Please click on the above link to read an incredible story about a family trying to adopt a little girl who is in dire need of medical care. Her parents have insurance to cover everything once she’s adopted, but need help coming up with $15,500 in the next two months. The fundraiser at this link has already raised half of the necessary amount!

Give a little, give a lot, but don’t forget to enter the giveaways. Even $1 gets you in, and you get to feel good about supporting a family doing something generous and noble.

I read an interesting post here, where the writer was just asking about the morality of giving when one is in debt. I’ve often thought it’s odd that some of my friends who owe their friends and family heaps and heaps of money, and rely on others for regular handouts, tithe when they do get a paycheck. I’ve been in the position to have someone who has never paid me back share her latest charitable contributions. I ultimately ended up writing off the loan because it became pretty clear that I would have to pitch a fit to get paid, and I wasn’t about to do that. Ultimately, that friend lost the ability to borrow from me, since I can’t afford to give money to people who don’t pay it back even when they have the chance to do so.

My husband and I are really tired of spending about $2,500 a year to simply pedal in place with our student loans. Looking at the numbers, we have a choice between starting to pay a couple hundred off each month, or give that money to charity to get our 7% giving (net) up to 10%. For the record, I don’t believe in giving based on gross income, because as Erin Manning pointed out, “ the fact is that you don’t have the money that is taken in taxes–so how can you give ten percent of something you don’t actually have?”

Some people might see that as paying Caesar before I pay Peter, and thus giving God my “second fruits.” But my thoughts on this are:

• Caesar has basically arranged to garnish my wages at a tax level unimaginable in the ancient world.
• Tithing is based on one’s “increase”, not just on one’s income. Since our income has gone down significantly since we opened up our lives to children, while our expenses have gone up, the fact that we give as much as we do is a good start.
• If I continue to “pay” my student loans the way I am now, I will spend $20,000 on interest only over the next ten years, at which point some of my loans might be cancelled. But they might not be, since the rules governing loan forgiveness change with time. If the rules changed against my favor, I would have spent $20k on interest and almost nothing on principal. This is money once spent, is gone forever. On the other hand, if I pay down my loans faster, I will be able to give more generously month by month, and overall in my lifetime.

For now, our plan is to put our tax refund into our emergency fund, which will bring it up to an amount that would cover a catastrophe or some sudden, huge expense. After that, we want to split any surplus (anything left over after mandatory bills and our current 7% charitable giving) between the emergency fund and our student loans. We’ll probably only put $100/month into the emergency fund for now, since we are basically spending 6% interest on our student loans and only earning .84% on our savings. If the tides shift, we can always slow down our payback and save more.

2. Zoe is getting to that point where she is not sleeping through the night anymore because she is the size of a truck big, and needs more food than I can provide. So, we’ve started the occasional bit of rice cereal mixed with breastmilk. This gets us through to 6:45 AM. I never thought that hour would look civilized, but it is, compared to 5:00 AM.

3. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a horrifying spider in the house, which makes me feel tense.

4. Oh wait, I forgot about that lovely one, carting an egg sack, that dropped from the ceiling two inches from my face yesterday. I screamed, caught it in a huge dish towel, and immediately started a load of laundry. My homeschool tutor student thinks I’m nuts.

5. My babysitter went back to school this week. She wrote us the NICEST goodbye letter ever, about how she’s learned so much about life, marriage, kids, etc. from us. She also bought both kids a thoughtful gift. I was honestly blown back by the letter. I hired her because I went to high school with her older sister, who kept prompting me to call her. I knew that the youngest of 9 kids in a nice Mormon family was going to be a good first sitter for Zoe. She has spent the last three months babbling with Zoe or playing earnestly with Wolfie, so I was shocked to read that she previously had a problem with getting shy and clamming up around kids. I was also flattered that she felt she learned so much, given that most of her siblings are married with children; she has no shortage of other role models, but now I understand that most of them are lenient to the point of letting kids stay up all night.

6. I’ve noticed that after a year of daily Mass, my older sister feels less judgmental to me. I can’t place my finger on it, but somehow she seems to understand that I am not doing it all wrong. Or that if I am, it’s not her job to fix me.

7. I just ordered another copy of Parenting with Love and Logic, because I lent a copy to my mom, who promptly buried it beneath some magazines. My parents are still running missing homework to my little sister’s high school three times a day, so they could afford to grow a spine. Instead, I will attempt to memorize key passages of the book so that I can parrot them back to my parents when they complain about Greta’s shenanigans.

I just went outside to find out what all that commotion was. Wolfie had no explanation, but there were feathers everywhere. I would say he did something, but the chickens (or as we call them, the ladies) were still following him around with love in their little dinosaur eyes.

