First {phfr} of the year!

Happy New Year! Are you ready for a new start? We have our patron saints, and I have my resolutions made. I wish there was a generator for accountability partners. I could use one. 

But let me share with you a few moments from this baby year.  This is our church, in a picture taken with my iPhone's panoramic setting. I love using it, even if I haven't got used to it. Also, I think maybe some distortions are sort of built into it. The pews, for example, are not angled; that's just the result of me standing in one place and pivoting while I take the shot. 

Still, it's beautiful, isn't it?

And this is the pilgrimage replica of the icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa, which came to our parish last weekend as part of the From Ocean to Ocean Pilgrimage. Fr. Peter West from Human Life International came and spoke about the icon and the pilgrimage during our Sunday masses, and after each mass people were invited to come up to venerate the icon, and take a holy card touched to it if so desired.

The original icon is said to have been "written" by St. Luke the Evangelist. I have been thinking a lot about such "original" images as the Shroud of Turin and the tilma with Our Lady of Guadalupe, so it was a pleasant surprise to hear that this image would be at our parish for the weekend. I'm still thinking about this one, and lately my thinking has remained deep in the realm of "pondering." But I might share some thoughts soon about images in your spiritual life.

****

What do you do when you're in the middle of a polar vortex and everyone comes down with sore throats and messy noses? Eat mint ice cream! 

It may seem like a strange choice to voluntarily eat a cold dessert with freezing temperatures outside, but thanks to the miracles of modern temperature control, at least it's easily done. Both the cold and the mint of the ice cream are soothing to suffering heads. You could even do a Little House thing and make your own, if you have the snow (we don't) and the flavoring. 

****

Dominic is the size of a two-year-old, but he hadn't eaten anything other than breast milk until two nights ago. (He's also trying to walk. Please.) He's gotten so that he's not sleeping through the night, or even longer than about ten minutes, without me nursing him (or at least beside him, fooling his unconscious little mind into thinking that he's still nursing). He's a bed hog, too, wanting the middle, or trying to go perpendicular and push someone off the bed. 

Jason and I made the decision to start him on solids to supplement our breastfeeding, so that we two adults could get some sleep. So this is his first time having solids—rice cereal, to be exact. (That doesn't count the times somebody lets him lick an apple or suck on an ice cube!) It seems to be helping.

Don't let the tongue fool you. He likes it. Babies are always funny when they eat. 

So that's life. As always, pretty and happy and funny and real are conflated, and it's wonderful that way. 

Read more at Like Mother, Like Daughter!