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About Me

Housekeeping notes on a Tuesday

May 24, 2022

I won’t launch into the familiar script of wow gosh how has that much time passed since I last dropped a line around these parts but…know that I know. And I know, it’s poor blogging form. Except blogging is dead! So I can resurrect this dead horse any old time it works for me and then beat in back into submission with my silence and nobody will care. Because it’s 2022 and the world is in chaos and there are no rules for the internet!

The other day after a particularly trying day of homeschooling (more on that later, she promises, dragging out the suspense…) Dave wondered whether it might be nice for me to start writing again, here and there, and I threw back my head and positively cackled because you know what would be nice? A 40 hour nap and a shower!

But he was right, as he generally tends to be. And his suggestion has been simmering under the surface for the past couple weeks. So, here I am. On day 2 of our summer break (because I’m the boss now), I’m sitting alone on a Tuesday, in a Starbucks, blinking at the unaccustomed silence punctuated by nothing but bad trance music and the hiss of the espresso bar.

For more than a year now I’ve tried to explain to anyone who asked why I wasn’t writing anymore, and I realized it’s a pretty simple explanation: something had to give. All the disruption of covid + adding a sixth baby buried me for all of 2020 and most of 2021, to be perfectly honest. And in His tender mercy, God completely stilled my desire and removed the compulsion to write.

Instead of the typical agony of unspilled words and un-crafted sentences I’d feel building in my brain in seasons past, I felt pretty much nothing. There was a curious – but not unpleasant – emptiness where the desire and energy to write had previously been. While I blessed the peace I found in a quieter and more hidden life at home, I did sometimes wonder where the “real” Jenny had gone.

Now that I’m a little older and a little wiser, I’m beginning to think that maybe these things that we do, these identities which we slip in and out of over the course of a lifetime, have less to do with who we are and more to do with where we are.

So for most of my motherhood thus far, were someone to have asked me what I did, I would immediately answer: I’m a writer. Sometimes freelance, sometimes a featured blogger, sometimes a copywriter, sometimes a content writer for an NFP organization, but always a wordsmith of some kind. I’m also a stay at home mom, I’d add, if they asked, or if the kids were in tow. I work from home, from coffee shops, during nap times. After bedtime. Both parties in these interactions would part ways satisfied. I made sense to them. I made sense to me. And maybe I was even a little proud of myself? A little (or a lot) relieved to have something sensible and socially acceptable to say when people asked “what do you do?”

But now things are a little more complicated, both literally and figuratively.

I’m not primarily identifiable by my work these days, but rather by my role.

I’m still mom, but now I’m also teacher and tutor and disciplinarian and whooooo boy let me tell you, turns out I was unintentionally offloading an awful lot of my parenting work onto our wonderful school. We’ve had some, ahem, remedial corrections and redirections to make over the past several months. I had simply assumed we’d hop right from going to school to doing school at the kitchen table but would’t you know it, it’s a bit more complex than that.

When we pulled our kids from brick and mortar school back in March, I kicked away all the remaining social supports shoring up my work in and around the home and I have been bobbing up and down in the sometimes stormy seas of doing life very, very much together for most of the time.

And…it has been kind of awesome.

Except for the days when it hasn’t. But on both kinds of days, I’ve marveled over the way we’ve completely transformed our daily rhythms and routines. I always laughed off the comments from homeschooling friends about the early mornings and getting everyone out of the house. I mean, yes, getting up in the 5 am hour and hustling butts into dress slacks wasn’t a delightful experience, but it bought me 7 hours of freedom, 5 days a week! Who wouldn’t wake up for that?

But I get it now. And while I have given away much, much freedom in the form of a quiet and clean house and occasional hours to myself, I’ve gained back freedom in other completely unexpected areas.

I’m sure I’ll write more about our homeschooling experience as we, you know, gain actual experience, but for now, it’s working. And while we really miss our friends and staff at our old school, for now, this is the right place for us all. So NEVER SAY NEVER PEOPLE. I am the least likely candidate for homeschooling on earth. I think I maybe have even sworn some oaths against it or made some inner vows over the years? I’m sure I did enter into some formal agreement along those lines in April of 2020 specifically (remote learning cough cough f word other bad words) that I should probably renounce), but choosing in freedom to do something that our kids needed and wanted is a whole different ballgame from being forcibly locked into our houses with a million laptops streaming at once. *Shudders and gazes meaningfully into oblivion.*

Ok gosh, this is getting to be a real novella, so I’ll wrap it up.

And because I don’t think the homeschooling thing was sufficiently shocking to you, here’s a quick rundown of other life events: we also went to Rome for a long weekend, basically, last month, and I think that experience was also a sufficient shock to the system to pick up screen and keyboard again. The whole not drinking thing? Still going strong. It will be 8 months in June and that feels surreal to me. Being back in the land of sun and stress and prosecco was the ultimate test, and somehow I passed. It feels like a significant milestone, for sure, and I’m as surprised as anybody to have ended up here.

Also, we’re Amish now and I milk our suburban cow in a prairie skirt in the backyard every morning before the sun is up. Not really, but WHO KNOWS WHAT COULD BE COMING NEXT? Maybe competitive adult gymnastics! Hedge fund investing! Losing the final 40 pounds of baby weight! The possibilities are truly endless, and all of them are potentially surprising.

I hope you guys are great. I am continuing to move forward with comments closed, I think that chapter of blogging life is over for good. It’s always lovely to hear from the vast majority of you, but moderating the psychos was never my favorite part of the gig. Thanks for being here and for understanding! – Jenny

Last day of school 2022! Woke up to a foot of snow the next morning, hence the wardrobe choices.

And some photo evidence of our whiplash-y trip to the Eternal City:

Obligatory gelato influencer shot.

St. John Paul II. The Lord continues to surprise me with new graces through the intercession of this holy man. The rosary I prayed with him here was worth the entire and occasionally unpleasant effort to get there.

We came, we saw, we conferenced. (And man, are we tired.)

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About Me

Housekeeping notes from a sabbatical

November 11, 2021

I’m just going to go ahead and assume we’d be mutually bored to tears by the explanations and equivocations I could give you for why it’s been 4 months since I last laid finger to keyboard and jump right into it. I won’t even use an Adele gif. I’m just, here.

Hello.

Okay, maybe a basic summary. I’ll keep it shortish.

About 8 months ago I sat with my spiritual director and dissected an equal parts frightening and exhilarating prospect that I’d felt certain God was calling me to, the idea of my “not working” any more. At least for a season.

We could make it work, financially, but just barely, we thought. It would be a big stretch, but it was a stretch Dave was willing to make, and for that fact I am profoundly grateful every single day. (NB: As it turns out, my income stream wasn’t what was keeping us afloat financially, and things have been…fine. Nothing terrible happened when I stopped bringing in my little side hustle of a paycheck. In fact, against all odds and any reasonable economic predictions, this year has basically ended up being a financial wash, perhaps even edging us slightly closer to black than red, which makes no sense at all and which I’ll probably write about at some point. But I digress.)

I’d recently renewed contract writing gigs with a couple of the wonderful organizations I’ve been privileged to work with over the years, but in so doing I’d inadvertently triggered nuclear levels of stress and panic.

I no longer loved the work I was doing. I barely even liked it.

Writing became, even here in my own home space, on the blog, a drudgery. Sometimes looking at my laptop would set off actual physical sensations of panic. And so all at once, it seemed, but really it was gradual – so gradual! – over the course of the past few years, the thing I’d done for so many years with almost no effort at all, words flowing out of me like water from a faucet, well, it became hard. Like really, really hard. It felt like rubbing sandpaper on raw skin to share myself the way I’d become accustomed to doing.

I don’t know whether to chalk it up to social media burnout or a conversion of heart or just reaching peak introvert saturation, but I felt as if I’d become suddenly and violently allergic to self disclosure. Which, hello, is the currency the internet trades in.

So.

So…I’m not sure what happens next, exactly. But I can tell you that for the first time since probably last winter, so nearly a full year ago, I actually “felt” like writing today. And here I am.

I deleted most of my social media almost 18 months ago; Instagram was by far hardest to let go. I only just officially “deactivated” it last week, after going almost 7 months without logging in and then suddenly falling face first back into a daily habit for most of October. I so wish I were a moderator in some things, but alas, abstainers are us, and so I nearly always end up having to pluck it out or cut it off, whatever “it” might be.

But now let’s talk about the peace.

The truth is, this past year has been one of the best of my adult life. Not because of anything particularly amazing happening, but really because of how very ordinary it has been.

It has been incredible to be “just” a mom. How I loathe that expression…and not for the reasons I’d previously assumed.

I feel no shame or loss of self in doing “only” motherhood, so that’s not the thing that rankles. It’s that one needs to make the disclaimer at all.

I don’t feel like this year, this experience of pulling back, has shrunken my universe.

If anything it has expanded it, wildly, doing more to purge my inherent, intractable selfishness than anything I’d yet undertaken. I think about myself so much less than when I was subconsciously scripting the Jenny Uebbing show from my day to day existence, making mental notes of details to share and insights to flesh out and funny anecdotes to retell.

And of course there’s nothing inherently wrong with drawing from one’s life experience to create art – let’s not call it “content” and trigger anyone’s gag reflex – it is the human experience, after all.

But the sharing in real time and the constant streaming access creating an almost total lack of any mental or physical time or space to actually digest and assimilate anything that I might be gleaning from my own brief existence on this planet? That part wasn’t good.