BUT, we bought a bottle of foaming soap for the bathroom because Wolfie’s preschool teacher recommended it for getting his hands cleaner and making it more fun for him. (Bubbles!) We ran through the $2.50 bottle (on sale) in about two weeks; we ran through the $5 refill in about 5 weeks. Given that this was just one sink, it would have cost us about $150 a year to buy foaming hand soap for all three sinks, even using bulk refill bottles.

Our fancy shmancy dispenser

However, there is a great work around. Foaming hand soap is not chemically different than the regular gel. It is just more watery, which allows it to run through the special pump in the bottle, which aerates it, causing bubbles.

Solution? Yes! I mix handsoap to water in a 1:4 ratio. 2 oz soap meet 8 oz water. I don’t vigorously shake, and I don’t mix directly in the bottle because once you clog a foaming dispenser with gel soap, it’s done; since soap sinks to the bottom, the first few pumps would necessarily clog the dispenser. I use a jar and put the soap in the water and gently stir it every now and then over the morning, before I see that it has formed a very thin mixture. Then it gets poured into the soap dispenser. If you want to fill the pump directly, put the water in first so that it doesn’t agitate the soap and bubble over. Wait until it’s mixed before using.

How much money does this save? Well, that depends on whether or not we were really going to use foaming soap at every sink. So two comparisons.

• Cost of homemade foam soap (10 oz): 2 x .0625 (cost of soap per ounce) + $0 (water) = $0.12 per refill. Annual cost= $6.24.
• Cost of continuing to use gel handsoap, bought in bulk (10 oz): 10 x $.0625 (cost of soap per ounce) = $0.62 per refill. Annual cost = $32.50

This is slightly skewed by the fact that 10 oz of gel soap seems to last a little longer than the 10 oz. foam soap in the bathroom, but I don’t know how to break it down any differently. However, there is no chance that we would have started spending $1 per week per dispenser just to have foam soap. So, this trick is saving us about $26 a year. The fact that we like foam soap better is a bonus! When Wolfie wastes an entire bottle of foam soap, I can say, “Hmmm, that was 45 minutes of fun in the sink and it only cost 12 cents!” That’s pretty cheap, even for me.

This year: no worries. I had a good time and enjoyed chatting with people. A few things were different. 1.) I have a newborn. That makes me a rock star. 2.) I didn’t try too hard with the one cousin to whom I wish I could be close, but who won’t let me in. 3.) I had a good Lent and a great Easter Vigil Mass.

Go ahead and tell me this baby isn't the cutest ever. Then I'll have to knock some sense into your head, because she is.

Alright, just got distracted from writing because I was staring at my beautiful baby lamb. Back on task.

Lent was better this year because 1.) I gave up something important (Facebook), 2.) I stuck with it, and 3.) it was the sort of thing that does actually give one more space for God. It appears that sharing every half-baked thought with every acquaintance I’ve met since preschool isn’t good for me. Weird.

Also, Lent was really good because my company bought me an iPad. It’s not how it sounds! I have a cheap drug dealer phone, I don’t even have cable, let alone a flat screen! And I know that Lent is not about getting things like Christmas is. But, there are some fantastic apps on the iPad for reading the day’s readings, getting information about the saint of the day, and even listening to the New Testament performed. For the first time, I have found a way to read a previously heavy tome while nursing a baby who doesn’t like for me to fidget. Or do anything besides stare at her. (Lucky her–we have so much in common! I too want to do nothing besides stare at her.) And I find that as I get even a little bit of scripture in, my life gets better. I think I walk around with soul-flu most of the time, and only occasionally check in with a doctor (priest) to clear my chest. This Lent was better because I put in a small dollop of effort.

This Lent was also better than usual because I was oddly nostalgic, remembering my freshman year of college, when I lived in a Catholic dorm and could go to the chapel 24-7. I went a lot, and was sad a lot because my dad had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer and despite my best efforts to think otherwise, I knew that my two-year relationship with my boyfriend was fizzling. I have such distinct memories of kneeling in the chapel, wanting to be close to God. This Lent, I was able to remember that hollowness, and give thanks to God that my life turned out the way it has, and to try to recognize that even when he offers me suffering, his plans are way better than the harebrained schemes I dream up.

Because of having a newborn and a less-than-compliant three-year-old, Fierce and I split up for Mass. I went to the Vigil, and he went to 7:30. We both felt like we got the better end of the deal. Historically, my family has either gone to the airport for Mass (“It’s only 45 minutes long!”) or my uncle, who’s a priest, has us come to his nursing home for the religious. There we entertain the lonely retired religious by letting our children toddle around after the service. This year, they were not having a vigil Mass, so my parents and most of my siblings went to the airport. Increasingly, I am baffled by this attitude about avoiding long services and Chreasters. My dad goes to daily Mass. We grew up praying a daily Rosary. And now, my parents will drive over an hour round trip to save themselves from sitting through a local service that is about that much longer than usual.

