Mama-luia

The longest Noah and I have been separated from Patrick is about 10 hours. Walking to the beach in Miscouche, PEI, during a holiday earlier this summer We just survived a four-day long stretch without him, and we lived to tell about it. It did involve, of course visits with my parents (I crave adult conversation!) 'editing' the bedtime routine out of a bath on more than one night eating cookies at various intervals to keep both of us sane (these cookies also happen to be sweetened without sugar, so I feel somehow justified in eating them) looking at photos of Patrick -- a lot -- just to hear Noah's excited voice as he would point and exclaim "Daddy!" and my personal favourite -- when a strange sound of someone moving around our front porch was heard, it involved me wielding an empty bottle of Rickard's Red. I was thoroughly prepared to smash it on whomever was walking around my property late at night, only to discover it was just a raccoon. As we...

I somehow thought that being married, having a family, a house, a car and a university degree to boot would have changed me from The Girl I Was. You know, The Girl I Was in High School . So I am surprised that I see her creeping up into my thinking patterns, into my ways of living out my vocation, on a fairly regular basis. The most startling way in which I am still The Girl I Was is in how I compare myself to every other woman. In high school, I'd see The Other Girls and think how perfec t their lives looked. I would then look at my own life and see the was the grades I was getting or not. The boys I was dating or not. The university scholarships I was being offered or not. The parties I was being invited to or not. The jeans I could afford or not. And I. would. feel. worthless. So now I am a grownup woman, thankyouverymuch; I don't give a fig about the jeans. The boys (they're all probably married by now, too!). The grades. The scholarships. The parties. High s...

I want to thank you all for your helpful comments about dealing with fussy kids at Mass. If anything, it's just nice to know other parents are going through this (because in our tiny rural parish, we are literally the ONLY family with young children, or child. Not a kid under 12 to be seen anywhere. Sigh.) The reason I posted that last entry wasn't so much to rant about Noah's 'bad behavior.' He is a boy, a very little boy, and it was obvious, as I hoped I conveyed, that he was having a hard time sitting still or just generally being himself because he was dreadfully exhausted. As soon as Patrick brought him home, he crashed. I think my little guy ought to be credited with the fact that he was simply having a hard day. * * * * * I reached out to all of you in part because I was so discouraged by a comment I found on a Catholi...

I really loved reading The Creative Family by Amanda Soule . She says a lot of inspiring things (and gives lots of inspiring ideas!) on how to live more creatively, more artistically, and therefore, more joyfully as a family. Many of the ideas were really just affirmations of things I already think, but really, sometimes, we need to be re-affirmed in our thinking. One of my favourite things she points out is that in order to spend time being creative with our children, we need to make time for it. We schedule in doctor's appointments, meals (obviously), sleep, prayer, exercise, outdoor time. But we also need to make things. Beautiful things. Simple things. No-pressure-if-you-can't-do-it- perfectly things. And in the busy life of parenting, homemaking and trying to get some freelance work in while I'm at it, it's good to remind myself to make time for beauty! Today my kitchen was torn asunder. Again. The load of laundry I had just washed and dryed was not putting ...