Some weeks ago, I was packing away the baby's 12-18 mos. clothing which was outgrown and out of season in a 59 qt. plastic tub. My rule of thumb, at least at the younger ages, is one tub per age range: 0-3 mos., 3-6 mos., 6-9 mos., etc. And, of course, at the earlier ages there are extra items like baby blankets, hooded baby towels and buntings filling up the tub.

Starting at about size 4 (age 4), I divide the clothing seasonally, summer and winter, into two tubs because, well, they stop growing out of it so quickly for one thing. And the clothing is larger in size so it's difficult to fit much along with sweaters and corduroy pants.

With the baby's clothing, however, on top of the hand-me-downs from his two older brothers, my friend Michelle who had a boy 2 1/2 years ago, sent me all of her son's old clothes. Needless to say, I can't get the tub to close. It's bulging and I don't want to get rid of anything.

That's what I do if the set of clothes doesn't fit - I sort and donate what I don't want. But, with the next baby, I don't even know what we're having yet and won't know for another 6 weeks. Even still, until we get to that particular size/age, I won't know what sorts of clothing I'll feel like dressing the baby in. I mean, between #2 and #3, I changed my preference for outfit styles considerably because I had less time to fuss about it. One-piece outfits were easier than two-piece because I didn't have to hunt for the matching pieces - either I had it or I didn't. And diaper time was easier with one-piece outfits too, just one set of snaps.

So, anyway, the upshot as I was complaining about how to fit the baby's clothes into the storage container is that my husband placed a moratorium on clothes buying. "I don't want you buying any more clothes for the kids," he said.

"Not even for Kenny? He's too small to wear your hand-me-downs, Jeff?"

He conceded, "Well, I guess for Kenny it's alright." Kenny is his favorite after all. "But not the other two. No more."

I explained, "Well, I only buy a piece or two for them every once in a while so that they get something new too. But the real problem is that Michelle gave me so many of ..."

I don't know whether to take him seriously or not when he says things that sound so unreasonable. Then he said, "Well, then buy another storage container for the extra clothes and stop complaining about it."

Too many clothes is a nice problem to have. I am always grateful when someone - a friend, a neighbor - passes along their son's old clothing to my kids.

Jeff visited Kenny's day camp yesterday afternoon while I took Tim to Dorbrook Park in Colts Neck.

Kenny's group was just finishing up their first of two daily swim sessions and were on their way to lunch. After lunch, they did "cooking", decorated cupcakes.

It was good for Jeff to visit. Primarily because he saved my butt

by signing off on a parental permission slip that allowed counselors to apply sunblock to my child as often as needed.

It's a long story and I have a long list of reasons why I failed to submit the permission slip myself.

First of all, the procedure this year is different from last year. Last year, a pack of permission slips came in the mail. This year, a letter home simply said that the permissions slips were online.

I was to print out the applicable ones and send them into camp. So, I quickly scanned the list of permission slips online and since they were in alphabetical order, I didn't readily see the sunblock permission slip amid all of the travel camp permissions slips. Since I forgot how things worked from last year, I wasn't even looking for the sunblock permission slip.

So, when Kenny got sunburned his third day of camp and developed blisters and told me that his counselors did not apply sunblock to him at all, I attributed their oversight to inexperience and began applying sunblock on him in the morning before he left.

A note came home on Wednesday about Kenny needing his goggles at camp for swimming. So, I sent in his goggles with him on Thursday. On Thursday, Kenny said that he had another note for me but I couldn't find it in his camp bag and he said that he must have left it on the bus. Unlike the Wednesday note, he couldn't remember what the second note was about. When the bus came in the morning, the note wasn't on it. I intended to call the camp about the missing note but figured that the office is probably really busy that first week of camp. If the note was important enough, they would send it again.

