Read It All
A wonderful electronic friend of mine (one of my sisters says that’s a weird way to introduce people on my blog–but it’s TRUE!), Kendra from Catholic All Year, wrote a book. And not just any old Catholic book (as if there is a serious category for “any such x-religion book). It’s a little guide to confession for kids and parents before the Big Day. If you’re still following with this conversation and you’re not Catholic, I’ll give you the quick version: Catholics (and other Christians) believe that people were born with something called “original sin” on their souls, their spiritual life within. After baptism, that’s wiped off by the Godparents & parents making promises and declarations on the baby’s behalf. But subsequently, because we are human, we build up spiritual dirt on that soul by choosing to do things, say things, etc that separate us from an all-loving God. Specifically, we break some or all of the Big Ten (commandments). By going to a priest to say confession and ask for forgiveness of those sins, we get grace infused in our hearts by God (grace is His life within us), and our soul is wiped off again. Now you’re thinking, why do you have to say your offenses out loud? Can’t you just apologize in your head to a loving God? Won’t he or she forgive you? Sure. But consider the psychological piece of this. If you don’t have to verbally articulate what you did, when you did it, and…
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Joining Jen & her crew for the 7 Quick Takes over at Conversion Diary. — 1 — I’m just getting done what needs to get done. That’s my dad’s favorite phrase. That and, “pull my finger.” And maybe a few other dadisms we have chronicled through the years. He’s absolutely the funniest person in the world, hand’s down. {Sorry, Jim Gaffigan–I did just read your book and LOVED it, but my dad is funnier.} My dad’s a doer. He comes from a family of doers. A cousin’s fiancé jokingly refers to my aunt and my dad and all their siblings as “human doings” instead of human beings. My dad’s faithful thought is, I just get done what needs to get done. He never complains about doing work in the yard around our house, indeed he cannot be pulled away from it with threats and screams. He never complains after a really long day at the hospital, followed by someone waking him up in the middle of the night asking about their medication, preceded by being on-call and popping by the hospital after mass but before vespers on a Sunday. The man never complains. He just does things, with joy or with disgruntlement–who knows?–and is my example on getting done what needs to get done. — 2 — Case in point, I’m still on a high from a weekend with awesome ladies, inspirational thoughts, sleep {who knew what that was?}, food prepared by someone else AND cleaned up by them, and a little peace…
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I wrote about loving your body after a baby after my last baby. I had to re-read it since I’ve had this one. Postpartum is this awkward transitional time when your skin tries to remember where it was before the Great Stretching, and your breasts try to gauge how much milk to make for this baby, and your belly jiggles and your face has lost its color, and you’re just plain in the middle of it all. As I write this, our little baby is almost three months old. I’m still so postpartum. I haven’t lost much weight since I had him. My body feels that heavy jiggle jiggle never-wear-a-bathing-suit-again feeling. My hair has clumped out on the side of my head, leaving the look of a bad side side bang job. I still occasionally slip into a hot bath when everyone is done with a day of needing to be held, loved, sternly glared at, fed, diapered, read to, praised, censured, hair patted out of their faces. The hot water like a deep breath for my skin, my motherly parts all tuckered out. My girlfriend Blythe just wrote this beautiful post on her blog, The Fike Life, about loving the nursing mom who had to dash after her toddler, displaying her soft tumtum to the world inadvertently. And how it gave her permission to not be perfect, not worry about being beautifully put together. We need that permission. “But one day I watched a veteran mother of many pop…
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A girlfriend through the Enlightened Mama community & natural birth world, Cori, makes these beautiful organic postpartum herbal bath kits. And when she asked if I wanted to review one and do a giveaway for my readers I jumped at the chance. Find HealFast Postpartum Herbal Compres & Bath Infusion on etsy & facebook & youtube with a great new video! If you’re local, you can also purchase them at Enlightened Mama or Blooma. Cori Levin as the founder of HealFast is a mother of two girls, prenatal yoga instructor {Blooma Minneapolis}, birth doula, and Thai massage practitioner {Enlightened Mama}. She teaches people on and off the mat to follow their hearts! —- My own doula, Liz, chief mama at Enlightened Mama, brought them to the hospital when I was recovering from my 10 pound baby. I filled the tub in the room up and draped the pouch of herbs under the running water with the string slung over the faucet. The smell was what hit me first–oh, wow, that’s refreshing after being surrounded by hospital smell (you know what I mean). Then the bath was relaxing, soothing, and I used the same bag again and again, just wringing it out and letting it dry beside the tub. The nurses kept asking about that nice smell in my bathroom. I can only suppose most of them don’t smell as sweet. HealFast is an organic herbal therapy designed to relieve pain and boost emotional and physical well-being. A handcrafted selection of herbs is…
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We had such a blessed family vacation! Almost two weeks of cousin bliss. Our siblings came from south & east coasts and with their kiddos, the house was burgeoning with cries of joy and despair. Oh you know those sounds. “It’s MINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” “You HAVE to share with me!!!!!!!!!!!!!” “No, NO, NOO!!!!!!” Punctuated by SuperBoy’s newly minted fresh attitude (I’m 4 going on 14) and SweetPea’s strident possessiveness of all things that she may have seen, or touched, in her lifetime, the little cousins were so sweetly abominable to each other. My saintly nieces, 3 and 7 months, were snatched from, screamed at, tormented, and stepped on. They valiantly tried to give as good as they got, though the little 7 month old just looked perplexed as did our adorable Godson and nephew, 12 months. Those two, and BabyLoves, were out of the running for loudest child ever. My fav? When V, 3, would fancy a toy, and then SuperBoy & SweetPea would literally chase her into the ground to get it back. It was like she was the huntee and they the hunters–painful, painful to watch. Yet we did, we moms. We sat back with the bambinos nursing and pretended we couldn’t hear most of it. They were learning to share with some intervention, mostly narration, and a few time outs. It’s never long enough, we never can get enough time or conversation in, and I loved every single minute our time at the Lodge, the hanging around the house,…
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A follow up letter after my open letter to my electronic friends who gathered in Texas: My dear readers, BabyLoves and I went to Texas for the Edel Gathering. We made it there and back. Together. Attached by the sling, as it were. The weekend was lovely, truly lovely, for so many reasons. It was, in many parts, whatever the attendee made of it. If you wanted private time to ponder, think, and just breathe, there was that available without the rigors of a jam-packed schedule. If you wanted to chat it up with new friends, hit Austin together, hang by the pool, there was that. If you were me and rooming with a very old friend whom you hadn’t seen in six years, and had your two month old in tow, you would probably do what I did: rest and hang by the hotel. In between sessions I had to head back to the room to rest. Given that it took me almost 7 weeks to recover from bebe’s epic birth, I should have known I’d be beat up by travel. Good thing there was lots of chocolate around. I didn’t see any of Austin, except the Cathedral for confession and mass. And we’re okay with that, me & the bebe. I didn’t get to the pool. I didn’t get to the outside restaurants. I didn’t get to the late night fun talks with ladies. I didn’t even get to see the amazing karaoke past 10pm. A little person…
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