The best-laid plans of Moms and Dads often....

...get blown out of the water!

We all planned to go to Easter morning mass together. I carefully laid out everyone's clothes the night before (including the adorable pastel-floral flouncy dress for the baby, with her new white shoes and cardigan, along with my now 3 year old outfit - I refuse to buy myself any new church clothes until I lose some weight!). All children were bathed and put to bed at a decent hour. My husband awoke about 15 minutes before my alarm clock was due to ring (I wouldn't have to wake him up, unimaginable happiness on my part!). I woke the boys up and dressed them. Samuel was a bit unhappy that we were ALL going to mass. He has gotten used to just the two of us going. After a few minutes, however, he was okay with the idea.

We were now down to 15 minutes before departure time. All I had to do was wake the baby up, feed her, and dress her. When I opened the door to her room I noticed a strange odor. She had thrown up in her crib the night before! After a quick re-strategizing session with my husband ("Honey, looks like you'll be going to church without baby girl, Samuel, and me"), I had to explain to Samuel that our plans had changed.

Once again, I was thankful that I had EWTN, on which I could watch Easter mass. It certainly is not the same thing as being at mass, but it is the next best thing when you cannot go. What was awesome was that the priest celebrating mass, Fr. Francis Mary, started off his homily (sermon) by remembering everyone who was home-bound that day. That made me feel a bit better!

The baby threw up 3 more times that morning and I was so afraid that I had made a big mistake in letting the rest of my family go to church, thinking they would either get sick or spread whatever was probably going to go around the rest of the family. My husband and I didn't feel particularly well, but nobody else got sick the rest of the day. I wonder if perhaps the baby just had a bad reaction to the strange combination of foods she had eaten while we were travelling the day before.

I spent much of my day doing laundry to clean up the messes the baby had made. I never did cook our Easter dinner, and we didn't get around to doing our family Easter Egg Hunt until early in the evening. Baby girl is my first baby that we did not have to teach egg hunting to! As soon as we put her in the room we had "hidden" her eggs she went right to them! Then as the boys did their hunting she busily followed them around trying to find more eggs as well!

We watched a wonderful show on the Discovery Channel which, I believe, started airing in just the past few weeks. It's an 11-part mini-series called Planet Earth. We watched the "Shallow Seas" and "Great Plains" episodes last night. It's on a bit late for all my children to stay up, but I let my oldest son watch it. I highly recommend checking it out, the footage of animal life is amazing, I've never seen anything like it!

I have changed my "display name," so when I visit you I will now be "LAA and Family." I have made this change because I have started helping my oldest son post a blog of his interests. After we completed the first post I saw "posted by Mom Embracing Autism" and that sounds a bit strange for a boy to be signing with. Besides, although "embracing autism" is a term that very much defines my life right now, there is a lot more to me than that. "Mom Embracing Autism" is a good title for this blog, my "identity" needs to cover a bit more than that!

Baby girl will have to make her debut in her new dress another day!