So, along with my husband signing off on the sunblock permission slip, there was a phone message left yesterday morning about the permission slip. Jeff also said that it was suggested to him yesterday by the camp staff that Kenny be given some shirts to swim in. So, I dutifully found some at Lands End and ordered four in yellow. At the end of the season, the selection isn't too great. Can you believe that I have been buying summer gear since February?! It never ends.

The items should arrive sometime tomorrow (I paid extra shipping) but Kenny has already told me that he doesn't like the design. "It's looks like girls' stuff. The flowers." I read the product description to him: Boys' Short Sleeve T-shirt.

Now the question is whether the camp will launder the t-shirt along with the swim suits every day or if I'll have extra laundry because of this. Kenny was the only one in his group that failed to qualify for the four-foot pool on Thursday. I think that his sunburn interfered with his ability to swim. Hopefully this week his confidence will be there and he'll qualify. He has done it at other pools, so he can do it. It's just a question of confidence and putting it all together.

I switched to Firefox.

I don't know whether it's for good or not.

The "hold up", I mean, what delayed my switching was the matter of migrating over all my Safari settings to the Firefox browser app. And, of course, that was a non-issue. I mean, blink your eyes and you miss the conversion.

But I needed to login at Amazon and Flickr again, setting the cookies. And other sites.

My financial sites - bank and credit cards - don't look right. I was unable to pay my AmEx bill, for instance, but I think their site has a problem because Safari didn't work either. The payment due date is set to Jan. 01 (suspicious?) and can't be changed. I guess they are trying to force late payment charges! Well, the bill is due by the 25th, so I'll try again after the holiday.

Sure, it was the Memorial Day show, aired yesterday, but it wasn't quite pro-war. It wasn't anti-war either.

If anything, it was just pro-national-defense and pro-moral-obligation-to-go-after-the-bad-guys-of-the-world, all of which involves some preemption, I guess, especially these days. But it's worth listening too. The program ought to be available as a podcast via iTunes [EWTN: The Journey Home]. I can't find it and I have a subscription.

UPDATE: I found the RealAudio version of the program: With Capt. Guy Gruters.

Other archived programs are here, some are interesting and some aren't.

But, the guest had been a POW during Vietnam for more than five years. And found his faith again within the first year of captivity. He said that he prayed the rosary constantly ... there was nothing else to do. He was clear that he wasn't given access to a Bible except for one twelve-hour period one Christmas Eve during his entire time in the camp. So the only way to contemplate the central acts of salvation, that is, to meditate on the Life of Christ was by praying the mysteries of the rosary.

(I should comment on the program's host, Marcus. I like him and he's come a long way but every once in a while, he exhibits "convert envy". Of course, only when he's talking with reverted Catholics. His attitude towards them is almost one of "Well, had I been a cradle Catholic like you, I never would have thrown that all away, in fact, I've never turned my back on God and his Church the way you did, so at this point, I would be an even greater, more faithful Catholic than you are now ... if I had been a cradle Catholic!" And I also think that he wants really, really bad, to become a Catholic priest. He might have to settle for the diaconate. But, don't get me wrong, I love his vulnerability. It takes a great deal of humility to admit that you were wrong, so wrong, for so many decades but he did.)

I remember touring the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Museum when I lived in Dayton, OH (15 years ago) and being touched by the numerous rosaries made from rice on display, recovered from Vietnamese POW camps.

This week's Catholic Carnival is up.

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Today's First Reading - Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24 - was a refreshing reminder and fit so well with the Gospel from Mark 5, Jairus' daughter.

God did not make death,
nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.
For he fashioned all things that they might have being;
and the creatures of the world are wholesome,
and there is not a destructive drug among them
nor any domain of the netherworld on earth,
for justice is undying.
For God formed man to be imperishable;
the image of his own nature he made him.
But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world,
and they who belong to his company experience it.

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Moonshadow's Flickr Photos

New month, flickr bandwidth reset to 0%, so I uploaded a couple more pictures from our trip to Hershey Park, PA.