Reflections on the Lovliness of Romance

Margaret did a fantastic job with the Valentine's installment of the Living Lives of Loveliness Fair. I hadn't intended to write anything about love or romance but after reading all of the posts, I had so many thoughts about my own romance with my husband that I thought I would write out some of them.

Sometime within the last couple weeks marked quite a milestone in our relationship. We have now been married longer than we knew each other before we got married. In case you were wondering, we will celebrate our fourth anniversary in May. In some ways I can't believe we have been married this long and in other ways it seems like yesterday that we took our vows. Overall, I think that our pre-married togetherness seems much longer than our married togetherness simply because we were not married.

My husband may not do things like randomly buy me jewelry and chocolates, but he shows he loves me in much more important ways. He has been there for me in my darkest hour when I needed him most. He does the laundry and takes out the trash without complaining. He works two jobs and is a full time student so he can provide for the needs (and a reasonable amount of wants) for our family. He is patient with and supportive about my pregnancy problems (and hormones). He is a loving father who will pretend he is a horse or read several stories in a row to please a rambunctious toddler.

He has never done anything for Valentine's Day before and I don't expect him to because he does so much more. Maybe that is why it means so much more that he ordered an expensive box of chocolates for me this year and then bought me some roses. He knew it wasn't expected, so he wanted to surprise me. And he surprised me not once, but twice. He's my husband and I love him.

The Difference of a Year

On Sunday we celebrated my son's second birthday. I found it interesting to compare his behavior during the Happy Birthday song to his behavior last year.

On his first birthday he had a wonderful time running around and playing with everyone. However, when the singing began and all eyes were upon him, my little extrovert burst into tears. We were surprised and amused that someone who loved attention should suddenly feel like he had too much of it.

This year he had a wonderful time running around and playing with everyone. When the singing began, he was totally oblivious to the fact that everyone was looking at and singing to him. He now loves music and singing and happily sang along with everyone else. Also, he heard the "happy" in "Happy Birthday" and clapped his hands together because he knows that "when you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!"

If you would like to see his birthday cake, click here to go to my cooking blog.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

I don't know if you are familiar with this set of books by someone who calls himself "Lemony Snickett". I had never heard of them until the movie came out a few years ago. When I saw the preview for the movie, I thought, "That looks dumb. Who would want to see that?" I didn't voice my opinion though and my husband said, "Hmm. That looks interesting. I would like to see that, but maybe I should read the stories first."

If it hadn't been for him, I would be missing out on some of the most clever and witty writing I have come across in quite some time. Even though these are written for children, most adults will appreciate Snickett's style and humor. The first several books have a very similar plot which gets slightly tiresome, but the writing style more than makes up for it. Somewhere along the line, the author starts turning the story into a mystery and then the plot gets a little more interesting.

We are still plodding through the series. Every time we come home from the library with a new book I have to be careful where or when I put it down or I will go to resume reading it and my husband will have the book instead. If we see any of the series at thrift stores we pick them up for our personal library because we wouldn't have any problem with our children reading them, unlike many of the other currently popular books.

When Did He Learn That?

Sometime during Advent, my son started saying "church". He would say it if we were at church or if he heard one of us mention the words "church" or "mass". Since then he asks us frequently if we are going to church. This development took us by surprise since most of the words he has learned were somewhat actively taught to him, either by reading to him about them or saying, "Look, a _____!"

Now we have been taken by surprise yet again. (When will I learn to expect the unexpected with children?) We have a book on saints which for some time he has enjoyed thumbing through, even though it is not geared toward young children like his other books. Within the last week he has started coming to me with the book saying, "Church, church."

My husband and I were amazed that without any guidance from us, he was able to tell that the stories were religious. We have started reading the lives of the Saints since he clearly enjoys it, but he is so young that we rarely get through one paragraph before he moves on the the next saint. Often he wants us to read from it as the last thing before he goes to bed. I hope this is a sign of future holiness for him. . .

Our Lady Seat of Wisdom

When I was in college I had a strong devotion to Our Lady Seat of Wisdom, which has unfortunately fallen by the wayside now that I am not studying anymore. Since wisdom is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, it would be wise (ha, ha!) for me to resume it.

I am interested in different feast days of Our Lady, but until recently I didn't know that one for her title of Seat of Wisdom existed. I was browsing the site of the newly founded institution Wyoming Catholic College and noticed that they list February fourth as her feast day. How exciting! Now there is one more special day to celebrate Our Lady.

Feast of the Presentation

I love feast days such as the one today where we celebrate more than one event at once. On January first we celebrated the Feast of the Circumcision and the Feast of Mary, Mother of God. Today we celebrate Mary's Purification, Christ's Presentation in the temple, and Candlemas.

It is beautiful how the Church incorporates certain Hebraic rituals or events into the calendar. This isn't just a random day that the Church picked to celebrate the Presentation. This feast is forty days after Christmas because the women always went to the temple to be purified forty days after their baby was born. If Protestants could see that there are Biblical reasons for many of the Church's feast days, I suspect they would be able to have a much greater understanding of the liturgical year.

Saints Simeon and Anna, pray for us.

I Guess I Paid Attention in CCD

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It was really hard to figure out whether the four marks of the Church were One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, or John, Paul, George and Ringo. :)