Ramsay Kieran is here!

My sweet mellow little boy was born on April 16th at 8:09 am . He weighed 8 lbs 7 oz & it was a very smooth and fast C section. I think something was added to my IV b/c I was feeling more out of it during this birth than with the last 2. And I am dealing with some typical post surgical pain, but ... its nothing compared to kidney stones!!
I am just so thankful that we made it to 39 weeks and that he is healthy and strong. He is already pretty good at holding his head up. Today he smiled at me too!

My Grandmother, Mary Straub, mother of my dad, died last night. She was an intense type of matriarch, a very powerful personality with a lot of strong opinions. Her husband was a surgeon and she had a great life in New York City, with summers at their house in the Hamptons. Later, they left the city for good and stayed out on the island. I miss their house on Long Island so much, after my grandfather died, she sold it.

Its a whole era that I miss, mostly because it included them. They had smart and interesting friends that would come over for cocktail hour almost every night and then we wouldn't eat dinner until late, close to 9 or 10 pm. It was not a kid-centric world and as grandparents, they wanted to be called by their names. I respect the way we were left to our own devices while they socialized. I'm pretty much the same with my kids now. Kids, go play, adults are talking now! I would try to come in and eat as much brie as I could before my grandmother caught me though...

Once my parents sent me to NYC to stay with them when I was 10. I flew alone and she picked me up and we spent every minute together for the whole week. I loved it! She took me shopping at Bloomingdales, to her hair salon, on the city bus, to an Ice Capades show at Madison Sq Gardens & she showed me Trump Tower, which she hated :). We met my grandfather for dinner at the fancy neighborhood steak house when he got off work. I was also sent to stay alone with them at their house in the Hamptons when I was about 14.

I have too many great memories of her to do her justice here on this puny blog, but in later years she suffered from dementia, so she hasn't been fully with us for awhile. Its just weird to have her completely gone. I aspire to be an awesome and powerful matriarch like her, she had her order and things she liked her way, but could also be very loving & surprisingly compassionate. Did I mention she was a beautiful woman? She was elegant and always fashionable, she subscribed to Vogue and was tall and slim. She had black hair and blue eyes & got very tan when she was living at the beach in her youth.

We will all miss her, my boys have known her their whole lives and she loved my husband. I don't look forward to telling my oldest that she is gone, when he comes home from school. Our family is less complete, but I know my grandfather and grandmother ( Ramsay and Mary) are together forever.

Little boys begging for youtube fairy tale vids. Me sitting on my park bench, watching boys play. My darling husband surprised me with 2 gigantic palm trees!

And last weekend my dear friend Carol invited us to an incredible Italian dinner party and surprised us with gifts, for us, not the baby, since we have the same type of baby each time, we don't need much, It was such an amazing treat and wonderful to be surrounded by great friends.

The beautiful "party tree" in our Hobbit like Shire that we luckily live in...

This week in the health news have been more headlines about circumcision being an important "tool" in the fight against 2 more STD's : Herpes & HPV. Of course, again, this info was based on the African studies. Studies that were done in ways that we could never do them in the US. I think its weird (of course!) to cut a newborn based on the premise that he might be promiscuous and I also think its weird to cut them knowing that in the time between now and the time he is sexually active the could easily have a cure for all of these diseases.

I also don't believe these studies are even true. Here in the U.S. we have an astronomically high rate of HPV, 80% of the women my age have it, and yet the partners of these women are from the generation that had a 90% circ rate. Again, they cut some African men, left others intact, left them alone & checked them later on. The cut men were home healing for up to 2 months after the surgery!

Here is what a guy named "Perspective" said on my mothering board today about it:

"We are a culture trying to find reasonings to continue practicing one of our most outdated traditions. And in the process are wasting the time of researchers and doctors, money, and taking unneeded risks with men's health.

Its time to let the circ issue die, and let the practice of circumcision reseed to the same level of importance as mall piercings, and dive bar tattoo's."

So well said! Its obviously a tradition that is dying out as educated parents question the practice of removing healthy tissue (that has many functions) and so the medical establishment sees a huge loss of income & is happy to do anything to keep it going in America, even though its been virtually abandoned in Canada, the UK & Australia.

