The Wine-Dark Sea

I bought Moira Farrell’s Home Catechesis Manual for Ages 3-5 for the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd more than a year ago. (about halfway down on this page.) I finally gave my first lesson today. What has been holding me back? The materials and the dilemma of not having enough money to buy them or enough time to make them. It’s a catch 22 and though I love the philosophy of Montessori in general and of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd in particular, I’ve always found it hard to see how it really meshes with my family’s particular situation and needs.

Still, I’ve been feeling a strong call to give Sophie, Bella and Ben the Good Shepherd presentation and the presentations on the Mass. They already have done quite a bit of their own “work” on both the Christmas and Easter stories using the toys and materials we already owned. But I wanted them—and Sophie especially—to spend time contemplating Jesus as the Good Shepherd.

So I came up with a two-pronged approach. I decided to do a little bit of making, a bit of adapting materials we already have, and a bit of begging. I asked my parents to buy the Mass kit as a present and they graciously agreed. I had heard of people making or substituting with creative thrifting but thrifting takes that precious time that I’m already too short of. So that takes care of that presentation.

For the Good Shepherd presentation, I realized I could use the shepherd and sheep from our Fontanini nativity set. Sure it’s not pure Montessori, but it would be good enough. Then I just needed a sheepfold and a wolf. I found a little picket fence at Michaels and made a cardboard pasture to go under it. Then I set out to make my wolf out of cardboard until I could find a plastic one. I got carried away with the sheer pleasure of creating and made half a dozen cardboard sheep and a cardboard shepherd as well. But they are really too flimsy to stand up to hard play. They could barely stand at all when I was giving the presentation. Still, watching me make them engaged the children’s curiosity and given their recent propensity to play with paper dolls, I knew that the flatness and flimsyness would not at all deter their fertile imaginations.

Bella was thrilled by the presentation and very engaged in a dialogue with me, answering the questions and speculating on the presentation. Before I’d even finished giving the presentation, she immediately wanted to tell the parable of the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to find the one lost sheep.

Sophie and Ben asked a bunch of questions, not about the presentation itself but about the set up and materials. They didn’t answer questions or engage in dialogue. Sophie seemed initially distressed by the wolf and immediately went to huddle with her blankie on the couch. However, when she got up she immediately went over to the table and picked up the wolf. Ben was playing with the sheep inthe fold and he yelled, “Go away! You can’t come in!” And Sophie began to play along with his game about the wolf attacking and the shepherd protecting the sheep.

A fight broke out as all three children wanted to use the materials. The cardboard shepherd and sheep were having a hard time standing up. So I immediately went to get the nativity figures. I also grabbed some scarves and then made a sheepfold out of blocks and a green scarf and used a blue scarf for water and a purple scarf for the dark, dangerous place. Sophie began playing with the second set and Bella offered a couple of elephants to be attackers in place of the wolf. Sophie began to name all of the sheep. One was Mary. One was Rosie. Then there were Lawn, Bow, Flower, and Mary-Bow.

Bella decorated the pasture with colorful barrettes to represent flowers. Sophie built up the walls of her block sheepfold to make them stronger. Ben went back to painting rather than fight to get access to the sheep and shepherd.

Later I came back and found that the wolf had become harmless and was no longer threatening the sheep so the shepherd could let them go in and out at will. I think the Wolf of Gubbio was responsible for that development. Then the two shepherds began to work together and to take turns guarding the flocks while the other slept. Ok this is definitely not orthodox Catechesis of the Good Shepherd and a proper catechist would probably confiscate the materials. I thought about it and did make a comment about how they had strayed from Jesus’ story. But Bella said I told them they could play and I guess she interpreted that liberally.

Still, they kept coming back to it. Later when I came back I overheard from Sophie:

“My shepherd celebrates Good Shepherd Sunday because it’s about shepherds. Jesus loves us so much. He is the Good Shepherd and we are his sheep. My shepherd is one of his sheep too.” Yeah, I guess she does get it. Right now Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus are in her sheepfold with the shepherd and the sheep and a bunch of flowers. I’m not sure what that means. “The gate was closed. Only animals were left there.”

