Mason 365: Day 5

Sunday's Here!

Two days ago, on Good Friday, a visiting deacon was invited to give the homily at our church.

It was a really good one.

I even stayed awake for most of it.

He read a sermon that was delivered some years ago by a pastor in Philadelphia to his Baptist congregation

entitled, It's Friday, But Sunday's Coming:

"It was a simple sermon, starting softly, building in volume and intensity until the entire congregation was completely involved, repeating the phrases in unison. The sermon went something like this.

It’s Friday. Jesus is arrested in the garden where He was praying. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. The disciples are hiding and Peter’s denying that he knows the Lord. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. Jesus is standing before the high priest of Israel, silent as a lamb before the slaughter. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. Jesus is beaten, mocked, and spit upon. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. Those Roman soldiers are flogging our Lord with a leather scourge that has bits of bones and glass and metal, tearing at his flesh. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. The Son of man stands firm as they press the crown of thorns down into his brow. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. See Him walking to Calvary, the blood dripping from His body. See the cross crashing down on His back as He stumbles beneath the load. It’s Friday; but Sunday’s a coming.

It’s Friday. See those Roman soldiers driving the nails into the feet and hands of my Lord. Hear my Jesus cry, “Father, forgive them.” It’s Friday; but Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. Jesus is hanging on the cross, bloody and dying. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. The sky grows dark, the earth begins to tremble, and He who knew no sin became sin for us. Holy God who will not abide with sin pours out His wrath on that perfect sacrificial lamb who cries out, “My God, My God. Why hast thou forsaken me?” What a horrible cry. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. And at the moment of Jesus’ death, the veil of the Temple that separates sinful man from Holy God was torn from the top to the bottom because Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. Jesus is hanging on the cross, heaven is weeping and hell is partying. But that’s because it’s Friday, and they don’t know it, but Sunday’s a coming.

And on that horrible day 2000 years ago, Jesus the Christ, the Lord of glory, the only begotten Son of God, the only perfect man died on the cross of Calvary. Satan thought that he had won the victory. Surely he had destroyed the Son of God. Finally he had disproved the prophecy God had uttered in the Garden and the one who was to crush his head had been destroyed. But that was Friday.

Now it’s Sunday. And just about dawn on that first day of the week, there was a great earthquake. But that wasn’t the only thing that was shaking because now it’s Sunday. And the angel of the Lord is coming down out of heaven and rolling the stone away from the door of the tomb. Yes, it’s Sunday, and the angel of the Lord is sitting on that stone and the guards posted at the tomb to keep the body from disappearing were shaking in their boots because it’s Sunday, and the lamb that was silent before the slaughter is now the resurrected lion from the tribe of Judah, for He is not here, the angel says. He is risen indeed.

It’s Sunday, and the crucified and resurrected Christ has defeated death, hell, sin and the grave. It’s Sunday. And now everything has changed. It’s the age of grace, God’s grace poured out on all who would look to that crucified lamb of Calvary. Grace freely given to all who would believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross of Calvary was buried and rose again. All because it’s Sunday.

At the end of the message the pastor shouts out:

It’s Friiidaaaay!

And the whole congregation responds:

But Sunday’s Coming!"

I was planning to just link to the page where I found the sermon, but I was afraid if I did that you wouldn't read it. And you should. You really should. It's worth your time, I promise.

I've always associated the Baptist faith with their known exuberance during the church service.

This is not a trait that I would ever, ever associate with us Roman Catholic types.

They don't call it the weekly "obligation" for nothin'.

We like to show up late, leave early, recite stuff, and sing if we feel like it.

That being said, we also help one another, pray earnestly, 

value charity, and practice tolerance and compassion.

What we do not do (those of us over the age of 5 or so anyway) is yell out during mass.

But darned if this guest preacher did not get a Catholic congregation to do just that!

I didn't do it. I was scared. I learned it young and I learned it well: 

Keep your fat trap shut when the priest is talking.

But I kind of wish I'd forgotten that on Friday, 

because I think it would have been nice to be a little Baptist for 15 minutes or so.

They have a passion that Catholics have but don't share in the same way.

I've been blessed to have so few Fridays in my life.

Maybe not even any in comparison to the struggles of others.

Maybe more like Thursday evenings...

But hearing that sermon made me so excited about the one long ongoing Sunday that is my life.

And particularly about this Easter Sunday.

If you think (possibly a little too hard) about it, you could pretty easily fit childbirth into the 'Sunday's Coming' metaphor. It's not easy, it's not fun, it can seem like it's never going to end... but Sunday's Coming.

We have so many fun and exciting things planned for later today and I can't wait to celebrate for the first time with all four of my sweet little Sundays.

Happy Easter Everyone!

Sunday's Here!

Sneak Preview of what my kids will be seeing when they get up this morning:

We're trying a super fun Puzzle Hunt this year!

Each of the kids has a little basket or something similar stuck on the "Easter Tree" (don't ask.)

Each basket contains a couple of the pieces to the almost-finished puzzles.

