Association Of Catholic Bloggers

My request for Catholic online and print resources on extreme parenting circumstances got an amazing response, so I'd like to share it with you. There's more on adoption than I thought, including an excellent new resource scheduled to be released by Pauline Books in 2015 (huge shout-out to author Jaymie Stuart Wolfe and the sisters at Pauline). But there's much less on fostering and step-parenting than I was hoping to find. Please, please, please if you have more to add to the list, respond in the comments or by email to santoskaree@gmail.com. It's so important to support parents taking on this holy but often incredibly arduous work. Adoption Adoption: Room for One More? , by Jaymie Stuart Wolfe (forthcoming from Pauline Books in 2015) Adoption: Choosing It, Living It, Loving It , by Dr. Ray Guarendi (St. Anthony Messenger, 2009) Longing to Love: A Memoir of Desire, Relationships, and Spiritual Transformation , by Tim Muldoon (Loyola Press, 2010) While We...

The kick-off to this great new series  How to Stay Married 10 Years & Then Some  is written by yours truly, me and my husband Manny. Here are our prime bits of advice gathered over the years, and a few of our most cherished stories. 1. How many years have you been married and how many kids do you have? Manny & Karee:  We've been married 14 years and have 6 kids: Lelia, age 13; Miguel, age 11; Maria, age 9; Marguerite, age 7; Cecilia, age 5; and Elisa-Maria, age 3. Yes, we know that's a lot of girls. 2. Name 3 things that have helped you to stay married this long. Manny:  “Not staying married” was never really an option in my mind. So I would say that the first thing that has helped me stay married is a proper understanding of what marriage is -- a promise of forever. The second thing that has helped me stay married is that I meant what I said on my wedding day. The wedding vows I spoke were not flowery or cute, but rather simple and direct....

Just in time for Christmas, here are some awesome book suggestions for nearly everyone on your list. For Married or Engaged Couples For Better... Forever!: A Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage, by Greg Popcak . This modern Catholic classic has been offering helpful advice to couples for more than a decade. Give a gift that helps love grow all year long. Click here for  my review . For Moms and Dads Growing Up in God's Image, by Carolyn J. Smith.   One of the biggest struggles parents face is teaching their kids a healthy outlook on sexuality. You can start laying the groundwork when your kids are very young by teaching them respect for their bodies. Then, it's much easier to talk to them as they get older. Learn how in this helpful book. Click here for  my review and link to buy . Catholic Family Fun, by Sarah A. Reinhard.   The family fun can last all year round if you use the ideas in this clever book. Imagine always having something whol...

"You know what's funny? Catholicism!" proclaimed the  Washington Post  recently. More and more Catholic public figures cheerfully crack jokes as they evangelize, including stand-up comic Jim Gaffigan, Stephen Colbert of the Comedy Central television network, and even Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York. The new book  Dad is Fat , by Irish-American comedian Jim Gaffigan, is a perfect blend of hilarity and wisdom about parenting a large Catholic family. Gaffigan hides parenting advice amidst the jokes in the same way some moms try to hide pureed zucchini in their chocolate-chip cookie recipes -- and he's probably way more successful. Gaffigan says it best in his own words, so following is his advice on everything from home birth to bedtime. Enjoy! Read more here...

[part of the SmallSuccess link-up on CatholicMom.com] The pedicurist recoiled in horror when she beheld the extent of my callouses. "Callous cream," she sternly recommended, and then proceeded to chatter excitedly in Korean to the pedicurist next to her, presumably describing my icky feet in gory detail. After rubbing the magic callous removal cream into my feet and scraping, scraping, scraping, the pedicurist triumphantly raised the scraper with the incontrovertible evidence of my appallingly negligent foot care. She must have thought I had been herding yak barefoot over the Russian steppes all last summer. But, with six kids, I don't have time for weekly or even monthly visits to the nail salon. And I made a bargain with myself not to get that annual mani-pedi until my husband and I revised the proposal on our marriage advice book and sent it off to the publisher. As soon as I pressed the send button on the proposal, I hustled down to the local NAILS NAILS NAILS!...

When the cover story of  Time magazine  brags that having it all means not having children, the culture badly needs a reminder that getting married and having kids is actually a good idea. That having children, whether one or five or ten, is not only praiseworthy but worth it. The percentage of childless couples has nearly doubled since 1980, and  the percentage of families with three or more kids has dropped by almost half.  Today's burning question is no longer why would any couple want to remain childless. It's why would anyone want more than one or two. Big Hearted , by Patti Armstrong and Theresa Thomas, answers that question in a collection of moving, true-life stories, each one more inspirational than the last. The stories in  Big Hearted  open up a window into the private thoughts and feelings of parents of large families. Not all of them love babies, although some of them do. Some mothers walk away from corporate jobs without a backwards glance...