It eventually became difficult to recognize the “insights” I was delivering, mainly via social media, as my own original thoughts or ideas. I felt like I was living performatively on some level, like I was just continually producing content for other people to benefit from or laugh at or nod their heads in recognition over (all noble goals! Don’t get me wrong.) but that I wasn’t like, feeling my own feelings or fully experiencing my own life.

Anyway, maybe that’s reaching, but it’s sure what things were starting to feel like. So, yes, the combination of an intractable aversion to social media plus a massive dose of writers block combined to render me almost mute for the better part of 2021.

I can’t make any promises now that I’m back as to what it will look like, but I can say the smallest urge to sit down and let the words flow has resurfaced, and so I will honor that impulse when it seems fitting and good to do so. I do love to write, after all. It’s all the other baggage that accompanies writing in the digital world that became too unwieldy.

And in that vein, I’ve decided to blog without comments for now. Not because I don’t love and value every single set of eyeballs that land in this space, but because of the extra time and space moderation, that necessary evil, takes up when I do have them enabled.

So, what can you look forward to reading here in the near future? Well, for sure I’m going to show you our kitchen renovation that took longer than we expected ($$$) and you know I’m going to share my combined 2020/2021 reading lists because I didn’t, ah, quite get around to it last year. And then, you know, the regular musings on marriage and motherhood that you probably come here for in the first place.

It’s good to be back.

And okay, here’s a kitchen/dining room sneak peek. My main objectives for this project were: a dining room big enough to seat 12 comfortably and a sink that a baby could do backstroke in:

About Me, body image, motherhood, pregnancy

Some thoughts on body image during pregnancy and postpartum, and the ego-shattering expense of motherhood

December 29, 2019

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

Seriously, though, it was the worst of times for about the last 3 weeks of Benedict’s pregnancy, which seemed to stretch interminably out over major holidays and multiple trips to labor and delivery for additional monitoring. Dave can vouch for my extra special attitude during this season of anticipation and antacids.

At some point during the final week, the fortieth, much to my astonishment, I begged God specifically that I’d not have to face another Sunday Mass “still pregnant” because a. our church is being renovated and the basement is hot as hell and b. I wanted to crawl violently out of my own skin while doing the extreme walk of shame back and forth to the restrooms escorting yet another weak bladdered offspring and offering the entire parish an eyeful courtesy of the single remaining body con maternity dress that still “fit.”

Mostly I just wept, sat up at night timing contractions, and cycled through every heartburn medication on the market in a desperate bid to emancipate my esophagus from the fires of hell. And that’s pretty much how all of November went.

(N.B. He has lots of hair! Enough to braid, practically. Old wives tale confirmed.)

About 5 days before Ben was finally born, I finally hit the right combination of google terms and discovered a secret subculture of kindred spirits: other women, most of them multiparous, also plagued by unrelenting and utterly unproductive contractions night after night for days and weeks and even months of pregnancy.

Weeping with relief, I initiated myself honorarily into the sisterhood of the “irritable uterus,” devouring post after post of other women’s stories about contractions lasting 10, 12, 15 minutes at a time for hours on end, their uteri locked into rock solid basketballs of tension pretty much 24/7.

It’s not Braxton Hicks, it’s not prodromal labor, and it’s not actual, baby-bringing contractions. The answer is d., Alex, none of the above. And the reason for it is … elusive. Age? Fatigue? Number of prior pregnancies? Physical condition? Probably a little bit of everything. At any rate, it was a long November and there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last. If for no other reason then we’re definitely on a procreative hiatus and even the most broken night of newborn sleep beats the hell that was my uterus versus somnolence.

November 2019 was not my best work.

I would be remiss, however, to fail to share the silver lining of Ben’s pregnancy. Other than the sheer physical hell of that final 4 weeks, I honestly felt good. Maybe not physically so good (raises eyebrow at total spent on physical therapy copays and massage) but emotionally and spiritually, pretty great.

This pregnancy was healing and transformative in a lot of ways. I was able to receive more of God’s grace for my vocation as a wife and mother, was able to see His version of myself more and more clearly, and most shockingly of all, for me, was able to let go of (or at least table, more on that in a future post) a lot of my deeply held and longstanding issues with food and weight and body image.

And guess what? I didn’t magically have a celebrity pregnancy because I stopped obsessing about food and how I looked. I still got huge, I still felt pretty awful by the end, and I am still struggling now, 4 weeks postpartum, with the fallout of crafting and carrying another human being under my heart for the better part of a year. My kids are simultaneously asking “so mom, when will you be skinny again?” and also “can we have another baby pretty soon?” so it’s pretty much every woman’s dream.

Here’s the thing though: for much of the past 10 months, I was at peace.

I was at peace with having a sixth baby (which felt – and still feels – shocking. Not the half dozen children so much as the being at peace part); I was (mostly) at peace with what was happening to and through my body, and I was at peace with how I looked.

None of that should have been possible. All of that is miraculous. I can only credit a well-timed introduction to the concept of intuitive eating, working with a wonderfully gifted RD, and God’s perfect timing.

Pregnancy has always been pretty terrible for me in the self image department. Blame the decades of disordered eating and the short stature, but I’m not a cute pregnant woman, and I don’t “wear it well.” The baby wears me. I am all baby and also the baby is all over, and we are both of us huge.

I was cradling Ben at his 2 week well child visit waiting for my turn to place him on the scale and the mom ahead of me looked back at us, eyes popping out of her head and cried out “another one? Again? So soon?!” I looked around and realized she was talking to me and politely asked “what?” knowing full well what was about to happen…

“How old is your baby?” She jabbed a finger towards Ben’s carseat, her eyes widening when I replied “12 days;”

“And you’re pregnant again???”

I stared at her with dead, sleep deprived eyes for a full count of 3 before calmly replying that no, I’d just had the baby 12 days ago. Her eyes goggled at my Kate Middleton-esque midsection and her cheeks had the decency to flush slightly as she stumbled over her words and I brushed past her to hoist my 10 pound baby onto the scale.

I wish I could say I was more incensed over the profound failure of our educational system to transmit the most basic fundamentals of human biology to a seemingly card carrying adult female, but alas, my pride was wounded deeper than my intellect. Though I do still wish I’d been able to slip her a little something to explain how ovulation works. Maybe just like 2 pages ripped from a high school biology textbook?

I’m not bitter.

I was talking with a friend earlier this week about how the newfound confidence I discovered during pregnancy is starting to wear thin as the hormones continue to come down and the baby weight…doesn’t. She pointed out I was less than a month postpartum, Christmas was only just happened, and perhaps I hadn’t been sleeping much? Not exactly a recipe for weight loss and wellness.

Here’s the thing, though. All that new peace and acceptance I found while Benny was on the inside? Now I get to fight to keep it. Now I get to experience the freedom and the terror of having the training wheels kicked off, of being at peace in my body just as it is, no baby on board to shield me from my own expectations or those of the world.

Because the acceptance and freedom I found during Ben’s pregnancy were a little bit conditional, it turns out, and dependent upon my “producing” something, having some sort of excuse for my body being less than perfect.

Now that I’m not growing a baby? Or nursing one? It is so, so tempting to get sucked back into the belief that my body is only as good as what it can do, as how it looks. As how well it performs.

I’m not actively “trying” to lose weight right now. I’m not doing a 30 day cleanse or a 4 week reset or trying a new diet of any kind. I’m not signing up for boot camp or pledging a certain number of trips to the gym per week for 2020. I’m not readily identifiable as an athlete of any kind, at the moment. And ironically, I’m not able to fit into any of my old clothes that don’t involve lots and lots of spandex, so living in running tights though I may be, no actual running is taking place.

For now, for the moment, in this uncomfortable in between season of sweet baby cuddles and scary parenting meltdowns and the whole-house post holiday hangover, I’m just me. I’m just a tired mom with a new baby and gross stains on most of her shirts and I don’t look or feel very cute, but I am happy.

And I’m starting to think I might be on track to find deeper, truer happiness than what I was hoping to find via the keto brick road or whatever other previous promises I’d clung to about finally being satisfied “when”.

As I sat down with my (dusty) laptop to write what this turned out to be, I happened to lock eyes with my bridal self in a wedding picture that hangs near my desk.

“I used to look like that. Look how beautiful I was.” I indulged the self pity for about 4 seconds and then shook myself with the rueful knowledge that however beautiful 26 year old Jenny had been, 37 year old Jenny would still look different. That there was no way I’d still be that girl in the picture, 6 kids or no.

And I recognize that I could easily, easily spend the rest of my 30s, my 40s, and beyond chasing that elusive image of who I used to be. Of trying to freeze time and keep her eternally present, if only from certain angles or through Instagram filters.

Or I could eat the pizza. Have the baby. Drink the beer.

This is less an “I give up” manifesto than an “I surrender” explanation. And in this season of lots and lots and lots of surrender (cough cough emergency c section + team no sleep) I’m figuring out that happiness lies less in what the mirror is reflecting back to me and more in what I’m able to reflect out to the world.

(And hey, lest we end this on an overly pious note, it must be said that I had the temerity to scream “what is wrong with you???” at a 7 year old child today for the heinous crime of crushing chocolate sprinkles into the dining room table with the back of a spoon, so please know that I am an all around ideal and uniformly excellent mother who is all done with spiritual growth and development, and I definitely did not get caught earlier in the day by the 9 year old muttering “good God I CANNOT WAIT for school to start” while bent over rehoming clean laundry found strewn across a closet floor.)

About Me, books, ditching my smartphone, reading, self care, social media, technology

Want to become an awesome reader? Do these 5 things

January 28, 2019

I received a flurry of comments, emails, and DMs after the year-end book list I published in late December. There were plenty of thanks for the recommendations, but there were even more incredulous queries along the lines of how do you read that much? and Do your kids bathe, feed, and clothe themselves? And I haven’t finished a book since college!

