Lucia Catherine

Rejoice with us!

Lucia Catherine was born on April 12, weighing 7 pounds, 8 ounces, and measuring 20 inches long.
Our daughter's birth was much easier than big brother's. She came one day early so as to be born on Daddy's day off. She only took two hours and two minutes of labor. Also, she was born at home, just half an hour after the midwife came. (The student midwife was literally coming in the door as Lucia was born.) Again, all natural and no tearing. Glory to God!

Teddy is intrigued by his little sister, but we are still working on defining "gentle."

She is named for both her grandmothers (who were both named after their mothers), with the first name using the Romanian pronunciation, similar to the Italian, but with the emphasis on the first syllable: "LOO-chee-ah."

I only realized today that her name means "Pure light." It is hard to be at home throughout Holy Week. Sometimes Teddy goes to church with his father (but not for all the services), and we who stay at home are fortunate to virtually visit St. Nektarios and hear Fr. Seraphim (Dedes) and his excellent choirs singing the Holy Week services. Lucia seems to relax when she hears the chanting, and I know it makes me feel calm, especially when Teddy delights me by participating in little bits of the service.

When I see her, I can't help but think of two little ones who now dwell with the angels: Innocent and Lucia, pray for us. "Where I am going you cannot follow Me now, but you shall follow Me afterward" (John 13:36).

Sunday Snippets

Driving to church:
"Look, Teddy, there are cows."
"They are eating. They are hungry. They're supposed to sit!" (Well, he is.)

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Teddy, after being censed at the Doxology, started strumming his invisible guitar. I leaned in to hear what he was whispering: "When the Spirit says, 'sing,' sing..."

***
Fr. Peter came out of the Royal Gates bearing the consecrated Gifts: "With the fear of God, with faith and love, draw near!"
"Communion!" Teddy waved both hands in the air. "Communion! Yay! Communion!"

Adventures in... nudity?

Yesterday, as I was at the office, my wife sent me a message. It said something along the lines of "Your son did not take a nap today. Eventually, I told him he could come out. He said, 'It's cold outside. It's cold outside. Naked!'" She went in and, sure enough, he was wrapped in his blanket with no clothes on.

Fast forward to the evening. We put Teddy to bed and, as usual, late in the evening, Magda went to look at him. I was about ready to go to sleep, but she came, pulled me out of bed and said, "You have to go see your son." He was fast asleep. And naked. We put his clothes back on and went to sleep ourselves.

Fast forward to about 3am. Teddy must have had some sort of a nightmare, because he woke up and started crying. I went to see what was wrong. He was, you guessed it, naked. I comforted him a bit, put his clothes back on him, and got him to relax and go to sleep again. About forty minutes later, there's another cry. I go to see what is going on and Teddy is standing in the hallway with only his shirt on. My first reaction was to get a bit upset, since I had told him not to take his clothes off. Then I noticed that the diaper and pants were in the bathroom. Sure enough, he had picked 3:45 in the morning to work on potty training himself. The diaper was dry, the potty was full.

What can I say? That's my son.

The bishop and the PK

Last year, we adopted a family motto: "It seemed like a good idea at the time." In keeping with this motto, presvytera and Teddy are almost everywhere there is a church-related activity. This means that Wednesday they were in church for the vesperal Liturgy of St. Basil and the great blessing of the waters. Then, they were at the archbishop's luncheon in Clearwater. Then, they were at the trisagion for Fr. George Pappas in Fr. Myers. Except for the liturgy, Metropolitan Alexios of Atlanta was also everywhere we were.

Thursday, they were in Tarpon Springs for the Theophany celebration (all five hours of it), then they were in Tampa for hierarchical vespers at the church of St. John the Baptist. Metropolitan Alexios was also in both places.

Today, they were at St. John again, as was Metropolitan Alexios. So, in addition to having seen him a few times previously, Teddy got to be around His Eminence quite a bit over the last few days. This is important because, at the end of the service today, Teddy and I were walking around the grounds at St. John as Metropolitan Alexios was coming out of the community center there. We exchanged a few words, then he and Teddy had a little conversation, after which His Eminence extended his hand to Teddy and said, "Let's go." Teddy grabbed a finger and they started walking (and, as I was to find out later, chatting).

I got ready to follow, but Metropolitan Alexios was curious about something. He said, "Wait here, let's see what happens." I have to admit that, by this point, I was curious, too. They walked through the parking lot... They got out of the parking lot... They turned the corner... and kept walking. The bishop and the PK were having a grand old time and, for my part, I think I will enjoy for a long time the memory of Teddy just walking along with Metropolitan Alexios, holding on to his index finger and pointing out cars and colors.

At the Neighborhood Pool

Teddy will usually swim to a parent, but the steps are lots of fun to play on.


So sometimes we have to go and get him! (And eat him up.)


Mama likes Teddy to try different water toys to see what he does with them. In this circle, he can spin around and around!


Dada tells Teddy how long he'll stay on his back (count of five or count of eight, usually), and also tells him not to kick.


Then Dada lets go!


The tricky part with teaching Teddy to float is that he can already swim.


Our little fishy loves swimming with Dada!(These pictures pre-date the two previous posts.)

Post-script

With a whole lot more confidence, Teddy kept jumping in the pool, swimming around, until he decided he was going to try and get to me even though I was a long way away. He made it about half-way and decided to go back. As he was turning, he ran out of air, came up, took a breath and kept going. Half-way back, he ran out of air again, took a second breath and made it back to the steps from where he had left. Needless to say that put a smile on my face. He's not completely water-safe yet, but he sure is getting there.

Little swimmer boy

As quite a number of pictures can attest, spending time at the pool with Teddy is one of our favorite activities. It is fun watching Teddy grow more comfortable in the water and develop his own little games. Recently he started "freezing" as he swims. He just stops moving and drifts along for a couple of seconds. Occasionally he does that when he is close enough to me to look me in the eyes (from below the water) and there seems to be a glint in there as he begins to move again and grabs on to my neck.

Today, though, took the cake. We played around a bit, and he swam more than I expected him to. He was a sport and even when he got a bit caught up in the ladder going down to the pool, it didn't phase him much. Eventually, I decided it was time to leave. He was already out of the pool, playing with an inflatable toy. When I said we were leaving, I started heading for the corner of the pool with the steps. Teddy was on the other side (width-wise) of the pool and at that point decided he hadn't quite had enough. He came, sat down on the edge of the pool and plopped himself down into the pool.

At this time, the following should be mentioned:

1. The pool is over three feet deep. Teddy isn't.

2. By just jumping into the water, he had no horizontal momentum.

3. The distance from him to me was a bit more than 5 meters (approx. 17 feet) by my estimation.

That being said, Teddy has made it about twenty feet in the water when pushing off or getting a good horizontal momentum going. Still, he had none of that going for him. Also, because he jumped in the water after I'd said we were going home, I decided I was not going to help him get to me until he'd gotten to the limit of where he could go.

It took him a while to get going forward, so by the time he got to within about a meter of me, he ran out of air. The expected turn of events here is that he tries in a panicky manner to take a breath, goes under the water and I pick a somewhat distressed boy up. The actual turn of events is that he rather calmly got his nose above the water surface, took a quick breath, finished coming to me, and, when picked up, proclaimed in a slightly winded but triumphant voice: "Swimming!"

Good job, little boy!