Been busy growing

Despite the oh-so-lengthy gap in posting, things here are doing spectacularly. Elise is busy smiling and cooing more frequently now, and one of her favorite times of the day is getting her diaper changed and playing with “the baby in the mirror”. I’ve fine tuned some of our events, such as bathtime; since Elise has decided she hates baths and therefore pitches quite a fit when she has one. However, having them earlier in the day when she’s not as tired has helped to lessen the cries to whimpers when she is being dried off. Much, much happier (for everyone involved!).

Greg and I have been working on our spiritual lives more in the last week, as well. We went to Confession at the Diocesean college Wednesday night. I can’t speak for Greg but my Confession was particularly helpful. The priest is one of the college’s priests, and he addressed each issue in my Confession point by point. Elise came with me into the Confessional, and she was just happy as a clam – smiling and cooing at Father, as well as hanging on to his finger from time to time. He told her she would have to keep secret everything she heard – she just smiled. Before Confession there was Adoration, which was a nice surprise (we were unaware of Adoration before Confession, we thought it was just Confession on Wednesday night!). Elise was kind of whimpering in the Chapel, but once Father exposed Christ in the Monstrance she immediately stopped whimpering and instead started cooing at Him. It was incredibly cute and at the same time, I wished that I could see what she sees. Somehow I think she sees Jesus more fully than any of us adults can.

Since it’s after Halloween, Greg and I have turned our attentions toward Christmas. Advent is one of my favorite seasons of the Church, and Elise will be getting baptized in Advent. We’re not exactly loaded rich, so we’re thinking that for close family members who are adults; we will be donating to charity in honor of them. We’ve been spending time looking at various charities and trying to inch out of them if they have any charities in mind. Since we don’t have very many nieces/nephews/cousins who are young (yet), we only need to find a gift for my Nephew. We also want to get something special for Elise, even though she will only be about four months old. Nevertheless, we were cruising Aquinas and More’s Advent and Christmas Shop to get some ideas. I found a lot of things I wouldn’t mind having (:X) and also found a few things we were thinking of for Elise’s first Christmas. We also want to get her a good quality Bible, but I’m not sure if we will buy it for her Baptism, or wait until a few years. Greg is of the opinion that we should buy her a Bible this Christmas.

I’m kind of new to this whole “raising a Catholic child” thing, can you tell? Greg is the cradle Catholic, and living in such close proximity to his parents is very beneficial as I can get his perspective as a Catholic kid and his parent’s perspective on raising Catholic kids.

Either way, I want to get the Christmas shopping done, mainly so I don’t forget it and wait until the last minute. I’m all about cutting out needless stress in my life. But if anyone’s like me and wants to get some shopping out of the way, I’d recommend going through Aquinas and More. They’re my favorite online retailer, so I don’t suppose I’ll stop gushing about them anytime soon.

Speaking of Advent and Christmas, I should dig up my book about Catholic traditions in the home. Greg’s parents do the Advent wreath (and use the Magnificat Advent companion). We tried to do the Advent wreath last year, but we ended up getting removed from our apartment due to the Great Mold Inundation of 2007. Does anyone have any Advent and Christmas traditions they would like to share? I’ve heard of the Advent wreath and the Jesse tree. If it helps, Elise is German/Hispanic; so any traditions in those cultures would be beneficial, as well.

It’s about a quarter to midnight, so I suppose I should wrap this up! I could you know, always update a titch more frequently rather than doing one big post!