Potty Training

We made a little progress on our no-pressure* potty training last night. Bella asked to sit on the toilet and after almost half an hour I actually heard a little tinkle sound. Dom and I made a big deal about her success and she asked to sit on it again this morning. I think the success and praise encouraged her. Not sure about success this morning as I couldn't stay in the room with her. Her diaper was wet when I took it off and I didn't see anything, though, so I assume it was a dry run.

Of course her timing both times couldn't have been worse. Last night she asked to go while I was filling up the tub for her bath. (I spent the whole time sitting on the bathroom floor. Fun.) By the time Bella decided she was done the water was cold and it was getting late so we just skipped the bath and put her in her pjs and went straight to prayer time. This morning she asked just as I was taking Sophie to nurse her down for her morning nap. I helped Bella get on the toilet and then went to put Phia down. Naturally Bella started yelling for me just as I was putting the sleeping baby into the crib.

*No pressure potty training= 1. I bought a seat with handles that fits onto the big toilet. (I really can't handle the idea of emptying a pot on a training potty with my morning sickness.) 2. We talk a little about big girls using the toilet. And that's it. If she asks to go, we help her to get on the toilet, but other than that there we do nothing to initiate anything. I figure she'll decide when she's ready and let us know.

Yeah, I do know this is the kind of post she'll kill me for in about 12 years.

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Lunch with Isabella

I was amused as I ate my lunch of goat cheese and fig spread on crackers to hear Isabella singing Greensleeves to herself. She knew almost all the words to the first verse. Not your usual toddler fare. She also was poaching my goat cheese. Delighted when, trying to contain the crumbly mess, I rolled some into a ball. "I want a cheese ball!" Quickly corrected to, "Please, mama, can you give me a cheese ball." Good thing she doesn't realize how good fig spread is!

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A Few Photos

Isabella helps to trim the tree.


Sophia and her godmother, Auntie Treese.


Sophia and Daddy on Christmas morning.


Bella balances in her new snowboots.


A late December trip to the beach.


Bella's secret smile.


Bella and Daddy look at the waves.

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Preparing a Home for the Christ Child

In a recent blog post Enbrethiliel jumps off a quote from me to muse about Advent and Christmas. Well, today I'll return the serve because her post has got me thinking and segues neatly into an explication of all that I've been pondering in my heart. She wrote:

Today's First Reading is about how King David was inspired to build a fitting home for the Ark of the Covenant. ("Here I am living in a house of cedar, while the Ark of God dwells in a tent!") It made me reflect on the theme of home--and the shadow of homelessness--we find in all Christmas stories, beginning and ending with the Christmas Story.

Even those stories in which Christmas is kept but either Christ or the Mass is forgotten are told in the shadow of the inn which had no more room. Hans Christian Andersen's Little Match Girl has its protagonist peering into the windows of happy households, but never coming in out of the cold. We have almost the same plot in Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol, as Scrooge observes domestic holiday scenes from a distance his past choices will not let him bridge. Ernest Hoffman's Nussknacker und Mäusekönig begins with a prince in exile and ends with a girl longing for what has become her true home. Something iconic from our own times is John Hughes' movie Home Alone, in which an eight-year-old boy who believes he has wished his family away learns that the only thing he really wants for Christmas is his family back.

. . .

The point is that what one finds adequate for eleven months of the year may suddenly seem intolerable when Advent and Christmas roll around. Deep in our souls, we are disturbed when our homes are not just so, as if the Holy Family might peer into a window at any moment and find that we, too, have not made room for them.

Probably not coincidentally, I've been reading Hans Christian Andersen's Little Match Girl with Bella of late. We have a beautiful picture book version whose illustrations enchant both of us. Dom, overhearing, thought the story a little grim for a two year old. I love the ending though, with the little suffering soul going to heaven in the arms of her loving grandmother. It helps me to think of how Christ comes in the midst of our brokenness, the poverty of our spirit which has nothing to give him. No, the real gift of Christmas is not what we give to him or what we give to each other, but what he gives to us. Ours is to receive, even if we feel unworthy, unprepared, still he comes creeping in to bring us peace and grace.

Sometimes the season of Advent makes me too caught up in the idea that I can prepare myself, perfect myself, achieve a level of peace that will make Christmas into a magical time. But God's peace is not like our peace. I really like the Home Alone analogy: the peace of Christ comes to us in the middle of what sometimes seems like a war zone when we have forgotten our need for family and think we must go it alone. He arrives not in the fullness of our preparations but in our emptiness and longing and our desperate neediness. And even when we feel like we have no room to give him, still he may find a way to enter in despite all that.

