— 1 —

Thank you so much for all the wonderful responses to my publishing announcement earlier this week! I’m so frustrated that I wasn’t able to reply, especially to all the kind words on Twitter. (Man, you know your life is crazy when you can’t even find time to procrastinate on Twitter.)

Things have just been so, so, so, so, so overwhelming ever since the baby came home. I can barely keep up with anything. To give you an idea: Christy wrote a perfect summary of what my days are like right now in her first take here, and I have had a tab open in my browser for a week to remind myself to leave a comment saying, “Yes, that is my life!” but I cannot seem to get to it because…that is my life.

— 2 —

When Yaya calls you and tells you that she has found a “terrifying” bug in her yard, it’s time to call an evacuation helicopter. I mean, this is the woman who knocks down wasps’ nests and then just stands there and chills while the angry insects swarm around her, before eventually crushing them with her bare hands. She’s nonchalant about being stung by poisonous arachnids while she sleeps, she threatens gang members with violence, and she finds scorpions in cups to be charming kitchen accessories.

So when I answered the phone to hear her screaming about some “terrifying” but that the kids needed to come see, I should have known that it would be as awful as this:

These insane-o centipedes are venomous, and their stings are said to be far more painful than those of scorpions. Oh, and they can cut you with their dozens of creepy little legs and inject venom into you just by walking across your skin.

I have seen one of these things on my property once (and I shared my heart about that experience here), and now I shall live the rest of my days in terror at the thought of encountering one inside the house. Enough of this useless bug spray nonsense; I need a flamethrower.

— 3 —

I’m sorry. I don’t think you understand the full awfulness of this thing. You can’t really tell how big it is from that picture, so here it is with a common object next to it to give you a sense of scale:

Well, that’s how I perceive the scale, anyway. And I need to make sure that you didn’t miss THESE, the needle-sharp dual DAGGERS at the end of its tail:

I should really stop now before I get a cease and desist letter from the legal team at the Texas Tourism Department.

— 4 —

On a brighter note, I did a juice fast this week! It’s not exactly a Perfect Health Diet thing, but I figured that juice-only fasts might avoid the risk of metabolic endotoxemia from too much fructose since you’re drinking each serving when your liver’s glycogen stores are low (which is probably stupid and wrong, but anyway…) I just bought the Naked brand of juices that my grocery store carries, and I lived on those for a couple of days.

I did it because I felt like my body needed a rest from the work of digestion to help it fight this never-ending sinus infection, and it did seem to help. Amazingly, I wasn’t hungry! Also, I felt good: my energy level was strong, despite not getting much sleep at night, and I didn’t even miss eating. I won’t go into the weight loss side, since we’re all focused on healthful diets and not vain concerns like a number on the scale, but instead will simply say that it was a good experience and I’ll probably do it again soon.

(Ha ha! Just kidding about the weight thing. I lost four pounds in two days.)

— 5 —

Speaking of health and weight and whatnot, I’m trying to get into a good fitness routine. I’m jogging again (looking as glamorous as always), and I can’t decide whether I’ll go back to Body for Life or Lindsay Brin’s Postnatal Boot Camp DVD for strength training. What I love about Brin’s DVDs is that they’re targeted at moms who have recently had babies, and all the workout ladies (or whatever the term is for the people demonstrating the moves on the DVD) are mothers themselves. Also, for whatever reason, my kids love to do it with me, which always leads to a scene more ridiculous than you could possibly imagine.

Anyway, hit me with any thoughts you have about workout routines that don’t require monthly fees and can be done in or near one’s home. Do we like Jillian or is she too crazy? Do we think that buying books about jumping rope is the very definition of absurdity, or is that just Joe? I am all ears. After feeling so bad for so long, I am extremely motivated to get back into great health.

— 6 —

The other day I got all fired up about making the perfect Cosmo. It was going to be a special treat after another grueling week; in fact, I was so motivated to do it that I actually made a special trip to the store to get cranberry juice — and let me just tell you, getting out to the store when you have six kids under age nine is NO JOKE. From the time we left until the time we returned, the trip took the better part of the afternoon.The shopping experience was deeply traumatic, in large part because there seems to be something in the air in our grocery store that sends my two-year-old into Turbo Crazy mode. I barely kept her from jumping out of the cart, shattering everyone’s eardrums with her screaming, and sweeping clear all the shelves.

When I got home I looked over my haul with satisfaction. I got milk and cream, some spinach, stocked up on summer sunscreen, and even remembered that new can opener that I’d been meaning to pick up for months. And then I barely restrained myself from clawing at my eyes and screaming as I realized:

I FORGOT. THE FREAKING. CRANBERRY. JUICE.

After slumping into a chair and staring at a wall in abject despair for a few hours, I decided to improvise my own recipe. The only juice we had in the house was the kids’ juice boxes, so I went with that. The resulting momtini was surprisingly delicious.

Here’s the recipe, adapted from this one:

• 1 jigger vodka
• 1/2 oz. Cointreau
• 1 tsp fresh lime juice
• 1 1/2 oz from Capri Sun or Juicy Juice box
• Lime and sugar for garnish

Mix all ingredients together in a chilled glass (preferably a martini glass if you’re fancy enough to have one). Wipe lime wedge around rim then douse with sugar for garnish. Guaranteed to make you pick up on the hidden brilliance of Barney that you’d never noticed before.

— 7 —

Hurray for three-day weekends, and God bless the men and women who have died in the service of our country.

————————-

One thousand eight hundred and twenty days ago, I started writing my book, a memoir about going from atheism to belief. After three complete, from-a-blank-page rewrites; countless feedback sessions from Joe and my agent and brilliant fellow writers, each of which left me wondering whether I should perhaps just give up on the written word altogether; revisions that made me feel like my brain was melting; a reality show; three new babies; and a pitch process that almost sent me into cardiac arrest every time I saw my agent’s name in my inbox…I finally have a publisher.

I know I use this word too much, but there is no other way to describe the pitch process other than to say it was EPIC. When Ted, my agent, first told me that we had multiple offers from great publishers, I was thrilled. My excitement quickly melted into a vague sense of dread, however, when I realized that I could only pick one. I know, I know, good problem to have. But because my writer angst knows no bounds, I had these visions of making the wrong decision and ruining everyone’s life in the process, leaving some poor acquisitions editor so scarred that she’d spit on the ground any time she heard my name.

I prayed for direction, and to my great relief my prayers were answered. God made it clear which house would be the right fit for this project, probably because he knew that I’d turn this situation into too much of a hot mess if he didn’t intervene directly this time. Ted made some calls, we all signed some papers, and now I can finally tell you:

Ignatius Press is my publisher, and my book will probably be released either this Fall or next Spring!

