Look at this, look at this! Well, here we go. A fresh start. Many of you may know my old blog, Betty Duffy. I’ve loved it long, but over the past year or so, Elizabeth Scalia’s offer to let me blog here at Patheos has become more and more attractive. Having a personal blog on which to post one’s thoughts and ramblings is very cathartic, but after four or so years, it seemed I had said everything I wanted to... Read more
Since Mass starts in fifteen minutes and we’re all still in pajamas, my spidey senses tell me that we’ll be making our weekly appearance of shame at the evening snoozers, boozers and losers Mass. It turns out that try as I sort-of-sometimes-pretend-to, I will never join the ranks of the neighborhood mothers who can have a baby every other Friday and still show up, perfectly coiffed and five minutes early, for Sunday morning Mass with their well-behaved offspring. Ah, well.... Read more
Who knew such a thing existed? Not I, that’s for sure. I’ll be honest, when I was offered the chance to review Sarah Reinhard’s new book, A Catholic Mother’s Companion to Pregnancy, I wasn’t too enthused about it. I immediately assumed that it would be like many other devotional books I’ve found little to my liking over the years, filled as they usually are with overly emotive, saccharine passages about how wonderful everything that God makes is. Everything that... Read more
I hate this election season. I hate hearing about the debates. I hate reading posts that have anything to do with politics. I hate reading status updates about politics. I’m starting to even avoid facebook (something unheard of for me!) because I hate hearing about politics so much. For a while, I thought that it was all because of the nastiness of people over politics. I thought I was just sick of people yelling at each other, tearing each other... Read more
On the morning that Lincoln was born, the Ogre and I headed out to Naples at 7:15. We were quiet in the car. He was tired from the long night that we had had the night before. I was tired, too, but running on adrenaline. I was excited, and nervous, but mostly I was trying to focus. When I had my homebirth with Liam, I discovered something fascinating about me, in labor. Me, in labor, is the polar opposite of... Read more
The Year of Faith begins today. I’ll confess that I haven’t been paying much attention to the build-up, as I’ve been occupied with smaller but much louder things. But this morning I got my first bit of the catechism delivered to my inbox. It was pretty timely, actually. Sienna sprang a fever last night, so instead of the mad rush of breakfast/lunch making/dressing/rushing her off to school, the Ogre put a movie on the computer for the three oldest... Read more
Dudes. I am shell-shocked. And sorry I’ve been so MIA, but mostly shell-shocked. Newborns trick you in the first week of their wee little lives. They’re all sweet and cozy and sleepy and delicious-smelling, and they eat well and sleep well and their tiny faces are beautiful and everyone is peaceful and loving. And then the second week happens, and you begin to see a glimpse of their true personality. Sometimes the newborns stay sweet and wonderful, but mostly it... Read more
This morning, the Ogre and I took the littlest minions down to the parish office to set a date for Lincoln’s baptism. That meant one terrible thing: I had to get dressed. Any occasion in the first few weeks post-partum that requires me to wear more than yoga pants and a t-shirt is invariably greeted with dread. I always take my time showering and doing my make-up and hair, taking extra care with my eyeshadow and eyeliner, making sure every... Read more
(No kidding, that awful pun of a title is the best I can come up with right now. I can feel my blog being ashamed of itself and trying to hide its face on the landing page. Sorry, blog. I’ll make it up to you when I can think again.) Things I’ve been busy doing: holding a crying baby nursing a crying baby changing a crying baby’s diaper getting peed on getting my face peed on cleaning pee off my... Read more
I keep trying to write the Pitocin/birth/black-out story but every time I sit down I fall asleep. No joke. We were in the hospital an extra day because Lincoln was jaundiced, and the phototherapy lights required a rigid schedule of nursing with pumping in between, plus tons of discussions with the nurses and doctors, so I think I got a total of 8 hours of sleep in the three days I was in the hospital after the baby was born.... Read more
Barefoot and Pregnant
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