This Advent was a particular trial for me. As usual I started off the season with a resolve to set my spiritual house in order, to renew my prayer life and my spiritual reading, to make a greater place for Christ so that Christmas would find me ready to welcome him. But He seems to have had other plans. Just before Thanksgiving I found I was pregnant again. I began Advent with a sense of joyful expectation and adventure, a romantic notion of uniting my expectation with Mary's and joining her on the journey to the Nativity. Almost immediately all my grand schemes were undermined and my peace destroyed.

One morning about a week into the Advent season I sat nursing Sophia with my volume of the Liturgy of the Hours open on the bed beside me. As I fought to stay awake, to read the psalms and responses, I started to feel sick to my stomach, that terrible surge of nausea overwhelming all my best intentions. Helplessly, I surrendered and closed my eyes, replacing the ribbon in the book and allowing the page to fall closed. After a time I opened my eyes and found my gaze resting on the crucifix hanging on the wall near my bedroom door. Almost as if a voice were speaking, I heard a gentle, loving rebuke: Stop this fighting. This is not what you should be doing right now. Rest. Close your eyes and rest.

Of course I thought I knew better so in the next few days I tried again and again to pray the Liturgy and every time the exhaustion and nausea would rise and I had to close my eyes and give in and drift. The book in its leather case sat beside my bed like a rebuke. But when I lifted my eyes to the cross I found myself praying in words not my own: "My hope is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth," and "Jesus I trust in you." And I prayed for certainty and each time I was sure that it wasn't my own thoughts but another voice which was telling me to stop, to rest and give my body what it needed so desperately.

Then today the thought came to me: I am bereft of the consolation of prayer. I have read other blogging moms renewing their resolutions to begin each day with prayer with a sense of loss and desolation and failure. I so want to start the day reading the psalms as I nurse Sophie, but instead I give in and close my eyes to allow my poor exhausted body to take a bit more of the refreshment my soul craves. I have read of this place, this darkness where the soul is bereft of the light she longs for. I've read of it from Therese of Lisieux and Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. But I got confused. They are talking of something more spiritual and exalted, surely, than this silly first trimester sickness of mine, aren't they?

But my friends (Thank God for friends!) remind me that this place of loss and failure may be precisely where God is leading me. This helpless flailing in the dark is His way of reminding me of my own poverty. It is surely no accident that I keep facing Advent and Lent with all these physical burdens of pregnancy and new babies that get in the way of my attempts to map out my own spiritual journey. I think I know the way I should walk but again and again I find Him leading me by other ways. Darker ways. Harder ways.

Motherhood has taught me again and again my own helplessness, has stripped away all illusions of control and exposed my vanity that thinks I can chart my own course, diagnose my own illness, or heal my own brokenness. The mess my house descends to in these times of trial reflects the mess of my soul. I long to be able to rise up and set my house in order and I find that I must give in to the demands of my gestating body.

The Word became Flesh and pitched his tent among us, here in the midst of the mess and chaos, exactly where we need Him most. I am reminded that Mary too had plans which were unfulfilled. I am confronted by the contradictory messages of Advent: "Prepare the way of the Lord!" John cries out in the wilderness. And yet the Nativity story tells us of the repeated thwarting of Mary and Joseph's attempts to do that very thing. The birth did not happen as any mother would have chosen, in a well-prepared home. No, and Mary and Joseph were all too soon forced to flee their home to make their dwelling in uncertainty in a strange and godless land. We too would prepare a Home for the Christ child and we too find ourselves helpless and homeless.

If King David and his descendants Mary and Joseph failed to prepare Him a fitting home, what chance have we? In this world we can only find glimpses of Home, a taste of the place which He has prepared for us. We are exiles, wanderers, full of yearning. And all our preparations will come to naught and the more we try to chart our own course the further off we will be swept by the tides and tempests of life. And only by surrendering the fight can we possibly hope to win.

And so in my helplessness, I cry: Come! Bereft of my private prayer time, I still am able to pray with my family the nightly prayers over the lit candles of the Advent wreath: Come! I do not recite the Psalms; but still we pray the O Antiphons in the week leading up to Christmas and I see Bella's eyes light up as we sing:

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.

And He does come. He comes in my tears and in my brokenness and I do find peace in the midst of turmoil when I cry for help and hear finally not just one but a chorus of answers: still, small voices that come when the rage and the tears have passed and I have allowed myself to become little and helpless like a child in my Father's arms, quiet enough to listen to His voice.