Ignatius? you say. Ignatius Press? The Pope’s publisher? The house that puts out all those works of theology that make you feel like you didn’t know anything about anything until you read this book? They’re publishing you? All I can say is: I KNOW!

Our bookshelves are about half full with Ignatius books, and I’m still having a hard time believing that mine will one day be among them. Let’s see, we have:

• A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace by Henri de Lubac
• A Refutation of Moral Relativism by Dr. Peter Kreeft
• Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus Against the Heresies by Hans Urs von Balthasar

…And Jennifer Fulwiler talking about listening to Tupac on her iPod while reading the Catechism.

I keep waiting for Mark Brumley to call and tell me delicately that there’s this professor with five PhDs named Jennifer Fullwider, and, long story short, a horrible mistake has been made. But that hasn’t happened yet, and I’ve given it a few weeks, so I guess I can officially say:

Ignatius Press is my publisher!!!!

I invite you to raise a glass of your favorite beverage to celebrate this moment with me in a virtual toast. Thanks for putting up with my writer drama over the past few years (though I shouldn’t talk about it in the past tense, as if there’s not a whole lot more to come). I love sharing my story with you, and I hope you’ll continue to join me in the adventures that are yet to come!

Needless to say, when I’m in these kinds of situations, I don’t tend to make great decisions. For example, I have this stupid sinus infection that I (and Augmentin) can’t seem to kick, and the presence of constant pain in my left cheek combined with a baby who wakes me up many times per night has left me in a not-great mental state. (Yeah, I have a neti pot. Hasn’t helped, but I use it anyway because I look so glamorous doing it.) It’s easy to let times like this trigger the beginning of a downward spiral in which I decline opportunities I should probably take, give up on activities that were good and fruitful, and open up my calendar and CANCEL ALL THE THINGS.

To inject some much-needed sanity into my decision making process during these times, I often go through a checklist of questions that my old spiritual director would ask. This post is kind of a rerun since I posted this list a couple of years ago (and I also have a new and wonderful spiritual director now who also asks great questions), but I thought I’d put it up again since these ideas are helping me keep the crazy-think at bay.

6 Questions My Spiritual Director Would Ask When
I Had a Tough Decision to Make and Was Being Crazy About It:

1. Have you prayed about it?

It’s hard to believe that this question is even necessary, but with me it usually is. With embarrassing frequency I’d come to my old spiritual director, Christie, and pour out my angst about some conundrum, ending with shaking my fist at the heavens and wondering why God wasn’t helping me. There were more than a few awkward moments the resulted from her gently asking, “Have you prayed about it?”, and I had to find a way to avoid seeming like a spiritual vegetable while offering the honest answer of “no.”

2. How does it impact your primary vocation?

I can’t overstate the importance of this question. It’s brought more peace to my life than any other thought exercise. The Catholic idea of vocation is that the meaning of life is to serve others, and your vocation (e.g. married life, religious life, priesthood, etc.) is the main way that God intends for you to serve. It’s his primary path for you to find peace and fulfillment — therefore, no legitimate call from God would negatively impact your vocation. God would never call a parish priest to do something that made him feel burdened and resentful of offering the Mass on Sunday, he would never call a father to something that made him feel tied down and frustrated by his wife and kids, etc. It doesn’t mean that the only things you ever do are directly related to the duties of your vocation, but that those duties are your top priority.

Whenever I’ve started going down a path that introduced tension, resentment, or other bad vibes into the family, it’s always turned out to be the wrong decision. This isn’t to be confused with short-term sacrifices that may be difficult, like when Joe was studying for the CPA exam and it was super stressful at times but we were both ultimately on the same page about it; it’s more about choices that fundamentally put you at odds with your spouse or your kids. Over and over again, I’ve found that if a call you hear is really from God (and not just your own selfish desires doing their best imitation of the Holy Spirit), one sure sign is that it will ultimately end up strengthening your work in your primary vocation.

3. What does your spouse think?

Like with #1, I often get so caught up in analyzing things that I forget to ask for Joe’s input, especially if it’s a small matter. My spiritual director would always hone in on this question too, since the Holy Spirit often speaks through our spouses, especially when we’re not doing a good job of listening to him ourselves. (For people who are not married, an alternative might be to ask your parents, siblings, or a trusted friend.)

4. Are you taking care of yourself?

At one point I’d been in a rut and was trying to figure out how to get my life back on track, but it felt like my discernment process was going nowhere. My prayer life was nonexistence, and, worse, I found that I didn’t even really care about praying. When I came to Christie to complain about it, and she immediately asked if I was taking care of myself. I explained that if tearing through entire bags of junk food at a time, drinking too much wine, never exercising, and staying up past midnight to surf the web could be considered “taking care of myself,” then yes, I was doing a fantastic job.

She paused for a moment, then said, “I think we’ve found at least part of the problem.” Experiences of suffering can be amazing times of closeness to God…but if your suffering is self-inflicted due to obsessive attachments to the things of the world, it’s probably not going to lead you to any super spiritual experiences. Christie said that before I began looking into any deeper causes for my spiritual dryness, I needed to start taking care of myself first. Sure enough, once I started eating a better diet and getting some sleep I was able to take the first steps toward getting my prayer life back on track, which helped me in every area of life.

5. Are you making decisions based on fear?

If you hear an inner voice telling you that you need to do something because you’ll be a big huge loser failure and everyone will hate you if you don’t, it’s pretty safe to say that that is not the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Christie always had to remind me of this. For example, at one point I was discerning whether or not to homeschool, but all of my thinking was fear-based: I was tempted to homeschool because I was freaked out about something I’d heard about the local school and I had images of my kids getting bullied playing in my head over and over again. On the other hand, I thought I should send them to school because I was sure I would screw everything up and end up with teenagers who couldn’t read and had mostly imaginary friends.

Christie encouraged me to stop living in fear and start boldly asking what God wanted our family to do, to make a conscious effort to trust that he would give us what we needed when we needed it if we just followed his path. It took a while to silence all the trains of thought that were filled with fear and anxiousness, but once I did the discernment process went much more smoothly, and I quickly came to a decision that brought me a lot of peace.

6. Which path would bring you the most peace?

Similar to the above, Christie would sometimes ask me to imagine myself going through each of the various options that were before me in some dilemma, and to consider which one would bring me the most peace. Fairly often, I would find that when I actually took the time to do this, I was filled with anxiety when I thought of going the route that looked best on paper, and felt a perfect sense of peace when I considered taking the route that seemed a little crazy — and the peace-filled option always ended up being the right path.

More info

I usually get a lot of great questions when I bring up the subject of spiritual direction, so here are some additional resources:

• How to find a spiritual director.
• This spiritual direction blog is a wealth of information on discernment and the spiritual life. Definitely worth bookmarking and reading regularly.
• This post called 9 Things to Do When Needing Direction has some great tips on this topic.

