Seven Quicktakes Friday-Nov. 30

1. Tomorrow we will no longer have a heathen baby dripping in her original sin. Hooray! Because of this event we are having many family members coming to town and I am throwing our first "real" Baptism party where I planned it in advance. The past two babies I was taken by surprise that we are supposed to have a cake and food for people afterwards. It does not help that G was baptised on the octave of her birth and I was still in shock of what it is like to have a newborn and be post-partum.

2. Three weeks is again my point of feeling like a normal person after having a baby. And by normal person, I suppose I have put myself in the category of normal for a nursing mother of a baby.

3. St. Paul is starting to feel like "home." You know that feeling you get when a place is familiar and comforting as you drive through it knowing where you are going? Moving is such a long transition. I expect that we will really know if it feels like home when we come back from our Christmas travels.

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4. M is complaining about my quicktakes being too short these days; these will be again. I wrote the first three on Friday and am finishing them Sunday, but backdating them to Friday because I discovered how to schedule posts this week.

5. I labeled all my posts this week and then added the gadget of a label cloud. My blog is all grown up now. Maybe some of the posts I wrote years ago before I shared it with people publicly might actually be read. :) And you really should check out why Beatrix Potter is awesome if you haven't yet. My children's book reviews are my favorite...

6. I am about to do this workout video. And I know you are saying, workout video at 3 weeks post-partum? I am just going to say it is the best thing one can do for a post-partum body. It stretches everything and helps one's core get back into being normal. Plus you do the whole thing laying on the floor...

7. We have ordered all of the Christmas gifts now and I just have to finish making the ones the girls are making for everyone... (I know, they did some fun artwork for them and I am laboring to make their artwork a gift...)

New Things!

Shortly after having the baby I was invited to contribute to the blog Truth and Charity. After three weeks I have decided to join! The blog is run by a group of lay, Catholic writers who are unwaveringly faithful to the Magisterium. The mission of the blog is to illustrate what it is to live as a faithful Catholic in American society - the intersection of faith and life.

I am really excited to be joining the other awesome Catholic bloggers on the site! I will be posting there every Thursday, and will continue my writing here at Living with Lady Philosophy.

Why Beatrix Potter is Awesome (Good Picture Books Series)

One of the weirdest but most wonderful authors of children's stories was Beatrix Potter. We have been slowly collecting the entire 23 book set with every chance to give birthday or Christmas presents, and reading all the stories as we find them at the library. The most recent book we read is "The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes." This apparently was her book written for her American audience, featuring the gray squirrel, the chipmunk, and the black bear, though the scenery is still taken from her native English countryside. It also features birds whose natural songs are: "Whose-bin-diggin-up-my-nuts" and "A-little-bit-o-bread-and-no-cheese." It makes me wonder what the birds around St. Paul are really saying.

Photo of Potter's Hill Top Farm by Chris Brown

All of Potter's books are full of insights about animals, nature, and relationships, which she expresses in the personified animals of her stories. Accompanying her witty texts are beautiful watercolors. (I would love to share some here, but according to Wikipedia the images are not in the public domain in the UK or Europe and I don't want to violate any copyright laws since I don't really know anything about them.)

A great feature of her stories is that she often includes rhymes in the dialogue, which expand on the nursery rhymes that I have already been reading to my children. She even has two books of her own rhymes "Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes" and "Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes."

She gives great life lessons in her stories: We learn in "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" the negative affects of gluttony and disobeying parents. In "The Tale of Jemima Puddle-duck" to not talk to predatory-like strangers even if they have sandy whiskers and that once again foxes are always bad. Another great tale is that of Ginger and Pickles in which we learn that giving credit, while it sells a lot of goods, does not always bode well for paying one's own bills. The tale about a tail, "The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin" teaches us to not pester our benefactors. From capitalism to parents to strangers, Potter presented helpful advice on living in the world.

The point is that Potter wrote some pretty great stories that kids and parents find entertaining and wonderful with every reading of the story. This I think is the essential element of good children's stories. I will say it again and again; if it is going to be great for the child it has to be great for the parent. And that is why Beatrix Potter is awesome. Go and read her to your kid now. :)