melted smoosh

from Catholic Online frankly, i'm glad Greta's not old enough yet to understand the biographical information about the saints we've been celebrating, because Saint Agatha has a gruesome tale. she was a noblewoman who refused the advances of the Sicilian governor, and suffered various tortures (including having her breasts cut off) because she would not renounce Christ. after her death, the eruption of Mount Etna threatened to engulf the town where she was buried. according to legend, her veil was held out to the fire, and the flames retreated. she is thus the patroness of breast cancer and breast disease, natural disasters (especially earthquakes, fire, and volcanic eruptions), nurses, sexual assault victims, and bell-founders.  Collect for the Day: May the Virgin Martyr Saint Agatha implore your compassion for us, O Lord, we pray, for she found favor with you by the courage of her martyrdom and the merit of her chastity. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, ...

from UCAN Spirituality having grown up with a fairly decent knowledge of the Scriptures, i nevertheless completely missed the cultural significance of Mary and Joseph's trip to the temple during which Anna and Simeon meet the baby Jesus and Simeon utters the famous Nunc dimittis . it turns out that Judaic law required all women to participate in a purification ritual forty days after giving birth, which included a dedication of the infant back to God -- hence why we celebrate this feast forty days after Christmas, and why it was known in the ancient church as the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. the liturgy for celebrating the Feast of the Presentation also includes a processional and blessing of candles.  "In obedience to the Old Law, the Lord Jesus, the first-born, was presented in the Temple by his Blessed Mother and his foster father. This is another 'epiphany' celebration insofar as the Christ Child is revealed as the Messiah through t...

dear Sweetpea, you are at such a fun age right now! all day long, we can practically watch your brain process and synthesize information, whether you're experimenting with dropping things, petting the kitten's tail in your Touch and Feel Animals book, or pointing out "mama" and "dada" in the pictures on our refrigerator. your latest obsession is cleaning your high chair tray or the coffee table with a Kleenex or dustcloth. you wipe off every speck you can find, and sometimes you'll start to clean the floor too. what a big helper!  you have lots of new words this month: "uh oh", "ball", "foof foof" (woof woof), and "dat" (that, accompanied by pointing to something you want). once, when you were playing on the bed and got wedged between some pillows, i quoted a line from Little Blue Truck: " 'Help, help, help!' cried the Little Blue Truck. 'Beep! Beep! Beep! I'm stuck, I'm stuck!...

well, we did it! we celebrated our very first saint day last night, and it was so simple and easy. as Greta gets older, i'd like to incorporate more crafts and activities for her, but even on the most chaotic of days in the future, we can manage to pull this off! i feel a little silly even writing about this, but for my own reference (and for any other souls equally new to living the liturgical year): here goes. last week when i was planning menus and making my grocery list, i cross-checked the list of feasts and saint days at Catholic Culture (which has become my go-to source of information). i have a running Google document and a Pinterest board to compile information and ideas for each saint day, and i decided that for this week, we'd mark January 31 (St. John Bosco),  February 2 (The Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord / Candlemas), and February 3 (St. Blaise). so my menu planning will reflect food from each respective saint's country of origin, or in the case...

Greta and i went to the children's museum for the very first time last week and loved it! i'd always assumed that the museum was geared more for older kids, but the subject came up at at our mom's group at church last month and we decided to go as a group. lo and behold, the bottom floor is designed for elementary-age kids, but the middle floor is designated as the nursery, and the top floor is entirely water play -- fun for all ages!  in every new room, Greta would sit back and take it all in before starting to explore. she absolutely loved the "spaceship" made out of recycled foam noodles and water bottles. lots of buttons to push and walls to climb!  the next section of the toddler play area includes beads to scoop and shovel, wooden balls that run down a track, light tables, and a gigantic black pegboard with thick plastic cylinders you can put in the holes -- just like a lifesize Lite Brite. the sand section was also a HUGE hit. she's n...

i think it started selfishly, with making my Christmas wish list for Nick. i'd been curious about Jennifer Fulwiler 's book, Something Other Than God , for quite some time, and i've been wanting a good Catholic study Bible with plenty of room to write in the margins. so those two went on the list right away, followed quickly by a few others that Amazon "recommended" for me ( Danielle Bean 's Momnipotent , and My Sisters the Saints , by Colleen Carroll Campbell).  and then, on a whim, i searched for "Catholic apps" on my kindle fire and discovered Laudate , which is a treasure trove of resources, including the daily readings (in print and audio form), podcasts, prayers, and an interactive rosary that automatically updates the mysteries for the day of the week. it also includes an examination of conscience, which i skipped over with a little niggling thought in my brain that i hadn't been to confession since last Easter. that day, i listened to a...

dear Sweetpea, December was such a special month! you love all the Christmas lights and decorations, especially the garland on the stairs and the lights Daddy put up on the house. a few weeks before Christmas, we took you to see Santa and you didn't even flinch! you loved the soft fur trim on his red velvet coat. he talked to you quietly for a few minutes by yourself, and then he talked to all three of us and told us not to blink because it all goes so fast. oh, sweetpea, how true that is! and yet, i can't be too nostalgic, because each new day we see more and more of you , and that makes every day feel like Christmas.  our next big adventure was flying to Seattle the week before Christmas to visit family and celebrate John and Genesis' wedding on December 22! you occupied yourself on the flight with reading your ladybug book from Grammy Kim, coloring in your new Rudolph coloring book and playing with the stickers, and scrubbing down everything you could reach...