Mama-luia

(Clears throat) "Hi, I'm Jenna, and I'm recovering homeschooling mom." Haha, I kid, I kid.  Moving on. I homeschooled my two oldest children for a year and a half. As of now, I have been a school mom longer than I was a homeschool mom, because they've been in our local Catholic school now for over two years. We enrolled them at the end of the first term when Noah was in grade one. He's now past the midway point of third grade. I really feel like a school mom, as it's part of my parenting life in a big way now. But the shift was huge for my thinking. I went into pregnancy with my first expecting that I would homeschool all my children. Such was our untested zeal that I had to deal with the embarrassment of receiving a call from Seton homeschooling when we had no born children; Patrick had sent away for their catalogue and they had an 'admissions counsellor' call and ask us if we had many any decisions for our family. We had to ex...

I have very few pearls of wisdom to offer in my career as a mother. Potty-training? I have only empathy -- and maybe my signature mixed drink, a Pomegranate San Pallegrino with gin -- to give when it comes to that topic. Getting your youngster to read at a precocious age, even just a plain old median age? Let's just say I'm working on self-publishing my manual -- "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Mind-Numbing, Hair-Greying, Lifestyle-Questioning Lessons." It's sure to be a hit. Here's my headshot I'll be using for my Parenting Advice column in "What Not to Do" magazine. What I do have some experience with, and feel confident in giving advice in, is road trips + parenting. More specifically, road trip hacks . You see, Pinterest boasts of images of carefully selected clothing in individual Ziploc bags to minimize on packing. Cute road trip car game printables. Blah blah blah. If that's your thing, why by all means, do it! But th...

About a year and a half ago, I was playing some praise and worship music on youtube when the suggested song popped up took me by surprise. It was a song by a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal, and the name of the Brother singing was... Isaiah. {My little sweetheart on the feast of St. Francis. I had planned zero activities, so Isaiah took it upon himself to dress up like my favourite saint (in his housecoat, naturally).} My second-born son immediately took to the song, because for one thing, it's incredibly catchy and well-done. Think a more spiritual version of Jack Johnson, with a reference to the Beatles and even to seventeenth century poet, John Donne thrown in. Of course, my little boy was especially taken in by the fact that the singer and he share a name. He also noticed that Brother Isaiah bears a resemblance to his beloved Kindergarten teacher: enough to keep a five year old boy hooked. Here's the song, by the way: He kept requesting we play Brother I...