Catherine likes to YELL! She stands on the couch against the arm and yells at me here at my computer. She is 10 months old now (Wow!!), crawling, and standing up on everything she can find. She has had her fair share of falls, and then some. (Don’t tell Grandma!) I am proud to say that she has not had a single pacifier or bottle. I have gone swimming with her a few times in the apartment complex pool, and now this lucky baby actually has swimming diapers to swim in, thanks to Great-Grandma Schomburg. So far Papa has been successful in keeping her away from the new server long enough so that she doesn’t manage to turn it off.
I recommend to all parents the book “The Family Bed” by Tine Thenevin. It is a few decades old but its wisdom is timeless. If all parents who sleep separately from their babies read it, the world could be a happier place. It discusses the safety of sleeping with your baby, how it is a good way of bonding with adopted children, shares neat and sometimes tender stories (and sometimes heartbreaking!) of parents and their children, and much more.
We are still waiting for a godfather for Catherine. Please pray!
Luke has news that he will post when he is ready.
I am reading “Brave New World” by Alduous Huxley and strangely enough, enjoying it. I hope I find our friend’s copy of “Animal Farm” before he comes over again…I haven’t seen any torn pages around, so that means Catherine hasn’t got to it. A good book I’m reading is “The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom” by David Kupelian. I like that last name! I learned that Judge Blackmun, the Supreme Court judge who changed our country’s laws on abortion and caused the brutal murders of more than forty million people, had a daughter named Sally who became pregnant in college about seven years before Roe v. Wade. As you might guess, when Judge Blackman asked his wife and daughters about Roe v. Wade, she was favorable to abortion! She ended up having a miscarriage and the short marriage to the father of the baby dissolved.
Co-sleeping… Well, I guess that is one way to avoid artificial birth control while breastfeeding for family planning… ha ha.
We do it when the baby is very young and still waking at night but as soon as they are sleeping through the night, it’s off to their own bed!
It is important to remember that co-sleeping is just a modern US term for the only natural and healthy sleeping arrangement for young children (and perfectly fine for older children, too, if there’s room). Catherine is welcome to stay in the bed as long as she likes– and if we can, we’ll try to get a house with a bedroom large enough to fit two king-size beds so there’s always room with younger ones.
As Catholics, we are aware that all forms of birth control are immoral, whether artificial devices are used or not.
We don’t cosleep for birth control. We are looking forward to having another baby. I breastfeed because it is the best food for Catherine, and we cosleep because it makes it much easier to feed Catherine at night, the bed is a nice place for Catherine to use up her energy before she gets tired and hungry enough to come to me to eat until she falls asleep, and it is wonderful to be there with her when she wakes up. It helps us to be a happy family, and Catherine sleeping through the night is not nearly as important as her happiness.