Which I totally and completely understand. Reading for pleasure can seem like a tough row to hoe some seasons, especially when career demands are intense and babies are small and plentiful.

I really subscribe to the idea that reading, like any other skill or hobby, is something that waxes and wanes during different seasons in life. I don’t swim much in the winter when it gets dark at 5 pm and my kids have schoolwork, whining, and endless snacking to accomplish before bedtime. When the summer sun rides high until 8pm I can easily slip out to the gym once Dave gets home. Winter nights though, I’m more likely to be dreaming about slipping into bed myself by that point in the evening.

When the kids were younger and my sleep was more disrupted, I definitely did not read as much as I do now. Nursing required at least one hand, sometimes two, and I didn’t have an e-reader yet. It was much easier to prop open a laptop and stream some mindless content or better yet, alternate between staring dreamily into my baby’s eyes or vacantly into space. During my later babies’ early days with smartphones on the scene, I had to make an intentional choice to leave that phone somewhere else sometimes.

Now that everybody is sleeping through the night and still young enough to be abed by 9pm  – ahem, most nights. To hell with this Oregon Trail winter we’re having; thank God nobody is dying in a covered wagon. Instead they’re sucking down steroids in a house with a roof – I usually have at least an hour or two of open time in the evenings. Provided I’ve prayed already, packed the lunches, sent the emails, etc., I almost always choose to spend this time reading. And 10-14 hours of reading a week can add up to some big numbers over the span of a year.

Here are a few things I do in order to maximize my consumption of the written word:

1. Make your smartphone smarter: I know, I know…but my ongoing effort to break up with my smartphone is mired in the annoying reality of life in 2019. Do I need a smartphone to survive? Of course not. But life without one – like the summer before last – is more difficult than it needs to be. Our school communicates via a private email system, my office communicates via a chat app, my sense of direction functions via Google maps…anyway, I still have a phone that is smart. So I’ve hacked it a bit to make it smarter for me. I’ve done this by: removing all social media from my phone, decluttering the front screen to the bare minimum, hiding all communication apps (Voxer, Whatsapp, GroupMe, etc) in a separate folder on the last page, no work email, and refusing to download an app for anything unless it can’t be done in a browser (looking at you Whole Foods/Amazon discount).

When my phone is less interesting and less capable of distracting me, I am more likely to pick up whatever I happen to be reading in those lulls of activity during the day, be it in car line or standing at the counter stirring dinner and sipping a glass of wine.

The one thing I’ll probably do again this summer when my kids are home is delete my internet browser which makes the phone even stupider (and harder to use for mindless scrolling) but which is too tough to manage during the school year. I’ve done this every year for 3 summers now and it’s been really great for keeping me more engaged with my family, at least once I get through the horrifying lack-of-immediate-Google-ability detox of the first week. Shudder. My brain is melting.

Without the tempting glow of a tiny screen beckoning you to disappear for a little scrolling, you are now ready to:

2. Get an e-reader. I’ve been a loyal Kindle reader for about 7 years now, I think. It was an actual lifeline when we lived in Rome in 2013, still tethered to my library in the States and able to provide me with instantaneous digital content in my native tongue. I like Kindle because we already use Amazon for so much (thus hastening the decline of civilization as we know it) and because almost every book is available in Kindle format. It also has cross pollination with other Kindles in your family and other devices, so you can share titles with your spouse or kids and if you do find yourself in a pinch when you’re out and about but left your Kindle at home, you can download the Kindle app to your phone and pick up wherever you left off in your book. But don’t do this unless it’s an emergency, because reading on a phone is terrible for you.

I like the Kindle Paperwhite because of its eyeball-friendly display and its husband-friendly backlighting which makes it perfect for snuggling with under the covers without disturbing your bed partner’s sleep. It vaguely thrills me in the same way hiding with a flashlight and a paperback used to do at age 10.

An e-reader is also the ultimate budget-friendly way to read; other than the original cost of purchase, you can basically read everything you could ever want for free, minus your annual Amazon membership. I’m not sure how other e-readers stack up price-wise, but like I said, Jeff Bezos helps the wheels of our domestic economy turn, so we’re already paying for it. Also, don’t pay a crazy amount for one! I think Dave and I got both ours on Prime day or black Friday a few years ago for less than $60 apiece.

But don’t you spend money on books, Jenny? 90-something titles is a lot!

Au contraire, my friends. I spent possibly $50 on books this past year. Possibly. If there is an obscure title that pops up for book club unavailable in digital format, a title I just have to have in hardcover the moment it comes out (cough cough Michael O’Brien), or a friend publishing a new title, I’ll buy it. Otherwise? I’ll…

3. Use the library like a boss. Our library system is amazing. We have convenient locations, attractive and updated (if not beautiful) new buildings, and massive collections of titles. But I almost never check out books irl. If we go to the library, it’s either 100 degrees outside and the kids are home or I’m meeting a girlfriend for a government-sponsored playdate. I don’t go there to check out books, period.

I mean fine, sometimes I let the kids each grab a stack. Which I then spend the next several weeks repenting, finding titles sodden in the backyard, shredded in the baby’s mouth, stuffed under car seats and behind couches, etc. That is when we find all the titles. Books, like puzzles, live at the library for our family. At least for now.

But digital books? Oh, my friends, digital books are what I use to placate myself if ever I think too long and about bloated, wasteful government expenditure of my tax dollars. Digital books are my smug little secret, new release titles by the dozens filling up my hold request que, recommendations from friends or some erie algorithm hastily copy and pasted, waiting their turn in a notes app I continually update. Some months I might be reading $150 worth of brand spanking new releases, all without opening my wallet.

Some library districts might not be so generous or so response to digital title recommendations – almost every book I’ve ever suggested my library acquire, they have, save for a handful of older or explicitly Catholic titles – but did you know there are some library districts that grant non-resident library cards? Mind blown.

Of course, you don’t have to be an e-book apologist like me to work the library system. Turning your to-be-read wishlist into a physical hold request is almost as easy, if a little less convenient. If you don’t mind picking up and returning books irl, this is the option for you. Bonus: less time wandering the stacks and rolling the dice on a title that ends up being a dud, or trashy. Downside: less time wandering the stacks. And less likelihood of you picking up a title you might otherwise never lay eyes on.

4. Be intentional with your leisure time. Don’t let downtime just “happen” to you. If you want to become an enthusiastic reader, you have to be at least a little bit intentional about it in 2019. There will always be something to stream, a newsfeed to scroll, screens to watch, and noise to attend to. Gone are the days where you might pick up a book out of boredom or lack of options. You have limitless options, and boredom can be banished with a simple keystroke. If you’re going to read, you have to make time to do it and resist the siren song of passive consumption of entertainment.

Getting your oil changed? There’ll be a show playing in the waiting room, and possibly music, too. And unless you brought your current read or your Kindle along for the ride, you’re going to find yourself spending 35 minutes of your life learning all about high stakes extreme crab fishing. Ask me how I know.

Similarly, at night, if you don’t set parameters around your screen time and your plan for how you’ll unwind once your duties for the day are done, it’s all too easy to find yourself hopping on instagram for “just a minute” only to look up an hour later, bleary eyed and hunchbacked at the kitchen counter. Don’t ask me how I know.

Decide you want to use your fringe hours to read, and then prepare to be shocked when you can easily cruise through a book a week. No, you’re not necessarily a genius, you just got 10 hours of your time back by refusing to cede the precious resource of your attention span to an algorithm designed to be irresistibly captivating. So actually, maybe you are a genius.

Try it even for a month and see what happens. Cal Newport (author of Deep Work) has a forthcoming title called Digital Minimalism that is all about having agency in this area of our lives, evaluating each new piece of technology and each practice and asking if it truly serves us, and if so, assigning it designated space in our lives. Down with passive consumption and automated upgrades. Up with the thoughtful, intentional application of new trends and technologies in our lives.

5. Find a reading buddy. It could be a whole book club full of many buddies. It could just be the other users on Goodreads whose titles and reviews you peruse when looking for new reads. It could be your long lost bff from college who you commit to rekindling the flame with. Try this: pick a title, both of you get the book, download Voxer or some other voice messaging app, and spend a month reading and virtually discussing your pick, no set meetings or irl encounters necessary.

Reading is really fun. And you can do it on a train, you do it in the rain…you get the idea. And unlike many other hobbies and pursuits that may find themselves sidelined during different seasons of life, it’s something you can pursue whether you’re 5 or 95, provided you have the right glasses, I guess. So while I may not be able to get out and run a 4 miler right now (I want to say because snow, but really it’s because mombod. #cantdoitall), once my kids are down for the count tonight, I’ll be happily indulging in the luxury of opening to the current location in a good book.

About Me, Catholic Spirituality, deliverance, Evangelization

Evangelizing with your story

January 17, 2019

I tend to lean pretty far in the self disclosing direction when I share here on the blog. I’ve pulled back a little bit as the kids have gotten older as far as the specifics I share about them, images, etc, but I’m still a fairly open book with my own story. I share bits about our marriage that Dave approves, but for the most part I’m a one woman show in this space.

The reason I share so much about my own life and my ongoing conversion is because I believe so deeply in the power of story.

When I was reawakening to the truth towards the end of my first run through college (I basically had two separate college experiences – 4 years at CU Boulder where I did my level best to uphold the party school reputation, and 3 years at Franciscan University of Steubenville where I finished my BA and started my MA) much of the awakening happened while listening to CDs and tapes (this was pre podcast era, people) of other people’s conversion stories.