And Bella playing about the lost sheep: “She’s lost, she’s lost, he cried. Tears came from the shepherd’s eyes. Have you seen my sheep wandering away? The shepherd never, never stopped. He walked around his fold seven times. He never stopped. All the sheep were eating the grass in the fold. He took the ripest grass and hung it. I will not put it back he said to himself until I have found the sheep. I remember to pray for my little one, he said.”

Anthony likes curry; but not with rice. He pushed away the first bowl I gave him and then whined till I gave him some sans rice. So far we’re evenly split: Sophie and Anthony like curry while Ben and Bella eat only plain rice.

1. We told the children that we are expecting a new baby while they were eating their pancakes Sunday after Mass. Bella sparkled with excitement: “REALLY?!?!!!” Sophie had a more subtle gleam but it was there. She kept asking me throughout the day: “It is real? Is it true? Do you really have a baby in your belly?” In an excited kind of way. Ben just asked if he could have another “pakepake” (That’s pancake for those who don’t speak Ben.)

Sophie, dressed as a priest. She told me that the scarves were her vestments. Oh and, yes, she was a male. Bella did her hair.

2. At dinner we were discussing names. Bella is still lobbying as strongly for “Baby Rose” as she was when we were expecting Anthony. Sophie suggested, “Mary… or Dogggie-Cup,” and then proceeded to bombard us with bunch of silly names in the “Doggie-Cup” vein. What can I say? She’s four. (Doggie-Cup refers to her favorite sippy cup that has cartoon dogs on it. Yes, they still all use sippy cups because they travel well and it minimizes spills at the table. Which is important when the 14 month old is constantly pulling down anything he can reach. Oh and has just learned how to climb onto the chairs and thence onto the table.)

Anthony climbs onto the table.

3. Yes, did I mention that Anthony is a climbing-crazed climber person? He’s figured out how to push the stool around and get to the kitchen counters. And how to climb onto the kitchen chairs and thence onto the table. Dom caught him just about to throw down an open container of flour on Sunday. No, I’d left the closed container on the kitchen table but Anthony pushed the stool over to the chair, mounted the chair, then climbed onto the table and grabbed down the container then opened the latch on the container. He’s driving me crazy. Especially since this last week has been cold and rainy and he hasn’t been able to play outside. He’s been perfecting his getting into stuff mode. I feel bad for the constant chorus of, “No, Anthony!” except that he really doesn’t seem to listen at all.

Bella with the St Gianna Molla book

4. Bella told me today that she is “falling in love with St Gianna Molla.” We are reading this biography of St Gianna and although Bella is still convinced that she heard God’s call to her to be a nun when she was at Mass on Holy Thursday, she is wonderfully surprised to discover a saint who is a loving wife and mother and doctor. She is very insistent about her call, by the way, every time it comes up she tells me gravely that it is “a very true thing. I really heard God’s call for me and it is to be a religious sister.” And then she seriously wonders what order she will join, “I don’t know yet what order God will call me to.” (I don’t necessarily recommend these books for children as young as Bella. I’ve had to do some editing as I read and we’ve had some discussions about the fairly intense material. Reading about martyrs is tough.)

I no longer remember why Bella was pouting. Probably I wouldn’t read her a book.

5. Bella sat on a wasp on Sunday and got a sting in a very sensitive spot. She came in screaming, tears streaming, “I never knew how painful it could be!” she exclaimed. “If I had only known how painful they were!” Dom and I were trying unsuccessfully not to laugh at her dramatic expostulations. She was so much in pain and yet so over the top and yet with such funny word choice. So gravely surprised.

The funny thing was that when we were getting into the car after Mass there was a bee on my seat and I almost sat on it and got the same sting except that Sophie warned me just in time that there was a bee in the car.

Why does Ben have a trash can on his head? I have no idea.

