7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 136)
— 1 —
Please don’t tell me that July is almost over. Because that means that it’s almost August, which means that I actually have to start thinking about the Fall, the season of doing stuff. I am a little daunted about how this whole “homeschooling with a newborn” thing is going to go (read: IT HAS EPIC FAIL WRITTEN ALL OVER IT). Not to mention the fact that we’re getting the kids involved in some activities! Activities! The kids are only now getting old enough for this, so I haven’t yet had the experience of being one of those moms who’s always on the go (read: I NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE AND I LIKE IT THAT WAY). Long story short: I hear that ominous Jaws music every time I think about the Fall semester. So let’s not discuss the fact that August is almost here.
— 2 —
Can’t…type…laughing…too…hard…Okay, let me pull myself together to warn you that there is some brief profanity in this video…but you need to watch it anyway, because it is the pinnacle of human achievement.
— 3 —
You know where else it was gettin’ real this week? At my National Catholic Register blog. For those of you who missed the fun, I wrote a post about talking to atheists about faith. Professor PZ Myers responded by resigning as president of my fan club, and his commenters came to a consensus that I’m pretty much the most useless person in the world. Then I shared my thoughts on his post, but, alas, it did not change his view that I have the IQ of a bowl of oatmeal. Between the four posts there were over 1,000 comments, and my email inbox was flooded with people weighing in from both sides of the fence. (And yes, I did think of writing up a little parody to the above video involving lyrics like “It’s gettin’ reeeeal in the PZ comment box…”)
— 4 —
One amusing note is that some Trucknutz-related news broke in the middle of this, which had a hilarious effect on my email inbox. For better or worse, many people immediately think of me when they see Trucknutz (because of this post…well, I hope that’s why!), and so I got a lot of emails about this story. I wish I’d taken a screenshot of the subject lines in my inbox, because it was something like:
Your horrible Register article
Thanks for a good post
TRUCKNUTZ!!!
That garbage you wrote at NCR
Trucknutz story
UR AN IDIOT
Did you see this Trucknutz story?
Liked your post about evangelization and atheists
Trucknutz
Your post was the stupidest thing I’ve ever read
You were NEVER a real atheist
Trucknutz!
— 5 —
It’s getting kind of Lord of the Flies over here with this weather. As the days of being confined indoors have worn on, our range of activities is getting more and more limited, to the point that the kids spend most of their time hitting each other and screaming these days. It got so bad the other day that I actually suggested that we do some crafts. Not knowing how one goes about such a thing, I pulled out some artsy looking toy that one of the kids had gotten for Christmas, but that, in a moment of what would turn out to be great foresight, I had stored away. I don’t know what this thing is called, but it involves a spinning apparatus and big bottles of brightly colored paint. You know where this is going.
Based on all the crafty blogs I read, I had envisioned this to be a calm, organized activity that would lend itself to closeup pictures of smiling children leaning forward and quietly pondering the project at hand. Instead, my kids descended on this thing like piranhas. I stood there frozen as they somehow managed to pop open the paint, grab at the spinner thing, tear the special rounds of paper, shove each other out of the way, and make sounds like rabid howler monkeys, all at the same time. I’m not good at mental multitasking, so I just stood there and flapped my hands in horror, not sure which feral behavior to address first. It ended with the kids slipping around a paint-coated floor, their shirts looking like a failed modern art experiment, and me vowing to seek revenge on whichever soon-to-be-ex friend foisted this toy on us (until I remembered that, umm, I was the one who bought it).
Anyway, if anyone has ideas for indoor activities that don’t involve spinning things and paint, I’m all ears.
— 6 —
I keep pinning things to my “Fun Things to do with Kids” board on Pinterest, thinking that one of these days the time I spend on that site will pay off because I’ll actually enact some of these ideas I get from looking at pretty pictures on the internet. However, so far my ration of “doing” to “sitting on the couch and looking” is not very good.
— 7 —
I was going to write something else here, but I’m going to go watch the Whole Foods Parking Lot video again. Youtube says it has 2,414,615 views, and I’m pretty sure that 2,414,612 are from me.
Have a nice weekend!
————————-
Below is a linky list if you’d like to add a link to your own 7 Quick Takes post. (1) Make sure the link you submit is to the URL of your post and not your main blog URL. (2) Include a link back here.
For your convenience, you can have each Conversion Diary post delivered on a feed reader or by email.
I am making a mental note to watch the video after the kids go to bed! I think, also, that you are very brave. It would be tough to get all those negative comments but you doing a wonderful job!
I haven’t read your blog in a while, but it’s one of my favorites…I can’t get over the fact that someone doesn’t like you! I don’t even know you and I’m all “how dare they say bad things about Jen?”