Last night I was lying on my side and I had my hand on my belly for a minute because bedtime is baby's craziest time of the day. All of a sudden I felt a fist hit me in the hand! It was bizarre and kind of creepy, but cool. The last 2 times I had the placenta completely covering the front so I never got exact parts, but this time I have a very high placenta so its been easy to tell exactly how little boy is positioned in there, and that fist was so obvious! Life in utero is definitely really life!

I am back from my 36 week dr visit today. I like the dr, he is the senior partner in the practice and very very sweet to my boys. He let me break their rule about doing a GBS test at 36 weeks and I can wait a week to do it, so I don't have to have a pelvic exam with my kids!
Needing to have this baby surgically is tough, but I brought up all of my worries and he gave a lot of attention to each one, and I feel OK about it all. I have to dig deep after my appointments and re-connect with the little guy and remember that I am strong and healthy and we will get through this & enjoy meeting him and taking care of him so much.

I'm weird, I love this part of pregnancy. I am so damn big! 193 lbs last week and still growing. I wish I could maintain my size better, but I kind of don't care. After the kidney/bladder drama all of my typical pregnancy complaints are NOTHING in comparison to that. My little guy kicks and has hiccups and just gets bigger all the time. I hope he is a lot like The Creature & Teeny, and is quiet and easy. Jakob was more of a fussy guy but that's only b/c I had no clue what I was doing when it came to feeding him.

Here are some recent pictures:

10 Years

Our 10th wedding anniversary was last Friday night, at this French restaurant in the countryside of Virginia. It wasn't that rural, we didn't want a long drive, but it was in the fancy neighborhood where Wonder Woman lives. My parents took the kids all night and we slept in, and went out to a fattening breakfast too. Dinner was amazing, not a snobby place, great food, great lighting ( important to me!)

Things I've learned in 10 years of marriage:

-Not much!
-I do know that my mom, who has been married to my dad for 37 years, says the key to a healthy marriage is to have a spirit of service to your partner. If both people are working to make each other happy, then everybody's happy!
-I aim for the above, sometimes I succeed, sometimes not
-Definitely present a united front in front of the kids, not easy & I don't always succeed, but its worth a try & disagreements can be talked out quietly & respectfully in the other room before re-uniting the front.
-support your spouse when he wants to start brewing beer, it may seem like a waste of $$, but it could also turn out great!
-I'm still learning

http://www.ugpulse.com/articles/daily/news.asp?about=Research%20says%20implementing%20male%20circumcision%20challenging&ID=8548

Since all the hoopla about circumcision preventing HIV (African studies claimed it was up to 60% protection against female to male transmission) I have been finding a lot of the research pretty suspect. For example, the 2 main researchers in the African studies had tried for over a decade to prove their hypothesis here in the U.S. to no avail. We have a much higher rate of HIV than Europe and we have a majority circumcised adult male culture & Europe has a 95% intact population. Its also insulting to all of the American men that are dead b/c of AIDS that circumcision could have prevented HIV. No American man would trust that his lack of skin would keep him safe, yet we expect Africans to believe that and then, use that same logic to have one reason left to convince Americans to cut their new babies.

The complications of circumcision have always been underreported and I always thought the numbers were way too low. I have personally seen buried penis (scary!),bleeding problems, infections & adhesions in otherwise healthy babies that I know. So, a Ugandan paper finally is reporting on the real rates of complications and shedding light on the real reason these studies showed a higher rate of transmission in the intact group-----the cut group was too busy healing to go out on the town!


I think most medical studies done in Africa are the worst form of colonialism. I hate that people are used in this way and I wish more Americans, esp. doctors & nurses would think more deeply before using these flawed studies to back up recommending surgery on perfectly healthy babies. Haven't we gotten past the point in medicine where we amputate healthy tissue to prevent disease?

As annoying as it is to cut & paste the link, I highly recommend it, I try & try & blogger never makes links work for me!

As my 10th wedding anniversary approaches (next Friday) I was thinking about our awe-some honeymoon. Awe is the word for these big mountains in Banff, Canada.