— 1 —

There’s been a lot of talk about struggling and gratitude lately. (Here is where I was going to list the many, many blog posts that would bolster my claim of “a lot of talk,” but I can’t think of a single one other than Grace‘s because I am currently using 80% of my mental energy toward coming up with increasingly colorful commentary about why I still feel like I have a dagger lodged into my cheek when I have been on antibiotics for this sinus infection for two days.)

Anyway. One thing that always surprises me about these posts is when people throw in caveats along the lines of “I know I shouldn’t be complaining, since other people have it so much harder.” Maybe it’s because I find everything in life to be difficult, but I never think those caveats are necessary. I can’t remember a time when I had the reaction of thinking that someone has no right to vent about whatever is troubling them. I mean, I read a post where a mom says that her life is ruined because she has a fussy toddler and can’t get Talking Tom to work on her iPhone, and I think, “You’re right. That’s insufferable. How can you live such a torturous life?!”

— 2 —

Sometimes I think it would be cathartic to just blow it out and have a Complaining Olympics where we all write posts venting about what we’re struggling with right now, and no caveats allowed. Valuable prizes would be awarded to the person who showed the most skill at wallowing in misery. I can hear the hushed tones of the commentators now: “Patton had the gold medal in the bag with her residency nightmare until she had points deducted for saying she didn’t think her problems were the worst in the world. Alexander was disqualified for overcoming her pain with a saint-like attitude. Fulwiler has now pulled into the lead with her seven-day series about her sinus infection in which each post was made up entirely of expletives.”

Okay, okay, maybe it’s not the best idea ever. But those posts would be fun to write.

— 3 —

Speaking of things we (“we” meaning “I”) complain about, here’s what happened to the scorpion I think I may have mentioned earlier this week:

I want to issue a threatening memo to all local scorpions that says: Here’s what happens when poisonous arachnids terrorize homeschooling households!

— 4 —

My aunt and uncle are in town, and they went to see some of Austin’s famous bats this evening. They didn’t even need to go to the spot downtown under the Congress Avenue bridge; there’s a bridge up here in the ‘burbs that has just as many, if not more, bats that fly out from under it every night.

Every time I drive by that bridge I think of our friend Irma. She’s the quintessential old-school Mexican Catholic woman, who immigrated to the United States to give her daughter and her grandchildren a better life, and has that fabulous combination of being warm and loving yet having no tolerance for nonsense. One day I was giving her a ride home, and we happened to stop at a light in front of the bridge just as the bats were coming out. I watched the animals pour out by the thousands, flocking into the air in such numbers that it looked like plumes of black smoke were emanating from the bridge. I saw the delighted looks of the tourists in their khaki shorts and polo shirts who nodded at one another in awe as they snapped picture after picture.

I turned to Irma to make a comment about the majesty of the moment, but when I looked over I saw that she was crossing herself as she whispered, “Que feo!” ["How ugly/vile/disgusting!"]

That moment gave me a new perspective, sort of like I had with Austin’s other claim to fame, live music. I still think the bats are kind of cool…but I can also see how someone would behold all these possibly-rabid animals filling the sky and say, “Que feo!”

(I wonder where Kelly would stand on this? Oh, wait, I think I know.)

— 5 —

Let me just tell you: When a family checks out of their carpet, things get grim.

You see, the previous owner of this house chose to replace the carpets just before he put it up for sale. I imagine him standing at the carpet store six years ago, trying to decide between the colors “First Winter’s Snow” or “Gleaming Ivory,” but ultimately deciding on “Stain-Sucking, Extra-Colorless Super-White.” (I probably don’t need to tell you that he did not have young children.) As you can imagine, it has been a tough row to hoe to try to raise six children with this carpet underfoot.

Joe and I have made a valiant effort over the years, but an ocean of Resolve could not save this thing now. At some point in the past couple of months we realized that we simply have to tear out this carpet and get hardwood floors; if we don’t make the decision ourselves, at some point the health department will demand it.

Ever since we had that realization, we’ve mentally checked out of the upkeep of the carpet. Sure, we’ll spray some cleaner on the stains and swipe it with a rag a few times, but it doesn’t take much effort before we call it quits since “we’re going to replace this thing anyway.” By now I don’t think there’s any way to check back in to caring about the carpet…which is unfortunate since it will be quite a while before we’re in a financial position to re-floor the entire downstairs.

It reached a new low this week, when we experienced the horrible combination of events in which the kids were drinking red Kool-Aid at Yaya’s house just hours before the stomach flu hit. At this point our best strategy might be to just post a sign for visitors that says: “Welcome! Don’t be afraid to walk on the carpet. All of the stains are dry (probably).”

— 6 —

I have this idea that I’m so excited about: I want to write a memoir about the diet/fitness stuff I did after baby #5 was born when I lost 35 pounds and felt so good. I don’t want to write it because I think I have Important Things to Say on this subject, but simply because I think everyone should write memoirs about experiences that are interesting to them (seriously! go write a memoir — I’ll read it). This idea clicked for me after ultramarathon runner Scott Jurek’s memoir had such an impact on me: I’ve read a million dry how-to books that talk about how to have better endurance when you exercise, but having those same insights packaged in the context of one man’s personal story made it all so much more palatable and pleasurable to read.

I’m thinking I would just offer it here on the website as an ebook: no five-year, sanity stealing writing journeys, no shopping to publishers, just me having fun telling a story. Now if I could just get to feeling good again, I could get started (I see a possible epilogue there).

— 7 —

For years I have held strong on my stance that I don’t understand organized exercise. I have tried, always unsuccessfully, to understand why a person would run five kilometers on some race organizer’s time table rather than just running the same distance around their neighborhood whenever they feel like it (read: it’s all about getting up early for me). Then, the other day I came across Sole Searching Mama’s post about her participation in the Oklahoma City Marathon. It’s the first thing I’ve ever read on the subject that made me kind of “get” what’s special about these races. I still maintain that it is extremely unlikely that you’ll ever see me running with a number on my back…but it definitely got me thinking.

————————-

So there I was, carefully typing out said paragraph, and I see a dark, moving object on the floor to my right. I knew even before I looked down what it was, since dark moving objects are only ever one thing in this house.

But here’s the worst part: It was moving away from my desk in a clear trajectory. You would think that the “away” part would be good, but, nay, it was in fact deeply troubling, as it indicated that only a few seconds before, the scorpion must have been RIGHT UNDER MY DESK. Where my FEET are. It is extremely important to my mental health that the space under my desk, which I cannot easily see unless I scoot my huge chair way back, remain a FEET-ONLY zone.

