Before school started up this week, I did a major tidy up of the playroom and the desks in the kids' rooms. We do our twice yearly clean outs during advent and lent, in which we select things we don't love or use all that often to donate. That's not what this was....
I've written about kids in Mass. A lot. My thoughts are well known on whether churches should have cry rooms (against it) or breastfeeding (for it). But when Haley asked me to be a part of a blog carnival about kids in Mass, I just KNEW that if I really thought about...
They have taken the word "naughty." They have taken it and made it about ridiculous Halloween costumes. It's gone so far that it feels off somehow for upstanding citizens to even say the word. It did for me, anyway. It seems like "bad" is the word most commonly...
New motherhood is a beautiful thing. There's nothing quite so glorious as a sweet squishy brand new little person, full of possibilities. Everything is new and wonderous and you are experiencing it all for the very first time.New motherhood is a terrible thing....
I've got a couple more mailbag questions I want to share with you guys this week. The first is one I really struggled with myself. Question: I was raised Catholic, but apparently, there is a lot about our faith I was never taught. Now that I'm raising children, I am...
A couple of months back the husband and I went to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier. (meh.) Before the movie we saw a trailer for a crazy-looking comic-book-based movie featuring what appeared to be an Ent, a sexy Wicked Witch of the West, that guy from Parks...
Continuing my mailbag week, another thing I get asked about sometimes is: Books. I didn't want to say "Homeschooling Books" specifically, because even though WE use them for homeschooling, I think any or all of these books could be used by all types of families,...
One of the great things about a good novel is how it allows you to transport yourself into a place or time or situation completely unlike your own and see what that's like for a while. Great picture books can do the same thing, and help my kids delve into new and...
I let my kid pick up trash. Other people's trash. In public places. It's our own weird little apostolate. I didn't always, of course. I was a first time mom once, too, trailing after my kid at the park, saying, "No, no, honey. Don't touch that. That's yucky." But I've...
Dear Newlywed, Congratulations! You're embarking on an exciting new chapter of your life. You've got hopes and dreams and plans. Plans, plans, plans. You've got the next few years mapped right out. You're going to finish school and you're going to pay off school and...
I shared this image on the Catholic All Year Facebook page over the weekend: I love this quote from Pope Benedict XVI. It comes from a question and answer session he had in St. Peter's Square in 2005 with some children who had just had their First Communion. Some...
UPDATE 2024: This post was originally shared on Micaela's blog California to Korea, as a part of her How I Homeschool series. She has since started a new blog on a new website, and when we asked if we could share Kendra's old post here she generously dug through her...
With my first baby, I carefully followed the little table in the book they gave me in the hospital that tells you exactly which food to start with, and in which order to introduce other foods. I sat Jack in his highchair and watched as he tongued back out the little...
Last month, we went to France (you can find posts about the trip here). I had grand plans about all the things I was going to accomplish on the flight. Reading, writing, embroidering, catching up on sleep, etc. I did a tiny bit of the first, and some of the last, but...
I'm going to let you in on a little secret. A secret known only to everyone who knows me in real life and all the people who like Catholic All Year on Facebook but no one else. Sometimes I put the Bumbo on the table. Okay, maybe it would be more shocking coming from...
Our last stop was Paris. After our flight to France was delayed by a day, Air Canada offered to slide our return date one day as well. Since we were staying in so many different cities and hotels, there really wasn't a way to shift the whole trip. So, we decided to...
But first . . . Chartres! If you like Gothic, get thee to Chartres. It's a masterpiece of French Gothic architecture. The present cathedral was begun in 1194 and dedicated in 1260, sixty-six years! But if you saw it, you'd understand. Every inch of it is carved. It's...
If you read Part 1, you'll know we arrived in Lourdes one day late. So, instead of the two days I had planned for, we had one full day in Lourdes in which to Do All the Things! And we did. Really, we did. We met up with my parents, who had already been in Lourdes...
My Day in the Life post inspired a lot of comments, and a lot of questions. So, I'm starting an occasional series called How We Roll to answer them. I would say that my children are very independent, compared with the general population of two to...
On Thursday, the husband's Aunt Maureen passed away after a battle with lung cancer. On Sunday afternoon we were all in Chicago at the wake. A real, no kidding, Chicago Irish wake. The whole family and close friends, kids included, spent the afternoon and...
via Pope Francis' comments at a weekly audience last summer really hit home for me: “This culture of waste has made us insensitive even to the waste and disposal of food, which is even more despicable when all over the world, unfortunately, many individuals and...
Salad. Tastes good. Good for you. Huge pain in the neck to make. Even when it was just the husband and I eating dinner, I would mean to make us a salad, but end up running out of time or motivation and just steam some broccoli again. Now with a houseful of kids to...
Discipline. It's a scary word that conjures up images of switches behind the shed and nuns with rulers in hand. But I'm here to tell you that it's the thing that makes me not only love my children, but genuinely enjoy being around them. We live in a Chicken Little...
As subscribers to Lego Club Magazine AND Lego Club Junior, my boys have been breathlessly filling me in on various details of The Lego Movie for months now. I have to say, those details did not fill me with confidence. The bad guy is Lord "Business"? Only the...
When my eldest son was in preschool, I made the mistake of handing the buck to the Pope when it came to some of our parenting practices. When Jack would ask why he couldn't watch a particular show that his friends were watching, I'd say, "Well, we're Catholic and...
You guys. I love these books. When I was a kid I my grandmother gave me one of those personalized children's books where you fill out a questionnaire about the child and get a book back. It said something like "Only KENDRA and her best friend KRISTEN could save their...
I wanted to go see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, because Iris said it was good (and made such a pretty cake). BUT that was sold out, so we went to go see the husband's first choice instead: Lone Survivor. UPDATE 2024: The recipe originally linked above is no longer...
First things first, can you spare a moment to say a prayer for Bonnie's son and Micaela's friend? And now for the quick takes . . . --- 1 --- Heather sent me a link to an article that claims that the eldest children in big families are exploited by their...
Here's why I don't like babywearing: 1. I can't physically do everything I'd be able to if I had a baby who slept in a swing or bassinet: like sew, or exercise, or bathe, or unload the dishwasher, or not be touching someone. 2. It can get a little achy. 3. They...
movies. It's a movie about the creative process, and the investment of creators in their creations. It's a movie about charming doggedness triumphing over crabby nitpickiness. But mostly, it's a movie about fathers. A really good movie about fathers. The Big Story of...