Friday the 13th

It wasn't terribly bad or scary, I'm just a nervous pregnant nellie. I have a blood incompatibility with my babies, which I've written about before & its part of why I have to have a c section. My numbers have stayed very low, but they are shifting around a little up, down, up, and that is starting to stress me out a bit. I am trying to go deep and focus on the little tough guy in there getting through this OK. I'm in good hands, the OB's are all pretty smart about my issue, but its not my favorite thing to worry about. Feel free to send "low titer" thoughts & prayers my way, :) Thanks!

I wish this was on American 60 minutes...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F91zuHAUoY&feature=related
The End of Circumcision

Keri & Mikes wedding

More wedding weekend photos

My brother is married

to the most awesome woman, Keri is so chill, so calm, I am utterly impressed with her. I have always liked her but on her wedding day she never broke a sweat or looked the least bit nervous. She made it seem like the day she and my brother getting married was the most normal day in the world.

It was a beautiful day, cold and icy, but clear and gorgeous. It went by way too fast! We got to see tons of cousins and family friends and I miss them all right now. Here are a few pics of the weekend that I prayed so hard I would be in good health for. Thank God, I was, and I was thrilled to be a bridesmaid and even more thrilled to be able to watch the whole wedding up close, it was powerful.

Baby kicking
Kidneys working
Bladder working
Best friend does not have MS after all
Dinner was the best lasagna I ever made
No complaints today!

Let's spend the day here...

This was me about a month ago, I'm a lot bigger now. And this was how I found the little guys in my bed.

I'd like to point out that I have this thing on the side of the blog that shows where people are coming from who come to your blog. I can also check what they were searching for that made them end up here. There are some truly crazy things that have been searched for that brought people here by accident, as they were looking for something else. I'm about to ditch that feature, b/c I don't want to know!!

Weird wedding dreams

Last night before bed I talked to my youngest brother, who is getting married on the last day of this month. The husband and I are in the wedding and that should be interesting with my parents watching the kids. So, my brother is getting married to a beautiful and nice young woman and we are so excited for both of them. He was dealing with some last minute logistics yesterday and I was trying to help him relax about the details.

I remember the last month before our wedding, the details were overwhelming, I can handle a lot of stress, but between my job as a commercial property manager and the wedding, which was not small, I had to get a prescription for Ativan. But I read the package insert and it scared me so I only took it twice.

So, last night, I think my brother slept well ( I hope) and all the stress transferred to me. First I dreamed we were in 2 cars and his bride was in her dress in our car, and she was driving. She had cut her hair off, but it looked really good on her. She looked super tall and elegant in her dress. We kept telling her where to park & finally we found a spot next to the church. Meanwhile, my brother is in the other car & my mom keeps telling him not to look at his bride before the wedding.

The alarm went off, but I went right back to sleep and into the next dream, this time we are staying at huge high rise hotel and the church is inside of another huge high rise across the street. I am now in my bridesmaid dress and it doesn't look too bad, which is good news b/c I lose my family and spend hours walking between the 2 hotels looking for the church. I am just wandering in the dress and the silver shoes I ordered to wear with it never arrived so I am barefoot & looking for shoes. I walk into an OR and there is a surgery going on that is very disturbing, so I leave and keep looking for the wedding. I am so embarrassed that they are holding the wedding off until they find me & then I find everyone, all the other bridesmaids and my mom & my kids are in a room putting their dresses on.

In reality, we are very excited about the wedding. In my dream it brought a tear to my eye to see my baby brother getting married, it will probably be the same in real life. He was my wild baby brother, he never wanted to cuddle & be held, he was on the move the minute he could move. When he came home from the hospital my mom put his carseat on the dining room table & my parents went into the kitchen. My other brother and I just stared at the little guy, he was so new & different, we were 11 & 7 when he was born. Our baby brother didn't even look like a newborn, he was over 11 lbs and he just stared right back at us. He didn't look much like us either, blonder and more like my mom. Its hard to describe, but I'll never forget the first sight of him. I learned to do so much for him that my mom stopped hiring babysitters. We had parents that were kind of over the baby stage, which worked out well because he was kind of over being a baby, right from the start.

