Category Archives: Reading

My New Reads

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My blogroll has changed a bit in the last few weeks, so I want to mention a few of the newbies. (Two I met at the Blog Party, two sifted in around the same time).

  • Bringing Good Home— found her before the party started, got to know her better during it. I appreciate her open window to her home managing and herself
  • Everyday Life as Lyric Poetry— a clever young mom who likes to read
  • The Flourishing Mother— visited because of her name (I love meeting another positive mom), and returned because I liked what she had to say.
  • Whole Hearted Life— A relatively new blogger I found through my Writer…Interrupted blog ring. Another mom of three littles who’s happy to be married. I’ve enjoyed getting a peak into her life and thoughts through her blog.

Parenting Info That is Actually Useful

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Many (if not most) baby/parenting books seem to emphasize their methodology to the point of threatening your child will be scarred if their method is not used (Catherine mentioned this at the end of February).

As a ray of sensible Spring sunshine, I offer today a list of books that are both useful and positive. No guilt-trips here (unless they’re carry-ons), and instantly usable information.

Rather cold toward co-sleeping and extended breastfeeding, but very sensibly combines the ideas of flexibly and scheduling for your baby.

Also offers “rescues” for correcting mistakes entrenched by “accidental parenting.” The original book is most accessible to new and/or 1st time parents, the other offers some more detailed approaches to specific problems.

I got this information from a class that then sent this DVD home with you. If you are afraid of colic (or think your baby has it) the techniques demonstrated here could greatly reduce your stress-level.

Demonstrates how to engage a baby’s calming reflex (did you know babies have a reflex to calm themselves like they have a rooting reflex when they’re born?).

Solid information about sleep itself to help guide expectations, and a detailed methodology of finding and implementing the possible solutions collected in the books.

The information is presented in a gentle, conversational way. The author acknowledges making the changes will require additional energy from already-sapped resources, and somehow that endeared her to me.

Simply the best book to give to your pregnant friend in her third-trimester or to any woman who’s just given birth. If it doesn’t cover everything, it does cover more than any other post-partum book I’ve seen.

Understanding the difference between disobedience and the process of growing independence. Discovering potential and clarifying expectations. Creating a sense of family. I really appreciated it.

Maybe some reviewer on Amazon can articulate it better, but this is definitely a user-friendly “keeper.”

A practical book presenting techniques for organizing and motivating your professional choice of stay-at-home mothering.

These are the books that work for me. For more ideas visit Rocks in my Dryer.

A New Perspective on Spending Time with God

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Some of you who read this blog know I was raised in the Church, and have always struggled with how much… whatever I was “supposed” to do. Fill-in-the-blank for whatever: Bible-reading, “quiet time,” prayer, service.

I have not, like some Christians, ever felt compelled by my church to do more. I only see new perspectives that make me reevaluate what I might be doing, or not doing.

(If you’ve been hanging out a while you’re probably also aware that “reevaluation” is for me sort of a cross between a running-gag and a need in my mind).

Right now I’m thinking about “spending time with God,” something that (rightly) is portrayed as necessary for spiritual growth, and frequently seems to involve chunks of time alone.

I am not the only mother of pre-schoolers to confess this is not a regular practice.

At a new bible study group I visited yesterday, the study-book brought up the image of God waiting for us to join Him in a special meeting place, and of Him missing us when we don’t show up.

The point was to see God as someone who values us and wants to spend “quality time” together. The idea that the interaction is not just for our benefit. It is a thought-provoking image. And a guilt-inducing one.

I had a new image come to me today (for any, like me, who have seen a certain part of the Lord of the Rings audio commentary).

What if, instead of a meeting in the drawing room, tête-à-tête by the fire, our relationship with the Lord was represented by something more like Frodo and Sam– a quester and his “back-man.”

Continue reading »

The State of my House

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I’m so glad this isn’t a photo-blog. I’d be tempted to share the disaster area that is currently my house.  I just found a quote (don’t even know the person who said it, but that’s beside the point) and had to share:

If your house is really a mess and a stranger comes to your door, greet him with, “Who could have done this? We have no enemies.”

Phyllis Diller

Getting Un-stuck.

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I absolutely cannot remember where I read/heard this, but here’s how my memory plays it:

I don’t want to.
I don’t even want to want to.
But I do want to want to want to.
And that is a starting place.

I haven’t got any further in the deciding how much my will determines my own doings/ability. But I am being reminded about the faithfulness of God in the midst of our foolish confusions.

Continue reading »

What I’ve Learned in a Year of Blogging (pt. 2)

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Some highlights (October 2006 to January 2007):

Beginning Orthodoxy

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Currently Reading
Orthodoxy
By G. K. Chesterton

Ahhh… Back to my reading list.

I’ve barely got through the introduction and I’m already wishing to quote large chunks of this fellow. He makes me laugh, and I like his analogies.

He reads rather like a blogger, which should be no surprise since he was a journalist and a debater for pleasure. He seems almost (again, like a blogger) to have unrestricted printing access. This makes him very free with word-count and self-amusing asides.

This book, Chesterton says, grew out of a challenge that the last book he wrote was incomplete in its scope.

It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest provocation.

Two things so far have caught my mind.

First, the (every) writer’s reality of rediscovering what (really) is already known,

I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before…. [This book] recounts my elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious.

And second, the question for both philosophers and writers:

How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? Continue reading »

On-line Quote Database

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This I like.

I suppose there’s no way to be *really* sure what you’re reading is for real, if you’ve never heard/read it before (this is how I feel about Wikipedia), but it still looks like a lot of fun for browsing.

Yes, I’m the sort of person who enjoys browsing quote collections. I also used to read my mom’s old World Book Encyclopedia set too, when I was supposed to be looking something up for a report.

Obviously the tangent-accessibility of the internet is nothing new to me

“Don’t complain, just adapt.”

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“I can’t do that! Suppose they catch me at it!”
“Surely you won’t let them catch you at it? A clever girl like you.”

From The Perilous Gard (a book I recommend without reservation).

This type of exchange drives me mad. I start out with a genuine (legitimate) concern, and someone counters with, Oh, it’s nothing really for *you* to be worried about.

That they are right is really beside the point when one is feeling insecure.

~~~

One of the disadvantages of modern femininity is that one is allowed a moment to “vent” as she seeks to do her duty, but it seems she is not allowed a moment of helplessness. This is true even in religious circles where it may be characterized as “lack of faith” or fearfulness.

While both may at the root be true, that doesn’t mean the “offender” has chosen to act in unbelief or fear (as the correction would imply). We are simply reacting, and this shouldn’t be treated as a shocking surprise.

After all, we’re not perfected yet.

Revision, Stage-one: Re-reading

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I’m feeling a direct parallel of interest re-reading as I did in writing this. I remember this section as one of the times I wanted to quit writing, and as a reader I am totally not sticking with it. I’m only on page 35, and I’m not picking it up during my reading times anymore.

When I was writing this was the signal to jump to a new section, so I’m almost to a total shift (and I know it will pick up quite a bit since I got a great word-count the next few nights). Knowing I only have a few pages left here is a good thing, but frustrating too, in a way, since I don’t feel justified in skipping to a more interesting part.

Bringing the axe to the first draft is not going to be emotional at all– well, maybe cathartic ;-). There’s some good stuff I need to be careful to trim around, but (in this section at least) it’s buried pretty deep in the gristle.

A brief excerpt (as I’m trying to toughen my skin): Continue reading »