Sitting in the dark at the Vigil Mass, feeling so grateful to Christ for allowing himself to be tortured to death, so that he could save a dweeb like me, I became aware that God does great things when given the slightest opportunity. Read the day’s readings and suddenly I’m more patient; read about the saints and find that I’m inspired to give more generously; pray a Rosary with my husband, and find my heart softening all over the place. Really, it’s getting kind of embarrassing.

I also have a student who was going to one of those too-good-to-be-true Regnum Christi schools, cracked under the pressure, was hospitalized with agitated depression, and is now homeschooled. His mother didn’t realize that he wasn’t allowed to be on school property, and was sent home from her volunteer post because she, like all of the other mothers, had a non-student child with her. Granted, the kid was pretty obnoxious while he was there, but he was not expelled. He left for health reasons, but is now being treated like depression is contagious.

It would be nice to say that I am impervious to the sin of shunning, but I think that smugness is a form of shunning. I am the queen of being smug, including my pride over not struggling with envy. It honestly doesn’t bug me at all to see people get ahead. Turns out, according to Fr. Robert Barron, schadenfreude is the flip side of envy. Nobody loves a good failure story more than I. I’ve always loved success stories, like Rudy, but when I’m honest, it’s because I see the amazing heroes as mirrors of my own marvelousness. When I hear failure stories, like how so-and-so’s idiot sister got knocked up by a deadbeat, I feel a bit superior. Of course, when my sister gets knocked up by a deadbeat, it has no bearing on my sense of myself.

At the heart of shunning is a desire to isolate a person as though they were a contagion. At the heart of envy is the desire to deconstruct a person’s blessings, and at the heart of schadenfreude is the desire to enjoy the revealing of another person as inferior. All of these are cousins of pride. Unlike my ex-priest cousin, these are cousins with whom I am sadly close.

But, can I just bring up the fact that as devastating as a series of IVF miscarriages and non-starts must be, what about those babies? Reading this article, I was struck most by the fact that, as much as the writer was sensitive about the subject, at least, as sensitive as one can be when one accepts the premise that one can buy sperm, impregnate oneself, intentionally deprive a child of her father, and accept that numerous children will fail to thrive before one eeks out a baby, she did not consider any of the costs associated with the fertility industry aside from those borne specifically by the women seeking pregnancy.

To her, that 16 babies die for every one born of IVF isn’t even part of the equation, nor is the fact that women are ill-informed of the tremendous health and emotional risks when they “donate” their eggs for a few thousands dollars. Babies aren’t babies until they’re both wanted and have survived the minefield of waning fertility. It may seem odd that someone who is writing about women who want nothing more than to get pregnant, does not actually recognize the humanity of the baby until birth, but it is perfectly consistent with the abortion culture. If we can make love-making baby-free, why not make babies without love? If we can get rid of babies we don’t want, why not see the loss of babies we do want in terms of me, myself, I, my pain? How can the babies’ pain matter if they’re here on our whim?

To someone promoting abortion, the important thing is to dehumanize the baby to make killing him easier. To someone promoting IVF as a valid moral choice, even for single women or gay couples, the important thing is to dehumanize the baby to make the killing of his siblings seem like just one’s own personal loss. Some claim that the babies which are miscarried weren’t killed, but they were at minimum placed very much in harm’s way. Who does that to a beloved child?

Anybody who has ever lost a child, or known a young person who died, can tell you that the pain stems not just from one’s own personal loss, but from knowing that the world has lost the huge potential that person had to offer, the unknown gifts. When a young person dies, it’s a bit like watching a library, whose exact contents are unknown, burn to the ground. You don’t even know what you’ve lost, and that’s what hurts the most.

Unless of course you’re not watching the library burn down, but you’re haphazardly setting fires as you seek to find a particular book. Then you can say that the cost was necessary, that it wasn’t your fault, that it isn’t really a loss because there was no less destructive way to find what you wanted.

The option of foregoing what one wanted because the cost to others is too high is simply not imaginable to the mind that sees others as things to be wanted or not wanted, rather than as valuable entities who don’t need to be wanted in order to matter.

So, I started looking casually online. Zoe is four-months-old, and I’m 28-years-old. If I want six kids, I need to be open to having them a lot closer than 3.5 years apart from here on out. But with two five-seater cars, neither of which can actually hold three car seats, we would need a new car by the time Baby Three arrived.

Really, I’m cool with getting a minivan, especially if I can get one that doesn’t look like a minivan. I thought I would go for a cross-over, but a very practical, funny mom who owns one told me that she regrets it because it’s much harder to fit in strollers, bikes, etc. And she’s right.