I don’t know, but I love your writing and your blog helped me so much throughout my conversion to Catholicism. I think you rock, Jen!
Can’t wait to read the quicktakes! Good luck with homeschooling, just take it easy the first year, that’s what my mom did.
Oh dear, I just read his “response to the response to the response” (whew!) and some of the comments. One comment was funny:
“If Catholicism is based on an imaginary deity, and a mythical/fictional holy book, there cannot be any intellectual consistency. Unless one is blinded from reality by delusional thinking.”
Actually, yes, yes there can! Intellectual consistency does not at all stipulate a basis in reality. Taking another example from Chesterton, a small system that leaves out a lot of information and possibilities can indeed be intellectually consistent – as in the crazy guy down the street who is convinced that the electrical company is spying on him via a huge conspiracy involving all his neighbours and friends. He can come up with a completely rational explanation of everything he believes, an explanation that has no inherent contradiction, and is in fact a very tidy and intellectually consistent view of the situation. The fact that it is completely nuts is beside the point. Catholicism could still be wrong and be quite intellectually consistent. The two questions are not necessarily the same.
So who is operating outside of reality? Obviously I think I’m right, and he thinks he is. But what makes me a little more inclined to give myself more credit than I give to those who vitriolically and unequivocally assault belief in God as stupid, is that I came to my conclusions perfectly willing to accept that there was no “knowable God”, or that if there was, he may look like anything at all, in the form of any religion or no religion. I am still willing to stipulate that I may be mistaken, no matter how devoutly I believe what I do. But these types, in much the same way as the vitriolic religious types will cling angrily to their view, show a key symptom of lunacy: a lack of ability to accept that they may be wrong. Any group can show it – there are Catholics like that, too, and it makes me very, very skeptical of their *real* personal belief system (as opposed to the beliefs they avow in assuming a particular label, and are supposed to try to live up to).
Wow that was long. And I have no snappy conclusion! How awful.
For stuff to do indoors with little kids, I recommend The Common Room blog (one of about five I read regularly, along with yours). I hardly ever use her suggestions, because it takes work to go look up the posts (pathetic, I know), but they sound fun and mostly very easy and always cheap or free.
I’m so glad you have thick skin, Jen. Commenters will say just about anything, won’t they? It’s a good thing you have such Fortitude.
I can’t believe July is almost gone either!
Jamie recently posted..7 Quick Takes Friday – 20110729
I agree, don’t do crafts yet or activities, wait till they are bigger……
some new things to do indoors –
take the matresses off the beds or out of the cribs and lean them against the hallway/living room/bedroom wall and they can make tunnels all around the house, then you can just lean against one and pretend you are part of the game while they crawl around, when someone gets tired just flop down a mattress and take a nap.
I also took an old white tablecloth,or use a sheet, laid it on the kitchen floor and let everyone paint (sorry!!) circles on it and put on hand prints, then when it’s dry cut out the centers of some of the circles and hang it from the ceiling, or in a doorway, throw any soft thing, balls, blocks, small stuffed animals through the holes, I think we call it “balls through a hoop” and it has been a favorite for 3 or 4 years now. You can have kids on both sides, higher and lower holes, can get crazy but is a lot of fun. You can sit on the couch and nurse and catch a few items to throw back once in awhile
Afterwards you can always do a puppet show through the hoops, our boys favorite is the pet skunk who constantly comes and stinks up the show, the other characters hardly have any lines to rehearse and there is no plot at all, huge laughs for everyone
Bubbles are always an indoor favorite
Making an trap for Daddy when he gets home
line up all the chairs and make a bus, bring all the stuffed animals for a ride, take turn being the driver and saying where to go
Have fun with those kiddos, they grow up way too fast
I heart quick takes friday.
Make the activities group ones – swim lessons (cheaper to pay for private lessons for 3 of your kids at once than to drag them to group lessons that are not concurrent); martial arts; some art lessons. But really, your kids are all still young. Aside from swimming (an essential skill and good exercise), you can still focus on things like park days and indoor gym days that serve the double purpose of keeping them ALL busy and allowing you to socialize with the other moms. As homeschoolers, we were able to set up all sorts of multi-age classes that served our needs as families – soccer, Irish dance, swim, tennis…people were glad to get our business during school hours and bent over backwards to accommodate us.
Do not sacrifice family sanity for individual kids’ activities!
suburbancorrespondent recently posted..7 Quick Takes: Camping Tips Edition
I can sympathize about not being good with kids and crafts. Actually, I’m good with crafts – it’s the kids that give me trouble! About ten years ago, for six months, we were taking care of two additional children, in addition to our two (kind of an informal foster care) and had a blast. I don’t know if it’s just that I was younger or what, but we had a great time that six months. This week, I led the knitting club without my husband and thought I would lose my mind – and it was only three fourth-grade girls!! (My hubby is the one who does well with kids – I should be medicated.)