I could say a lot more about him, but I just think of him as a baby, our family baby, and now, a grown ass man getting married, its so cool!

The rest of the story...

So, since I've been in a lazy state this whole Christmas vacation, it was a challenge for me to scramble around my house cleaning before the reporter got here. I had to primp (top priority!;), dry my hair properly, wipe little faces, get boys dressed, clean the floors, put away the toys that were stacked all over the living room table & feed everyone.

At the same time I had to find one or 2 friends who were still nursing little babies, not huge 2 yr olds like mine. I found one friend who said sure, she'd be right there & one who said Oh hell no! The one who said sure showed up with her 15 month old and then 5 minutes later the other one showed up too. I was so happy to see 2 of my favorite mamas and they helped with the last minute stuff. I asked my mom to come if she could, and she showed up 5 min before the news people did. I was happy to pull it all off without needing my mommy though!

At noon on the dot the reporter arrived with one cameraman. She was very cute and easy to talk to. They wouldn't take any drinks or coffee, they had a plan, they stuck to it & they got it all done in exactly an hour, like they promised. They asked us questions first, I went first & tried to remembber what my bro the TV star told me, to make it look like a conversation--be normal. I'm petrified of public speaking & the reporter told me she is too, but she said that the camera is different. I think its about the same.

We talked about how crazy it is to still be talking about breastfeeding publicly in this day and age. I remembered what I wanted to say & it was all taped in one shot. My friends really rocked it though, they turned the camera on & these girls had it all come out so smoothly, I was impressed! Then, they took shots of us, my 2 friends nursing, me on the computer (my mom thinks I spend too much time here as it is). We chatted a bunch and then they left. It came on at 5:15 and it was pretty well done. First of all, the photographer made my house look so awesome! It looked perfect in every shot & you would never know, unless you'd been here, that all 3 of us were in the same house. We didn't look too shabby either & they only used about a sentence from each of us, but they were the better comments we had, especially my 2 mama friends, they had the perfect quotes from them.

It was definitely a fun, out of the blue thing to do on New Years Eve. I welcome any opportunity to talk about breastfeeding, after doing it for 9 straight years with no plans of stopping anytime soon, I think the more its seen as normal, the better for everyone. Ladies can feel free to nurse anywhere,they can nurse longer, they can get better support from their families & they can get help if they need it. Its still a crazy country when it comes to breastfeeding in public, and on Facebook.

Nice end to a challenging year

Wow, life is so funny. I was in the hospital a week ago & then yesterday I was revelling in the feeling of feeling fine. I slept in and got ready to make the boys french toast. The husband was at work and the whole day was ahead of me & I didn't have any pressures at all.

Then, while I was talking to my mom on the phone, the other line buzzed in and I was talking to a reporter at Channel 7 news. She had found my name online because of my volunteer lactation consultant website & asked me how I felt about Facebook banning breastfeeding photos. Personally, I nurse fairly discreetly, but definitely openly--my kids won't tolerate their heads under a blanket---and some of those pics show some mad boobage. Still, breastfeeding is normal, and even if you do see a nipple, is it the end of the world? I also am not a fan of censorship in places where you ahve to choose to see stuff anyway--so the reporter was happy to talk to me. She wanted to do an awesomely pro-breastfeeding story on how its Nutz to care about breastfeeding pics on FB in this day and age. And how 80,000 people signed a petition to get FB to stop being butts about their pics and let them post whatever they want.

So. it was 10 am. I thought she wanted just to chat on the phone, but she said she and a cameraman were coming over to get some opinions on tape...at noon! more later....

The Boyz Christmas photo. If all hell wasn't breaking loose over here, I would have mailed out more cards!

Here's a good article about why GenX'ers like me are largely to blame for the current housing foreclosure drama, http://www.babble.com/Generation-X-nesting-to-blame-for-the-economy-housing-crash/

Sorry, you have to cut & paste, blogger won't let me link properly!


I have always found it weird that my generation expects to live at their parents level of affluence--same size house, same kind of cars etc, right away, with the very first kid. Even before the wedding, my peers are buying houses they can barely afford to be at their folks level right out of the starting gate of adulthood. Yet... their parents took sometimes decades to get to that size house, car etc. and we often forget that.