6. Bella has decided that she loves listening to the Office of Readings. And most especially she loves the Book of Revelation. I have no idea why and I don’t think she does either. Her explanation is something jumbled about listening to it in the car while on the way home from Home Depot after she’d shut the door on her wrist. And something about loving St John. He’s in all her crucifixion pictures, at the foot of the cross with Mary and Mary Magdalene. So there’s that. Still, I often wonder what she’s making of all the bizarre imagery.

Having a treat at the Starbucks in Target. Sophie’s black eye happened when Bella tried to throw a wooden pot at the play kitchen and it accidentally went into Sophie’s bed instead. That’s Bella sitting alone at the counter by the window in the background. I’m not sure why she chose to sit all the way over there.

1. I finally replaced the batteries in our scale this week and discovered that for the first time in almost seven years I’m back down to within five pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight. My pre-Bella pregnancy weight that is. I’ve been continually nursing and/or pregnant since we’ve been married, so it isn’t too surprising that I’ve settled into a slightly plumper, more maternal self. But I guess a thirty pound nursling will burn up the calories pretty fast. And it didn’t hurt that my sister left her job at Starbucks and thereby cut me off from the free pastry supply and that I gave up sweets for Lent. I’d gotten into a very bad habit of eating chocolate every single day. Though I’ve never been one to obsess about my weight, it does feel good to be back to wearing that one pair of jeans that I bought when we were first married.

2. Also, having a scale with batteries, I have now determined that Anthony weighs 30 pounds at 14 months. He is just 3 pounds lighter than his four year-old sister, Sophie. And Ben has now passed Sophie in weight if not height. He’s a whopping 35 pounds. They are only 16 months apart and given that he’s on the big end and she’s on the smaller side, I knew this day was bound to come. Finally, my tall Bella has sprouted like a weed. She’s 48 pounds, almost half a hundred!

3. Bella has been occupied with making a Japanese paper dolls house, inspired by Rumer Godden’s two novel about Japanese dolls, Miss Happiness and Miss Flower and Little Plum. Bella loved the books, though Sophie loved the parts about the dolls, she found both of them rather emotionally intense and had to step away. I’m starting to realize that Sophie is a very sensitive soul. She is also now terrified of the Little House books, not liking at all the chapter about wolves. And now is freaked out by wolves to the point where Dom was reading me a review of a taqueria that opened in our old stomping ground and Sophie freaked because the place was called the Howling Wolf Cafe.

4. Bella has recently been prone to amazing acts of rather misplaced generosity that I"m not quite sure what to do about. For example, when I was making all the kids dolly quilts Bella decided she wanted to give hers to one of her cousins who I suspect is a bit old for dolls. Then today she announced that she wanted to give the doll house she made to her friend A from next door. A is a very nice 13 year old girl who has no idea that Bella thinks of her as a best friend. A has always been very kind to Bella and has looked out for her but I’m not sure what to do when Bella announces that she wants to invite A over for dinner or to give her these handmade tokens of affection. I know the relationship isn’t truly reciprocal but I don’t want Bella to realize that. How can I gently redirect these impulses without quashing the very generous spirit that drives them? Or should I allow Bella to lead and follow her generous impulses even if the attentions are not fully welcome to the objects of Bella’s affections?

5. I started writing this on Wednesday and this is the first time I’ve been able to update. Now the irony of take #1 is settling in. On Saturday morning I woke early and lay in bed doing some frantic mental calculations while I tried to resettle Anthony, who woke me. Do you do these mental calculations? I always do. Somehow my subconscious always puts together the pieces and then my conscious mind has to play catch-up.

Yep, I still had a pregnancy test hanging around. Yep, it confirmed what my calculations had already convinced me of anyway. Baby Bettinelli will be arriving sometime in January. Margaret and I are going to be pregnancy buddies once again.

6. I think really after that last one no more takes are necessary. Now I’ll know how many people really read all my Quick Takes Posts.