Don’t worry too much about formal “schooling” while your kids are young. They’ll learn a ton if all you do is read to them, play with them, get them to help around the house, and pray with them. They’ll be teenagers soon enough.
Dearest Jen, you have a healthy respect for the responsibility of teaching your children at home instead of having someone else do it for you. There isn’t an ounce of failure potential in that recipe. I’ve never even met you and I’m SO proud of you. Go mom!
I’m still laughing thinking of that video!
I sympathize with the screaming and hitting kids. I’m not sure if it is the heat or the newborn that is fueling the rage, but we’re in the same boat. We did crafts today too. Buy the kids one of those stained-glass coloring books (not necessarily of stained-glass, but images on see-through paper). The boys spent a good hour or so coloring and then covering up any available window space not already covered from another stained-glass window craft we did last summer…
another non-spinning paint idea: beeswax or wikki stix. so fun (and easy!) to do in this heat. wikki stix package says: Thousands of Ways to Play! Tap into the kids competitive spirit and challenge them to see how many ways they can come up with.
have fun!!
Oh, Jen, I just love you so much. I’m so glad that I subscribe to you so that I get these reminders to read something other than stressful email correspondences and stay in touch with the Catholic world. This was a great 7 Takes for a Postpartum mommmy. I am in awe of you.
Homeschooling with an infant focuses on life skills – making drinks, snacks, peeling vegetables, learning how to do laundry, checking cupboards for inventory, writing shopping lists and notes, helping with the baby….
Plus lots of reading good books together, making up stories whilst Mommy nurses and naps. Reading Rainbow, the matching books from the library and activities were an absolute wonderful gentle curriculum that even now my almost adult kids remember
If you can get grocery delivery that’s even better!
Missus Wookie recently posted..365 – 209 Peas in a Purple Pod, Broad Beans in a Bod?
“For those who believe no proof is necessary, for those who don’t believe no proof is possible.” Stuart Chase. So where does that leave us, as Christians who want to share God’s love? Jesus said to pray for those who persecute us. As a high school religion teacher I have encountered students who do not believe. I want so desperately for them to “get it,” to at least be open to the mystery of an omnipotent God who loves them so much He would die for them. Sometimes the only thing that reaches people in these situations is to show them this kind of love. It often hurts, it’s humbling, but when we show unconditional love, especially in the face of ridicule, the darkness is revealed for what it is. This itself can be very convicting (and painful!
Pope John Paul II said that “faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of the truth.” Faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit. We must pray for people who have not received or haven’t been open the the gift of faith, and in the meantime we must ask God for the strength to withstand the ridicule of non-believers, with His grace (the best witness.) I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, Jennifer, I’m just remembering how exasperating and hurtful it can be to be attacked for your faith. But as someone once said to me, when you suffer in this upside-down world we live in, “You are storing up treasures in heaven.” Keep up the good work. Our brothers and sisters are worth it and you can never out-give God. I promise to pray a rosary in confidence that God will do this work…
Allison Welch recently posted..Relax
First of all, love the video! We need to watch it every time we need a pick me up.
Second, let me just say THANK YOU for your witness and sharing your story of your conversion with readers! I know you take a huge risk every time you do this as you are well aware of the criticism you might receive from “those other readers.” Honestly, I don’t know how you do it. God obviously gives you this grace to respond with humor though I know it must hurt you deeply.
Praying for you as you continue your journey!
Hmmm, I wonder why Myers keeps continuing to read your posts. Keep it up! With a few more prayers he might switch to the other side.
haha good point. Let’s all start a prayer campaign. Then he’ll eat his words about him leading a fan club
jeni recently posted..7 Quick Takes Friday: Trip Takes
The tone of the spurned lover: “You were NEVER a real atheist — never, never!”
Jen, this will be the easiest year to take the kids to the activities with the baby. Next year it will be harder because the baby will be a toddler! Also – learn from my mistakes! ; ) Limit the number of activities and try to find more things that all the kids or even the family can do. Keep the HOME in Homeschooling and you’ll all feel better! God Bless you – you certainly are taking some hits for the kingdom this month!
Elena recently posted..Analyzing political analysis -Politifact and Bill O’Reilly
Awesome sites for things to do with kids:
http://www.preschooleducation.com
http://www.perpetualpreschool.com
http://www.enchantedlearning.com
And for quick clean up? just get an old (or $1) shower curtain liner, put it on the floor, wear ‘old’ shirts and let the kids go to it!
