La Lupe is probably the best nagger on the planet. Everyone around her is poked and prodded to change certain habits. Of course her constant corrections come from a place of total love. She has lived 82 years and knows a little something about habits and what happens after a lifetime of them.

The two things she is always hounding me about are to sit up straight and to drink plenty of milk. Between having eight babies and breastfeeding all of them, La Lupe knows a thing or two about the logistics of motherhood. Whenever I talk to her on the phone she asks me if I’m drinking enough milk because if not then those babies are going to take all my calcium and make me jorobada like her. And as for my posture, moms in general always have bad posture. If we’re not holding one baby on our hip and trying to drag another away from imminent danger, then we’re lugging loads of baby gear around or stooping over to pick up toys or looking for a lost sock or something. You get it. Moms = bad posture.

I’ve never taken any of this seriously. I’ve never actually been careful about taking care of myself physically. Our bodies are resilient. Our ancestors hunted and foraged and migrated vast distances, surely my body can stand what I am doing. It’s not like I’m working in the fields or building houses or working out eight hours a day or something.

But I’ve done it nonetheless. I’m only in my mid-20s and my body has decided to pay me back for not taking care of it. I need to see a chiropractor, an eye doctor, a jaw masseuse (no joke, they exist), an orthotist, and a lactation consultant all because my body has decided that it has had it with me.

This week I’ve been thinking about how badly I treat myself. Physically speaking. As I go through my rolodex of memories I come across time after time when I knew what I needed to …

I confess. I love celebrity gossip. I love all those magazines that crowd the checkout aisle at the grocery store. I love the fashion. I love the makeup. I love the gossip. But with kids, our budget made me decide between diapers and Us Weekly. Assuming that the girls wouldn’t enjoy their bums being swaddled in pictures of Alicia Silverstone’s new baby, I choose to go with diapers.

But this past weekend we took a mini-vacation and visited my parents in Houston. So I splurged and bought the juiciest looking mag I could find.

As I flipped through the pages I was not disappointed. Beautiful dresses and gorgeous handbags. The newest trends in shoes. I was almost giddy. But then I started reading about couples that have separated or divorced. While this isn’t new — celebrities not having long-lasting relationships — I read about some couples I thought were going to be together forever. Courtney Cox and David Arquette? When the heck did that happen? I thought they were rock solid. I had to run to the computer and look up Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. just to make sure they were still together so I could feel a little better about the state of marriage in the celebrity world.

I kept reading and found an interview with Blake Shelton about his recent marriage to Miranda Lambert. Ok, this has to be a happy; they just got married. But then they asked him how he had dealt with a previous marriage and divorce. He responded, “Life isn’t perfect so you find what makes you happy and you do it.” That’s it. I threw the magazine across the room.

I hate that. I hate it when people say, “You’ve got to do what makes you happy.” There’s no commitment in that statement. There’s no maturity. There’s no room for another. It’s just plain selfish. Now I know there are situations that come up that are grave enough to warrant separation or divorce as the right course of action. But what I …

“Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable compliment, by too much love, not too little.” -C.S. Lewis

I know that Lewis was probably referring to God loving us too much but I think this works for us as well. I am always too embarrassed, and sometimes even scared, to love people the way I know I should because I don’t want them to think that I love them too much.

The women in my family have taught me how to show love through affection, hospitality, and generosity.  There is not a woman who so openly shows her extravagant love as La Lupe.  Everyone that crosses her path is well-fed, hugged, kissed, maybe scolded a bit, but definitely knows her love.  She is a great role model in this regard.

For some reason, while I know what I need to do to show people love, I really struggle with actually doing it.  When I attend weddings, I get so nervous about talking to the newlyweds that I actually avoid them. I tell myself that they have more important people that they want to talk to than me so I avoid them to not take up time. (I know, pretty self-deprecating. Welcome to my head.) It’s such a load of crap. What I’m really scared of is showing the couple that I love them. I am scared that they will reject this love. That they will think I expressed too much love and not consider me as good a friend as I might consider them.

I know what scares me is the vulnerability of loving another.  Of giving them hugs, of congratulating them, of complimenting them.  To express such a real emotion makes me open to rejection and I sometimes cannot handle the possibility of this so I don’t let myself be vulnerable to begin with.

But the more big life experiences I live, the more I realize how silly I am being. At our wedding, every single person we invited was important to us.  There was no one that was invited that we hoped would …

We’ve all been there. Your husband is spilling his heart out to you and the only thing you want to do is yell, “Freakin’ suck it up and deal with it!” Ok, maybe it’s just me. Sometimes I’m too tired to offer a sympathetic ear. Sometimes I’ve heard the same thing over and over, and I just don’t want to hear it again. But mostly I want to tell him this because I don’t think what he is complaining about is all that bad.

