"Blessed is She" Begins

A few years back, a priest told me that I should be carving out an hour of time in my day just for God.  For scripture, for meditation, for prayer, for Him.  An hour.  Are you kidding me?  As a pregnant mom with 3 little children, I told him it was just not realistic.  I couldn't get 2 minutes to pee in peace let alone an hour?

The last time I "read" the bible seriously was about 9 years ago and I didn't get as far as I would have liked.  It isn't that I don't want to… God has put that desire in my heart.  It isn't that I don't think it is important… I long to know Christ through the scripture.  I just don't seem to be able to consistently get it done.  Laundry and lunches and spills and runny noses seem to trump The Good Book as it sits patiently, quietly, calling me.  I know it is a failing in my discipline, but that knowledge doesn't seem to help me much.

So my new solution is...

"Blessed is She" is a new, free, online devotional, inspired by the Holy Spirit and put in to play by Catholic women across the country.  The writers are a mix of singer/songwriters, bloggers, authors, stay-home-moms and professional women alike.  I am honored to be counted as one of them.

What has got me (and hundreds of other readers!) so excited about this project, is the ease with which these devotions will be spread.  Sign up (here) and when it goes live on Sept 1st, you will start receiving the devotionals in your email inbox.  You will get

Unlocking the preteen and adolescent brain

Ever wonder if your pre-teen or teenager is brain damaged? You aren't alone and for good reason.  They kind-of are.  Well not exactly damaged - they just are under-developed.  

Babies are born with the ability to hear, to see, to move.  As they get older they develop to ability to communicate non-verbally and then verbally.  As children age, naturally they develop the skills to do much of what we adults are able to do.  As they begin puberty, they grow to be about our size and may even have relatively similar physical strength as we do.  But even if they start looking like adults, we have to remember that they are not. Their bodies begin to look more grown-up, but that brain of theirs needs a bit more time to mature.

The human brain is not fully developed until about the mid-20's.  Yes, you heard me right.  Target age 25 as a good year.  The pre-teen years specifically are a time for synaptic growth.  People have the most synapses they will have over their entire life at ages 11 (girls) and 13 (boys).  As kids enter teen years, myelination and neural pruning takes over and synapse production slows again.  What that means, is that the pre-adolescence and teen-age brain is growing and changing like crazy.

Before you think - hey more synapses should make him smarter - you have to realize that a boys brain at age 13 is a briar patch of connections.   More connections does not mean better when you have an overproduction of synapses.  It actually leads to inefficient processing.

Finding Joy in My Homework

This week my middle two finished up their first week of school, grades 1 & 3.  On Friday, JR's teacher sent home a homework assignment for the parents to complete.  In one million words or less, I was to tell the teacher all about my child.  I had a week to complete the assignment and my correspondence would be kept in strict confidence.  

Upon receiving the homework my husband handed it directly to me.  There was no question that I would be the one completing the assignment.  After the kids were tucked in I settled in to the desk and began to just write about my son.

It was bliss.

Rarely do we have the opportunity to just write, unrestrained, about one of our children.  I share stories from time to time, but I don't just gush about my kids.  Who does that?  Well I admit I did do that for a little while when I was a new mom.

5 Things Every Grandparent Should Know

In our current culture, grandparents can be divided easily into three groups.   Those who are raising their grandchildren, those who live far away, and those who are close by.  About 1 in 10 children are being raised in a grandparent-headed household (Pew Research, 2014). This is for the other 90%.  Whether you are a Long Distance "Holiday Grannie" or one who lives close by, this is what your son or daughter won't tell you.



1 - They want to see you more and we want them to see you more.  They want you to be a bigger part of their children's lives. Yes, we are busy.  Yes, we know you are too.  So keep it simple.  Kids can be overwhelming especially in large families, so maybe just take one grandchild at a time, or tag along with their activities on occasion.  Get to know them.   Make them feel special.  Take them out for an ice-cream or to a movie or to the library.  Take them goofy-golfing.   Take them to piano lessons and stay to listen to their practice.  Teach them how to use a hammer or bait a hook.  Take them to a baseball game and teach them how to score it.  Bring them home with you to plant flowers in your garden.  Even a trip to the grocery store can be fun when you have a grandparent's attention.  If you are a long-distance grannie, then learn to video chat.  Schedule time to read them a book one night a week face-to-face on the computer.



2 - Let them get to know YOU.  We know you have a busy life.  We aren't asking for you to retire, give up your hobbies, and become a granny-nanny. Your life experiences are part of what defines who you are - so share your experiences.

10 tips to survive the sleeplessness of parenthood

A few years ago Samuel L. Jackson did a fabulous narration of a very vulgar story book entailed Go The Fok to Sleep.  You can catch the youtube here.   Do not listen to it with your children around.  Or your parents.  Or any CPS workers.  But if you are sleep deprived and have headphones handy, it may make you laugh until you cry.

I clearly remember the time when I first realized that I wouldn't ever sleep like before.  I had a 6 week old baby and I was sitting at the kitchen table talking on the phone. That was before texting, when friends actually talked on the phone.  I asked my friend, who had a 1-year old and a 4-year old, how soon I could expect to get some sleep.  She laughed and told me she had been up the night before too.  What??  Wet beds, sick kids, nightmares, dry throats, shadows on the walls, whatever.  Parents don't sleep.  I was shocked.   Really I was.  She only had two kids!  I was so unprepared for that.  I cried.  I really did. I sat at my kitchen table and sobbed.   I just wanted 8 hours of sleep.  Was that so hard?

Um.

Yes.

It is actually impossible most nights.

Babies get up in the middle of the night, little kids get up, big kids get up.  Then your kids enter the teen years and they sleep and sleep and sleep, but they don't go to sleep until later, robbing you of any 'alone time' to decompress with your spouse.  Or you are up late waiting for them to come home.  I am told that this is precisely the age when we parents are up worrying about them rather than being physically out of bed.  Supposedly that continues through life, until you switch to worrying about your own parents.  There are also all sorts of other things that ail adults and keep us from having a good night sleep.  Some are self induced like too much caffeine, or alcohol rebound; others just part of aging -changing prostates and achy joins.  My newest nemesis's are the barking dog next door and my 8 year-old's night terrors.

So how do parents cope?  

1- Redefine your normal.  A normal night

Journeying with Friends: How and why vacationing with friends is the way to go

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the difference between a family trip and a vacation (read here).  It was in anticipation of our summer trip to the beach with some friends.  Now that we have returned from such vacation, I have to make an addendum to my initial post.  There is a third type of trip/adventure/vacation.  A journey with friends.  And I have to say, this is the best way to vacation!

So here are the key features and the benefits of such a trip.

5 Parenting Tips from the Garden

Last fall I embarked on a new hobby.  My dad had taken up gardening recently so with his help we built a bed and I started my life as a gardener.  He carefully mixed good soil for me while I studied various table and charts and laid out what to plant and when.  Feeling pretty good about myself I sat back and waited for those little shoots to peek out of the ground.  The garden was a mixed success and I found that much the hard parts of gardening mirror some of the hard parts of parenting. 

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Thinning and Overcrowding
One of the hardest parts of gardening for me is the thinning process.  You have all these fabulous green shoots poking out of the ground and I am supposed to cut away more than I leave?  That sounded crazy to me. So I only half hardly thinned.  And the carrots ended up looking like a nice patch of grass coming up.  So as they grew there was no room for the actual carrots to grow.  They needed room to grow (duh).  Kids are the same way. They need room and space to grow.  It is so easy to keep our lives packed with good activities and nice people, but that can lead to a lack of commitment to our tasks and a lack of meaningful