Happy Fother's Day

Below is a scan of the "Fother's Day" card Francesca gave to my grandfather (her Grand Pepere). How would you like to get a card like this one?

Everybody (except my grandfather and Francesca) thought this was hilarious.

Poor girl, she was just trying to be sweet.

Olivia Publishes Her first Book

The title of Olivia's new book is Sophia and Joseph Get a Whole Can, but Olivia Gets a Half Cup by Olivia Drapeau.

I think it's brilliant.

Gemma's Birthday

Here is what we're doing about overpopulation.



Once again, my wife has borne me the world's most beautiful daughter.

Gemma Noelle Drapeau came into the world at 8:25 PM, December 10, 2009. She weighed 7 lbs, 6 oz and was 18" long. She is fantastico.

We named her after St. Gemma Galgani.

Honey, Pack Your Things...

...we're moving to Japan.

Maybe it's their way of making up for all the TV sets (a.k.a. poor man's birth control) they sold.

h/t The Duck

Pollywog in a Bog

My kids' new favorite song, from one of my favorite bands.

"More Spacious Than the Heavens"

Our family had dinner at a Melkite Catholic church on Saturday night. Part of the evening included a tour of the church.

The Melkite Church is in communion with the Roman Catholic Church (they acknowledge the Pope as the head of their Church), but their liturgical traditions come from the East, not the West. Icons figure very prominently in the way they worship, especially icons of Mary, the Theotokos (the “God-bearer”).

The sanctuary of a Melkite church is very different from that of a Latin (Roman) church. Most notably, there is no crucifix behind the altar. Instead there is an icon of Mary similar to the one pictured here.

This type of Marian icon is known as Platytera, which literally means “wider” or “more spacious”. In the Eastern Church, Mary is venerated under the title, Platytera ton ouran. In English, this title is literally “more spacious than the heavens”. Mary is given this title because, unlike the heavens/universe, Mary, the Mother of God, could contain God and did for the nine months leading up to Christmas.

Yesterday was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and Christmas is only 16 days away. It seems to me to be a fitting time to open our hearts to the one who was “more spacious than the heavens”. In doing so, we also welcome the One she carried within her.

The Saintmakers

The kids at Boola and Pepere's house. Thanksgiving 2008.

Theology of the Body: Max's Song

I wrote a song this morning for my son, Max.

I wanted to express the idea that he is an unmitigated blessing to our family and that he is the result of our fruitful love. He's an absolute delight and everybody's favorite. The first two verses are sung to him as if he still in the womb. Verse three is after he's been born.

The "crying and the laughter" mentioned in the second verse is a reference to this. Olivia ("Ala" to Max) has since gotten over the fact that he's not a girl and Joseph is still especially fond of him because sisters can be wearying.

I'll put up a recording here once I figure out how to do it.

Max's Song

Verse 1:
Baby, do you know
That you are something special?
Even if you don’t,
I’m here to tell you truly,
That you are being waited
for with eagerness and joy,
The long anticipated
baby brother for our boy.

Chorus:
You were made by Love,
Conceived in love,
You were made for love,
We love you, Boy

You were made by Love,
Made for love,
And we welcome you with joy.

Verse 2:

Baby, can you hear
The crying and the laughter?
Just wait till you appear—
It’s silence you’ll be after.
The home you’re coming into
Is filled with kids and toys,
It’ll take some getting used to
Though, especially the noise.

Chorus

Verse 3:
Baby, can you see
Now that we’re together,
Now that you are here we
All love a little better?
You’re bringing out the best in us
It’s such a great surprise
To see our family’s happiness
Increase before our eyes.

Chorus

Smithlings

My two college roommates and I meet once a month for a group we call the Innocence Smiths (named after a Chesterton character, Innocent Smith, from Manalive, which you are commanded to read).

Last Sunday, we got our families together. We thought we'd call it a Smithlings meeting.

Here are some pictures from that event.