I found Dr. Scott Hahn’s story particularly riveting. I remember one night with particular clarity. Hidden away upstairs in my converted attic bedroom, I could hear the happy, sloppy sound of my roommates and their friends banging around downstairs as they came home from the bars, sliding furniture across the battered floors of our rental and clinking bottles. Barricaded in my room, I pushed play on a borrowed boom box and listened for the third or fourth time as Hahn described his surprising journey into Catholicism.

I was a cradle Catholic with at least a tenuous grasp on my faith, so it wasn’t as if the details of his tale were totally unfamiliar to me. It was his conviction that gripped my soul, wearied as it was after years of blurry football games and black out partying and inch-deep friendships. Could somebody really take God this seriously? To turn away from their life, their career, leave everything behind to jump in faith?

The things coming out of the speaker sounded more like the stuff of Bible stories than current events. In my twenty-something years of living as a Catholic, I hadn’t encountered what seemed to me a radical application of Catholicism; not merely part of life on Sundays or used as a modifier to describe oneself, but as the essence of a person. His identity seemed to rest, now, post conversion experience, entirely in being Catholic.

I didn’t know anyone like this in real life. My parents didn’t count, at the time, because caught in the snares of my adolescent misery, I couldn’t see clearly how much love they’d expended, how hard they’d tried.

What I knew of being Catholic was duty, sacrifice, and a sort of stoic resignation. I’d stopped living my faith in any meaningful sense except one: I still went to Mass most Sundays. But I was not sober, I was not chaste, I was not kind or honest or patient. Duty-bound, I dragged my hungover body out of bed for the latest possible service on Sundays, head down and heart numbed in the pew as the liturgy – often banal and irreverent because Boulder – washed over me in a comforting, familiar rhythm.

What caused this profound disconnect between my head and my heart? What allowed me to profess the Creed with my fellow parishioners on Sundays and party recklessly with my fellow classmates on Fridays? I can’t say for sure, but I imagine it had much to do with a lack of community. With a fragile catechesis that only went skin deep, the profound truths of the Faith I’d professed since childhood eluding me as a jaded young adult.

I knew who Jesus was as a historical character and, theoretically, Who He was in the Blessed Sacrament on the altar at Mass. But I didn’t know Jesus as my Lord. He didn’t call the shots in my life. I was living for me, directed by me, and in pursuit of what pleased me. Jesus was an afterthought, and His Church was the window dressing I put out as a flag to signify to others what I was about. Being Catholic defined me in the same way being an American did, or being a woman. It was something intrinsic and immutable but nothing I had real agency in.

When I started hearing stories like Dr. Hahn’s, the universe tilted. I came to recognize that faith was as much a gift as a choice. That this man, and countless other men and women throughout history had chosen Christ, had made a decision to orient their entire lives around Him. Not by reciting an “I accept you as my Lord and Savior” prayer – though a well-meaning roommate had once coached me through that, sensing an opening in my confusion over the question of whether or not I was “saved”. The fact that we recited the prayer after smoking pot in her Honda Accord did not seem to deter her from helping me go through the motions.

I don’t fault her for her confusion – my faith wasn’t any deeper! Her “Lord and Savior” line was similar to my weekly attendance at Mass, in that we were both going through the motions we’d been taught, unsure of what it meant to concretely apply our belief in Jesus to our lives, or unwilling to make the leap.

The joy I heard in Dr. Hahn’s story was infectious. I can’t think of any other reason I’d have wanted to replay over and over again this recording of a forty year old man telling his life story.

Later in the night my roommates came and pounded on my locked door, begging me to come out and join in the festivities. I feigned sleep as I lay there in the darkness, the CD still playing and hot tears rolling down my cheeks. I wanted out. I wanted joy. A fire had been rekindled inside of me earlier that semester with the death of the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II.

His passing had left me dazed and weeping, shocking me with an intensity of grief and regret such as I had never felt. I was still dazed, some weeks later as I lay there listening to my old life progress outside that bedroom door and feeling certain that something new was on the horizon.

My path back into full practice and belief was not linear. For brevity’s sake and to construct a coherent narrative, it sometimes reads that way. The years that would follow, however, were marked by pain and uncertainty as much as by profound consolation in prayer and joy in newfound Christian community. And as I learned to read The Story with new eyes, my heart burning as the Scriptures were unfolded for me, I came to recognize the power of my own story, too; to console and to inspire and to attract.

We tell our stories because we love to share ourselves, but also because apart from the grace of baptism, the story God is writing with each of our lives is the most miraculous thing that will ever happen to us.

When I look back over the seemingly disconnected events in my life, the unexpected twists and turns, the disappointment of unanswered prayers, the highs and lows, it can seem random. When I do so applying the lens of faith, the resolution seems to improve a bit, the principal image coming into clearer focus: I love you.

God is writing a love story with each of our lives. When I remind myself of this, when I remind other people of this by sharing parts of my story, I pull back a little corner of the veil between this world and the next, a burst of His light and love escaping forth into the darkness.

We live in a world shrouded in darkness. We needn’t – shouldn’t – let the fear of humiliation or a little stage fright hold us back from lighting candles in the darkness. And every Christian has this light burning within them, ignited by the specific, personal love Jesus has for every single person ever created. Every single soul is the story of salvation history all over again: rejection and redemption, suffering and salvation.

Later this week, the Catholic Woman will publish a letter I wrote about my younger years. While parts of my story are painful to share, the cost is more than warranted when I consider the immensity of what I have received.

About Me, Family Life, motherhood

What my 5 kids taught me in 2018 {part 2}

January 3, 2019

Continued from yesterday. Read part 1 here.

3. Accept people for who they actually are

One of our kids has struggled heroically this year with emotional regulation. I can say heroic now because I recognize the delicate wiring that comprises his arousal system and the unique qualities of his personality. Another child may sail effortlessly through the school day, hopping into the car afterwards brimming with energy and good nature; his tank is full, he spent a full day interacting with his favorite thing in the entire world: other people! He will happily (usually) do his chores and skip outside to play for hours until dinner. Homework, however, is another matter.

This other child though? I see him visibly sagging from the weight of the school day as I pull up to car line, his small shoulders telegraphing a message to me from the curb: I’m done. I’ve handled pretty much everything I’m able to handle today, and I need you to recognize that.

For months I ignored that message, or couldn’t translate it properly. Tantrums erupted daily after school, sometimes stretching for hours past dinnertime and ending only with sleep. We consulted with teachers and saw a counselor and modeled play therapy techniques at home and made plodding progress (again, not linear) and finally, what hit me after months of hard was something his therapist scribbled on a sheet of notes: “remember, this is not something he is doing, this is who he is.”

That single sentence reframed a year of difficulty and in all frankness, resentment on my part.

It wasn’t something he was doing. It was simply who he was. Not adaptable like his brother or fiercely independent like his sister. Sensitive and intelligent and utterly and profoundly exhausted by a day out in the world. My expectations had to rest in the reality of him. He needed little more in the afternoon beyond a snack and to melt into my arms for some quiet time on the couch. And he needed me to simply offer it and not dwell on the disappointment – my disappointment – that asking for anything more, like chores or activities, was asking for the moon. At least for now.

Another child has demonstrated a seemingly infinite capacity for mischief this year, and our house bears visible witness to it.

I can continue to live in willful ignorance of this and leave all the Sharpies in unlocked drawers because none of my other kids would have drawn on the kitchen cabinets with permanent marker, refusing to become one of “those” houses who childproof to the point of ugliness, or I can save myself the heartache of more broken treasures and destroyed tubes of mascara and put everything out of his destructive reach.

Every human person is a mystery. They have a particular mission they’ve been given to share with the world, and they are comprised of a surprisingly disparate collection of parts and pieces that don’t necessarily add up by human standards.

I’m not sure I would have gone with that particular trait and that specific weakness, I can muse critically, mentally scoring God’s craftsmanship in one of my children while wiping something unmentionable off a surface that should be out of reach, a masterpiece which must have taken long, careful minutes of intelligent strategy and persistent effort to achieve. This one’s going to end up on one side of the law or the other, as they say.

Or I can keep my eyes and ears open and maintain a sense of curiosity and even sometimes in rare moments of benevolence on my part, wonder.

It really would be a dull, efficient world had I designed it. But there would never, ever be poop in a place you weren’t expecting poop.

4. Self-acceptance is a beautiful, instinctive thing*

I hope this memory of my preschool daughter sears itself into the depths of my long term memory: looking down at her suddenly too-tight jeans and her adorably bulging belly preventing the buttoning of what buttoned yesterday, and exclaiming with joy “Wow mommy, I’m growing! This is great, I need new clothes!”

I look at her dumbstruck. Impressed. Wishing I could frame things that way. Granted, a child’s growing body is healthy and normal and expected. But shouldn’t an adult body also be released from the shackles of a static self image?

Every time I glance in the mirror and excoriate my reflection for not reflecting high school Jenny’s youthful visage back at me, I burn the miserable neural pathway of wistful nostalgia in a little deeper. What if I could expect – and therefore accept – a changing body?

I don’t mean an acceptance that tosses the eye cream and hangs up the gym shoes; that’s resignation by another name. It would be for me, anyway.

I mean an acceptance that bravely expects change. An acceptance that is untethered from the frantic message of marketers and advertisers and the tiresome echo chambers of social media and is deeply rooted in this gospel truth instead: you are fearfully and wonderfully make, and it is good that you are here.

I watched my little daughter bloom from a miniature preschooler this year to a sturdy little kid, arms and legs lengthening even as her torso blew past those size 4 skinny jeans (also, skinny jeans for toddlers? I judge myself. But also, that’s all you can find in most stores.) She was delighted to embrace her new body, knowing instinctively that it is good to grow and stretch and change. No playground bully or Instagram filter has told her differently, yet. I pray that when one does, she will be able to see the lie for what it is and turn back to reality.

