Exhaustion, Grace, Sons, and Chanting…Not Necessarily In That Order

My dear readers,
Forgive the incoherence that follows; hopefully it explains itself.
We celebrated Epiphany a day early for various reasons. I botched the early part of the Liturgy; all the changeables threw me off and I grew more and more flustered and kicked a stack of offering plates accidentally and also knocked over a stool by [...]

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First Trip to the Library

I have just discovered that by hitting ‘Enter’ while holding down the shift key I can start a line directly below my present line
like this instead of double-spacing my paragraphs
like WordPress normally does.
This will be
nice the next time I write
a poem.
***
“Libraries are just civilized. They are just a part of civilized society, and we need [...]

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A Rather Heckish Day

I must be brief. I feel I’m starving, and none of this fare my husband likes to call “rabbit food” seems tolerable at the moment. After wrestling with Johnny for hours on end I’ve been overtaken by the urge to replenish my emotional welbeing by eating something warm and savory and very, very lonely. But [...]

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“Johnny” Turns Two

 
Our son, whom I call Johnny on this blog, just turned two. His dad, tired of elderly ladies mistaking Johnny for a little girl because of his glorious blond curls, extracted from his mom a promise to cut said curls after the birthday. All right, says Mom. But how are curls logically feminine?
Oh well. A man’s [...]

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Babies Going to the Chiropractor

Here’s Nicole Hoelscher Harms’ full story of a Chiropractor solving colic. Nicole is a friend and a published author of articles.
I would only add that if you are taking your child to the chiropractor it’s well to find one who has some training on the gentler techniques needed for children.
The last few days have been rough. [...]

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Getting Baby To Sleep: Tips From the Women’s Network

Yes, due to my whiny post a few weeks back I’ve begun to get hits from people trying to help their baby sleep. Feeling guilty that my post offers nothing but complaints, I offer these tips I picked up over the last two years. If other parents want to send me their tips, I will include them.
1) Has [...]

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An Untried Theory

Ah, yes. Potty training, toils and travails of. A subject that has no interest whatever for most, but which parents of young children can’t seem to stop talking about.
I’m in quite the situation, myself. My boy is not even two years old yet – not till September – but in certain ways he is very [...]

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Love of Child

I suppose that all natural human loves can be images of and partakers in Divine Love. It’s only just come to me how a parents’ love really does so.
In a happy marriage there is no need of a child to bring any completion or fulfil any lack within the relationship. The the man and the woman [...]

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Google Searches that Brought Me Readers II: Getting Kids to Eat Eggs

For kid-friendly egg recipe scroll to the bottom of the post. 
I continue to be amazed by the search phrases that bring people to my blog. Just to reassure everyone, there’s no indication who made the search or where they were coming from, at least not that I know how to or care how to find.
Last [...]

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Getting Kids to Eat, Lesson Two: Using Water

Johnny has been eating eggs a lot lately but I’ve been worried he hasn’t been getting enough carbs. Apparently Cheerios are now too boring to eat. And I know well that trying to force a kid to eat something is the surest way to make him loathe that thing forever.
 This morning I tried a trick [...]

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Feeding Vegetables to a One-Year Old: My Two Favorite Methods

My first favorite method is to buy frozen peas and diced carrots and store them in a clear freezer bag so that Johnny can see what I’m pulling out of the freezer. “OOOO, Does Johnny want Blocks and Balls?” I ask with the veggie-light in my eyes.
 He clacks his tongue – every time – in that [...]

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Plop, Plop, Plop

Today Johnny started cimbing stairs. Since we don’t have any in the house, that was quite an accomplishment.
I tend to get rather sedentary during the winter and so far Johnny, a very very physical person, has put up with the new boring regime fairly meekly. Today he had enough. His persistence in piling my lap with [...]

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The Heartbreak of Parenting

Today my baby displayed his first evidence of shame. He bit my neck and I scolded him, rather mildly. But another woman was present, and little Johnny surprised me by bursting into tears, burying his nose in my neck, and covering his cheeks and eyes with his hands.
Am I proud? No. I think it’s so [...]

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The Efforts of Children Superior to Today’s Adult

Children come into this world serious beings. I know this is true because I watch Johnny, and once watched younger siblings, in their serious endeavors. Always the very young are seeking to acquire skills and accomplish feats. No one blames them that their goals are meaningless in the wider scheme of things. We know they are trying instinctually [...]

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Shall We Sin That Grace May Abound?

Do wrong so that we can have the pleasure of fixing the wrong we’ve done? Johnny votes ‘Yes!’
Our CD Tower is this lovely wooden piano-themed fixture. It undulates rather than rising straight up, and its sides are covered in carved, painted, and polished piano keys, almost lifesize. It’s one of my favorite pieces, and like most [...]

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Beware the Doo-mious Mama-snatch…

Forget the experts for a moment - the truly wonderful thing about baby talk is that my baby loves it! No, he doesn’t seem to know it’s silly. And in fact I’m not sure it is. Like everything Johnny and I do together, it’s quite serious. Not glum, dull, drudgish, or somber. Serious as in meaningful.
I recently read [...]

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What to Do When an Adoring Adult Swoops You Away From Your Toys and Suspends You Six Feet Above the Floor While Squishing and Kissing You

“From his viewpoint it must be akin to alien abduction.”
Johnny’s current stage is to practice “putting” things.
Earlier it was “unputting” them. I would build a castle of blocks; his delight was to knock them down. I would put a pen away in the drawer, he would labor away at the drawer to open it and [...]

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A Merry Little Soul

My one-year-old son, Johnny, is a merry little soul. I read a sentence somewhere about “the solid, unkillable children of the poor” and that reminds me of him. We are not destitute but Scottie and I both come from lower-middle-class families and Johnny has not exactly had all the advantages. He gets plenty to eat, people [...]

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