So today Bella and I started reading a little book that I bought with the intention of looking forward to her first confession and first communion. I’m not positive she will be ready next year; but she’s expressed a very strong interest in making her first confession and I thought that I should at least honor that request by beginning the work to help her get ready. (Interesting, by the way, that it’s confession which has grabbed her interest rather than communion.) Anyway the book began with a section of prayers and one of them was the Confiteor. The book is older so of course it has the old translation so as I was going I was trying to correct to the new translation. Turned out Bella knew it well enough and when I stumbled she continued: “Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault” Complete with beating her breast. So I guess she has been paying attention at Mass.

I went online to look up the new translation so I could write a correction in the book and I found this article by Father Z. I especially liked this bit here:

The 20th century writer of the Liturgical Movement, Romano Guardini (d. 1968) wrote in his 1955 work Sacred Signs:

“To brush one’s clothes with the tips of one’s fingers is not to strike the breast.  We should beat upon our breasts with our closed fists. … It is an honest blow, not an elegant gesture.  To strike the breast is to beat against the gates of our inner world in order to shatter them.  This is its significance. … ‘Repent, do penance.’  It is the voice of God.  Striking the breast is the visible sign that we hear that summons. … Let it wake us up, and make us see, and turn to God”.

The future Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Spirit of the Liturgy (p. 207): “We point not at someone else but at ourselves as the guilty party, [which] remains a meaningful gesture of prayer. … When we say mea culpa (through my fault), we turn, so to speak, to ourselves, to our own front door, and thus we are able rightly to ask forgiveness of God, the saints, and the people gathered around us, whom we have wronged.”

I read this passage to Bella and I’m not sure how much of it sank in. Still, you never know with Bella. 

When we were going over the Ten Commandments we had an interesting moment. The book glossed the Fourth Commandment with the explanation that “we should love and obey our parents and all who are over us.” So I discussed what other people Bella might need to obey. And then it occurred to me that it was important to clarify that while she might need to obey people other than Dom and myself, she should never obey if someone wants her to do something that is a sin, that will hurt herself or someone else. I don’t want to teach her blind obedience to an authority which is misused; but proper respect for proper authority. She pondered this for a few minutes and then responded with an example from her Bible story book that showed she had understood the lesson. She told me about Joseph who was asked to sin by Potiphar’s wife and who refused her request. (The Bible story book properly doesn’t explain what kind of bad thing she wanted him to do, just that she demanded and he refused and that he suffered for the refusal because she falsely accused him of doing the very bad thing he had refused to do.) I was rather pleased to see that she was applying Bible stories to moral lessons.

Last Sunday since Dom was in the hospital and we were all going stir-crazy, the kids and I took a drive to the park and fed the ducks, geese, and a swan. It was cold and wet; but at least they were out of the house.

Praying about rain

On Monday Bella and I had a dental appointment. As I was asking her to get her shoes on, I looked up and noticed that the light rain had turned into a torrential downpour. I pointed it out to Bella and she grew distressed about the idea of having to go out in the rain. She even started to say something about maybe not going to the dentist at all. I hate to see her distressed and so I told her to pray about it. Jesus calmed the storm, I reminded her, he can make the rain go away if you ask him. I don’t know why I suggested that but somehow the words were coming out of my mouth. Not my usual style. So we prayed and continued to get ready. Sure enough, right before we went out the door I looked up and the rain had abated. When we went out to the car the rain was a light drizzle. Bella and I got into the car and as I was putting the address into the GPS the rain grew heavier. As we pulled out of the driveway the downpour returned. It rained most of the way to the dentist but again when we pulled into the drive there the rain had slowed to a drizzle. I pointed it out to Bella and she was thrilled that Jesus had answered her prayers.

Anthony enjoys the Bettinelli family’s Sunday after-Mass traditional pancakes.

Parting the Red Sea

Bella was stumped, trying to figure out what game she would play. Then she perked up, declaring she would do something from the Old Testament. Later I came in and found her playing the parting of the Red Sea. She had two orange scarves spread out side by side on the floor. There were two bunches of animals and figures. The Israelites were in the middle of crossing the sea. Some of them were perched on the trailer of Ben’s flatbed truck. They has a bunch of plastic shapes piled up with them, representing their luggage. There was a family and a single woman and I think a few other people. The other group clustered together behind her were the Egyptians. Unfortunately, I had to interrupt her game to take her to the dentist.