Logan's is the Madagascar, Julianne's is the Franklin, and Corinne's is the Little People.

Wish us luck!

The hunt for the egg-stra-special egg begins.
This is the only egg on the tree that actually has something in it.
I'll probably just have the kids point to different eggs and try to guess which one it is.
Otherwise I'll be cleaning egg shrapnel out of my carpet for a week.

Some shoes and "crowns" and stuff ready and waiting for church in the morning.

Decorated eggs chillin' on the kiddie table.

Kiddie Table: Aerial View

And now... the egg-citing conclusion of...
The Broken Egg Mystery!
The kids were doing egg-tremely well with
handling the fragile eggs properly until...
they finished decorating and I told them it was time to
put them away in the refrigerator until tomorrow.
Corinne did not handle the announcement well,
responding by flying into a fit of fury and pounding
the helpless egg against the table.
To be fair though, she is only 1 and clearly what she thought
she was doing was just pounding her fist in anger
because I'm pretty sure she was the only person
at the table who was surprised to see that the shell was broken.
Oh well, there's always n-eggxt year :)

Mason 365: Day 4

Let's Just Pretend It's Still Saturday.

Holy Week is always both truly inspiring and entirely draining for me.

Today's going pretty well so far (I say so far even though it's almost midnight and I'm probably the only person I know who is still awake) because before I can go to bed I still have to: finish this post, clean, prepare Easter baskets, decorate the "Easter Tree" (oh it's happening Tracie; I'll take the pictures when it's all done,) get dress clothes washed and laid out, and possibly build some puzzles (long story; Easter-related though.))

• I took the kids grocery shopping this morning for the first time in who knows how long - and despite the $270 cart-full I came out with I, of course, still forgot my average of at least 6 items. I can't even seem to leave the store with what I need when it's on the list! I start looking at it and talking to the kids and getting all confused and before I know it - home - with no waffles, no maple syrup, no cat food, no frozen veggies, no chicken, no milk, no nothin'. But that's okay. It took me long enough just to put away the stuff I actually did buy.

• Other than the food shopping we pretty much spent the day just cleaning and arguing ...and dying Easter Eggs! They don't look all that awesome, but we had a fun and surprisingly stress-free time making them. I found this recipe where you use just food coloring and water and a little white vinegar to dye the eggs. I was really egg-cited about how well it worked out - until I went into the Easter decoration bin and found about 15 of those little color tablets left over from last year. I'm always kind of frustrated with them, though, because you can never tell what color they really are until you get them in the water. At least this way the kids got the egg-act colors they wanted. (Yeah I know that's annoying, but I'm pretty egg-hausted, so I'm probably not going to stop.) Logan and Julianne both wanted blue and Logan wanted blue for Mason as well. When I asked Corinne what color she wanted she said, "purple." Another egg-citing development! I really expected her to say 'blue' because she tends to just repeat what other people say, but she made the decision all by herself (!) and she even pronounced the word 'purple' with surprising clarity.

• One of today's many and varied highlights occurred at the end of the Easter Vigil, when Fr. Ken wished us all a "very blessed Christmas." It was nice to be in the company of another person who is noticeably feeling the effects of the Holy Week Frazzle (and, as Zach's aunt pointed out, we do still have our tree up (another story for another day.)) 

Fr. Ken blamed the weather for his confusion.
For mine... I blame the kids.

I let the kids put their own eggs in the bowl and scoop them back out again.
This was a pretty big gamble since we only boiled four - one for each kid.
(Nobody much likes to eat them at our house.)

I thought they were going to break them all right out of the gate,
but they waited until slightly later...
to be continued...

(Julianne's in this pouty won't-smile-for-pictures stage.
They all go through this at least once or twice prior to age 5 and she couldn't have timed hers better.
After all, who wants to look at pictures of happy kids on Easter anyway.)

This was supposed to be a picture of Mason "dying Easter Eggs"
(i.e. fast asleep in the monkey bouncer)
but the kids woke him up before I could snap it.

Three of the finished eggs (Logan was still working on his)
while Corinne's was still intact...
another  mysterious clue...

Mason 365: Day 3

It's a Nice Day for a Good Friday

Since she climbed out of her crib and came downstairs all by herself this morning for only the second time ever (the first time being naptime yesterday when she decided it definitely was not nap time after all) and since she just so happened to have picked up a crown somewhere along the way (my little princesses refer to all headbands as crowns,) I thought for a little change of pace, Good Friday might be just the day to feature my precious baby girl, Corinne.
She's getting so big so fast and she has so much coming up behind her that I sometimes struggle with the fact that she's not even two yet. I want to make her older than she is. I want her to know what the older kids know and do what the older kids do and behave like she's two or four years ahead of herself.
But she can't. And if I turn on my fool brain and think about it for just half a second, I realize that I really don't want her to anyway.