To give you an idea of what I’ll be fixating on for the next 1,000 days or so, let’s take a moment to re-imagine me typing that paragraph in light of this information. Picture it like it’s a movie:

There’s the protagonist, smiling, dashing out her brilliant prose for her blog. You may have noticed that I’ve been slow to update the ol’ blog lately, she types. That’s because I’m so tired from getting up with a newborn that I’ve forgotten all of the English language except for about fifty words. Also, our house has been hit with a particularly disgusting stomach flu — but on the plus side, sometimes our two-year-old has to take a break from screaming and hitting me to puke. But I’m treasuring these moments since they go by sooooo fast!

Now the camera pans to her bare feet under the desk. We hear the clicking of her keyboard as we see the malevolent arachnid inch toward her toes. She pauses to come up with more scintillating content for her blog, and in the process stretches her legs. Her feet brush past the scorpion, missing it by mere millimeters. The scorpion feels threatened by the giant foot. It turns to engage, its dagger tail in the attack position, ready to plunge into the unsuspecting foot.

Just as it moves in for the kill, the protagonist thinks aloud about another possible sentence for her blog post. “I don’t even mind the fact that I also have a raging sinus infection, because I’m counting it all joy!” she says, which causes her to laugh so hard that she scoots her feet back just as the venomous point of the scorpion’s tail was about to be stabbed into her flesh.

If this were a good movie, it would end with the protagonist seeing the scorpion and promptly buying a new house. As it was, I screamed at Joe to come deal with it, which was unfortunate since he was evidently suffering from temporary amnesia in which he no longer knew that you can never, ever, ever kill scorpions on carpets:

Joe: [Raises up shoe and stomps on scorpion.]
Jen: That’s, uhh, that’s not going to -
Joe: [Angry scorpion now running at him with tail in the attack position.]
Jen: It doesn’t work to -
Joe: [Stomps scorpions a few more times. Scorpion stops moving.]
Jen: It’s not dead.
Joe: [Beholds silly woman and her crazy-talk with bemusement. Touches scorpion with tip of shoe. Scorpion jumps up and starts running at him again.] Whoa! This thing isn’t dead!!!

Joe eventually disproved the Can’t Ever Ever Ever Kill Scorpions on Carpets rule, but it was only after going all Michael Flatley on it for about five minutes. I maintain that the rule holds for me, though, as I would never try to kill a scorpion by stepping on it. I feel certain that I would somehow miss it and it would end up gripping onto my shoe with its little pincers, hoisting itself onto my ankle, then running up into the pantleg of my jeans, where it would sting my leg over and over and over again as I writhed and screamed in agony. (I assure you that this is only one of many things-going-horribly-awry-with-scorpions scenarios I have all worked out in my head.)

All this is a long way of saying: If my tone seems painfully strained for the rest of my writing career, it’s because I will henceforth be writing while holding my legs at least three feet off the ground.

— 1 —

The baby turned one month old this week! We’re finally drifting into something that looks like a routine, and the PPE (Postpartum Ennui) is slowly getting better. I was starting to feel like things might never improve. I was so profoundly unmotivated and uninspired that I suggested to Joe that maybe life as I knew it was over, and from here on out I would spend my days shuffling around like a zombie, not trying to do anything, letting go of all my goals outside changing clothes every few days. (The doom-and-gloom predictions got even more ominous than that, but I’ll spare you the drama.)

I had forgotten that it can take a long time to bounce back from traumatic experiences, especially when they occur over a long period of time. Now that I think about it, after we went through a difficult few months in 2005, after everything finally blew over I felt like I had adrenal fatigue for a couple of months afterward. Whether or not it was a diagnosable condition, I was definitely mentally and physically exhausted from being under so much stress for a prolonged period of time, and my body needed a few weeks to just zone out and chill.

I think that’s where I am now. On those moments when I catch myself engrossed in Dora the Explorer thirty minutes after the kids have left the room, I need to remind myself that I’m probably still in recovery mode.

— 2 —

My kids must have such a different impression of the Tooth Fairy than I did when I was a kid. In my childhood, I would always put my tooth under the pillow the night I lost it, and the Tooth Fairy would come promptly and leave me a lavish gift that was exactly to my liking. It is so very different around here.

My kids often puzzle at the fact that sometimes we can’t put the tooth under the pillow for a couple of days because the Tooth Fairy is “out of town.” Then there was the time my six-year-old put her tooth under the pillow and it was still there and there was no gift the next morning (this was a couple of weeks ago, when she had the misfortune of losing a tooth the day the baby came home from the NICU). The Tooth Fairy is also a kind of an erratic figure to them, since sometimes she leaves really nice gifts, and other times it’s a couple of crumpled dollar bills that look like they’ve been stuffed into the pockets of some mom’s jeans for a few days.

When I was a child, imagined this fairy to be a perky, confident being, kind of like a Martha Stewart with wings. I think my kids imagine a disheveled slob floating into their room each night they lose a tooth, rummaging around in her overstuffed bag for a random gift, then barely getting her act together enough to stumble out the window and drift over to some other kid’s house, probably getting lost a couple of times along the way.

— 3 —

The great new Feedly app interface.

After acting like the Google Reader shutdown was the worst thing that has ever happened in human history, and specifically calling out Feedly as an “alternative” that was too depressing to think about, you might be surprised to hear that I am now a big Feedly fan. In my defense — and to the Feedly team’s great credit — it was kinda lame when I wrote that post back in March. The Android app was basically useless, which was problematic for those of us whose lives revolved around reading blogs on Android tablets.

But the folks and Feedly stepped up in a big way, and added a ton of features to their app (to give you an idea: when I first downloaded it a couple of months ago, they were on version 7; now they’re on version 15). I would go on, but it is embarrassing to admit just how important it is to my quality of life to be able to read blogs in a convenient format.

— 4 —

To my shock as much as anyone’s, we’ve actually been sticking with the healthy eating thing. This is seriously surprising to the mother who was regularly letting her kids have Cheetos with a side of Goldfish for lunch just last month.

The ease of the transition was all thanks to the fact that the kids jumped the shark with their obsession with junk food. You see, for the longest time I had resisted making changes to our diet because it would be too hard. “I just couldn’t deal with the kids constantly whining about not having their favorite snacks around!” said I.

But then it got to the point that they were constantly whining for me to get them their favorite snacks when we did have them in the pantry, and I realized that I probably wouldn’t be dealing with that much more whining if I stocked only high quality foods in the house. So I just stopped buying crackers, chips, bread, pasta, tortillas, etc., and stocked up on tons of fruit and veggies instead. There were a couple of days that I’ll henceforth refer to as The Great Dorito Famine of 2013, but after we got past that it’s actually been fine. I leave fruit sitting out on the table all the time, and the kids have learned that it’s easier to just have some of that than to try to coerce lazy mommy to get off the couch to get them something else.