Heigh ho, Snappy!

I feel like I have to reacquaint myself with my readers (both of them) because I haven't written in such a long time. There really is no excuse for not writing, especially since I'm supposed to be a writer/wordsmith (at least that's what is says on my business cards). The truth is, I'm a lot like this guy, and well, that's just sad. Nevertheless, the secret to success is getting up one more time than you fall off, so here I am, back on the turtle again.

My hero says if a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. Ultimately, I think this blog is worth doing: my life is pretty interesting, my kids are pretty funny, my wife is pretty, and I'm a pretty good writer, so I might as well keep going. I just want everyone to have real low expectations. I'm too tired to wring the life lessons out of the unwashed loads of laundy laying around our house--I have a hard enough time putting on pants before I go to work in the morning.

Easter Break in Mexico

Advice for Angela

Angela, one of my co-workers is getting married soon. When her fiance arrived to take her home, Paul--the only other male on staff at St. Max--and I seized the opportunity to pontificate a little about married life.

My advice (to the fiance) was "If you think about it, you're not all that attached to your opinion." I owe my life of bliss to following that proverb, and I don't care who knows it. Consequently, my recommendation to every engaged man is "Surrender. Resistance is futile."

Paul's wisdom was directed toward Angela: "You have three years to train him. If you don't like how is by then, it's your own fault."

Of course, Chesterton, who wrote "Marriage is a duel to the death that no man of honor should refuse," is far more poetical in his advice:

"Every woman has to find out that her husband is a selfish beast, because every man is a selfish beast by the standard of a woman. But let her find out the beast while they are both still in the story of 'Beauty and the Beast.' Every man has to find out that his wife is cross -- that is to say, sensitive to the point of madness: for every woman is mad by the masculine standard. But let him find out that she is mad while her madness is more worth considering than anyone else's sanity."
-- G.K. Chesterton, "Two Stubborn Pieces of Iron" in The Common Man

Angela, may you and John's domestic safari be as wild and fun as mine has been.

HT to Chestertonian at the Blue Boar for the Chesterton quotation.

Volunteer Children

This woman must be a lost relative of mine.

Olivia's Version of Our Family

Olivia is quite an artist and has quite an imagination. This image of our "famley" includes a mysterious dark-skinned girl and a dis-armed Joseph ("the better to NOT hurt you with, my dear...").

From left to right the figures are (I think): Mama, Sophia, Baby Max, Black olive Olivia, BANANAMARIA FRANCESCA, Armless Joseph, Beardless Papi.

One Wild Place...

The Chesterton quotation I have in my header says:

For a plain, hard-working man the home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks.

This afternoon, Chesterton was proven right yet again.

I came in from my office to get a glass of water and I spied my little Olivia talking to her mother in the hallway. From the waist up Liva was the pretty Catholic school girl I had just brought home from Kindergarten; from the waist down she looked like Eve shortly after the Fall of Man.

Why are you in your underwear?
Because.
Because what?
Because we're having an underwear picnic on the trampoline.
Ah. Of course.

Milady tells me that's also the reason the baby was diaperless and crying when I came in. Thank God we don't live where they actually have Winters...

Our Recent Trip to the Zoo

My cousin Andy and his family came down from Denver to visit over the holidays. We loaded up our 5 kids and his 6 kids and went down to the zoo. Next time we'll have to remember to bring passports because the park rangers almost didn't let us out with some of the more wild kids...

My Birthday

 

Here is a picture of some of the loot I got for not dying last year. The stuff on the left side of the table is from my kids: 2 Jiffy Pop popcorns, a single chocolate chip cookie, 3 previously-owned figurines in various states of repair, one cracked Narnia snowglobe from McDonalds, some stuffed things, 2 cards and a counterfeit dollar bill. On the right are gifts from my Kolbe students (they went with a coffee theme): a customized travel mug with pictures of my students that are a few years old, a balloon on a stick, an enormous Starbucks mug (which says "Established 1971", like me), a bag of coffee, a can of coffee, German cookies, a ziplock bag of sugar, 2 creamers, and--my favorite--gift wrapped coffee filters.