When Brandon complains about having a hard day, I have to bite my tongue from saying, “Hard day? When your client poops all over your last clean t-shirt and knocks over a canned food display in the grocery store then I will believe you’ve had a rough day.” I feel like I have it harder than him so I don’t feel like his complaining is justified. More likely than not what actually comes out of my mouth is, “Pick yourself up by your bootstraps and keep forging ahead.”

Talk about breaking the first rule you learn in Marriage 101. Listening and being compassionate are pretty high on the list of necessary communication skills. So while I knew I lacked these qualities in conversations with my husband, I didn’t quite understand his plight until recently.

As I made clear in my June 8 post, I haven’t been teaching the girls about Mexican culture. What I failed to mention is that I haven’t even been teaching them Spanish. It’s just so hard. It is difficult enough keeping our family fed, house clean, and everyone wearing matching socks much less remembering to call an apple a manzana.

I have been stewing in guilt about this but of course some people find it necessary to stir the pot even more. Every time I talk to La Lupe she reminds me that my kids better be speaking Spanish when we go visit. One acquaintance that I see often always has to rub it in by asking if I am teaching the girls Spanish and …

When I was a kid, I always enjoyed holding my hand over my heart and saying the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the school day. I love singing the “Star-Spangled Banner” at the beginning of baseball games. My heart can’t help but swell with pride for my country. My dad, being from Mexico, always made sure I knew how blessed I was to be born and live in the United States of America.

That being said, my first allegiance is to God. When it comes to “God stuff” in “State stuff,” I have no problems. I think it’s great that the Pledge of Allegiance includes “one nation under God.” I know the Knights of Columbus fought hard for this addition. It is citing the correct order of things — God first, Country second.

It is important to keep this order in mind when putting “State stuff” in “God stuff.” The majority of Catholic churches in Texas that I have entered (which is a lot because I’m a big nerd and love visiting churches I’ve never been to) have an American flag displayed near or next to the tabernacle. I take issue with the flag being up there next to the true presence of Christ and addressed this point in a blog post last year. I have thought about this a lot and have found no theological argument for its placement there.

I know there is nothing in Canon Law that regulates the placement of flags in a church, but it just seems proper for the sanctuary of the church to be free of all civil signs as it is the sacred space where the Body and Blood are present with us. I have no problem with an American flag in a church but I think that its placement it very important. It should be in the parish hall or in the atrium or narthex. To have it in the sanctuary of the church seems opposed to what the church stands for, a place for all people, no exceptions.

As Christians, …

I have been failing as a Mexican for a while now. I have not been passing on important cultural traditions to my children. This isn’t because it slips my mind; I have consciously been avoiding it.

Months ago my parents bought us some books in Spanish that contain traditional Mexican folklore. One story is “La Llorona.” It’s about a beautiful woman who threw her children in the river out of rage after her husband left her for another woman. After realizing what she did, she ran along the banks trying to catch them until she slipped and fell and died. To this day you can hear her ghost’s shrill cry as she wanders around after nightfall grabbing any children she finds to make them her own.

I know. Scary, right? Can you imagine reading that to a 2-year-old? And yet that story was really important to my childhood. It used to be one of my favorite stories to listen to. All of my friends knew it. It’s so old, La Lupe was told the story when she was a kid. Whenever I hear it, I feel connected to my past because of how long it has been around. And yet, I have not been able to bring myself to read it to Olivia.

Then there is the story about “el cucuy.” Like the boogeyman but Mexican. My childhood was filled with threats of the cucuy. If you don’t finish your dinner, el cucuy will come get you. Don’t wander off inside the store or the cucuy will grab you. You better behave or I’m going to call the cucuy. If I don’t teach Olivia this term, we’re going to go to El Paso one day and she’s going to have no idea what the heck La Lupe or anyone else is talking about. It’s just such a part of the language. I used to use it all the time when dealing with non-compliant little cousins.

Then, perhaps, my biggest problem. Spanish TV. It has become so trashy. Every woman is so scantily clad …

Like any young couple with a growing family, Brandon and I have been discerning and having monthly conversations about when we should have our next child.  Recently, the following statement actually came out of my mouth, “Well, Obama’s health care reform will kick-in in 2014 and then we will be able to get maternity care on our insurance plan.  Maybe we’ll just have to wait until then.”

Wow.  As soon as I said it I was just so disgusted by the kind of system we have that would make it so hard to have kids.  Our family planning is going to be based on when a law goes into effect?  No way.  I refuse to be bullied by the insurance industry into letting it dictate our reproductive planning.

Our mailbox has been bursting at the seams with medical bills the last few months.  When I stop to think about all the money we have spent on medical needs in the last year it seriously makes me sick.  Granted, Lina is absolutely worth all the bills (those chubby cheeks are so irresistible,) but it doesn’t make the amount of money that is moving from our savings account to the hospital’s or doctors’ or Blue Cross Blue Shield’s pocket any less obscene.

