Mama-luia

Some years, simply being a family takes priority over being extra liturgically-minded. There are babies and young children who need to go to bed at predictable, early hours. The long church services are simply too much for them. Dying eggs on Holy Thursday morning But isn't our faith learned first and foremost in the domestic church anyway? Lamb chops and grape juice for Holy Thursday dinner Around the kitchen table, where food is prepared lovingly and conversations take place? Especially at so young an age, Making paschal candles the faith must be "caught", not taught. So we spruce up our homes, as best as we can Our new "little oratory" in the living room And don our most handsome attire for the one Mass we can all attend together. (Although this almost-six-year-old made it to the 2.5 hour long Vigil {which he slept through in its entirety}. He was so proud to go out just with Daddy.) The...

So, Lent. (I need to remember to take these sorts of pictures before it gets dark.  The shadows make it look unintentionally somber and extra Lent-y.) I am embracing a "gentle Lent" again this year. My spiritual director says, "We choose our penance, but God chooses our Lent." You know what God chose for me this week? A (rather funny) doozy. Please be forewarned:  if you have a weak stomach, or are otherwise squeamish,  scroll down to the photos of my kids.  I took the kids to the dentist, an hour away from here. It involved lots of driving and complaining from kids about the length of the car trip. Then a dentist visit-tantrum from one child resulted in only one getting his teeth checked. After we ate lunch at the nearby McDonald's, I realized I had forgotten water bottles. So I took them to Shopper's to buy new water bottles, then drove home. I was already exhausted when we walked in the door. Then the power went out just whe...

I know, I know, how pathetic to post about Advent and Christmas in Lent! But I forgot I had this post in queue and I couldn't let our Christmas go unnoticed. I check my blog every year just to see what (the heck) we did last Christmas! So, go read something Lent-y if that's your thing. I am posting this firstly for my own enjoyment. :) The beautiful season of waiting. Without the loudness of the malls, or the busy-ness of readying for cookie swaps and kids' Christmas concerts, our Christmas prep is decidedly quiet in comparison to so many families. A few nights scrolling Amazon to order a few carefully chosen toys for our children, and everything else picked up at the Madonna House gift shop. (A wonderful place to shop during Advent. It's so quiet, reverent and simple. I selfishly want to shop there because it's like a little pilgrimage to Bethelehem every time we go.) So we make our Advent traditions.  Now we are in a wonderful stage where the ...

Today My Queen is fourteen months old. I have called her My Queen for almost as long as I knew she was a she; there was the brief "getting to know you" phase where I had to wrap my mind around the fact that I did indeed have a daughter, and in that fleeting time known affectionately as the "babymoon" she swiftly and irrevocably became My Queen. She has me wrapped around her little finger. Anna is what my sister warmly and reverently said "she is just the baby your family needed right now." Our little one's temperament has been so gentle, so sweet, that the noisiness and wildness of two boys quieted a little by her coming. Her presence has made us all a little more gentle. Because gentle, she is. From very early on, she would fuss, and I would try to nurse her, check her diaper, pick her up, and wonder, what does she want? And when I would lay her on our very comfortable but worn couch and immediately she would stroke it and coo. She would si...

Hurray! We have made it successfully through three months of 'real' homeschooling. I want to just pause and say... I am proud of that. It is morphed into something different than perhaps I had envisioned a year ago, or even in the end of August, but in many ways it is better than those expectations of mine had been. Having Patrick so actively involved has been a tremendous blessing. Because seriously, I do not get how women look after babies and tots while still making any headway teaching an older child Math & Phonics. I know it works for some families. But that wouldn't work for ours. Not without a pharmacy of anti-anxiety drugs or a maid. What we have devised has been wonderful, however: concentrated phonics, Math and catechism lessons for an hour a day for Noah taught by Patrick, while I play with the littles and work on letters and so on with Isaiah. Then throughout the day I do art, music, readalouds, science, baking and other life skills (how to make...