets this through CoOp. Ironically, I am one of the science teachers. It's hilarious because I won't bother with doing these experiments at home with her, but I try to do a lot of experiments when I teach for CoOp. I think it has to do with the fact that I feel like I'm getting "more out of it" because at CoOp there are like 30 students, but at home it's just Mary so it seems like so much work for very little. Anyway I am making an effort to get more kits to do more hands on science things with Mary. Kits are more expensive, but I think it's worth it to not have to hunt high and low for different things to do an experiment with Mary.
Well, we are about to have some friends over, so this is all I have time for this week. Next week I hope to be more organized and have more time to post a better update. We had 3 doctors appts this week for Thomas, so I had less time this week. So, this is all for now! Hope to post another and more detailed update next Sunday!
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