The Catholic Baby

It's time to see your baby with new eyes.Your baby is not a project to be optimized or a bundle of milestones to be hit on schedule. Your baby is a person of infinite dignity-made in the image of God, willed for his own sake, destined for eternal life, and entrusted to you.The Catholic Baby brings together two streams of wisdom that belong together: the child-led insights of the Montessori method, which teaches us to observe, to prepare, and to reverence the child as a capable person-and the Catholic faith, which reveals who that child truly is and the heaven he is made for.Written for the exhausted, awestruck parent standing over a sleeping newborn in the small hours, this book will help you: - See your child as the gift and mystery he is, and receive him with reverence rather than anxiety- Prepare a home that is simple, ordered, and beautiful-a true domestic church where your child absorbs the faith the way he absorbs his mother tongue- Serve your baby's movement, language, senses, feeding, and sleep with both practical care and prayerful attention- Understand the astonishing gift of baptism and the daily work of raising a child of God- Weave prayer, blessing, and the seasons of the Church into the ordinary rhythm of your days- Meet the genuine hardships of the first year with honesty, practical wisdom, and the real consolations of faithLess stuff. Less rushing. More presence, more peace, more wonder-and, at the center of it all, the God into whose life your child was baptized.Raising a child is the longest and most important work of your life. You are not doing it alone.