— 5 —

I continue to be inspired by the concept of Bento Boxes, and got a few plates with multiple compartments to experiment with. Granted, my concoctions are totally uncreative and boring, but I’ve found the concept to be key to avoiding processed food at meals.

Green beans, rice crackers, sour cream, tomatoes, and pickles for my pickiest eater's lunch.

For whatever reason, I’ve found that it’s easier to get the kids to eat good food when I give them little bits of a variety of different things, rather than trying to get them to eat one thing in big quantities.

— 6 —

Speaking of me being sunglass-blessed: My mom asked me what I want for Mother’s Day, and since she already does sooooooo much for us I wanted to think of something super easy for her. I offered the usual protestations of not needing anything at all, but since I knew she’d get me something anyway, I said that I’d love a new pair of sunglasses if she had any of her usual freebies handy. She gave me this pair of Tom Fords, which she happened to have lying around:

I’ll just be tacky and tell you that they retail for almost $400. I noticed that the model is called the Jennifer, which I take as a divine sign that it is an immutable part of my destiny to have outrageously awesome sunglasses.

— 7 —

The Novena to the Holy Spirit starts tomorrow if you’d like to finish it on Pentecost! For those of you who aren’t familiar with it (or with novenas in general), it’s a nine-day series of prayers, with each day focusing on a different gift of the Holy Spirit. I have always found the Novena to the Holy Spirit to be a particularly powerful experience, and highly encourage you to do it.

[UPDATE: Oops! The novena begins TODAY, not tomorrow. That's what I get for blogging while tired.]

Hope you all have a great Mother’s Day weekend!

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The doctors have said this before, when I was diagnosed with the clotting disorder after getting a deep vein thrombosis during my second pregnancy, but, luckily for my third, fourth, fifth, and sixth children, I knew that they weren’t that serious when they said, “You seriously can’t have any more children.”

But now they’re saying it with extra drama, and there’s nothing like lungs full of blood clots (for me) and lungs full of holes (for the baby) to make me think that they might actually mean it this time.

So what does that mean for me? When I converted to Catholicism, to my great surprise I came to agree whole-heartedly with what the Church teaches about contraception. I do Natural Family Planning (badly), and probably have about eight years of fertility left. Am I still going to stick with it? Am I resentful of these rules? Do I even want to have more kids? If the subject lines of my email inbox are any indication, a lot of folks are curious about this; hey, I would be too if I followed someone’s blog who found herself in this situation.

So let’s go ahead and crack open that can of worms, and I’ll give you my long answer to the question: Your doctors said you can’t have any more kids. What now?

Let’s talk about risk

First of all, let’s remember that when we speak about the dangers of pregnancy or any other undertaking, we’re talking about risk. This is not certainty. Nobody has a crystal ball. It’s all just educated guesses.

This sounds obvious, but it’s surprisingly easy to forget.

You hear a doctor say, “You shouldn’t do XYZ because it would put your health at risk,” and it’s tempting to immediately declare, “‘Risk,’ you say? I SHALL NEVER DO XYZ AGAIN THEN!” But it’s critical to do the best we can to identify what level of risk we’re talking about.

In my own case, for example, I have a responsibility to my existing children not to take unnecessary risks with my life. The word to hone in on here is “unnecessary,” though, because the reality is that we take risks with our lives all the time. I’m thinking about taking a road trip this summer that would involve driving for hours down two-lane roads with 70-mile-per-hour speed limits and no barriers separating oncoming traffic. I would be driving on a weekend, when plenty of people are on the road after having beers at nearby lakes. There is no question that my life would be in danger if I went on that trip; in fact, the danger to my health in that situation is probably not even drastically lower than it would be with another pregnancy. Yet we perceive the pregnancy as being so much more fraught than the fun road trip.

For a variety of reasons, we’re always tempted to freak out and get all fearful when it comes to new life, much more so than in other areas of life. A mother setting out to climb a famous mountain as a personal self-fulfillment project would be congratulated and encouraged, whereas another mother being open to pregnancy despite concerning health conditions would be chided and discouraged, even if the risk to both women’s health from their respective activities were the same.

So, especially when it comes to the question of more children, we need to look very carefully at the question, “How big is the risk?” There are times when we’ll take a closer look and find that the risk is real and huge and deeply concerning; but other times we might just find that the risk isn’t all that much greater than it would be with plenty of other “normal” activities, and that the doom and gloom predictions about future pregnancy were fueled as much by our culture’s fear of life than as by a reasonable analysis of risk.

The hope factor

Every risk has a flipside, and this is another area that is too often forgotten about when we’re talking about pregnancy: the benefits of undertaking the risk.

We have this problem in our society of seeing new human lives as burdens. Instead of celebrating new people, too often we chalk them up to carbon footprints and mouths to feed. We deem others (always others, not people we know) to be “overpopulation.” And I’m not using “we” rhetorically: Seriously, I’m not immune to the mentality either.

The soundtrack to all of my pregnancies is the noise of my whining voice. I always forget about the life of the new son or daughter that I’m carrying, and talk about the huge burden that “the pregnancy” is placing on me. Maybe it’s all those years I spent immersed in secular culture, but I am naturally sympathetic to the frame of mind that wants to immediately shut down the pregnancy train as soon as the doctor says the word “risk.” Especially in the case of those of us who already have a lot of children, why not? After all, how many kids does one person need?

But children are more than a number in the family birth order, and each human life is infinitely valuable. Think of someone you love: When you consider the worth of his or her life, it makes you view the pregnancy that brought him or her into existence differently. It makes you willing to accept higher levels of risk to add a person like that to the world.

Imagine that you were diagnosed with a rare and fatal illness, and you discovered that there was a doctor who had developed a brand new way to treat it. Imagine that this doctor cured you. Imagine the waves of joy and relief that would sweep over you when you found out that he had defeated the disease that threatened to cut your life short. Now imagine that you found out that he was his mother’s seventh child, and that her pregnancy with him went against warnings from her doctors not to have any more children. Would his mother seem crazy for becoming pregnant anyway? Would she seem irresponsible for deciding that adding another soul to her family was worth the risk?

Unfortunately, sometimes we need to remind ourselves what other people can do for us in order to remember the value of their lives.

I’m not suggesting that there’s never a good reason to avoid pregnancy; even aside from health risks, there are plenty of other reasons couples might decide that it’s not a good time for another kid. I only suggest that when we make those decisions, it’s critical that we make them in light of the hope that every new baby brings. When you think of making sacrifices for a nameless, faceless “pregnancy,” it doesn’t seem worth much effort. But the cost/benefit ratio changes drastically when you really think about the worth of one boy or girl’s life.