So a minivan that looks like a minivan. But I can get one that’s sleek-looking. A black one! You won’t even notice it’s not an SUV because I’ll be driving that fast in my kick-butt car. So I filtered the cars that met my criteria on usedcars.com to only include black Toyota Siennas. But then a lot of the deals dropped off the list, and I can either buy one that’s 8-years-old and has 114,000 miles on it, if I want to stick to my budget. Or I can buy a used car that mysteriously costs the same as a new one.

So, I’m okay with getting a red one. Or a gray one. Or a poop-colored one. Because when I think about it, the only thing I really need to do if my car color sucks is go to cafepress.com and make a bumper sticker that says: I’M COOLER THAN THIS CAR LETS ON. Or I could pay $1,000 to get a cheap dung-colored deal painted black. But then I will have spent $1,000 on my car’s appearances, instead of my own. Let’s face it. If anybody is having a $1,000 makeover, it’s me. Although I’m pretty sure you can’t get a chin tuck for $1,000. And I don’t have $1,000.

As I go through this minivan process, I realize that it’s a lot like discernment. By realizing early in the game which criteria I really care about (lots of seats and space, low mileage, safe, affordable) and which I don’t (color, ability to blend into the background should I see an old friend in a new car), I can make a better decision because I’m already choosing from better options.

Fortunately, when I was a young single woman, I was blessed with the right books and ideas. In high school, I read Wendy Shalit’s A Return to Modesty repeatedly and loved me some Joshua Harris’ I Kissed Dating Goodbye. I also read some crazy feminist books that made me both militant about my rights as a woman, and disgusted with feminists who thought that a woman’s highest calling was acting like a man. It all added up to my own personal All Children Left Behind Act: if I felt at any point in dating someone, whether it was our first date, or God forbid–our second, that the guy wasn’t marriage material, I ended it. I went on A. Lot. Of. First. And. Only. Dates. A lot.

Anyway, I chose early and often and I quickly ended up with a catch. I went on at least 15 one-date-only-dates my sophomore year, and had keenly dated three people between junior year of high school and then. (Fifteen may not sound like a lot, but when you balance how much I hate hurting people’s feelings with having to specifically clarify that “It’s you, not me,” you can understand why it was a sufficient number to make me feel weathered.) I was actually tired of dating and about to swear off of it when Fierce came along. We didn’t really interact much until a few months after our writing class ended.

Things with Fierce were not always smooth, and it took a few attempts at dating, with friendship in between, before we really found our groove. But I continued to choose early and often. I let him know what wasn’t working in the relationship, I was always ready to walk away if it became clear that he wasn’t marriage material after all. Until we said our vows, I was always ready to end it, since I really, truly do not believe in divorce. It’s better to run away from the altar than your spouse.

Some people argue that this dating mentality is a way of “using” guys. Which is odd, since I thought dating was about finding a lifelong mate, and dating with no purpose was about getting someone else to pay for your dinners and movies. Basically, people who say this are wrong, and I’m right. I know this not just because of the aforementioned logic, but because something unfortunate happens in today’s mating and marriage market: the good guys get snapped up. Women who wait may end up waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and then they may end up settling. According to Helen Alvare at the 2010 Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life, even atheistic economists are realizing that today’s mating and marriage market gives women a lot less than it gives men, and that without a huge cohort of women saying no to commitment-free sex, all women will be subject to a mating and marriage market where they put out and eventually settle. The reason women initiate 70% of divorces isn’t because they’re running off with their poolboys, it’s because they married a boy and it’s intolerable.

By choosing early and often, pruning every useless relationship, hobby, friendship from our lives, we become talented at spotting the people and things that are really good for us. We can prune charitably, but we’re not running a dating or friendship charity. The way we spend our time, and especially, the way we invest our hearts with other people, is what makes the difference between having real relationships and real choices, instead of having relationships that never quite fit and choices that leave us wanting more.

I have a cockamamie theory. If I have enough kids, things will get easier. Two kids already feels easier than one, partially because I don’t have the energy to perseverate on Wolfie’s every move, since Zoe needs me, and partially because I have the consolations of a newborn to tide me over when dealing with the demands of a toddler. I figure that a third child will be hard logistically (three carseats means a new car, means always have two kids unobserved as I pile children into the car, etc.), but perhaps easier spiritually. Instead of harping on every failing, I can enjoy what I can, and pick my battles more wisely because I have to.

The Good

The Bad

The Ugly: I said, "Smile" and this is what I got. I wanted him to smile, he wanted me to get lost.

I wonder if motherhood feel like an uphill battle, and then a cinch for other people? It is difficult to envision another vocation in which one has so many oscillations between carefree sailing and takes-every-bit-of-strength-I-have trudging.

On a related note: I think I might be pregnant. Depending on how far along I am, we might be having Irish twins. Fun!