When we got pregnant and found out our medical insurance didn’t cover maternity care, we definitely panicked at first, but eventually figured it out.  We talked to the hospital before we had Lina and, if we paid in full before the birth, they would give us a major discount.  Done.  Our doctor was very kind and gave us a bit of a discount as well.  It was going to be a lot of money but we were navigating the waters and saving a little here and there.  Additionally, our medical insurance covered Lina from the second she was born so we thought we were in the clear.

But then we got a bill from the hospital for Lina and all her expenses.  We called the insurance company and understood they were still trying …

Several people have called me prudish for writing my “i love boobies” post.  I’m totally comfortable with this label because I believe our girls are growing up in a hyper-sexualized world.  If someone thinks I am overly sensitive about modesty, well, someone’s got to push the other way, right?

When I taught at a Catholic high school, I was in charge of monitoring the girls’ dress code.  What a great gig – extolling the virtue of modesty to teens everyday.  As I would walk down the hallways, girls immediately started checking the buttons on their shirts to make sure they weren’t unbuttoned too low or tugging at their skirts trying to make them longer.  This was good for them.  There was a voice in their head telling them to cover-up among all those voices telling them to bare it all.  It is all too common for a teenage girl to believe that her power lies in how sexy she is.  Being “hot” and making boys “want them” is the goal, not being kind or smart or funny.

And I’ve known all this for…pretty much as long as I’ve been alive.  I remember being really young, like 7, and knowing that if I rolled up my shorts to make them shorter, maybe that cute boy with the glasses might like me.  I was 7!  I had no idea why that would make him like me more, I just knew that’s how people on TV did it.  I didn’t know I was buying into the sexualization of women.  I just knew that a force (i.e. the media) out there was telling me I could get a guy because of my looks instead of being an interesting conversationalist or a good basketball player or a really great pog player.

Recently, Olivia and I were walking along a strip mall to pick up something for lunch and we passed by a tanning salon.  This salon had a HUGE picture of a woman in a bikini on the outside window.  It was larger than life.  The woman …

There are at least two kinds of penitents: one who goes in and wants a lengthy conversation with the priest about their sinfulness and how to change and another who just wants to get in, list their sins, get absolution, get out and get it over with.  Both styles are legit and priests seem to be sensitive and respectful of both.

As for me, I usually want to be like penitent #1 but get mistaken for #2 every time.

I am horrible at confession.  I really am.  Though my confessions are valid — I’m contrite, truly want to avoid sinning in the future, etc. — I am never satisfied with my confessing style.  When I go to confession I want it to be like spiritual direction with absolution at the end.  I want to have a dialogue with the priest about what I am doing wrong, why I am doing it, and how I can change it.  I want to truly hash out my sinfulness.

But in reality, I don’t really know how to start that conversation.  I’m so anxious walking into the confessional that, once seated, I nervously stammer out a vague list of sins, the priest offers equally vague advice, absolves me and I’m out the door.  Even when I have a ton of sins to confess, I’m out of that confessional in three minutes, tops.

I don’t blame the priests; I know this is on me.  The priests can’t help but offer vague advice when I give them vague sins.  Am I supposed to be specific?  I usually list ambiguous things like being uncharitable, neglecting my spiritual life, or sinning by omission.  The biggest problem is this makes it seem like the sins are not so bad.  I mean all sin is bad, and an offense against God and the rest of the world no matter how small, but I think not being precise about one’s own sinfulness might mislead the priest who is trying to think of what kind of advice and what kind of penance to give.  For …

It started April Fool’s Day if you can believe it.  We’d been going to the Friday Fish Fry at our new parish all of Lent, and it had really become the highlight of our week as we loved the community we found there.  We left our house a little later than usual and  unfortunately arrived at the end of a line of about fifty people.  We had brought separate food for Olivia (who is allergic to dairy and eggs) so she and I parked our stuff at a table while Brandon stood in line with Lina.  As we waited, a man at our table with a terrible hacking cough threw the napkins he was using to cover his mouth directly onto Olivia’s plate of food.  Shoot. There went her dinner.  Brandon ended up waiting in line for an hour, after which Lina started to break down because it was so near her bedtime and Olivia because she was hungry and we had no food for her.  We dejectedly drove home with the girls crying the whole way.

The next Friday came.  Brandon had a meeting out of town but had plenty of time to drive back to Austin, pick up our car from the mechanic and get home so that we could make the Fish Fry on time this week.  I was very much looking forward to getting out of the house so I made sure everything was ready on time.  I got the house cleaned up, Olivia bathed, Lina fed, both kids in clean diapers, and Olivia’s food packed.  We were all set.  Brandon called to say he was pulling up to the mechanic.  This is only two minutes from our house, so I got Lina in her car seat, Olivia’s shoes on, set the alarm and we waited in the garage for Brandon to pull up.  And we waited.  And we waited.  Apparently after Brandon arrived, the mechanic still had to put the car back together and print out the quote before Brandon could leave.  By the time …