NFP is worth it

All that said, I do think there’s enough risk in my own situation that I should chill on the pregnancy front for now, maybe forever. In that case, then, wouldn’t contraception or sterilization make everything easier? To put it concisely:

No.

First of all, Natural Family Planning can be an effective way to space children. (I’ll give you a moment to stop laughing and clean up the drink you just spilled on your keyboard.) No, seriously, if you’re willing to invest a little time to learn the ropes, it can work just as well as contraception. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not always easy, and that the challenges that come with NFP are very real. However, it’s not like the alternatives offer problem-free solutions either. As the great Simcha Fisher once said, “When it comes to facing fertility, all God’s children got angst.”

I know a lot of other couples who have given up contraception to use NFP, and not a single one of them has ever returned to contraception use. I’m not saying it never happens, but, at least in my experience, it’s rare. That’s totally counter-intuitive since NFP is a sacrifice-based system, but I think what most couples find when they give up artificial birth control to space children naturally (especially when they involve God in the process), is that the high level of personal sacrifice involved is a feature, not a bug. NFP is not just another form of birth control; it’s an entirely new lifestyle. It makes you see yourself and your spouse and your children entirely differently. It makes you see the meaning of life differently. It even makes you see your relationship with God differently. And once you’ve spent a while living that kind of life, you don’t want to go back.

Intellectually, I don’t think that contraception is a good thing. I’ve come to believe that it takes away women’s reproductive freedom, and, on a societal level, fuels abortion culture. But, when I think of my own situation, I never even get that far in the analysis. Like so many other people who have made the switch to NFP, I simply couldn’t be okay with any form of sterilization anymore, whether temporary or permanent. I don’t know how to articulate it other than to say I just couldn’t do it. On a purely visceral level, in that place deep in the heart where the most important truths about our humanity reside, I know as surely as I know anything else that those Catholic teachings about human sexuality are true and good.

So what now?

As you can imagine, I’ve gotten some flack about all of this lately, especially in light of this disastrous pregnancy. Sometimes I catch myself reacting by saying:

“I didn’t know!”

I mean, yeah, I knew that I had a blood clotting disorder that’s exacerbated by pregnancy, and, okay, there was that one just slightly life-threatening DVT in my second pregnancy. BUT! I thought that it would be fine once I took preventative Lovenox. I didn’t know that it was possible to end up with bilateral pulmonary embolisms when you were on blood thinners — I thought that I was stabbing myself with needles every day to prevent that kind of thing! I didn’t know that a one-month supply of said blood thinners would set me back FOUR THOUSAND dollars. I didn’t know that I’d end up having to undergo medical procedures that were like something out of a bad episode of Fear Factor. I didn’t know that one of my veins would turn black from having over 10 blood draws in the same arm over a few hours. I certainly didn’t know that my baby would have his own, unrelated life-threatening lung issues that would put him in intensive care for two weeks. Sheesh, people, I didn’t know!

The implication there is that I would have done something differently if I had known that I was signing up for a pregnancy that was like something out of a homeric epic.

But would I?

I look down at my sweet baby boy, who is sleeping in my lap as I type, and I am overwhelmed with love and joy at his existence. I am filled with certainty that his life was meant to be. I can barely even remember all the pain I went through to bring him into the world, because that finite amount of suffering seems so utterly insignificant in comparison to the infinite value of his life.

Yet I am also sitting here saying that it would probably be best if I didn’t have more children. It leaves me in a place of strange tension: If this baby was so worth it, wouldn’t that be the case for another one? As a mother, I certainly have a duty to my precious children not to take risks with my health; but if I’d followed that train of thought more closely before, most of said precious children would not even exist.

It is when I ponder these truths that I realize: It’s so freaking complicated.

There are no more difficult, complicated, messy decisions in the human experience than the decisions we make about having kids. In no area of life is there more at stake, more opportunities for suffering and loss, and more opportunities for joy and love and connection that will last through eternity.

I don’t have all the answers; many days, I don’t feel like I have any. I have no idea if I’ll ever have another biological child. Today I’m thinking that I probably won’t…but will I feel that way tomorrow? If I’ve learned anything so far this year, it’s that your whole world can be turned upside down in a matter of hours, leaving you with an entirely different perspective on life than you had the day before. Luckily, with NFP, you make these kinds of decisions on a month-to-month, rather than a long-term basis. I’ll have regular opportunities to re-evaluate my choices.

And so when people ask about whether I think I’ll have more children, I usually respond with a responsible-sounding answer about how I am aware of the risks and currently plan to take the prudent course and avoid pregnancy for the rest of my fertile years. But then I’ll glance over at my little blond-haired son, and sometimes his tiny, ink-blue eyes will catch mine, and I can barely suppress a smile as I think: Never say never.

— 1 —

I think I have Postpartum Ennui, a condition I just invented to describe why I don’t want to do anything, ever. This is especially true with anything that involves my brain: I can get myself motivated to straighten the kitchen or make the bed, but someone sends me an email asking if I can go to an event next weekend and I stare at it like they just asked me to derive the quadratic equation. I find this rather unsettling, since it’s normally the opposite with me. I’m the person who aspires to be a brain in a jar, for goodness’ sake! Why is it that I suddenly can do all this physical activity but cannot seem to get my brain to work at all? (I know, I know, I just had a baby recently, but normally I don’t still feel like my brain is a bowl of oatmeal a month out.)

— 2 —

I’m reading Scott Jurek’s memoir Eat and Run, which is probably not surprising given my love of reading about people who survive physical challenges that would kill me ten times over. Jurek is an ultrarunner, meaning he regularly competes in races that are over 100 miles long (those of you who read the amazing Born to Run will recognize Jurek from that book). He runs these things without stopping, so he often runs continuously for over 24 hours at a time. It’s all so insane and foreign to me, it’s like reading about an alien lifeform. As I read I’m thinking, You get up before dawn? To run? For hours? Until you’re vomiting and about to collapse? And then you run some more until your toenails fall off? It makes for fascinating reading for us couch potatoes.

— 3 —

Interestingly, Jurek’s memoir has had a significant impact on me, even though I mainly read it to gawk at the insanity of ultrarunning. Check this out:

Back when I was jogging a lot before this pregnancy, I still never built up any impressive endurance. At the peak of my jogging routine, when I was in the best shape of my life, I never could jog for more than about 3:45 without stopping to walk for a while (in case there are any ultrarunners in the audience, I should clarify that that’s 3 minutes, 45 seconds). I went out for one of my first post-pregnancy jogs yesterday, many pounds heavier and much more out of shape than the last time I exercised, and I was able to maintain a slow jog for an astounding 5:20. I thought it would take me months to work up to that level!

