Eating Cold Spaghetti

Lent is in it's final stretches. Just two weeks and we will be celebrating the resurrection of our Lord. We will be singing our Easter songs and raising our hallelujahs.  But first, we must walk these final steps. The end is nearing, and the light is in sight; but we have not yet reached Golgotha.  Around this time during Lent has always been my time to stop and reflect, and question just how "well" I've done in my attempts to sacrifice, unite myself with Christ and ultimately grow closer to Him.  Some years I sigh, realizing how much of Lent I've allowed to pass me by and then vow to finish out the last leg actually doing something..anything.. to actively seek Him.  This year, as I sat in the pew listening to the homily on the  pillars of lent (prayer, fasting, alms-giving) I was smiling to myself, patting myself on the back and feeling rather smug for just how good I've been doing. I was running through my list of things and checking off all my good works. T

 I mentioned in my about me how I like to keep things simple, and with this list of things I included ecological breastfeeding.  Just to clarify, this is not the same as exclusive breastfeeding. With ecological breastfeeding, you do exclusively breastfeed, but you also follow nature rather than culture in regards to wh en and how we soothe baby( no paci, co-sleeping, nap nursing etc).  It comes from the  Seven Standards by Sheila Kippley, and is quoted as " ...  that type of baby   care which follows the natural mother-baby relationship. It avoids the use of artifacts and mother substitutes; it follows the baby-initiated patterns"  so in a nutshell it's more than just breastfeeding for nutrition. I didn't actually know this is what I was doing, per se, until many months into our breastfeeding journey when I discovered the book.  And though simple and true to nature in concept, it can be challenging in today's world for many mothers to even attempt.  While I am

 When I was pregnant with my son, I wanted a devotional that followed the pregnancy and helped me prep myself spiritually for the new life within me. I found one titled "waiting in wonder" and was not disappointed in it. It was precisely what I'd been looking for. I found myself Journaling and reading from it again during  my pregnancy with my daughter.  And now, in this advent journey I have rediscovered it.. Advent is  a time of waiting. It too is a pregnancy of sorts. As we remember Mary's "yes" to letting Christ reside within her, we too are invited to carry Christ in us.  We are pregnant with the anticipation of Christ's coming and we cannot help but rejoice. Especially on this 3rd Sunday of advent, literally "rejoice" Sunday where when lighting the rose candle we are looking forward to Christmas and all its glory, and the joy bubbles out. Not anxiety of all that needs to be done before Christmas, but joy because we can see what is coming

 My little lady is almost a year old. And, while I wrote down the bare bones of her birth story in snippets in the days and weeks after she she was born, I am just now finding the time (and the notebook I originally wrote it in..) to type it up.  It's crazy how time flies sometimes. I can surely still remember it all like it was yesterday, and yet here we are almost a year later.  It was just a couple days before my due date and this time around I was soo very ready to give birth. I was DONE being pregnant and nursing a toddler and I wanted something to change. Since weaning wasn't happening(more on that in a different post..), I obviously figured that the change needed to be giving birth. And while this certainly did usher in change, it took many more months and other catalyst to point me in the direction of the real change I was looking for.  I digress.  Point being, I was done being pregnant and ready to meet by daughter.  This is me, just four days before(wearing my perpetu

 Sometimes I read the news. Usually, I regret it. Here lately I've been finding myself distracted and caught up in the news of the day. Something I rarely ever used to do. It started innocently enough... Back in March and April places were shutting down and plans had to be changed accordingly, I needed to know if we could go here or there and what the rules and stipulations were. But as with most things that begin this way, it became more of a daily habit of checking the local, and then national news.  Add to this our election year and I was trapped in the Web.   But, alas, the world's news is not the gospel. In fact, more and more, it would seem it isn't even rooted in the truth. It isn't about giving the facts and happenings, it's all about pushing one agenda or another and polarizing and dividing. Perhaps it's always been such, and it's merely a perspective shift for me.. Or I've spent too much time lately scrolling through the trash of it, as a momen

I turn 26 this weekend and in light of this, I've been thinking about birthdays and why we celebrate them and how we celebrate them.  Growing up we had a tradition, on your birthday you got to pick what was for dinner. It could be your favorite homemade meal or any fast-food you wanted (fast food was a rare "treat" in our house for much of my childhood) or I think even hometown buffet was an option(eating out anywhere else wasn't something we did- EVER). I typically opted for McDonalds and then, as I outgrew happy meals, Pizza Hut.  My mom would bake your favorite cake, or once we discovered ice-cream cakes, you could pick one out. And after dinner and cake we might have a present or two. And that was our birthday.  It is a simple tradition that I happen to love. I want to carry it on and keep birthdays small and simple. I see many parents overwhelmed by the need to throw big elaborate parties (each one more extravagant than the last) and spending a fortune on one day