*(Mental illness notwithstanding, of course. Depression, anxiety, and other pre existing conditions in our brains that precede self awareness can certainly interfere with an intrinsic self acceptance. Original sin is a real buzz kill.)

Finally, and most importantly of all of these, I look back over these past 12 months and see a distinct theme woven through all the smaller parts of the story, and it is this: that I am not in control.

I am not in control. You are not in control. None of us can hope to execute the perfect list of New Year’s resolutions because none of us can say for certain what the coming year holds.

I can fill a whole bullet journal with goals, set a dozen intentions for the coming year, fill a spreadsheet with data tracking my progress, but I don’t have all the necessary information at hand.

I can’t see the illnesses and heartaches, the financial stressors, the windfalls, the knock down drag out fights or the quiet moments of sorrow in the middle of the night.

All I can control, in the end, is me. Me, and how well I love the people around me.

Motherhood is searing this into my soul one stomach virus and night waking and parent teacher conference at a time, and I’m a very slow learner. As my cramped soul expands to consider the possibility that maybe this thing, too, can be good, I’m learning my lesson. Maybe this thing I didn’t expect and this situation I certainly didn’t ask for can be meaningful on some level, can be redeemed somehow, was what God intended for me all along.

I can imagine my heavenly audience of intercessors gathered around whatever God’s version of Facebook Portal is, waiting to see how I’ll respond to the situation at hand: Will she scream? Rant to her husband? Pull the soiled sheets off the mattress a little too violently? Write a scathing review online?

Sometimes the redemption exists only in my own heroic (ha) effort to resist throwing an adult temper tantrum when someone, say, stabs a hole in the couch. Because someone is going to stab a hole in the couch, okay? And then they’re probably going to cram it full of orange slices or snotty Kleenex. The only real variable here is time. Time, and whether or not mommy is going to add a new word to the family vernacular when she finds it.

But that variable is huge. And as I reflect on the gift of another year given, fully aware that I’m promised nothing beyond today, I hope to make better use of my time. Not simply becoming more efficient and productive, but accepting reality for what it is: a gift from a good Father Who is watching and waiting to see what I’ll make of it.

Not all my kids, but an approximation of what the checkout guy at Trader Joe’s sees when he sees all my kids.
About Me, Family Life, large family, motherhood, Parenting

What my 5 kids taught me in 2018 (I should have taken better notes)

January 2, 2019

Another retrospective New Year’s post, just what the internet needs! For your enjoyment I think I’ll break it into two installments since said internet has destroyed our collective attention span. You’re welcome.

I sighed this morning, as I leaned over the kitchen counter this morning waiting for my espresso to drizzle out another shot of “sorry you’re not sleeping these days,” and scrolled through my blogfeed reader – remember those? I still use one! (And sometimes I read paper books. Subversive, I know!)

I was reading through another “goals I nailed in 2018” post, mentally congratulating the author but also wondering if maybe I’m doing something wrong.

Gone – for now, at least – are my days of setting lofty S.M.A.R.T. goals in January and having a list of successes to look back over at the year’s end. I can point to a few small things that I’m doing better, to patterns of healing and growth in the emotional and spiritual realm that are no small matter, but not really to things that I’ve accomplished, per se.

Any growth this year has happened to me rather than through me. It has consisted more of accepting and embracing circumstances as they come to pass, and less of setting out to conquer x and actually, well, conquering x.

And it’s not linear. It’s a hot, embarrassing mess. Cut to scene one of me angrily scrubbing kitchen counters with a diaper wipe on one of the interminable days between Christmas and New Year’s Day this year, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand and feeling such irrational anger at the hand we’d been dealt for what felt like the umpteenth year in a row: barfing, fevers, night wakings and not a single family event attended.

Crumpled in the wake of sickness was the calendar of holiday festivities I’d eagerly consulted in my mind’s eye as November melted into December, the anticipation buoying me along through one more school lunch packed, one more pickup, one more last minute costume assembled, one more late night of work.

Soon, the cursor was all but hovering over January 1 and we’d accomplished seemingly nothing over our Christmas “break,” instead trading night shifts and shampooing vomit out of carpets and picking up yes another prescription. (We’re not re-selling these online, we promise.)

I was feeling sorry for myself as I scrubbed that counter, despite having just read a stirring essay by a father of 9 with cancer, whose piece contained a hyperlink to the blog of a mother of 7 with cancer who had died of said cancer. “We can all take a lesson in contentment from the pages of her book; what she would have given for one more day, week, month of ‘ordinary time,’” he wrote.

I paraphrase. All that to say, I’m a sh*t and I know it.

Thank God He is training me via a thousand paper cuts and not a severe and mortal blow. At least not yet.

1. Flexibility

I cheerily responded to an email from my spiritual director in late December (but pre-Christmas, notably) that Advent had been “surprisingly joyful, actually! We’d had some illnesses and some difficulties but it was going to be smooth sailing from here on out and we were so looking forward to Christmas.”

You can probably see where this is going.

The lesson here for me was one I’m always exasperatedly trying to impart to my children. Guys, be flexible! That’s just life in a big family.

“Flexibility!” I apologized to my crew, dipping a washcloth in cool water and laying it on the 3-year-old’s inferno of a forehead and texting our regrets to a long-awaited Christmas party with my other hand.

“Flexibility,” I shrugged, sending Dave solo to 4 pm Mass on Christmas Eve while I sat couch duty with 3 fevers burning and what sounded like an entire infirmary of coughing. The newly Tamiflu’d preschooler lay across my legs like an electric blanket, eyes dull and pitiful.

“Flexibility,” I reminded myself with jaw clenching, running another load of laundry on Christmas Day. And another. And then another.

By the time December 31st rolled around, I was stiff and aching from the effort. Both parents were. My own flexibility exhausted, I emotionally assumed the fetal position, snapping at simple requests and drinking more coffee than was wise or helpful.

I had learned the lesson, or so I thought. I could be flexible. Fun, even! Okay, plan B, we’ll stay home and light all the candles and order pizza!

But flexibility on my terms, that’s what I wanted.

God wanted to equip me, I think, with the superpower of inconvenient flexibility.

That was not on my Amazon wishlist.

And as readily as I can admit that, gosh, that kind of adaptability would sure come in handy leading this big ‘ol family as the mom, my human nature shies away in horror from the work required to acquire it. And so He keeps assigning the reading, sending home the assignments, so to speak. Not because He is an awful taskmaster who wants me to suffer, but because learning this thing will be a profound help to my long term happiness and holiness, not to mention my family’s.

2. Be open to unexpected gifts

Having as many babies as I’ve had has demonstrated to me that every baby is ground zero, every person a new starting line. I’ve gleaned some some time-tested lessons from baby to baby, but each new person who joins the family has necessitated a sort of amnesia of expectations. I have loosely affixed goal posts in my mind, but the new addition is welcome to blow past them in his or her own way. Number one needed a paci attached almost surgically to his person at all times and slept on a tight schedule I could set a watch by; number two was almost physically attached to my person at all times and slept almost never, as far as I can remember.

By the time number five started babbling mama and baba and taking mincing steps all over the house and dropping her second nap all before the age of one, I trimmed my sails of expectation and resigned myself to a child who was determinedly mobile months before any of her siblings were. It wasn’t remarkable in any sense other than this: it was her.

This was simply who she was, and she was revealing herself to me in a way that none of the books or blogs I’d read or even her own siblings could have. I’d mentally steeled myself for the horrifying spectacle that is newborn sleep with four other children in the house. She showed up and slept through the night by week 6. Right now she is contentedly eating mini marshmallows at her high chair beside me and I’m congratulating myself because I did the responsible thing and pre-shredded them for her.

I’m a much better mom for her than I was for her older siblings, simply because I’ve studied more. Learned what hills to die on (sleep, always) and what hills to forfeit to the battering winds of what actually works (this time, bottles). I begged God to make breastfeeding easy for me this time around, and in the reality of Zelie’s circumstances He answered me big time by simply removing it from the picture altogether.

Never rule out the possibility that God wants to answer a prayer, perhaps did answer a prayer in a way you never expected.

(to be continued in part 2)

Just imagine I lysol wiped the entire cart first and there’s an invisible brightly patterned stretchy cart cover lovingly positioned beneath her. And that she’s not barefoot. Voila, firstborn status achieved!
About Me, book list, books, reading

The PG-rated book list you’ve been waiting for {what I read in 2018}

December 30, 2018

I started this post in November soooooo things are just swimming along for us as we round the bases to close out 2018. Here’s the recap: Christmas: we missed it. Bird flu, we have it. Norovirus: we had that, too. Lots of clorox wipes and bottles of ibuprofen under the Christmas tree, etc, etc.

Anyway, I’ve been reading a lot this year. Especially since cutting out social media browsing early in November, and more recently in between many middle of the night disruptions requiring new sheets and tylenol disbursements. I have more free time than I ever realized, though the discipline required to sit down with an in process book is a little more than what I’d grown accustomed to with scrolling.

Sometimes I’ll find myself putzing around the kitchen at 9:40 pm looking for something else to clean because I don’t quite feel like crawling into bed with a book, I’m too wired/tired to do my own writing, and I’ve removed that third option of the slump n’ scroll from the evening menu.

Jenny’s have-read list of 2018, in reverse chronological order: (p.s. these titles contain affiliate links from Amazon; if you order through a link, Jeff Bezos will give me a hay penny)

(I’ve kept the reviews uber concise and have also included, at the bottom, the unlucky titles I’ve abandoned for the time being because adulthood means not having to finish a book you start.)