I give most of the credit to Jurek’s memoir. I can’t pinpoint any particular tip or passage that changed things for me; I think I’d just been spending so much time immersing myself in reading about people who run, run, run until they can’t run anymore, and then they run some more anyway, that it rubbed off on me.

— 4 —

I realize that what I said in #3 would seem to contradict what I said in #1. It doesn’t sound like I have Postpartum Ennui if I’m out there breaking personal records for jogging. The reality is that I’m not all that motivated to exercise, but I am extremely motivated to get some time to myself. I don’t think of my jogs as opportunities to burn calories and get in shape as much as I think of them as “that thing I do when I get 30 whole minutes where nobody asks me for a snack or a sippy cup or to put on Shaun the Sheep the entire time.”

— 5 —

One of my biggest surprises of this year is that homeschooling has gone very well, despite all the craziness we’ve had to deal with. In terms of the “three R’s” (Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic) the kids are not only ahead of grade level but ahead of my own goals that I set back at the beginning of the year. The philosophy I’ve adopted that has simplified everything and made it easy for me to keep up with is that we do structured work (following prepackaged curricula, doing worksheets, systematically working through lessons) for the three R’s, and we unschool for everything else. I even combined spelling with handwriting, so that each spelling test is also a handwriting test and therefore I can get it all out of the way at once like a boss.

So, when I found myself too exhausted to undertake too much (which was most of this semester), I would do a Survival Homeschooling day, which looked like this:

• I teach each kid a brief math lesson from their Saxon Math books.
• I go over a grammar lesson from the awesome Growing with Grammar curriculum.
• I give them math, grammar, and spelling worksheets to do on their own.
• After they finish their worksheets they have 30 – 60 minutes of reading time, when they can read whatever they want from our selection of nonfiction kids’ chapter books. (I stocked up on a bunch of cheap ones from Amazon, so we have a whole shelf full of books that tell stories of interesting people and events and things).

Notice that it requires very little hands-on time from me. As the kids get older and I regain my ability to deal with life I’ll probably attempt to do more, but this improvised Survival Homeschool routine is working really, really well for us right now.

— 6 —

Have I ever mentioned that I am sunglass blessed? Sometimes I think that if a Sherlock Holmes type were to analyze my appearance, he’d be completely thrown off by that detail. He’d say: She’s carrying a purse from the discount rack at Kohl’s that shows that she doesn’t spend money on accessories, her scuffed shoes show that she has little attention to detail when it comes to her clothing, and those flare pants show that she has no awareness of what is currently in fashion. And yet she’s wearing the very latest Versace sunglasses?!

You see, my mom has done the finances for the same eyecare corporation for almost 30 years, and she has tons of friends who are sales reps for the big eyeware companies. They all love her and are constantly offering her free products, and she generously passes many of them along to me, and so my purse is filled with gorgeous sunglasses from Anne Klein, Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren, and other fabulous brands. It’s almost a shame that I don’t have bad vision so that I can get great eyeglass frames too!

— 7 —

It is going to be unseasonably cool here in central Texas this weekend, which is unheard of for May, and I can only imagine what that might mean for more northern parts of the country. Stay warm, and hopefully we’ll get some real summer weather here soon.

Have a great weekend!

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I spent two hours last night that I could have been relaxing or blogging or reading books about people who have to use ice for toilet paper cooking and storing a massive veggies and rice dish so that we could have some non-processed food on hand, which was doubly insane since my awesome friends already hooked me up with tons of great food. I spent the rest of the night debating whether I was more angry or exhausted, with the latter winning out by just a hair. Anyway, I think the lesson to be learned here is that one should never try to prepare healthful meals when one could be blogging.

I am feeling particularly low on brain cells today, so luckily Hallie has provided me with an easy post idea with her Five Favorites blog carnival. For this round I thought I’d list five things that made my various recent hospital stays more bearable. These would be handy things to acquire of you’re planning to get very sick any time soon, and would also make great gifts for anyone you know who’s hospital-bound (the ones that are legal to give as gifts, anyway).

1. An extra cell phone charger

I can’t believe it took me so long to think of this. I was living my life with a mere two device chargers, one by my bed and one in the kitchen, both of which I use regularly. I would take the one from the kitchen whenever I traveled, and invariably I’d lose it in the bottom of some bag or leave it plugged in at the NICU, and then I would have to walk all the way upstairs when I needed to plug my phone in at home. Doesn’t sound like too big of a deal, right? I thought the same thing until the time I returned downstairs to find our 20-month-old standing in the center of the kitchen table, holding two now-empty cereal boxes whose contents were all over the floor. Extremely helpful to have a separate charger just dedicated to travel (and if you’re giving it as a gift, you could get a cute one like this).

2. A tablet

I thought I knew what it was to love my Google Nexus, but I didn’t know what tablet-love was until I found myself stuck in the hospital. I used my Nexus to watch Netflix, read books, surf the web, check email, and pray the Liturgy of the Hours. Best of all, I used it to do video calls with Joe and the kids via Skype — it was surprisingly helpful for us all to be able to see each other. I have a basic Nexus 7, which is small (about the size of a large paperback book), and one of the least expensive tablets on the market. I don’t know what I would have done without it!

3. The Relax and Sleep app

When I was in the hospital in January, I hardly got any sleep. Every time I was about to drift off there would be ambulance sirens outside my window, someone standing right outside my door and using her cell phone to speak to someone who was evidently very hard of hearing (seriously, what is with people shouting into their cell phones in hospital hallways?), or an announcement over the intercom saying “Attention: Code Blue” which sent my mind into overdrive wondering what terrible thing Code Blue might mean. I downloaded this Relax and Sleep app, and it was a life-saver. It gives you dozens of different sound options, and you can play multiple sounds at once (I usually did fountain + ocean + rain). I also used it all the time to block out the sounds of beeping monitors and crying babies when I’d try to read in the NICU. Best app ever.

4. A fabulous travel bag

This bag is so amazing. It is perfect in every way. I got it as a gift a while back, and it’s hard to describe how much I love it. The leather is strong yet as soft as melted butter, the interior lining is silky smooth, and it has just the right number and type of compartments. This sounds unbelievably shallow, but it was a significant source of pleasure for me in my long days of running back and forth to the NICU. When I was feeling exhausted and stressed and utterly overwhelmed, it always boosted my spirits to see this beautiful and stylish bag, and to know that everything I needed was tucked inside.

5. A cute oversized sweater

I wore the same sassy expression on my face the whole time I wore the sweater.

My long, black maternity sweater ended up being the Swiss Army Knife of my wardrobe for hospital stays (I can’t find it anywhere on line, but it’s similar to this one). I used it to keep warm, obviously, but also put it to work as a pillow, a nursing cover, and a blanket. The cotton/polyester blend is durable and doesn’t wrinkle easily, so I could stuff it into a bag or throw it into the back of the car without worrying about it. Also, it’s stylish enough that I felt good about wearing it, and it did a great job of disguising whatever stained, mismatched outfit I’d thrown on that morning.