Christmas Eve

and I'm thankful to be at home. I have been in the hospital since Saturday, home for Sunday night & admitted again on Monday, finally released today.

I try to keep it positive on this blog, but I am a pregnant chick with problems right now! I have known I have kidney stones since last June, and I've had a few come through without problems.

Unfortunately I had the most unbelievably hellish experience with passing a stone starting on Saturday. I was given Demerol, percosets & flexeril in the hospital. None of them worked much, but I was able to sleep and then released in the morning. The next day the pain came back in the afternoon, but my prescriptions were sort-of working so I was able to fall asleep. At 3 in the morning I woke up thinking I was dying, I can't even describe the pain. Its kind of like somebody ripping your back open and then individually ripping each muscle in half, without a break, or any rest at all. It took another 12 hours before I got relief, in the form of being in-patient with a PCA pump full of morphine that I hit every 15 minutes for 2 hours before I could even speak. I have had natural childbirth twice for a total of 80 hours of labor, but it honestly does not compare. I used to think people who described kidney stones as worse than labor were wrong, I had had both & the stones weren't that big of a deal. This time I found out it really is was way worse than labor to have a stone!

So.. I was scheduled for surgery in the morning of Tuesday the 23rd, where the urologist would go in with a laser, blast the stone and then retrieve it out of the ureter --tube that runs from kidney to bladder. Then they would put in a stent that would keep the tube from collapsing after all of the trauma & I would have to keep it in for the rest of the pregnancy.

The good news is I avoided the stent surgery, the stone moved on its own, IV hydration & morphine helped it stop blocking the ureter and the pain is gone. I am just nervous now of its possible return with a future stone & nervous about possibly having the stent placed in the future. Can you believe the drugs you are allowed to take while pregnant? I am not so worried about a little wine here and there after hours and hours of morphine. Believe it or not, its safe & my little guy was checked every hour & he is fine.

I am happy to be here and grateful that it wasn't worse.

Yesterday I was in the ER, again. I'm fine but I was ruling out an infection after some typical symptoms. Anyway, there is no privacy with just curtains between you and the next patient. So I lounged under my warm blanket and listened to the saga next to me. The woman was 94, she lives independently with her 95 year old husband. He is taken care of completely by her, although they just hired an aide recently. She deals with catheters, wheelchairs his meds. She cooks 3 meals a day for him.

She was there because she had a dizzy spell with some chest pains. They ordered an EKG & a cat scan to check for risk of stroke & put an IV in for blood tests and drugs. She told the nurse she had never had an IV in her life. She had the cutest voice too. The most amazing thing was that she told everyone the only time in her entire life she had been a patient was when her daughter was born. Her daghter was with her and vouched for the truth of that statement. This lady was unbelievable, I would love to be her at that age, what a woman!

Its that time where you get Christmas cards & letters that detail every perfect moment of people's lives. I don't begrudge them the right to show all the good of the past year, I totally get it--I try to blog mostly positive--but it would be fun to get a more realistic Christmas letter. I'll do a brief one that I would never mail:

-bad bad preschooler yells the F word in music class and spends most of the rest of his school year in the principal's office.

-we take a very intense, very fun trip to Chile. OF course mom has to get super sick, but the kids had a blast, except on the plane, where every single passenger hoped we would get sucked out the window b/c the preschooler was being very BAD..

-bad bad 20 yr old stepson of husband's oldest friend moves in and manages to screw up every thing we ask of him, including the dishes, so he lays down on the sofa and stays there for a month, while scary religious cults work hard to recruit him.

-oldest boy had his First Holy Communion, which was an amazing day and a perfect occasion, except for 2 things,1. we roasted a pig in the ground which scarred our 5 year old for life. He still remembers ever single person's name who ate the pig & every person's name who did not. The other thing won't be mentioned, it was real bad.

-summer came and things looked up, preschooler made it without being expelled (that would happen in the fall), but then mom, found out she is riddled with kidney stones.

-pertussis happened. Half of July, all of August & most of September lost to the whooping cough that all 3 guys contracted thanks to a summer camp at a park in Northern Va.. Poor little preschooler coughed until he threw up all day for 30 days.