The Obesity Code: 5 stars. Really great read, some fascinating stuff that backs up what I’ve experienced eating keto and dabbling in avoiding sugar.

Tell Me More: 3.5 stars. I really like her writing and this collection of essays was enjoyable, if somewhat depressing at times. Her life kind of reads heavy into “hot mess,” which, I mean, aren’t we all? But light on the redeeming qualities. Call me pollyanna, but I need some morally uplifting denouement in my written word. (I just found out there is literally a name for the kind of reading I gravitate towards: Up-lit. Nailed it.)

Delay, Don’t Deny: 3.5 stars. I’d like to give it more because it has some great information, but it’s so short and it’s written so casually that it didn’t feel worth the $9 purchase price. She extensively referenced Dr. Jason Fung, author of the Obesity Code, so if nothing else she pointed me to a great follow up read.

The Personality Brokers: 3.5 stars. Not the most pleasant reading, and investigative journalism just isn’t my favorite thing to curl up with. It’s definitely interesting and made me re examine a lot of the forgone cultural “truths” we embrace about sorting people, including ourselves, into different categories and types.

These is My Words: 5 stars. Riveting, a grown up version of Little House on the Prairie. I loved it.

Small Animals: Parenting in the Age of Fear 3.5 stars. Some good insights and interesting journalism but tiresomely cluttered by the author’s extreme liberal POV.

Waking Gods: Book 2 of the Themis Files 5 stars. LOVED this book.

Motherless, Fatherless and Childless: Solid 4 stars. Apocalyptic Catholic trilogy. Novelized exploration of the culture of death in full flower. I read these towards the end of the summer once it seemed the Church was in full meltdown and found them oddly comforting. Great character development and arresting content.

Only Human: Book 3 of the Themis Files  Not my favorite. High hopes for the final chapter in this trilogy, but book 2 was the standout in this series.

The Real Presence St. Peter Julian Eymard: 5 stars. Captivating spiritual content necessitating bite sized chunks and time for meditation. Plus the Kindle version is practically free right now.

Comfort and Joy by Kristin Hannah (dull and predictable but palatable for pre-Christmas bedtime reading)

Waiting for Christ, a collection of meditations for Advent by Bl. John Henry Newman, great read for this season.

Abba’s Heart by Neal Lozano. 4 stars. I’m a big fan of Lozano’s Unbound, and this book is a nice companion to the relational work that most of us need to do in our connection with God the Father.

In Sinu Jesu: 5 stars. best book I read all year, hands down. Will be re-reading it many times again, I can tell. Order a copy for your pastor ASAP.

Made for This: 5 stars. A must read for all women and anyone who does anything related to birth for a living. (Read: OBs, midwives, doulas, NFP instructors, lactation consultants, RNs, etc. Listen, I am firmly on Team Epidural and this was still such an essential read. Mary knocked it outta the part –  forgot to include this on the initial list because I read it as a physical book, and those are harder to keep track of than my cloud library 😉

Stranger and Sojourners and Eclipse of the Sun: 5 stars apiece. I re-read at least a couple Michael O’Brien books every year. I glean something new from his fiction each time I revisit it; I read once that he writes his first draft in front of the Blessed Sacrament, and it makes total sense when you sink into the depth of his prose.

The Smoke of Satan: 4 stars. Great, fast read. Was surprisingly balanced and level and gave lots of backstory about the present situation in the Church hierarchy. Docking it a star for having a clickbait title that will probably put a lot of people off from reading it. Highly recommend.

The Grace of Enough: 4 stars. I love reading books written by people I know – a solid read that delved into the necessity and beauty of creating an intentional family culture and taking the path of rejecting materialism in our extremely materialistic culture.

China Rich Girlfriend + Rich People Problems: 3.5 stars a piece. (books 2 and 3 of the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy – I saw the HILARIOUS movie in theaters so never read the book.) I like these books a lot; they were entertaining, fast paced, and really fun to read. There was a good amount of sexual content and infidelity and some mild cursing, but it wasn’t graphic, you know? I wish modern (well, most modern) fiction wasn’t so hypersexualized. It’s not crucial to the plot and it ends up being distracting and embarrassing and keeping me from finishing and/or recommending a lot of books. This one really was on the tamer side, but it was more quantity over quality, and just had general themes of immorality and secularism.

Leota’s Garden: 3 stars. Guys, I went on a really embarrassing Francine Rivers kick this past year and read basically everything she’s ever written. Her “Mark of the Lion” trilogy is far and away her best work, and gets a solid 5 stars and will probably be worth re-reading in the future. Her other books, like this one, are uplifting, entertaining, captivating, and good. Not great, by any stretch of the imagination, but good. Think Hallmark movies, but more moral. And almost as saccharine in moments. Not all her books are sugary sweet, but this one was.

Her Mother’s Hope + Her Daughter’s Dream: 5 stars. Some disturbing content dealing with child abuse in the first book, but a really enjoyable and historically captivating set of books about the complications of mother daughter relationships. Squeaky clean but not saccharine.

People of the Second Chance: 3 stars? 2.5 maybe. I’m putting this one in the same category as GWYF (though Goff’s theology is vastly superior to Hollis’), and books like Present Over Perfect. I don’t really get this entire genre, so maybe it’s me and not them? It had a good heart, but it was written at like a 6th grade level and sounded more bloggy than a blog, if that makes sense?

Pachinko: 4.5 stars. Guys I LOVED this book, but there was sexual content for sure. Not graphic and sort of matter of factly written, if that makes sense? Such a richly textured and fascinating novel.

Mark of the Lion trilogy: A voice in the wind (5 stars) An echo in the darkness (4 stars) As sure as the dawn (4 stars) I absolutely adored these books, but especially the first one. A fascinating and inspiring historically inspired read of early Christianity with beautifully developed characters.

Codependent No More: LOL. 3.5 stars? I honestly don’t remember much of this one. A friend told me “everyone needs to read this book” and so I did, and she was probably right. She also confessed that telling someone they needed to read it was in and of itself codependent behavior.

The Four Tendencies: 3.5 stars. I’m a bit of a Gretchen Rubin junkie. This was neither her best nor worst work. I can’t remember what, specifically, wasn’t great about it, but it hasn’t stuck with me the way The Happiness Project did.

Reading People: 3 stars, fairly meh. I’ve read a lot of books about temperaments and personality theories, so there was nothing in here that was new information to me. (Skipped the Enneagram chapter bc I’m pretty skeptical that stuff jives with Christianity.)

What We Were Promised : 3.5 stars. Interesting and engaging read but unremarkable characters. I struggled to remember what this one was about.

I’ll Be Your Blue Sky: 4 stars. Compelling and occasionally difficult subject matter. I really like Marisa de los Santos’ writing.

One Beautiful Dream: 5 stars. Loved this book. A must read for pretty much everybody, not just moms.

Crossing to Safety: 5 stars. My first foray with Wallace Stanger, it won’t be my last.

The Spender’s Guide to Debt Free Living: I honestly don’t remember this one so I’m going to assume it was a solid 2.5 stars.

The Drama of the Gifted Child: 2.5 stars. Really interesting for the first 60% (sorry, I read mostly on Kindle) and then it got vv weird and Freudian.

The Widows of Malabar Hill: 5 stars. I love India and books about India, and especially books about women in India. Clever writing and a surprising plot twist.

Goodbye, Vitamin: 3 stars. A bittersweet (mostly bitter) memoir-esque retelling of an adult child’s coping with a parent’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis and the relational fallout from the disease progression and the brutal honesty it can bring.

The Last Sin Eater: Another Francine Rivers situation. 4 stars.

The Atonement Child: and another. 3.5 stars.

The Masterpiece: and yet another. 3.5 stars.

Educated: A Memoir: 4 stars. Really disturbing and really captivating.

Finish:Give Yourself the Gift of Done: 4 stars. I listened to Jon Acuff on the Dave Ramsey show back when I had a commute, and I like the guy. This was a good reminder that it’s the little daily habits which add up to big wins.

Anxious for Nothing 3.5 stars. I don’t think I’d ever read an adult Max Lucado book. It was decent. A good little primer for combating anxiety with Biblical wisdom, not in a “think yourself well” vein, but in a truly helpful application of Scripture to daily life.

Adrenal Fatigue: 3 stars. Read like a very long Web MD article.

The Adrenal Thyroid Revolution: Slightly less WebMD-ish.

The Adrenal Reset diet: 3 stars. (LOLOL) turns out having a fifth baby in 6 years will make you vv tired. Also, some hormone stuff that changing up my diet to very low sugar/high fat/low processed foods has helped tremendously with fatigue.

Girl, Wash Your Face: 1.5 stars. I can’t handle the popularity of this book. It was everything self referential and disappointing about millenials with no redeeming qualities that I could discern except for, I guess, her massive Instagram following? Think banal health and wealth gospel + some Christianity flavored seasoning sprinkled on top to get on the right book club lists.

The Scarlet Thread: 4 stars. Another Franny title. I enjoyed the way she toggled between frontier days and modern time (well, the ninetes) with this title.

Lineage of Grace Series: Second to lasts dance with Francine. 4 stars for creativity with biblical content without being offensive. Definitely has helped me read the stories of the Old Testament – particularly the female protagonists – with new eyes.

Sons of Encouragement series: ditto, but featuring men of Old Testament.

The Hideaway: 2.5 stars. For as long as I had to wait on my library’s digital hold list, I expected this book to be better than a mediocre Hallmark movie. Alas, it was not.

