There are some questions a mother doesn’t even need to ask in order to find out their answers. For example:

Did the kids remember to brush their teeth this morning? Why yes, they did.

Has Eamon realized that his birthday is only 20 days away and has he given any thought to what kinds of presents he would like? Why yes, he has.

And finally, did Raphael escape outside again? Is there a giant mud puddle in the driveway? Is there any laundry to do? Yes. Yes. And yes.

With the early sunrise these days, Raphael has been waking up earlier and earlier. This morning I heard him calling for me at 5:30 am. It was early enough that I held out some hope that he might be willing to cut a deal. You know, something like accepting a cup of milk in exchange for immediately falling back to sleep after drinking it.

But to get the milk, I had to make it down the stairs first. I attempted to do this while my eyes weren’t quite yet adjusted to the light. That was a bad idea.

As I made my way down the stairs, I missed one. Or something. I can’t be sure. All I know is that one minute I was making my oh-so-graceful descent down the stairs and the next I was lying in a crumpled heap at the bottom with a searing pain in my left knee. Not to worry, though. I was okay. And I’m pretty sure the baby in my belly slept through the excitement. Which is a good thing, because the rest of my family did too.

It’s good for a mother to have trial runs like these. It was so very reassuring to find out that if ever I have a serious accident, as I lie alone gasping my last breath, my husband and children can be counted on to snooze through the entire thing.

After working out the milk deal with Raphael and returning the empty cup to the sink, I hobbled my way back up the stairs and into bed. I might have cleared my throat rather loudly. I might have even inadvertently elbowed my husband in the ribs. And then when he just so happened to wake up, I might have told him that my knee was killing me but that he ought to be feeling able-bodied and well-rested enough to go get a start on breakfast.

And then, is there no end to the humiliation I must endure? He had the nerve to pretend he had no idea what I was talking about.

Dear Drywall Guys,

I love you. I hope it’s not inappropriate to tell you that, but it’s true. I love the way you actually show up when you say you will. I love the way you take that big space attached to my house and transform it into more house—more house!—within hours. I love the way you take all of my husband’s years of hard work and make them pay off, seemingly overnight.

And love is blind. I hardly notice you smoking right outside my open living room window. And this morning, when I picked up a pile of cigarette butts and styrofoam Dunkin Donuts coffee cups from the driveway, I cradled that stuff lovingly in my hands and carried it affectionately to the garbage can.

Because you see, I love you. And it’s all good.

Several of my children have gone through a learning-to-talk stage where their speaking skills and their forming of proper consonant blends can’t quite keep up with their desire to communicate complicated material. 3 year old Gabrielle—appropriately nicknamed Gabby—is my current struggler in this department. Her immediate family understands about 98% of what she says, but other people are sometimes hard pressed to understand her.

But Gabby doesn’t let that get her down. Just the other day, Grandpa stopped by for a visit and I noticed the two of them chatted alone in the driveway for several minutes before he came inside. Curious, I made a point later on of asking Gabby if the two of them had had a nice conversation. She shook her head sadly.

“Poor Gwandpa,” she sighed. “He just doesn’t know my words.”

The Carnival of Homeschooling is here this week. Enjoy!

The update on Baby James is here and it sounds good!

are so very wise and smart. If you haven’t yet read all the comments about family size, NFP, and being open to life in the thread below, go do that now. I particularly like the underlying theme of God not sending just babies, but the grace we need to go with them as well. Here’s what Mark wrote:

The kids have taught me so much about God. My 5 year old insisted on giving me a toonie ($2 Cdn. coin) for my birthday. I knew this was half of her entire savings. At first I didn’t want to take it from her but she insisted. I took it and said to myself, I’ll just find a way to give it back to her. And since she was so generous I would give her back $5. It took a while to sink in but I realized this is how God takes care of us. What father would not repay his generous child? Since that day I no longer worry. If we generously turn everything over to God, He will provide for us in abundance.

A reader writes:
It would be nice to know that there are others out there who struggle with the conflict of truly being open to life and loving children and wanting a big family, but at the same time being overcome by the fear of the realities of a really big family and not knowing how to “slow down.” Because NFP isn’t as easy as everyone says it is and depending on one’s fertility signs, it doesn’t really always work. At least not for me.

Hmmmm, I do not want to get bogged down in the details of whether or not NFP “really works” here other than to mention that NFP methods test out at 98 point whatever percent effective, but what really counts for most people is “user effectiveness” which is a lower number. The simple fact is that using NFP to space or prevent pregnancy, particularly for some people, is not quite as simple as popping a pill. And that’s a good thing. Because we ought not to be using it the way some people pop a pill.

I think that with NFP, there wind up being many “accidental” pregnancies that are not truly “accidents” at all. Couples often know when they are bending or breaking particular rules or not paying close enough attention to fertility symptoms and lo and behold—a pregnancy results!

This might lead to a great deal of frustration with NFP, but as I said, I think it is a good thing. NFP is not fun. This fact likely encourages many couples to be more generous in planning their families than they would otherwise be. The seriousness with which most couples learn and use NFP is usually directly proportional to the seriousness of their reasons for using it. Personally speaking, if conception did not come easily for us and my husband and I had to actively plan every single pregnancy in the way people using artificial birth control do, we might have 3 or 4 children by now. We surely wouldn’t be expecting our eighth. We would be missing out and wouldn’t even know it.

All of which brings us to the heart of the emailer’s struggle. It can be hard—so very hard—to accept God’s plan for our families in place of our own. It is downright scary sometimes to turn something as powerful and potentially life-changing as our fertility over to God. And this works both ways. I know women struggling with infertility who want desperately to conceive and are unable to. These women too experience frustration, disillusionment, and fear in accepting God’s will for themselves and their families.

But our bodies and our fertility do belong to God. Sometimes the hardest words in the world to pray are “Thy will be done.” I know that when I pray it, my mind sometimes races through all the possibilities of what “God’s will” might be and I am tempted to add, “Oh, except for that! Thy will be done as long as it isn’t that!” Something to work on.

I don’t have any particular questions to pose on this topic, but there is a lot to think about here and I am pretty sure you all will have something to share. Thoughts?

This little Chinese boy with Down Syndrome is in need of finding interested adoptive parents by July 1. China does not usually allow for the adoption of children with Down Syndrome, but so many people advocated for this little guy that an exception has been allowed. A donor has offered to fund the adoption, but if willing parents cannot be found, James will be permanently institutionalized in China and no other babies with Down Syndrome will be eligible for adoption in the future.

Find out more through Barbara Curtis at Mommy Life and at A Helping Hand.

Somebody needs to wake me up. Maybe I really should try that coffee thing. If I didn’t know better, I would think that the two men we hired to do the drywall in our addition just pulled up in a truck, entered my house and began–get this– putting up drywall. I don’t know whether to faint with disbelief, squeal with joy, or break down sobbing. I’ll let you know what I decide later.

My dear brother David and I are moon twins, or Irish twins, as some people like to call it. This just means that we were born less than 1 year apart. When we were kids, I thought this was fabulous. It’s every younger sibling’s dream come true, isn’t it? For 18 glorious days out of each year, I caught up—actually caught up— to my older brother and we were the same age. Yes!

Well these days I don’t covet the privilege of growing older quite so much. In fact, today I am breathing a sigh of relief that I am once again David’s younger sister… for the next 347 days. Oh, I feel so youthful! Happy birthday, Old Man!