-surprise! New baby on the way. Which is awesome, except it would have been nice to get through the kidney stone and bladder drama before facing another pregnancy. But, still, we are very grateful for the miracle of another unique person joining our family.

-School in the fall, hard for the 3rd grader with tons of homework, absolutely brutal for the kindergartener who is too young to face all day school. So we try his old school's half day k program, but he (I ) am expelled after 2 weeks of the principal harassing mom for no reason. When mom told her to ease up, 5 yr old is kicked out. So, now, he is unschooled at home.

-Its been bad, its been good, it hasn't been the worst year ever, by far, but it has been challenging in all new ways. Yet, we have each other, and that's enough.

---about the bad bad folks mentioned above, including my own child--there's no such thing as a bad person, just bad actions, but it was fun to call them bad for a minute.



-

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/family/11/21/baby.buggies/index.html

This is a link to a study that says that strollers facing away from the parent stress the baby. Did it really take a study to figure this out?

It seems like it would be fun for a little baby to be pushed around, looking at it from an adult perspective. But as a baby, I think it would be a little frightening, you have no frame of reference and you can't see any familiar faces facing forward. In the stroller the world is coming at you fast. I think human babies are made to be held and it is such a short time in the big picture that its even possible. I know its not for everyone, but I love wearing the baby and keeping them close when they are tiny.

Hard Stuff

When my second son was born and died, after living for 7 weeks, I wrote in a journal/word doc on the computer almost every day. I kept it up for 2 years, with bigger and bigger spaces between postings (this was pre-blog days) and then the computer crashed and I lost the whole thing.

Last night my awesome better half fixed the computer after it crashed again & found my old journal. It is very very hard to read. I am just not "there" anymore, thank God.

I was very lucky, I had lots of signs sent from my baby and I wrote each one down. I also wrote down every time one of my friends was insensitive or mean, which wasn't good of me to chronicle, since I had forgotten about most of it.

I remember one of the many hard parts was feeling socially inept. I had no use for small talk back then. I felt like I had just come back from a horrific battle and felt horrible guilt for surviving it. It wasn't another soldier, somebody's baby--it was my baby. There is pride in surviving all kinds of tragedies, but not losing your child. There's no pride in that, its just surviving, remembering, feeling & suffering & then hopefully, finding some joy again--but never in the same way. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

All boy mama

Its been a crummy week so far, I caught some kind of flu-like nightmare on Saturday and still feel bad. Homeschool hasn't happened and I needed a replacement for my meeting tonight.

But... the big ultrasound was today, this morning we looked at baby's heart, brain, limbs, stomach, bones, palate & all looks good. I'm relieved because I took a bunch of medicine for the kidneys last summer before I knew about Chunky #5. And Chunky # 5? Surprise, surprise! Another BOY! For a long minute there, we thought we were all seeing girl parts, but then baby changed position and we saw the boy baby in all his glory. So here we go again, same clothes, easy sleeping arrangements. I'm not complaining.

When I can get a real working link to the video, I will post it. I apologize for the tininess of the picture too, but if you look closely it is amazing! The kiteboarder is right on top of the whale!

A sweetheart meme

Exciting! I got tagged by my friend Erin at Breathe, Just Breathe

Here's more than you wanted to know about my better half:

Husband's Name: Larry

How long we've been married: coming up on 10
years

How long we dated: Dated 1 year & 1/2 & were engaged 6 months.

How old is he? 39

Taller: Him, by 3 or so inches.

Who can sing best? Him.

Smarter? That's a toss up. I know lots of random facts but he can fix anything and I am useless around the house.

Laundry: Both of us, I am very very bad at it. Luckily, he is man enough to wear his newly pink underpants though.

Paying bills: Me, I'm not much better with $$.

Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? Him

Mows the lawn? We ditched our tiny lawn and covered it with pavers after we killed it.

Cooks dinner: He is a great cook, but I do 90% of cooking.

Who's the first to admit when they're wrong? Hard to say, probably him, hahah.

Who kissed first? Him

Who wears the pants? Probably him. He's classic alpha male, not metro, not new age.