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Writer's Block Unblocked

Elizabeth Foss described it well:

I've had writer's block lately. Not my ordinary writer's block, but some kind of strange variation. I can think of all kinds of things to write, but I have no time at the keyboard to give them voice.And then, on those rare occasions when I do have some time and all my conditions for allowing myself time at the computer are met, it either doesn't seem worth saying or it would take too much time to write in the time allotted.

Yeah, I've been writing, but so much more has been on the back burner waiting to be written. Then today some sort of grace seems to have unlocked the dam.

Perhaps it's that I'm reading Andre Dubus's essay collection, Meditations from a Movable Chair. I find nonfiction to be much more conducive to helping me find my voice as a writer, though I like reading fiction more. I have a little breathing space today, or I'm grabbing it despite the girls' fussiness and my own tiredness. I need this freedom of finally getting all these pent up words down. Because for me writing isn't just saying what I already know, it's really more about discovering what I think and what I feel through the process of battling to find the right words and through the process of interacting with readers in the give and take of conversation. And of course I don't discount all those prayers my friends have been sending my way. I know they're helping too. A touch of needed grace on this icy day.

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Quick Book Review: The Dark Horse

It took me a long time to get into this Rumer Godden novel. Her Indian novels are not my favorite. I tend to like them despite the setting rather than because of it. But the real stumbling block for me was the race horse that gives the book its title. Still this time I pushed through all the horsey stuff to get to the characters and the story and of course it was worth it, being a Rumer Godden novel.

One thing that did eventually help to draw me in is that this novel, like In This House of Brede and Five for Sorrow Ten for Joy features a religious community, this time the Sisters of Poverty in Calcutta, India. While this novel has a very different flavor than her other religious novels, it has at its heart of of that same restfulness. It is a novel about grace and about conversion and about trust in God, though there is of course quite a bit about horse racing as well.
As in Godden's other Indian novels, here she highlights the great disparity between the haves and have-nots, between the rich and the poor. By the time I got to the end I was quite won over and it will join my other Godden novels on the shelf so that I may reread it some day.

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For Lessons Learned and Resolutions Made Go Elsewhere This Year

Elizabeth Foss and Jennifer F. both have inspiring posts up about lessons learned in the past year. If you're looking for inspiring and thoughtful blogging, go there.

I'd love to be able to write something in a similar vein. Or something about resolutions for the coming year. But right now I'm in the trenches and I simply cannot fathom having that much perspective. Right now it seems any lessons I might have learned over the past year have been unlearned or at least been put on hold until I have time and energy to implement them. Right now I'm dragging myself from minute to minute, trying not to lose my temper or my lunch. And I must confess--because if I can't name anything I've learned or anything I resolve, I can at least have a little of the honesty it takes to proclaim such things in public-- that after reading those two posts I sat down and had a little cry because I feel so completely and utterly out of control right now. I felt much better afterwards and I think I really needed it. No slight is meant to the writing of two of my favorite bloggers, just a window into my own inability to gain some perspective.

Last night Dom and I calculated that this is the fourth new year's in a row that I've greeted while pregnant. (The second time I didn't know yet.) Each child is a blessing, of course, but the thing about children is that each one brings a total upheaval of routines, expectations, of life. And that upheaval begins from the day I find out I'm expecting. I hardly dare to plan for the coming year because all I know for certain is that things will continue to be... interesting and unpredictable.

Updated:
Thanks you all for the words of encouragement and the prayers.

I think what has me most discouraged is that looking back over the past year it seems I've just gone from one crisis to the next and hardly had time to recover a semblance of "normal" life in between.

In the beginning of the year I was getting ready for Sophie's birth. The last few weeks were a trial as my sciatica raged and my blood pressure shot up so that I could only accomplish a bare minimum rather than the nesting I really wanted to do.

Then Sophia was born by c-section after a long labor. Hemorrhaging right after the surgery and an infection that didn't get caught for almost two months led to a very long slow recovery. I was just beginning to get to sleep regularly and feel up to getting out of the house when Dom's job moved and we were discombobulated and started to house hunt in earnest. We'd never really settled into our last apartment because we knew the move was looming.

House hunting with all its emotional ups and downs took up much of the summer and fall. And then there was packing and moving, of course. And we finally were moved in November only to find that I'm pregnant again.

I was not at all adverse to another baby but I was sort of looking forward to establishing a sense of order and calm domesticity. Looking forward, I have a hard time feeling like I'll be out of crisis mode any time soon.

