Yay! Advent is my favourite season in the church calendar, and it’s almost here! Actually, Lent was pretty cool this year, too, with our superduper Lent with Kids series, but the inspiration for that came from all the fun and surprisingly helpful things we did at home during Advent. So here we are! I […]
In case you missed the biggest news of the (/my) blogosphere last week, I have a guest post up at the glorious Lulastic and the Hippyshake. It’s an exciting week for this fangirl! She’s running a brilliant series of guest posts, How to be a ______ Parent, and she asked me to do ‘How to […]
‘That’s going straight to the blog!’ Miriam predicted as we walked out of the church service on Sunday. We had the lucky experience of hanging out at Archbishop Justin‘s place this weekend, staying with SBJ’s English godfather, who lives in Canterbury. It’s a pretty nice church. Since the first, self-conscious time I breastfed […]
You may have spotted Michael/SKATERAK’s comment on Tim’s first Not Only A Father post. It reads: This will definitely be an interesting series. Thanks for whetting my appetite already. Is there any chance you could throw in some advice on how to present God to children, as well? Just a little question, eh, Michael? I […]
In Steve Biddulph‘s new book, Raising Girls, he apparently calls for an army of aunts to take their place in helping parents to raise resilient young women in a difficult era. The Guardian reports: It is a view about to be revived by bestselling author and psychologist Steve Biddulph, who is calling for an “aunties […]
Today Sweet Baby James turns one, and we need to think of a new nickname for him. Here are some of the things we love about having a one-year-old. He can make friends on footpaths and in shops any day of the week. Any small animal is a ‘cat’, and ‘cat’ always has to be […]
Almost all of us will spend some of our adult lives single, but when we do we’ll be in a sometimes uncomfortable minority. There are some brilliant things about the single life and some challenges we need to help each other in to build deep and strong community for all of us. Following on from this […]
Sleeping in 22 different bedrooms in ten months: not bad for a baby, right? Our baby, SBJ, has slept overnight in 22 different places as we’ve been on the move around New Zealand and around the world. More than two thirds of those are instances of gracious hospitality from friends and family – sometimes for […]
I was single before I was married. That’s less obvious than it sounds, given the number of people who marry their high school sweethearts or have a number of relationships throughout their twenties and maybe thirties. I did neither. After a flurry of boyfriends in my teens (the internet won’t tell me the real […]
Is the role of godparent archaic, pointless, essential, a lottery, fabulous, or just what you make it? Our baby, SBJ, has four godparents: two in New Zealand and two in the United Kingdom. Lucky boy! I didn’t grow up in a tradition that appointed godparents, and though my husband did, it’s not very common in […]