This is why I love my birthday and why every one is better than the last. You couldn't script better gifts. They're great and they practically beg to be worked into a reflection on how our gifts to God are just like these, but, you're all smart and I don't have the time to write that reflection, so fill in the blanks. I'm just sure that God must be as pleased with our efforts to love Him as I was with these kids' efforts to please their grumpy (now old) teacher.

The Dangers of Education

Well, it's official: my daughter Olivia can read. Normally, this would be a cause for celebration, but it really puts a damper on my "parenting" style.

What I mean is that, with this development, my wife and I can no longer spell secret messages to each other in front of our middle child. Now, only the baby and Annamaria remain clueless.

Yesterday, Joseph was busy being a boy at the dinner table and he messed up the cushion on the window seat. This cushion was something that Amy wanted for a long time and now that we finally have it, it gets quite a bit of attention from the mistress of the house.

"Don't bend the cushion!"
"Don't hold your sandwich over the cushion!"
"Don't walk on the cushion with your dirty feet, I just cleaned it!"

You get the idea.

Well, last night Papi had the midkids--Joe and Liv--while Mama took the bookends--Sophia, Annamaria, and Max--to Sophia's audition (The Princess and the Pea, if you're tracking). Anyway, after dinner I noticed that the cushion had somehow found it's way under the table.

I announced to Joseph that Mama was going to be "P-I-S-S-E-D Off" if she came home and saw that. Because he's a good boy and loves his Mama (we all do), he fixed it immediately.

That's when I heard what I thought was Olivia spitting out a hair or something.

"Puh...puh...puh..."
"Liva, are you okay?"
"ih...ih...ih...ssss...ssss..."

Oh, hell.

"eh...eh...eh...duh...duh. PISSED!! Papi, what does 'pissed' mean?"
"It means Papi's in trouble."

In my defense, the "P-I-S-S-E-D Off" line is not how I usually speak in front of my kids; it's a quote from a song composed by one of my favorite singers, Tonio K.

Tonio K. is a brilliant satirical lyricist who sings about the twistedness of love after the Fall of Man. I've learned more about true love from him than probably any other influence in my life (sadly, including Popes). Trouble is, he used to have a potty mouth, and his song H-A-T-R-E-D (from which Liva's new vocabulary word was plucked) is peppered with a number of expletives. (It's a breakup song, he was drunk when he recorded it, etc., etc.) It's also hilarious. So I sing it. And quote parts of it. In front of my newly literate daughter.

So, for those of you that care about our Domestic Safari, some of the cubs are learining new tricks and one of the gameskeepers is in the dog house.

The Toes-ary

On a lighter note...

Recently, the kids have discovered that knuckles pop. Now popping knuckles is something they all want to do, all the time. Taking advantage of this, I have developed a new form of prayer. We call it the "Toes-ary".

Basically, it's a cross between "Little Piggies" and the Rosary. I grab a toe and start a Hail Mary while popping the knuckles. With each toe, we say a little more of the prayer until we finish. Then, we repeat on the other foot. Last night we decided that the mystery from the life of Christ we'd reflect on is the washing of the disciples feet.

It's not likely to go down in history as one of the great forms of prayer like these, but this is something distinctly Drapeauvian and proof that happy families are happy in unique ways.

In the future, I'll post some more of our family's quirky habits/sayings for your amusement.

New Pics of Kids

Our friend Alishia took some pictures of our family this weekend. I like this one of the two brothers. If you follow the link below you should be able to get to the others.

by alishialinn
 © All rights reserved

Just follow this link to see the photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alishiahanson/sets/72157602590972643/

(If the link doesn't work, try copying and pasting it from this email into your browser's address bar.)