Meet the Frugalwoods: 4 stars. Enjoy their blog and found this read pleasantly comprehensive of all her writing there without being overly repetitive. I’m never going to give up living in the suburbs or living with electric heat, but I still find their frugality fascinating and inspiring. Worth the read.

The Perfect You: 2 stars. I didn’t love this book because just as I was getting into it, it become a sort of personality inventory/scoring device and as I was reading on a Kindle, I was not about to start filling it out.

Flyaway: Kristin Hannah, but I literally remember nothing. So, 2 stars for that?

Night Road: I like Kristin Hannah but I don’t think I like like her like so many people do. This novel was darker but not unbearably so. About partying teenagers and the life-altering consequences of youthful misjudgement.

Distant Shores: 3 stars. And another Kristin Hannah title that I don’t remember much about.

Kisses from Katie: 5 stars. It will change your life.

Daring to Hope: 4 stars. The follow up to Kisses from Katie. It wasn’t as authentic or compelling or convicting to me, for whatever reason. Still a good read.

Gilead: 4.5 stars. Luminous prose and an unexpected perspective was employed by the writer. I was shocked to discover that this book was written not 100 years ago, but is actually rather contemporary.

Living Your Strengths: 3 stars. Not life changing or anything, the way I found the Highly Sensitive Person or the Temperament God Gave You to be. Just another personality indicator/type predictor.

A Year of Less: 2.5 stars. I love budget memoirs and I cannot lie. This one was okay. Also she lives alone, so being frugal is just not that impressive to me in those circumstances.

A Spender’s Guide to Debt Free Living: 3 stars. Can you tell I go on topical benders, too?

Small Admissions: 3 stars. Moderately entertaining, especially her descriptions of the terrible parents of the prep school babies she manages.

My Life in France: 4 stars. Julia Child was fascinating and before her time, though her writing drags in places.

Dark Matter: 5 stars. I do not love physics, but gosh did I love this book. Read it, you won’t be sorry.

Leia, Princess of Alderaan. 4 stars. I loved this Star Wars fan fic, and my 13 year old self won’t let my 36 year old self pretend otherwise.

Joy to the World: 3.5 stars. A new-t0-me Scott Hahn title. I’ve read most of his work and had him as a teacher for several years, so there was nothing new here for me, but still a concise and beautiful little book, especially during the Christmas season.

Chestnut Street 3.5  stars. Some sexuality and anti Catholicism. I went on a real tear with this author for the next couple weeks, as evidenced by:

The Return Journey: 3 stars. Did I mention when I “discover” a new to me author, I binge on them? For example:

Minding Frankie: 3 stars. Yep.

A Week in Winter: 3 stars. Yep again.

A Few of the Girls: 3 stars. At this point It was safe to say that I was on a serious Irish chick lit kick. This particular title collection of moderately entertaining short stories with a decidedly anti Catholic bent (written in Ireland in the nineties so I totally get that.)

Circle of Friends: 2.5 stars for moral relativism and being depressing as hell, and for starting me down the road of earnestly questioning the wisdom of continuing to read Miss Binchy.

Tara Road: 3.5 stars. I finally quit Maeve after this one (don’t you just love that name though?) when I admitted to myself that her virulent anti Catholicism and secular sexual morality was affecting my non-Teflon soul. I know some people say they can read anything and let the bad stuff just slide off their backs, but I’m not one of those people. I can’t handle steamy, suggestive and overly graphic sex scenes and I can’t stomach the reality-defying moral relativism of the bulk of modern pop fiction.

The Comfort Food Diaries: I honestly don’t remember this one, so I’m giving it 2.5 stars for being unremarkable. My bff is very into food memoirs, which I totally get, but they usually involve tortured childhoods and resultant adult trauma – at least the ones I’ve read – which kind of stresses me out as a highly sensitive person with tons of little kids at home.

L’appart: I love travel/living abroad memoirs, and this one is definitely that. The author is a little vulgar and a pretty negative guy, but it’s still a good read and gave me some pangs of panic as I thought back to anything home improvement related during our year in Rome.

A Million Junes: 3.5 stars. Moderately well written YA lit.

The Garden of Small Beginnings: 3 stars. Cute, but kind of dull and unremarkable.

Little Fires Everywhere: 3 stars, disappointing treatment of teen pregnancy and abortion that could have been such a great opportunity to deviate from the typical/predictable Planned Parenthood storyline, especially given the character development in this book.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: 5 stars. A completely fascinating exploration of the intersection between different cultures, faiths, and medical science.

Currently reading: Alone Time, This Will Only Hurt a Little (had to bail on this one last night, but I’m SO glad I happened upon a transformative memory she has of JPII before I did. I really like this book, but it’s very, very graphic in parts and I just couldn’t hang), Dopesick, and The Lido.

Abandoned list: either they were boring, trashy, poorly written, depressing, wrong book at the wrong time, or just wildly off the mark for me in some other way. Recording them for posterity’s sake in case I want to revisit a future title – I’m looking at you, Wendell Berry and Julian Fellows

A Quiet Life in the Country, Belgravia, Becoming Mrs. Lewis, Rich Mom, Smart Mom, This is How it Always is, Far from the Tree, Bootstrapper, The Well Educated Mind, The Red Tent, Elinor Oliphant, The Betrothed, Beauty in the World, The Dictator Pope, The Glass Castle, Jaybar Crow, Names for the Sea, Number One Chinese Restaurant, I Feel Bad About my Neck, Under the Volcano, Tell Me Three Things, Becoming Mrs. Lewis, Start with Why

Whew, that’s a lot of books! How do I achieve these numbers? I’ve found the secret to success is as follows: bring my Kindle everywhere, cut out social media, don’t watch tv (except the occasional football game and medicinal Hallmark movies) and commit to having really no other hobbies. For example, I’ve struggled mightily to get into podcasts because, well, I’d rather be reading. So I read. Go with what works, I guess.

I also recommend having a bunch of kids and then using a solid hour + of solitary reading each night after bedtime to recover from your day with them.

Hope you find a gem to carry you through the rest of Christmas break, cheers!

 

About Me, deliverance, feast days, keto, mental health, mindfulness, motherhood, PPD

Consolations and Desolations of 2018

December 21, 2018

The other night we did something pretty remarkable with a group of friends at a Christmas party. Wedged in right between the overconsumption of some terrible red wine and a white elephant gift exchange, one of the guys invited us to share “desolations and consolations” from the previous year.

Between laughter and sober tears, couples went around the room and told their stories. I was struck by the humility and honesty the activity required, and also by the willingness to be vulnerable. It would have been easy to keep it light and surface level and I wouldn’t have blamed anyone for doing it, but no one did. Every person who shared did so from the depths, and it was pretty moving. Some couples shared stories that were already familiar. Others reached for stories that hadn’t seen much daylight, surprising the group with the weight of the load they’d been carrying.

It reminded me of something that is too easy to forget; that everybody has a story. And few of us know the details of each other’s stories. And any time you are entrusted with those details, good or bad, it is an honor.

I was proud of the men in the room for being willing to open up. There’s a range of different masculine personalities in our circle of friends, from frat boys to intellectual giants and everything in between, and it is so refreshing to see their willingness to be humble and real.

I was proud of the women in the room for being transparent and pulling off the masks most of us wear in real life, whether in the carline at school or on social media. Real women can reveal weaknesses as readily as they can reveal strength.

Something about the Christmas season – and yes, we are in Advent still – invites a kind of reflection that is so necessary and so cathartic for the human soul. I think that’s part of what can make this season hard for people who are grieving – reflection and recollection go hand in mitten with the yuletide.

I’m 36 years old today, and far from despising my doorstep-of-Christmas birthday as I did when I was younger, I absolutely love having my personal calendar turn a new page right around the time that the Church’s calendar and the calendar year do the same.

It’s like a trifecta of reflection on the past year, if I lean into it. And so I will, sharing just a few – not 36, don’t worry – of my own consolations and desolations from 2018.

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My dad’s cancer diagnosis. From the moment I got the call from my mom, I had peace. I was concerned but not hysterical, and I had a deep consoling conviction that he was going to be fine. This was a complete consolation in what could have been an utterly desolating time. I am naturally anxious and prone to health anxiety, especially about my parents, being a dutifully neurotic firstborn. Also, I was 3 days postpartum when they told me the news. I was in the most fragile of mental states given my past history with PPD, but I felt enveloped in tranquility. I asked for prayers and I prayed a lot myself, and I truly don’t remember a time over this past year when I was terribly worried. Even while sitting for hours with my mom in the waiting room during his surgery, I felt sure he was going to make a full recovery.

And he has. He is approaching 6 months cancer free, and had a clean report on his last scan. He also miraculously escaped without nerve damage from the procedure, an unexpected and wonderful gift.

His presence at my sister’s wedding a few weeks ago, the fifth child he has given away in marriage now, underscored for all of us how tremendous this year has been, and how differently it could have gone.

I won’t take my parents’ and inlaws’ robust good health for granted. I pray for many more good years, grateful, in a way, for the conviction of that terrible diagnosis. The big takeaway for me was this: the only thing I can actually control is how I react to the circumstances and events that God permits in my life.

Easy for me to say when he’s healthy now, right? But this realization and the profound gift of an increasing capacity for emotional self mastery has been an unbelievable gift to me, a girl who has always defaulted to chronic anxiety and occasional panic attacks. It’s like this: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ― Viktor. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

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On a related note, another huge consolation this year has been the gift of a good counselor, an effective counseling technique, a good antidepressant, targeted hormone supplementation, and some profoundly efficacious healing prayers. I wish I could point to any one of those things and say definitively: this was the thing. The thing that changed everything! But I can’t. I’m a poor candidate for a double blind study because I am notorious for Trying All The Things until I find something that works. Chalk it up to being very results oriented. I’ve never felt better in my adult life. I have very little anxiety and a fuse that is about a mile longer (though Luke my verb still manages to extract a decent amount of maternal, um, energy).

