Saints, Statues, and Archery – 7 Quick Takes

Linking up with Jen again.

This is actually one reaaalllly long take and three short ones, but I conveniently made it into seven. Enjoy.

1. I have mentioned in a previous post my utter lack of knowledge about Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, yes? Here is yet another example. Bear with.

When planning the girls’ baptisms, I was thinking about how Super Friend’s kids all are named after a saint in some way. Super had mentioned once something about these saints being their patrons (as the time I probably didn’t know what that meant). Then I thought about how, on my application form for RCIA there was a space to write in my “baptismal name.” Also, the one time I had seen a baptism was during one of the first masses I ever attended last year. I was still in deer-in-the-headlights mode during mass at that time, and it was during a crowded mass so I couldn’t really see, and the people were on the other side of the church so I couldn’t really hear what they were saying, but I could have sworn that, when the priest asked them, “What name do you give your child?” they said, not just the name, but the name in the way you would say a saint’s name. I don’t remember what it was, but for example, instead of just saying “Catherine” I thought they said something like “Catherine of Sienna.” Looking back now, I’m sure they actually just said the baby’s first and middle name, “Catherine Anna,” or something like that, but deer-in-the-headlights and big church and all…

Getting to my point. As you might imagine considering my history, none of my children are named for a saint or Biblical person. I know I don’t use their real names here, but I’ll just let you know that we have no Mary. No Elizabeth, Theresa, or Anne. So. When I was preparing for their baptisms I thought that I needed to find a Biblical or saint name to announce when the priest asked “What name…?” We didn’t have our baptism class until two days before the baptism because of The Chicken Bone Incident, so I didn’t know any different.

I searched through tons and tons of saints to come up with the right ones to be each of the girls’ patronesses. I chose Saint Cecilia for Miss, Saint Therese of Lisieux for Lass, and Saint Brigid of Ireland for Sis. It wasn’t until after the fact that I learned that I had not needed to do this, and that I would just be announcing their actual names during the baptism, but whatever. By that point I was totally into the idea of each of them having a patron saint they could learn about, so I kept with the idea anyway, though the saints’ names didn’t play a role in the baptisms.

2. SO. The reason I just relayed that whole big long story of my lack of understanding about baptisms is to explain that I have told my girls about their patrons, and the older two each refer to them affectionately as “My saint.” We have books about their saints. We ask their saints to pray for us. On the feast days of the patronesses we have a little celebration, talk about the saints, get out a statue of them, have a special dessert in their honor, and make a donation to a charity of the kids’ choice as their gift (I totally stole this idea from Super Friend).

So we have statues of the girls’ patron saints.

^^ That’s Sis playing with Miss’s Saint Cecilia.

I had intended the statues to be something we would just get out on the feast days, but Lass wanted hers for a toy. She carries her Saint Therese with her everywhere. She sleeps with it too (along with two books of saints open to the pages of Saint Therese).

3. I always remind her to be careful with it. It’s amazing how well that statue has held up in spite of the fact that she drops it all the time.

Naturally, the one time she asks me to carry the statue downstairs for her in the morning, as I was setting it on the counter, I didn’t quite get it all the way over the edge and it fell to the floor and broke. She was heartbroken, and of course I felt awful. My husband glued it back together, and all is well.

So I thought.

I dropped the statue a few weeks ago. About two days ago, as I was making breakfast and the girls were playing with their saint statues, I overheard Lass say, “We are sooo careful with statues. But I think Mama isn’t careful with statues. Mama drops statues.” Miss agreed, “No. Mama isn’t careful with statues.”

Clearly I’m never going to live down The Dropping of Therese.

4. Along those lines, I had no idea when I introduced these saint statues and our books of saints that the girls would get so into them. They love to “play saints.” They fight over our saint books. When they play dress up, they are as likely to get into some elaborate costume as Therese or Cecilia or Mary Magdalene as to dress up as Cinderella or Snow White.

They’ve already asked to dress as saints for Halloween next year. I love it. What better figures to emulate?

^^ One reaaallly long take made into four.

5. I have just realized that this weekend will be our last one home together as a family until March 8. We will be traveling or my husband will be working every weekend in between. It makes me tired just to think about it, but we have some really fun things coming up, like a trip to Florida (and Disney World) and a skiing trip with friends.

6. Miss is really into shooting her bow. She’s pretty good at it too.

^^ She is so proud of being able to get the arrow to stick to the target.

My husband loves teaching her too. He has bought a long bow for himself, partially because he wanted to have a bow similar to what she will be learning on, so they can shoot together.

7. We had family visit two weeks ago. The girls had their first experience of experimenting with make up with their Aunt. What are aunts for?

Miss looked at the picture below and said, about her sister, “She looks like a bad guy there.”

Have a great weekend!

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