Good things about being pregnant

--In your 30's it seems like the years fly by in such a hurry, but pregnancy slows down time for me to a snail's pace. When its over though, the baby is a toddler in no time!

--Once I get past being sick, where I hate music, food, and anything enjoyable, all of a sudden...music sounds incredible and everything else improves too.

--My Creature has decided he is having a sister and so he constantly shows me toys he wants to buy for his sister. Sharing all of this with the kids is really fun.

--I feel less fashion pressure while pregnant, I am going to be big and enjoy it as much as I can.

I have to admit, I haven't been a huge, enormous fan of Barack Obama, like what seems like the rest of my generation. I just have a hard time in general, voting as a consistent-life-ethic Democrat, but also I get suspicious anytime big groups of people start thinking alike. In my area it was almost like Obama mind control, the ads were so constant, so extreme and so absolutely relentless, I just couldn't get on board. Ditching the funding that he and McCain agreed on & then grossly outspending McCain rubbed me the wrong way too.

I see all politicians as human and not entirely reliable, basically, just like the rest of us. I think McCain made a lot of mistakes in his campaign, but I have always admired him and I know he's a good guy from hearing about him from all the years my Dad worked in the Senate (my Dad worked for Democrats). I know he is open minded and works well with everybody, I haven't seen Obama work well with too many Republicans. The extreme bipartisanship is one of the most depressing things in America to me. I am very hopeful that that will change though.

I don't absolutely love and devote myself to McCain though & I think that's why Obama won, the utter devotion of his supporters. I do think there are some huge positives in Obama winning. Like my Dad said, it was another peaceful revolution in America. And that is really awesome. The people have spoken and I think it is infectious to see all the joy in his supporters this week. I also am hyped to see a young family in the White House. I am excited that the rest of the world seems happy about our new President elect also.

Rachel Campos-Duffy, who was on the Real World San Fran, writes a column for blogging baby & she had this to say (which I really liked :)
As a mom, I am thrilled by the possibility that Malia and Sasha, may replace Hannah Montana and other teen starlets as girlhood role models.

I'm equally hopeful that Malia and Sasha's beautiful dresses will inspire a national trend toward more age-appropriate clothing for girls and away from the sexy clothes currently being marketed to them. Though twelve year-old Malia will be 16 at the end of her father's first term, it's hard to imagine that Michelle and Barack would approve of her wearing the sleazy attire pushed by today's young celebrities or seen on MTV and BET. That will be good for girls and parents!

In fact, Barack Obama has not been shy about promoting clean fashion. On MTV, the always sharply dressed Obama, admonished "brothers" for showing their underwear and told them to "pull up their pants." Amen to that. If only Barack had been pro-life, his very sensible position on hanging off-the-butt pants might have been enough to win me over. In any case, it's safe to say that Barack may be the only president cool enough to convince teenage boys to clean up their fashion act.


more on consistent-life-ethic
Notable exponents, according to the Consistent Life organisation, include actor Martin Sheen, novelist Wendell Berry, the current Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, and Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff.[5]

In 1971, Roman Catholic pacifist Eileen Egan used St. John the Apostle's phrase the seamless garment, referring to to describe a holistic reverence for life. "The protection of life," said Egan, "is a seamless garment. You can't protect some life and not others." Her words were meant to challenge members of the pro-life movement, as well as those who are in favor of capital punishment, to adopt a consistent life ethic. Egan's view was that there is a unity of Catholic teaching when it comes to human life.

the boy in a basket

the boy in a blue slide

the morning primp, where I wrestle makeup away from my little friend

So, I haven't been in a very reflective place lately, more like action-mode. I am homeschooling the Creature and its taking a lot of time and energy. I am a totally reluctant homeschooler, but I realize I have to really work with him and develop my patience to get him to a point where he will be successful in school. Homeschooling can be good for kids but it can really develop character in the parents. I think homeschooling can be awful too, like in a family that punishes the kids for not learning the way the parents hoped they would. I try hard to keep it positive, but the fact remains that I am home working every day with my MOST challenging child. I do already see some improvements in his maturity so I am going to hope for the best, even though this morning at breakfast I was already so fed up I almost turned into the Hulk.