Seven Quick Takes

I

Let's just start with the best news of the week. On Wednesday night, the RCIA class I teach ran late and by the time I got home Little Bear and Matt had said prayers and were finishing stories. Little Bear gave me a hug and kiss, then told me to leave so Daddy could finish putting him to sleep. Ten minutes later, Matt slipped out of the room: for the first time ever, Little Bear went to sleep for Matt instead of me. And he slept straight through the night, only half-waking once because he'd pushed off the covers, was cold, but hadn't woken up enough to pull them back over himself. 

II

So that was the highlight of my week, but Wednesday was full of all kinds of excitement. Matt started grand jury service that morning, and as Little Bear and I were driving him to the courthouse, we were rear-ended by a pickup truck. The other driver was super apologetic, gave us her insurance information, and called the police, and our jeep is definitely still drivable; the spare tire mount is bent, and the tire/mount rather pushed into the back door so the door hinges are slightly off-kilter. The claims adjustor expects we will have to replace the whole back door.

Matt and Little Bear were perfectly fine; my midwife had me go to the ER because I had abdominal pain where the seatbelt had been. Matt was at jury duty, so Little Bear got to go play with his aunts and uncles while I spent a few hours in the ER. The nurse couldn't find a steady fetal heartbeat, which had me pretty scared, but an ultrasound showed a very active baby so Kit must have just been running away from the Doppler. I have some bruising on my uterus, but baby is fine and there's nothing else wrong with me. Our 20ish-week anatomy scan is already scheduled for this coming Monday, so they'll check then to make sure my swelling is going down.

III

Since yesterday, the Roe v Wade anniversary, is a Day of Penance in the United States, I made a meatless pizza for supper: olives, red and green peppers, tomato sauce and cheese. We were happily surprised to see Little Bear eat all of the vegetables, even carefully picking up any peppers that fell off and eating them with his fork. 

IV

It took two hours to light a fire in the fireplace this morning. I have no idea why, but it was beyond frustrating... And because when Little Bear first started whining and begging to watch Daniel Tiger I'd told him to stop asking—he could watch after I had the fire burning, I couldn't use Daniel Tiger to keep him quiet and happy while he wanted attention and I needed to focus on lighting the fire. 

V

My parents were out of town most of this week, celebrating their 30th anniversary. When my mom called today to say they'd made it home safely and offer us a ride to noon Mass, Little Bear was so excited: "They're home! Grandma and Papa home! Home from airplane!" He ran around the house happily shouting variations on "They're home" for the next half hour.

VI

Despite a few instances of too-loud whispering and not wanting to stay still, leaving Mass today I felt pretty vindicated in having stuck to our anti-cry room stance (as in starting out there; we have always taken him out briefly if he gets disruptive, then brought him back when he was able to behave again) even though for the past year or two Little Bear has been one of the only kids his age not in the cry room at church. He's only two and a half, and he says pretty much all of the responses throughout the Mass—even the Greek. I didn't realize he knew the Kyrie until today. We certainly haven't done anything to teach him any of the responses; he's just learned them by being surrounded by other people saying them every time we go to Mass.

VII

I thought I was going to wind up photo-less this week, but just as I was trying to come up with a seventh quick take, I looked down in time to see Little Bear's slice of leftover pizza tumble out of his hand. He fell asleep, sitting on my lap, while eating pizza: 

Poor munchkin. He doesn't want to nap, and he sleeps so well at night when he skips naps that we've been encouraging quiet time instead, but he's so cute I'll let him doze here for a little bit.

Have a good weekend! Check out more Quick Takes over at This Ain't the Lyceum.