I hope that the exhaustion and nausea will clear soon and I will have a brief respite. But it will only be the eye of the storm in a sense. I am absolutely dreading this birth. Not the baby; but the birth. After two emergency c-sections, I have no hope for a vbac. And I am very afraid of both the surgery and the long recovery. I'm facing not only a surgery I know and dread but a new doctor, a new hospital. All the things that might be comforting are unfamiliar, the only familiar is that which I fear.

And in this season of advent and joyful hope I have been deprived of the consolation of prayer. I plan to write a separate post about this, but the short form is that my dedicated prayer time has been my nursing time and it became quite clear to me that my body was demanding I use that time for closing my eyes and resting. There is no other time it seems. Just brief snatches of desperate pleading here and there.

I know God understands, but my fearful little heart is having a hard time resigning itself to living in crisis.

Thanks again, my dear friends, for your consolations and for helping me indeed find a little bit of perspective on this wintry morning. At least this blog and the gift of writing, when I snatch the time to jot a few words, and the gift of sympathetic readers at least they have continued to be here for me.

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My Blog in Review 2008

via The Bookworm

Post the first sentence of your first blog post of each month. You can also add a favorite picture from each month.

January

Dom posted this question on his blog and it's been bugging me too, so I'm reposting it here.




February

Well, I didn't have a leap baby.





March

Bella now says "Amen" at the end of prayers and regularly (though not always) folds her hands during the blessing before meals.




April

Congratulations to Hallie who announces the arrival of Lucy Jean on Monday.




May

The Religious Potential of the Child by Sofia Cavaletti just arrived this week and I'm only about fifty pages in; but it's really getting my wheels turning.




June

Last week our hot water suddenly ran rusty for a day or so.




July

Coming up in August are my birthday and our wedding anniversary.




August

Ah music to my ears!




September

Bella has recently begun opening the refrigerator to graze through the shelves.




October

I know I said I wouldn't be around.




November

We celebrated the first day of the new liturgical year by welcoming a wonderful group of friends and family into our new home.




December

Our house has become besieged by moths.




Oops! I just realized that for every month except December I actually posted the first sentence of the last blog entry of the month. I'm too tired to change them and I think they are apt and catch the flavor of the year quite well, so I'll let it stand. It's rather emblematic of my life right now, topsy-turvy, upside down and backwards chaotic.

If you want to play along, visit Kelli and add your post to her Mr Linky.

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Trust

Bella is rolling on her towel on the living room floor, clad in only a diaper, while my sister rubs lotion on her dry skin. She's shivering and chattering her teeth.

"Are you cold, my Bell?" I ask.

"Auntie Treese will warm my pajamas," she replied. It doesn't matter what she feels now, she knows certainly in a minute she will be dressed in her warm pajamas and won't be cold any longer. if only I could have such certainty.

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It's a Snap

Sophia has learned how to snap her fingers. It may be the cutest thing I've ever seen. And she is so pleased with herself, laughing and laughing. Though it may also be that she's pleased with our reactions.

She quite surprised my sister, who was playing with her at the time. I suppose she'd been watching us snap the other day-- I don't remember why we were snapping-- and was trying to mimic our actions. I tried to get a video, but I don't think I caught it.

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The Pooh Corner Chorus

The other morning I walked into Bella's room and was greeted by the sight of a bunch of her stuffed animals all perched on her bed with books propped open in front of them. Probably not a coincidence that they were all Pooh characters: Pooh and Eeyore, Tigger and Kanga. When Bella came in and I commented on the books, she told me they were singing. I just had to run for the camera.

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A Happy Christmas to All

The stockings were stuffed.


Ooooh, chocolate!


Phia's first stocking.


Bella's new horse.


Daddy, read this to me?


Bella munches her candy cane near the creche. (Which is in our non-functioning fireplace.)


Phia is excited.


Hey, that's my new doll!


Isabella and Sophia


Loving sisters.


The Bettinelli family wishes you a Merry Christmas.

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Advent is Over, I Know

But I just had to post this great picture of Bella with the Advent wreath I took last night. (We had to replace a couple of the purple candles, Dom was afraid they were becoming a fire hazard.)



"Candles! Candles!"

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On Further Reflection...

Maybe the shed wasn't the best place to store the ice melt. Or the Christmas wrapping paper.

Theresa got more ice melt yesterday. I had to make a run to Target today for diapers and stocking candy anyway, what were two more tubes of wrapping paper? Except that I know I have at least five tubes buried out there. And bows and ribbons and.... they'll still be there next year.

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Truth in Advertising

My little chatterbox is at least refreshingly self-aware. Last night at dinner she was going with her usual non-stop commentary that included exclamations over the advent wreath, the Christmas tree Dom brought home this evening and a recitation of her full name: "Isabella Bettimelli." But my favorite was her declaration: "I like to talk." Truer words have never been spoken.

