7QT 166: Of Julianna, Kitchens and Proselytizing

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We registered Julianna for kindergarten this week. Can you believe it? I’m having trouble. I mean, it seems like she’s been in our life forever, certainly long enough to be starting school…but there are things you tend to associate with a child entering kindergarten. Like, I don’t know…speech!

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I shouldn’t make it sound like she doesn’t talk, because she does. In fact, she comes to me these days and issues a long stream of gibberish that very clearly means something…I just don’t know what. When she started it, we thought it was incredibly funny and cute. Now I’m looking at things differently. “Julianna, I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I tell her. “One word at a time.”

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For two nights, I spent my after-the-kids-are-in-bed time filling out forms. You should know, also, that my handwriting (so my husband says) is illegible. Being sensitive about this, I was writing ve-ry-slow-ly. And I was ready to spit nails by the time I was done. How many times does the school district need me to fill out Julianna’s address? I filled out her address on NINE DIFFERENT FORMS. And TWO of them were about who she lives with. I mean, really, people. It was a rude awakening to the difference between private and public school procedures, let me tell you.

And she has her last shots this morning. I tried to prepare her last night, but it’s hard to know what she “gets.” Alex is off school, so we’re going to the doctor’s office with four children.

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When RAnn, over at This, That, and the Other Thing, interviewed me about my Lent book, she asked what activities I had planned this year. I told her with the infant in the house, we were going to have to take it one week at a time. Well, that’s what we’re doing. Perhaps it will help everyone who thinks just because I write books about celebrating seasons with children, that our house is full of well-organized, blissful family catechesis. Um…no. My family is the perfect illustration of why we need books like mine.

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I was going to write another Quick Take on that subject, but it occurs to me that maybe I need to write a post on that topic all its own.

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Speaking of all things faith, this is evidently “Evangelization Week” in our neighborhood. Tuesday afternoon it was two young girls asking if we had a church home. Thursday just before noon an older lady rang my doorbell with literature. I groaned inwardly and tried to tell her kindly that we’re well evangelized, and quite familiar with the Bible, but she really, really wanted to give me a flier–four pages, full color. “Did you know the Bible says ‘they will beat their swords into plowshares?’ she said with an earnest smile. “Do you believe that will happen?”

What a question! Caught between a desire to get rid of her and the inability to lie, even by omission, I swallowed a whole lot of thoughts and stuttered something that made no sense but made it perfectly clear that I was a heathen, just as she thought. “Well,” she said, “the Bible said it will happen, so we know it will.”

Yes, I thought. In Heaven.

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No matter how much time passes, I cannot get over the fact that in a house with nearly 3000 square feet, everybody has to inhabit the same room. A few days ago, Christian and I prepared dinner in a twelve-foot-square kitchen with one child pushing the empty bouncy seat in front of the refrigerator door, one child building a marble run in front of the pantry door, and one child trying to drop marbles down it before it was finished. Just imagine that traffic jam.

Have a good weekend!