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Along with that longer fuse, I have realized, truly by the grace of God, this truth: you get to decide whose voice you’re going to listen to. For months after Zelie was born, I was working doggedly and without any evidence of results to lose the baby weight. I swam for miles and miles each week, counted calories, tracked my meals, got sugdar out of my diet, etc, etc, etc. And nothing happened. I mean, I’m sure it was good for my heart to do all that swimming, but no weight was lost.

My frustration would always, always peak while getting ready for Mass on Sunday mornings. I would whip myself into a frenzy of self hatred, glowering at my reflection in the bathroom mirror with piles of rejected items of clothing around my feet. The kids were dressed and ready, Dave was dressed and ready, and I would be resorting to tearfully stuffing myself into my stretchiest pair of jeans and caking makeup on my face to disguise my puffy eyes.

I have a vivid memory of almost growling to myself in the mirror during one of these pre Mass abuse sessions: “I hate you.”  And it dawned on me like a clap of thunder: that is not my voice.

Using my impressive powers of deduction, I figured out that it wasn’t God’s voice, either.

I prayed, in that moment, for God to show me how He sees me. And He immediately pointed me to the Cross. He didn’t pat my head and tell me how pretty I was. He didn’t give me visual amnesia and cause me to suddenly see a supermodel looking back at me in the mirror. But He did correct my vision. “Love,” He seemed to be saying, “looks like this. This is love. This is what love does to a body.”

Once I put two and two together, that God sees the self immolation of motherhood with the same eyes of love that look upon His Beloved Son on the Cross, I correctly deduced that Satan hates me, personally. He hates God, and he hates whatever images God. He has a vested interest in making sure I hear that hatred coming through, loud and clear. And he’s not stupid. Women want to be beautiful. Women are drawn to beauty. Beauty speaks our soul language. And in my woundedness and sadness, he had gotten really good at leaning in close and whispering all the things I thought were true about myself: that I was fat, worthless, ugly, hopeless, ruined, repulsive, past my prime, never going to recover, never going to be an athlete again, etc.

The clever part is this: I’ve always struggled with self image, I have no memory of ever not struggling, and so I was pretty sure that the voice whispering all those terrible things, that constant refrain in my mental soundtrack, was mine.

I cannot possibly overstate how transformative this realization has been. Are the negative thoughts all gone? Nope. But knowing that they aren’t mine? Stunning, extraordinary freedom.

I can deflect those little slings and arrows as enemy fire now, no longer locked in a prison of self harm. The bad tapes I’ve been playing over and over again in my mind for decades are broken now, their tracks becoming more distorted and scratched with every effort on my part to resist and rewire and redirect them.

Neuroplasticity is real. What a gift! God loves me personally, and His and my enemy, the devil, hates me personally. What a revelation! The desolation of the first 8 months of this year was in my inability to accept my 5th-time postpartum body. The consolation has been not in the miracle of a little weight loss, but in this new ability to correctly identify different voices.

I feel like I’ve happened upon the secret of happiness. Discovered the fountain of contentment, the wellspring of peace. It makes me stupid happy, this new superpower. And it’s such a relief. I could cry right now thinking about the way I used to talk to myself, and I could cry in gratitude for no longer being enslaved to that way of thinking.

2018, you’ve been a year of real surprises. I never expected to look back on 35 and definitively put my finger on it as the year that God rescued me from myself.

But He did. And He has.

And He wants to rescue each one of us, personally. I’m sure of it. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. Here’s to another trip around the sun.

P.s.

I’ve been praying these prayers daily for a couple weeks now, and I’m noticing that when I am faithful to the practice, it is much easier to remain in this place of peace. The negative thoughts are laughably easy to identify as enemy missives, and there is an overall lightness to life. I can’t recommend the practice – or the app – enthusiastically enough.

About Me, toddlers

Luke is a verb

November 17, 2018

Lately I’ve been taking a little journey back to the period called “inexperienced motherhood.” It usually happens in Trader Joe’s or somewhere else in public, where I’ll look down next to my cart and see that someone has taken a massive bite out of a raw zucchini and then stashed it on the lower rack.

I make sure not to look down for too long though, because if I don’t keep my eyes on the whirring blonde ball of energy that is our resident three year old, he will be behind the counter and elbows-deep in the free sucker bucket, much to the consternation of whichever Trader Joe’s team member is lucky enough to be our cashier that day.

“Hey buddy,” the Hawaiian shirt clad stranger will begin, “you can’t be back here!” or else it’ll be the arched brow and the “Hey, mom, can you get him back on your side?” with a knowing look that plainly says “you’ll get the hang of this sooner or later, lady.”

Little do they know, these innocent bystanders who stand witness to our public displays of destruction, that Luke is not my first rodeo, or even my second, but my fourth.

I’ve had the opportunity to confess that to a few well-meaning good samaritans who stop to help me disentangle him from the climbing net at the park where he is hanging upside down, dangling from one leg, which he somehow managed to thread through 4 different squares of cargo netting.

Or at a splash park last summer when I would march him back naked (again) and unashamed from the edge of the pop jet fountain, white buns blazing under the hot Colorado sun for all the general public to observe. “Sun’s out, buns out!” the neighbor kids shouted gleefully all summer, watching Luke streak across the yard having freed himself once again from the shackles of swim trunks or his pull up.

I thought it would abate with potty training, but alas, he is now more naked and I am wiping more things off of more surfaces than I was before. At least diapers were a contained, albeit expensive, environment.

When Luke’s true nature first began to show itself around his second birthday, we told ourselves he was bidding for attention. Acting up because a new baby was coming. Having a hard time adjusting to all the big kids being in school some days.

Nope. Turns out this just is Luke. Or else he is having the longest and most persistent case of the terrible twos in recorded history.

He’s not terrible, though. He’s actually really sweet and funny and really, really smart. He tells strangers he is 7, that he is the oldest in his family, that he is going to learn how to drive soon. He tells anyone who will listen to him that he “used to live in Italy” (no, he did not) and that when he grows up he is going to be a daddy and a garbage truck driver. (lucky gal the one who scoops him up.)

He is always dirty, usually naked, and has single-handedly inflated our grocery bill by at least $150 a month. A typical breakfast might be 2 eggs, a bowl of oatmeal, and maybe a strip or four of bacon if there is any lying around. He eats like Gaston, he has the manners of Gaston, but he is much kinder than Gaston.

“Mommy I just love you! Come here, I’m going to kiss your mouth. Mommy when I grow up I’m going to live with you and come home every night for dinner (nope). You’re a good mommy, you do a good mommy job.”

It’s hard to stay mad at a guy like that, even when he manages to extract himself from his carseat and OPEN THE VAN DOOR WHILE WE’RE DRIVING THROUGH TRAFFIC.

Yesterday someone posted a viral video from like, home security cam footage and it showed a toddler hanging on and being lifted by the opening garage door while mom’s back was turned and I was like, “yep. That is for sure going to happen to me.”

When I meet boy moms with grown or older sons, I beg them for reassurance that he is going to make it safely to adulthood. Last week we thought an upstairs toilet needed a professional snake job, but then lo and behold, daddy’s amateur snake job turned up AN ENTIRE GREEN APPLE and we all looked in fascination and horror at the child who assured us “Mommy told me it was okay to flush apples down the toilet.”

Nope again.

Next fall Luke will start preschool in our sweet little Montessori atrium. And as much stock as I put in the great Maria Montessori’s methods, I do wonder if Luke might accidentally eat the class pet, punch a hole in the ceiling tiles with the red rods, or squirt his classmates in the face with the spray bottles they use to gently mist their succulent collection during the zenlike period known as “plant work.”

Also, he knows how to use matches.

I feel like we’re playing some strange new game in the raising of this child – one that doesn’t include a rule book – so we’re making them up as we go along, to varying degrees of success.

He wakes us up some mornings by dropping a shoulder into our slightly sticky bedroom door and flipping on the overhead light while bellowing out IT’S MORNING TIME I’M HUNGRY before turning abruptly and thundering down the stairs towards the kitchen. Thanks to DST reveille has been nudged forward to 5:50 am but who’s counting?

Other mornings he will creep around the side of the bed to find daddy and wiggle his still-saturated pullup-clad butt in between our sheet and and comforter, and let me tell you, the person who brings to market an aroma-based alarm clock is going to make some real money.

One memorable morning around 3 am earlier this Fall, I awoke in the midst of what I assumed was a home invasion when he’d pulled a stepping stool up to the bed and stood, 2 centimeters from my head, yelling WAKE UP MAN. (?????) I awakened. And spent the following hour trying to get my cortisol levels back down to sleep-able range.

We love our crazy Duke, don’t get me wrong. He is hilarious, loving, super personable and very, very good at getting his way with his 3 older siblings and 3 older cousins.

I recount some of his antics here for posterity’s sake, and also to demonstrate that no matter how many kids you’ve had, you might not be fully prepared for the immensity that is one of their personalities in particular. (Or maybe more than one! I’m looking at you Blythe). You never know what – or who – you’re gonna get. Which is part of the fun.

(And by fun I mean the kind of fun that you feel on a roller coaster ride, just to be clear.)

I’m curious – do you have a verb in your family? Is there one – or more – in every family?

oldie but goodie (gosh I’m glad I painted that kitchen…everything)