I snapped this photo of her right after she surprised us this morning, doing two of her favorite baby things:
sucking her two fingers (the nurses first caught her doing this in the hospital nursery right after she was born; they said it probably started in the womb) and holding her pink elephant blankie. It has Mommy Loves Me embroidered on the front and it's absolutely filthy, but I can hardly ever slip it away from her long enough to get it through the endless wash cycle. She can't sleep without it and, even though it's supposed to "nap" in the crib during her waking hours (she sets it down so sweetly on her pillow when I come to get her and says "Elphunt. Nap," she brought along during the Great Crib Escape this morning. She was calling it "Elle" for a while, but she's recently upgraded to "Elphunt."
She's wearing her sister's Dora pajamas. We can't exactly figure out why, but the two of them wear almost the exact same size and we swap out their clothes so frequently I've seriously been considering just combining them into one big giant girly dresser. Another thing I love about this picture is that you can see they're still a tad too long.
*sniff* I can remember when they were a tad too long on Julianne.

Reflecting on Good Friday, this year in particular, has caused me to focus a little more on Jesus' mother, Mary, and on how quickly our children grow and start to follow their own paths. They may not all teach scholars in the temple at the age of 12, but they start to go their own ways, expand their own networks, show their talents and follow through with their passions so young.
She knew which two fingers were her favorite even before Day 1 of her post-uterine lifetime. What important decisions will she make in two more years? Or 10? Where will she be when she's my age?
I can't wait to hear the stories she'll tell about my grandchildren...
But for now, it's a good day. It's a good Friday.
Every day with my babies is a blessing.

Lord, help me to love every one of them in the way that they need,
To appreciate them in the way they deserve,
and to know when and how to let go with grace.
Amen.

Mason 365: Day 2

It's 3 AM and I Must Be Hungry

...and Teething

To be honest, it was probably closer to 5:15 when I took these. But I couldn't say for sure because I refuse to put in my contacts any earlier than I absolutely have to and there is not one clock on the first floor that I can read bare-eyed without standing on furniture or jamming my face into some radioactive green glare.

Let's just split the difference and call it about 4:07 & 1/2.

Baby Mason is truly an awesome sleeper, but pre-teething he slept 11 or 12 hours at night and occasionally added a two or three hour nap right in on top of that.
This gave me time to get whatever kids were off to school that morning up, ready and out the door without skipping any z's or sweet baby fun!
I got spoiled...
and along came teething, which snuck up from behind and turned my sometimes 10-noon sleeper into a semi-solid 9-5 with an all-expenses-paid trip downstairs every morning to avoid a tumultuous mass-waking of the rest of the family.
'So what's to complain about, you sorry wimpy excuse for a newborn mom?'
In Short: Nothing
Not One Thing
The first couple of nights were pretty rough. I've never really had a problem teether before.
I didn't even know most of the other kids were getting teeth until they broke through and bit me with one and most of my kids have slept through the night almost immediately, so having to get up 2, 3, 4 times with a 3-month-old and then care for four of them all day long was a pretty big shock to my system.
But, as with all big adjustments, we're starting to develop a rhythm and I'm loving the bright side:
For a mommy of four, private quiet time with baby is a massive luxury and if I have to steal mine by starting the day at 3 AM... or 4:07 1/2... or 5:15... or what have you, then so be it.
Sign me up and count me in for a lifetime supply of this:

I couldn't decide which one I liked best so I decided on a montage.

Fast asleep after breastfeeding on the sofa.

The angle was a little awkward (that's my blue shirt to the left of him), but the shots came out great!

*sigh... but for that darned camera strap shadow in the last one.

He's so precious when he's sleeping...

and when he's awake.

Mason 365: Day 1

A friend from high school does this 365 Photo a Day Challenge where she takes a picture of something fun or beautiful or sweet or just an average part of life every single day for an entire year! She does a beautiful job for many reasons, not the least of which are that she has an awesome perspective on life and that she's a professional photographer. Although I know nothing about Instagram or Flickr or any other programs that is known to help photog-types enhance their craft and although I maintain a somewhat hopeless love/hate relationship with my cheap Samsung pocket camera from Walmart, I've decided to give it a try!

Her most recent 365 project focuses on the newest addition to her family, who is just a couple of months younger than ours, so I thought it would be fun to embrace that theme as well; following the little guy through his first year of development. Since I'm much more a writer than a photographer, I figured on utilizing the blogosphere for this project, allowing me to document my wee one's development through both language and visuals.

And so, without further ado, Cereal Mom Blog proudly presents:

Mason 365

And away we go...

The minute I snapped this one, I knew we had a winner!
I absolutely love it when the kids try to give Mason a kiss and he tries to kiss them back.
He usually misses (as evidenced by the photo) and ends up either kissing someone's nose or trying to suck on it.
The monkey in the foreground is Julianne waving the bouncer toy to try to get Mason's attention so I can take a good picture. Originally I was trying to get kind of an artsy photo of Mason behind the veil of the monkey toy, but I definitely prefer this one; nothing beats the love between new brothers. Julianne wasn't notified of the change.

Oh, and I have no idea what that silvery thing on the right is. Mason's guardian angel caught on film?
Or maybe just another example of my poor photography skills. Hold on tight folks. This could be a long, long year.