BONUS ITEM: Ambien

When I was discharged from the hospital after having the baby, I asked the on-call OB if she’d give me a prescription for a low dose of the sleeping aid Ambien. Since I’m not used to asking doctors for drugs and am also really neurotic I half expected her to gasp, glare at me like the druggie I obviously am, and open a secret panel on the wall to trigger an alarm to let everyone in the hospital know that they had a crazed addict on their hands. (Like I said: neurotic.) Anyway, as it turned out she said that that was a good idea and wrote me a prescription for a low dose. I knew that having a baby in intensive care with five other kids at home was going to lead to schedule insanity, and I’d need to grab sleep whenever I could; there wouldn’t be a lot of margin for lying awake for hours at a time thinking up new and worse things that could go wrong. I only took the Ambien on a few occasions (I was careful not to rely on it too much, since we really did not need “mommy’s sleeping pill addiction” to be added to the list of our problems), but it was a huge help in getting me through those two weeks.

* * *

Hopefully you and everyone you know are in great health and will have no use for this list — and hopefully I won’t need it again either. Maybe 2014 will be entirely different over here, and my Five Favorites a year from now will be a list of essential items you need when taking a weeklong vacation to Tahiti.

Happy Wednesday!

— 1 —

Wow, it’s been three weeks since I’ve participated in my own blog carnival. It’s good to be back! And thanks to Grace for replying to multiple last-minute emails with the subject “Can you host 7QT this week?!?!?”

— 2 —

I’ve been doing 7 Quick Takes pretty much every Friday for almost five years, so it felt weird not to spend Thursday afternoons writing my posts (though not that weird, since everything was so chaotic that I usually didn’t know what day it was anyway). Thinking about how long I’ve been in this Friday routine inspired me to look up my first Quick Takes posts, from waaaay back in October 2008. It was especially interesting since the three children I had then were the close to the same ages at that time that my three youngest are now. Reading those stories made me realize that I have learned a few things about management household chaos…but mostly I haven’t, and things are pretty much as crazy now as they were back then.

For those of you who care to stumble along with me down Memory Lane:

• Quick Takes Vol. 1: The friend I refer to at the top was Hallie. This was back in her pre-blog days, when she didn’t have a fabulous site for me to link to. Also, I really need to revisit that idea from #7 about telling Joe that I’m using our downstairs living area as a performance art space.
• Quick Takes Vol. 2: Oh, wow. #3. Never again shall I buy clunky metal lunch boxes for my children, no matter how much 80s throwback charm they have. And I still occasionally think about #5 when I’m at the grocery store, filled with a burning desire for vindication so that all the employees of HEB might know once and for all that there WAS a black widow in my grapes!!!
• Quick Takes vol. 5: Ha, ha! I can’t believe I ever tried to convince Joe that we should make our own yogurt (#3). That is the very definition of “exercise in futility.”

— 3 —

One of the things that surprised me about the whole NICU thing was how much the kids missed me. For one thing, they were staying with their grandmothers, whom they see almost every day anyway, so they were in familiar environments. But mainly I was surprised because I thought they’d enjoy having competent caretakers for a while, since I was not exactly adding a lot of value to our family during the last few weeks of the pregnancy. I mean, seriously: if I could have found a large mannequin with an unbrushed reddish-gray wig and a voicebox that would yell “STOP IT!” at ten-minute intervals, I could have planted it in my chair in the living room and it would have covered fully 80% of what I was doing in the average day.

But, as it turned out, my kids were evidently pretty happy to have foul-tempered-blob mommy around, as evidenced by how anxious they were for me to come home from the NICU. It’s made me feel more confident about my parenting skills (or lack thereof) to know that simply being present counts for a lot.

— 4 —

I need to take this opportunity to give a huge shout-out to my friend Kathryn Whitaker, whose blog you should read if you don’t already. She was such a huge help to me over these past couple of weeks. Her fifth child was in the NICU for 44 long days, so she had an intimate understanding of the challenges I was facing (she wrote a great post with tips for parents of NICU babies, which applies to anyone going through a stressful time).

Kathryn stopped by the hospital to visit me the day after the baby was born and gave me a ride out of there, which was a tough moment since I was leaving the maternity ward without a baby. She sent me encouraging texts, and delivered an amazing NICU survival gift bag to the hospital. The day before our little man was released, she came by my house with some pre-prepared meals for our freezer, as well as a generous gift certificate to The Studio Kitchen which she’d put together with donations from other generous friends. She even offered to pick up our Studio Kitchen meals so that I don’t have to go pile everyone into the car! She is every bit as gracious and kind and superwoman-ish as she seems on her blog. Thanks, Kathryn!

— 5 —

I have a food challenge for you: I need some creative lunch ideas. Not “creative” as in “I want to assemble the food on my children’s plates in the likeness of St. Pius V in honor of his feast day,” but “creative” like “I’m trying not to eat about half of the food items that would typically be involved in an American lunch.” Joe expressed some mild concern about the current meal plan of letting the kids eat chips off the floor, and even I have caught myself marveling at the fact that my children can sustain life on the quasi-edible things that I have been letting them consume, some of which I’m not even sure qualify as “food” in the classic sense of the word.

The Perfect Health Diet has done wonders for my health and energy levels (when I’m actually following it), so that’s what I’m going to try to get the kids to eat too. This means:

• No processed food
• No grains other than rice (no bread, pasta, tortillas, quinoa, etc.)
• No beans

I’ve got dinners down, and since I’m counting Rice Crispies as PHD-approved food I have breakfasts covered too. Now I just need some easy lunch ideas. Any suggestions?

— 6 —

Thinking about the lunch issue has made me interested in bento boxes. They’re so cute, and the Japanese food that typically fills them is very close to what the Perfect Health Diet recommends. I am overwhelmed with the urge to go buy The Just Bento Cookbook and these utensils that cut veggies into charming shapes and start reading bento box blogs. But is this possible for moms of large families (or, more accurately, moms of large families who are not gifted in the domestic arts)? Is throwing together a basic, no-frills bento box (i.e. no faces on the food) something that I could do quickly and easily with a little practice? Or am I setting myself up for failure to even think the words “bento boxes” and “six kids” in the same sentence? Pontificate away.

— 7 —

I’m going to the Ladies for Life brunch next weekend. This will involve exotic things like leaving the house to go somewhere other than a hospital and wearing makeup. I’m most excited about seeing the speaker, Melissa Ohden, whose story is absolutely amazing and inspiring. If you’re in Central Texas, come join us!

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