20 weeks

If you read this blog and don't already know, we are expecting a third baby in January! We traveled to the US during first trimester, so that was a good way to distract myself from the morning sickness. Then we got back and had a little scare (blood loss), mandated rest, then I got sick, Davy got sick and I got sick again. And it took forever to get my regular energy back. I thought I never would. But then I did and my second trimester has been going swell. Almost 20 weeks and I can't believe how much I already love and am excited about meeting this new little person God has blessed us with. I was scared and thought I would be embarrassed about announcing it to people (since we live in the country with one of the lowest birth rates in the world, and this baby and Davy will be 18 months apart)... but I'm surprisingly not. I just feel so incredibly blessed, like the luckiest person in the world, walking around with my sandals, pot belly and rambunctious toddlers.

"With great affection I urge all future mothers: keep happy and let nothing rob you of the interior joy of motherhood.  Your child deserves your happiness.  Don’t let fears, worries, other people’s comments or problems lessen your joy at being God’s means of bringing a new life to the world.  Prepare yourself for the birth of your child, but without obsessing, and join in Mary’s song of joy: 'My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit exults in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant' (Lk 1:46-48).  Try to experience this serene excitement amid all your many concerns, and ask the Lord to preserve your joy, so that you can pass it on to your child."

- From Amoris Laetitia by Pope Francis, n 171

Food for thought for stay-at-home-moms

"When Deirdre and John were here this weekend and telling us about Paris, I was remembering times I spent in Europe, back when mothers went to the market for the day’s food, carrying a straw bag and bringing home enough for the meals and a little more. My aunt actually married a German man and lived this life.

Marketing in the morning, large meal at midday, light “collation” in the evening, warm rolls delivered early to the doorstep, eaten for breakfast with unsalted butter and coffee (although I personally don’t like coffee. I know).

We were thinking about how, if the mother is the manager of her home, the family eats simply but well.

I don’t know why being the manager of the home (leaving aside being its heart, and just purely looking at things job-wise) is considered… nothing.

Have you been to a hotel recently? Maybe to stay, or for a reception? Can you imagine even thinking, 'This hotel is great. It’s comfortable, welcoming, clean, and refreshing. The food tastes homemade. It’s wonderful that this hotel has no manager.'

The amazing thing about being the manager of your own home is that it’s just such a pleasure. Listen, everything has its downside; nothing is perfect. But the freedom to decide when, where, and how to do things, taking into consideration only the opinions of those you love, why, that’s a pleasure.

Well, it can be!"


From "Okay, this is the salad post." by Leila Lawler 

Book club and habits

We are still deciding/discerning whether our kids will be homeschooled or what school they will go to, but in the midst of this I feel like I am homeschooling myself. My main goals are reading and music, in my case piano playing. I think if we could be really great readers and have lots of books, and play instruments together, that would be the foundation for all the rest. Sports we'll outsource. Other academic subjects, too. But reading and music I feel passionate about not outsourcing.

I am not the voracious reader I thought I was. Or I used to be in sixth grade. I mainly want to buy books online, but then they pile up in a big, tall stack of books "to read". My Little Catholic Bubble Book Club on Facebook has been really motivating in that sense. I have a deadline each week to read a certain amount, which if I didn't have a deadline I wouldn't read. I've already read St. Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset, The Power and the Glory and now The Power of Silence, which are books I wouldn't have picked by myself or wouldn't have read so quickly, but the book club really helps. See pic above of the "his" and "her" bookmarks I made for my husband too, who wanted to read along with me.

The piano playing is another story. Maybe I need a club? Or some guidance? I know I can't get around the "grind" of a little practice every day, but I haven't been successful yet.

And on the subject of homeschooling, here is a really great article: My Education in Home Schooling

The Outdoor Life of Children by Charlotte Mason

I loved this little book of writings by Charlotte Mason on nature, compiled by Deborah Taylor-Hough. As she says in her forward, "Basically, go outside with your kids as often as you can. You'll all be healthier, happier, and will learn a thing or two in the process." I was incredibly inspired by this book to appreciate nature even more, and learned some practical tips on how to start all learning from nature. I still have a few years before Adelaide can keep a nature journal, so I am taking advantage of them to learn as much about tree, plant and animal classification as I can. I know NOTHING. Here are some of my favorite quotes

"People who live in the country know the value of fresh air very well, and their children live out of doors, with intervals within for sleeping and eating."

"Never be within door when you can rightly be without."

"In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother's first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air."

"A great deal has been said lately about the danger of overpressure, of requiring too much mental work from a child of tender years. The danger exists; but lies, not in giving the child too much, but in giving him the wrong thing to do, the sort of work for which the presente state of his mental development does not fit him."

"Whoever saw a child tired of seeing, of examining in his own way, unfamiliar things?"

"It is infinitely well worth of the mother's while to take some pains every day to secure, in the first place, that her children spend hours daily amongst rural and natural objects; and, in the second place, to infuse into them, or rather to cherish in them, the love of investigation."

"A love of Nature, implanted so early that it will seem to them hereafter to have been born in them, will enrich their lives with pure interests, absorbing pursuits, health, and good humour."