Anthony’s first driving lesson. Actually, I just needed him out from underfoot (I think it was while I made dinner). Since Theresa was outside cleaning her car, I asked if he could keep her company. Both of them were delighted with the solution.

Words with Sophie

At dinner Sophie was asking for words to be defined. “What’s ‘devour’ mean?” she asked. So we defined it for her. Then she stumped us, “What does ‘go-ap’ mean?” What? we asked. Over and over again Dom and I tried to mimic back the word she was saying and every time she looked at us as if we were crazy and then repeated it again, slowly and loudly. Over and over and over and over and over. We tried throwing in an ‘r’ on the theory that she’s from Massachusetts and maybe was dropping that little-pronounced letter. Nope. We started to think it was supremely funny and laughed and laughed as we tried to mimic our four-year-old’s pronunciation. She alternated between frustration with our incomprehension and taking offense at our laughter and joining in with the giggling.

Dom kept trying to get her to use it in a sentence. Finally she understood what he was asking. “You go-ap your food.” It still took me a minute or two and then suddenly it clicked: “Gulp”. It pairs nicely with ‘devour’. It wasn’t so much a Massachusetts accent she was sporting as a Texan drawl. Later I texted an account of the conversation to my mom and siblings. I didn’t tell them what the solution was but left them to guess. My sister threw out a few of the same things we’d guessed. But my little brother with the Texan drawl got it in one. Unfortunately after that she started to ask us about another word she kept repeating it and we never did get it. Poor Sophie.

Ben enjoys a snack outside after a tiring morning of helping with the yard work.

A New Game

I’ve noticed that sometime in the past few weeks Ben has made a jump from playing mostly by himself near his sisters to being a frequent partner in Sophie’s games. To the point that Bella has had a few moments of feeling left out when she wandered in from whatever she’d been doing on her own (wandering in the yard, lost in a book, eating a snack, etc) and found that Sophie and Ben were deep into a game and didn’t want to include her. I think Sophie likes playing with Ben because he’s content to follow her lead and doesn’t try to control things as Bella does. (In the past I’ve often heard Sophie telling Bella that she’s playing “a one person game.”) Ben loves the attention from his big sister. Both Ben and Sophie are united in fending off Anthony, the pesky little brother who is constantly, “ruining our game!”

Last Saturday we spent the morning going to Home Depot for mulch and then weeding the front beds, trimming the bushes, and laying down mulch. Very satisfying to get this done after a couple of years of meaning to get around to it. Yes years. Last year we had Anthony so my participation in yard work was practically non-existent. There is still more trimming I’d like to do. My only window of opportunity is while Anthony is napping because if he’s up I have to keep an eagle eye on him to keep him out of the street.

I looked up and Anthony, who had been calmly eating his tortilla while seated in the yellow chair, had somehow scaled the table. See how proud he is?

I guess every family has to have one. I’ve finally met mine. Though I do wonder how much birth order has to do with it. Bella might have been as much of a climber and as into things as Anthony is but since she was my only one when she was this age, I was able to keep my eye on her at all times.

A short time later and he was climbing this ladder! Oh, baby boy! He was not so successful getting down and so hasn’t attempted it again.

Peek-a-boo!

See, no fear! He sees the others climbing and swinging and doesn’t see why he shouldn’t too.

This is why his face and head are constantly covered in bruises and scrapes.

The wagon only contained him for a little while. Then he figured out how to climb down. Of course.

All tired out. I put him down in the chair when he fell asleep in my arms right before we were heading out to the store. Bella adorned him with some of her fabric bits.

Eating pancakes with Bella in our Sunday after-Mass ritual. It was a fine day so the kids were dining al fresco.

Blowing raspberries with pizza all over his face.

A rare sight: all four of my gang playing happily together in the sandbox.