Rebecca @ The Road Home recently posted..Quick Takes (Saturday)
This is totally unrelated to any quick takes, but you should keep your eyes out for this great picture book on the lives of Sts. Benedict & Scholastica called The Holy Twins. It was written by Kathleen Norris and illustrated by Tomie dePaola. I bet your little Pamela will appreciate it when she’s older.
GeekLady recently posted..7 Quick Takes: Birthday Edition!
Is it common for atheists to be so vicious and vulgar? I’m being serious. I just don’t read atheist posts and I clicked on the one you posted before I saw your warning. The lack of human decency was horrifying, and it’s not like I lead a cloistered life. When you were an atheist, did you write like that? Is that aggressiveness their cultural norm? I hope he is the exception, but I stumbled across something equally vulgar and mean several years ago.
Oh, atheists run the same gamut as Christians. PZ Myers and his crew are just the atheist version of the Westboro Baptists. They have no manners, and think that it proves how rational they are.
Hi, Jennifer, I just wanted to write you a quick note and say “hello.” I found your blog a long time ago, and was a regular reader once upon a time, but then went through a busy time in my life, and lost track of a lot of the people I used to follow. I re-visited your blog for the first time a few days ago and spent hours reading through your archives, all the way back to the place where I stopped a few years ago. I’m so glad I did, it reminded me of how much I loved reading in the first place. I’ve linked to a few of your articles since then, and I’m looking forward to keeping up with you in the future! Blessings to you and your family.
Rina
Oh Jen, 1) You are hilarious. 2) We love you. 3) You are on the right track so know that these pain-in-the-butt responses you get and harsh words are obvious indicators that you are both reaching people and making them think. You are going to always ruffle people’s feathers putting the faith out there — but for every email you got, you make a hundred people think about the truth in your words.
God bless you! Thank you for bringing people to the Church and letting God move in you in such beautiful ways. We are praying for you. Twice you have popped into my head incredibly randomly at mass just before communion and I offered it for you — so know, the Holy Spirit is guiding your efforts. <3
And at least when dreaded Fall comes, you can step outside again, right? Our temperatures are similar to yours here in North FL. Our humidity is killing me.
jeni recently posted..7 Quick Takes Friday: Trip Takes
hahahahah you’re funny! I am out of words! LoL at the video too…
great post!
celineanavocci recently posted..play angry birds
I know I’m late to the party (I usually am) but just gotta tell you that I love your posts, and I hope you don’t let the naysayers get you down. You always strike me as sincere and REAL, which I would prefer any day to reading about how you take all your young kids to daily mass, followed by a half-hour of adoration, then after breakfast you do a saint craft with your littles, followed by saint story time, lunch, nap, family chaplet of divine mercy…etc. Just be faithful to prayer and listen to who God says you are. Remember you are only ever called to be your authentic self.
MyFeminineMind recently posted..For Those in the Area
Re: #1, and probably echoing other commenters: Don’t sweat it. You are going to do just fine. If nursing is going well you can homeschool during that time; during nap times; if some of the younger ones no longer nap, enforce a “quiet time” in the morning/afternoon (during baby’s nap times, perhaps) for all the other children while you homeschool your oldest. (The last could make him feel special and make the others want to start schooling!) Other moms have written tons in blogs about how to involve the preschool/toddler crowd in schooling, but I admit I’ve had only epic fails there.
So my method was more to school when they are not about. And really, first grade still doesn’t require that much more one-on-one time than K.
Based on what I’ve seen other moms do/say, just start with what you consider bare bones (like the 3Rs), and add in what you can, if you can. Your child will not end up “behind” if he doesn’t get a lot of science/history/foreign language in the first grade. Plus there are a ton of great picture books that you can read to all of them that will cover an amazing amount of ground. Check out Maureen Wittmann’s “For the Love of Literature” if you haven’t already.
Your line, “I NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE AND I LIKE IT THAT WAY,” really made me LOL! That’s me! From one introvert to another, don’t pressure yourself too much. I learned all-too-slowly that God made me the way I am and I do not need to feel a lot of pressure to change it. Yes, I force myself to do certain activities to provide enriching activities with my kids, but there is this insidious pressure – in homeschooling as much as anywhere else – that we “owe” our children exposure to a million different things. The reality is that we don’t; we owe them love and loving experiences of God. If a mom/dad loves to be out and about and take their kids everywhere, then wonderful! If you like to be at home and your kids have a load of free exploratory time, then wonderful! You don’t need to make yourself miserable as an introvert to be a good homeschool mom: I think your kids would rather be ANYWHERE with you when you are content, rather than at the most amazing event in the world when you are stressed and snappy.
OK, enough cheerleading!
Besides, Simcha Fisher has said pretty much all the above and much more eloquently!