"The mother's real difficulty will be to keep herself from much talk with the children, and to hinder them from occupying themselves with her. There are few things sweeter and more precious to the child than playful prattle with her mother; but one thing is better - the communing with the larger Mother, in order to which the child and she should be left to themselves."

"But, pray, let him work with things and not signs - the things of Nature in their own places, meadow and hedgerow, woods and shore."

"The child who does not know the portly form and spotted breast of the thrush, the graceful flight of the swallow, the yellow bill of the blackbird, the gush of song which the skylark pours from above, is nearly as much to be pitied as those London children who 'had never seen a bee'."

"It would be well if we all persons in authority, parents and all who act for parents, could make up our minds that there is no sort of knowledge to be got in these early years so valuable to children as that which they get for themselves of the world they live in."

"We were all mean to be naturalists, each in his degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things."

"He must live hours daily in the open air, and, as far as possible, in the country; must look and touch and listen; must be quick to note, consciously, every peculiarity of habit or structure, in beast, bird, or insect; the manner of growth and fructification of every plant. He must be accustomed to ask why - Why does the wind blow? Why does the river flow? Why is a leaf-bud sticky? And do not hurry to answer his questions for him; let him think his difficulties out so far as his small experience will carry him."

"In Science, or rather, nature study, we attach great importance to recognition, believing that the power to recognise and name a plant or stone or constellation envolves classification and includes a good deal of knowledge. To know a plant by its gesture and habitat, its time and its way of flowering and fruiting; a bird by its flight and song and its times of coming and going; to know when, year after year, you may come upon the redstart and the pied fly-catcher, means a good deal of interested observation, and of, at any rate, the material for science."

Habits by Charlotte Mason

I read this book of Charlotte Mason's writing about habits, compiled by Deborah Taylor-Hough, and in general liked it, but only certain parts and not others. I liked part two in this series (The Outdoor Life of Children) much more. I was generally inspired and confirmed in my intuition of habit training myself and then children, the earlier the better. We could all use a little more self-discipline, right? I especially liked the why that Charlotte Mason explains behind obedience to parents and developing good habits. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

"A mother whose final question is, 'What will people say? What will people think? How will it look?' and the children grow up with habits of seeming, and not of being; they are content to appear well-dressed, well-mannered, and well intentioned to outsiders, with very little effort after beauty, order, and goodness at home, and in each other's eyes."

"Not the child, immature of will, feeble in moral power, unused to the weapons of the spiritual warfare. He depends on his parents; it rests with them to initiate the thoughts he shall think, the desires he shall cherish, the feelings he shall allow. Only to initiate; no more is permitted to them; but from this initiation will result the habits of thought and feeling which govern the man - his character, that is to say."

"And here we have the reason why children should learn dancing, riding, swimming, calisthenics, every form of activity which requires a training of the muscles, at an early age: the fact being, that muscles and joints have not merely to conform themselves to new uses, but to grow to a modified pattern; and this growth and adaptation take place with the greatest facility in early youth."

"It is it so easy for ourselves to take up a new habit, it is tenfold as easy for the children; and this is the real difficulty in the matter of the education of habit."

"Rewards? No; to him a reward is a punishment presented under another aspect..."

"For a habit is a delight in itself; poor human nature is conscious of the ease that it is to repeat the doing of anything without effort; and, therefore the formation of a habit, the gradually lessening sense of effort in a given act, is pleasurable."

"Let them make their mud pies freely; but that over, they should be impatient to remove every trace of soil, and should do it themselves."

"In conclusion, let me say that the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Don't; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured they will go the right way, and grow to fruitful purpose."

"When a child grows stupid over a lesson, it is time to put it away. Let him do another lesson as unlike the last as possible, and then go back with freshened wits to his unfinished task."

"What is the natural consequence of work well and quickly done? Is it not the enjoyment of ampler leisure?"

"Allow them, at the utmost, an hour and a half for their home work; treat them tacitly as defaulters if they do not appear at the end of that time; do not be betrayed into word or look of sympathy; and the moment the time for lessons is over, let some delightful game or storybook be begun in the drawing room."

"At the same the custom of giving home-work, at any rate to children under fourteen, is greatly to be deprecated."

"Indeed, exceedingly little actual punishment is necessary where children are brought up with care."

"You want a child to remember? Then secure his whole attention."

"Indeed, obedience is the whole duty of the child, and for this reason - every other duty of the child is fulfilled as a matter of obedience to his parents. Not only so: obedience is the whole duty of man; obedience to conscience, to law, to Divine direction."

"Exactly so; because, in these cases, there is no gradual training of the child in the habit of obedience; no gradual enlisting of his will on the side of sweet service and a free will offering of submission to the hightest law: the poor children are simply bullied into submission to the will, that is, the willfulness, of another; not at all, 'for it is right'; only because it is convenient."

"The mother often loses her hold over her children becasue they detect in the tone of her voice that she does not expect them obey her behests; she does not think enough of her position; has not sufficient confidence in her own authority."

"By-and-by, when he is old enough, take the child into confidence; let him know what a noble thing it is to be able to make himself do, in a minute, and brightly, the very thing he would rather not do. To secure this habit of obedience, the mother must exercise great self-restraint; she must never give a command which she does not intend to see carried out to the full. And she must not lay upon her children burdens, grievous to be borne, of command heaped upon command."