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Fa La La La La La La La La

Yes! Dom went and got a tree tonight after work. And then we discovered it was too big to fit into our old tree stand so he had to go back out and visit three different stores to find a new stand. And then had to come home and cook dinner because I just couldn't. My hero!

Isabella absolutely refused to go to bed until the lights were on the tree. So we complied. Who could resist such pleading? She's up way past her bedtime, going through the box of Christmas decorations with wide eyes. And wondering when she's going to get to open her presents. No, I haven't wrapped them yet. They'll go under the tree tomorrow night after she's in bed. She just knows that with trees come presents and she wants hers. Now.

We are finding new places for our familiar decorations. We had to improvise on the stocking placement as we can't drill holes into the brick over the fireplace. They are instead hanging in the faux-brick over the couch.

Leaving all the trimming to the last minute wasn't the plan. But I don't mind. Except for how tired I am right now. It's been a long, full day. And I just realized that I absolutely must make a run to the store tomorrow. We need two more stockings to hang. And Sophia is almost out of diapers.

Oh my sister is going to be pleasantly surprised when she comes home from work tonight. She has no idea that tonight is the night.

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Sweet Sophia

Dom's been busy pulling all the videos off my camera and uploading them for me. For some reason my computer wasn't recognizing them. Oh yeah, it might have been an overly full hard drive. Which is now not so full thanks to the thorough cleaning that Dom gave to it. Anyhow, I'm content to let him do all the grunt work of video uploading. Then all I have to do is cut and paste the link.

So without further ado, here are a couple more of Sophie in the high chair.


Sophia laughs at Isabella's antics from Domenico Bettinelli on Vimeo.


Sophia lunches from her lap from Domenico Bettinelli on Vimeo.

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The Newest Bettinelli— 10 Weeks Old!

I had an OB appt this morning and an unexpected ultrasound. No snapshot to post, this was just to check the heartbeat, which was fine and strong. But oh how lovely a sight! Quite the best Christmas gift I'll get, I'm sure.

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Not Yet Decking the Halls

But... I got to bed at a reasonable hour last night and so had a little more energy this morning. I exerted myself and vacuumed the living room and our bedroom and the girls' bedroom. I swept the kitchen and dining room. I straightened all the aforementioned rooms. And I did some much-needed laundry. So I feel much more ready for Christmas. Now we just need to buy a tree and hang our decorations. Details, details....

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Is There Anything Better Than a Laughing Baby?

Sophia laughs at being attacked by Pooh Bear from Domenico Bettinelli on Vimeo.

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Bella in Auntie Tree's Cowboy Boots

Isabella puts on her aunt's cowboy boots from Domenico Bettinelli on Vimeo.

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Christmas Book Bleg

Does anyone know of a good picture book with a fairly comprehensive collection of Christmas carols? I'm looking for something with nice pictures and lyrics to all the verses of most of my favorite carols, preferably a collection with a more religious bent rather than secular.

Bella and I have loved her picture song book, Go In and Out the Window, a great combination of pictures and songs. I'm loving singing Christmas songs to her, but frequently forget the words to the songs. I'd love a book to jar my memory and that she'll be able to follow along with as she gets older.

If I can't find anything exactly like I want, I might put something together on Blurb, along the lines of the prayer book we made for Bella.

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A Few More Winter Snapshots

Bella's slide, snowbound.

I'd hung our bird feeder on the back door, but I think it's too exposed. It hasn't had any visitors yet. Still, I noticed a few birds who would swoop by the back door as if on reconnaissance. I even saw them hopping about on the doorstep and found some little prints in the snow. So I swept off the step and scattered a bit of seed. Soon we had a regular stream of guests.

I haven't yet identified these little guys; but other than one sparrow, I think all of our visitors have been the same species. They're dark brown or gray with a white belly and a yellow beak. I'm hoping they'll get to the point where they're a little less easily startled by our moving about in the dining room so I can get a better look.

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In the Bleak Midwinter

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen,
Snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago.

Icicles on the eaves at the front of the house.


Isabella wields an icicle sword.


Dom shovels the drive.


Theresa makes a snow angel.


Bushes across the street glowing at night.

more pictures when I figure out how to get them off the camera...

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Snow, Snow, and More Snow

Will post pictures tomorrow; too tired tonight to find the card reader. But it started snowing yesterday afternoon and hasn't stopped yet. Supposed to still be going strong tomorrow. Which is why we didn't go get our tree today. Maybe after mass we can go get one. I hope.

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