7 Quick Takes

1) I love the idea of Conversion Diaries Quick Takes on Fridays, since it's easier than using my pre-weekend brain to actually think of something coherent to say, but today I'm too lazy to link in to the carnival-- so this is just mine own version.

2) This post by Jordana, on Curmudgeonry, really lifted my spirits yesterday. I would love for you all to go and read it and be re-invigorated in your commitment to the sacrifice of motherhood. And that includes those of you who are mothering other people's children, too-- nieces and nephews, neighbor kids, whatever. I've been saying over and over to myself today, "This is my body, broken for you..." and it has helped me keep my mind on the eternal significance of even the small daily "brokenesses".

3) As I approach the beginning of my third Breastfeeding Adventure, I'm starting to notice articles and posts about breastfeeding as I stroll through the internet. In particular, I've become aware that b/f-ing in public is a very controversial issue-- even in the Church. Well I'll be darned. I never knew. Really. I breastfed Sofi in movie theaters, college dorm rooms, church services, grocery stores, everywhere, and I never really noticed any looks of censure. Maybe I was just naive? But anyway, I found a great article by a breastfeeding husband in the church (for lack of a better label) and got permission to re-post it here. (it'll be up shortly)

4) If you've noticed, I haven't been posting much this week. You can always take blog silence as an indication that something (usually finances) has sent us bad news and I'm slogging through the Slough of Despond. I usually don't blog from there. Too muddy.

5) One more house to see in our price range. Then back to the waiting game-- see if anything else comes on the market in the next week or so. Our letter of approval from the bank is good for 60 days.

6) Home schooling a third grader really shortens your day. I spend an awful lot of my day on nouns, verbs, multiplication tables, line graphs, note-reading and whining children. It's exhausting.

7) On the other hand, there's this:

The Breastfeeding Article of the Month Award goes to...

Melissa Neece!! Or rather, her husband, Kevin. Actually, they can share it, since she wrote the rest of the article. I got her permission to re-publish this excerpt, which is from her husband's perspective.

And to sum up, here is an article about breastfeeding in public that my husband Kevin wrote that I of course think is brilliant:

Written by Kevin C. Neece:

It is really a sexist view that proclaims that women are intelligent and responsible and can make choices about how they respond to stimuli and that men are just drooling animals, uncontrollably dominated by their passions because they are basically too dull-witted to do otherwise. Saying that men “can’t help it” or “are wired that way” may seem like compassion and consideration for men, but in reality it is a degrading gender bias. The truth is that we should expect all adults to behave like adults regardless of their gender.

As a man, I am personally tired of hearing such views bandied about so easily as though they are not at all bigoted. It may be culturally acceptable, but it is wrong to expect men to be the lowest common denominator of our species. Adult men are expected to be and are often portrayed as no more than college frat boys with families. But college frat boys are just junior high boys with newfound freedom and legal permission. And junior high boys are just elementary school boys with sex drives. So essentially, we are telling men that their progress as a gender is so stunted that they can never truly be expected to grow out of boyhood. This is now excused because we tell them that they are genetically wired to be too stupid to grow up. When you place no expectations of civility and maturity on any human being, they will more often than not respond to those expectations by remaining in the realm of their baser instincts. If, however, people are treated as beings capable of civilized, respectful behavior, they develop as such.

Moreover, the story of human progress tell us that the basic project of being human consists of learning, changing, growing, and trying to become more than what we are. By insisting that men are incapable of advancing themselves in a conscious, focused manner, we are depriving them of their basic dignity as human beings by ignoring their potential to grow in positive, civil and mature directions.


As a man married to a breastfeeding mother, to whom I am very sexually attracted, I can say that simply having developed the mindset of the natural, feeding function of the female breasts has allowed me to consistently view my wife’s breasts as sources of food when seen in a functional context, and as sources of arousal when seen in a sexual context. There has never been any confusion between the two. I did not have to be trained or desensitized. All I had to do was learn about the purpose and beauty of breastfeeding. Were the activity of public breastfeeding more common and accepted in our culture in general, and were our expectations of men inclusive of more than unthinking Neanderthal-like sex drives, there would not be an issue regarding the response of intelligent, civilized men to public breastfeeding. A mother must be asked to do no less than put the needs of her child before other considerations. A man’s response to what he may or may not see for a brief moment is his own to deal with.


The breastfeeding conversation among Christians today tends to focus on nipples, nudity, and naughtiness. Instead, Christians should be about the business of helping to develop a view of breastfeeding as normal, natural, and necessary. Part of that process includes the promotion of breastfeeding as an acceptable, everyday experience. This may create some difficulties along the way for Christians who are now grown men, but it will also help prevent future complications for the Christian men of tomorrow. If our boys are raised in a culture that values and openly accepts the fullest, truest nature of the female breast, we can come one step closer to a world that no longer reduces breasts, and indeed women, to mere sex objects.

Familiarizing the younger generation with a broader understanding of the feeding function of breasts will help to prevent unnecessary and unwarranted sexual temptation in the future rather than creating such temptation by presuming a universally sexualized view of the breast. This is not about a few instances of men being bothered by seeing a little skin. It is about a process of cultural education and development toward a more enlightened future where sex is a natural part of life and not something that dominates our lives in a negative fashion. In this future, breastfeeding is placed in its proper context as a normal and necessary function of motherhood, no longer overshadowed by over-sexualization, nor oppressed by the tyranny of titillation. Therefore, normalizing public views of breastfeeding mothers is a move toward moral responsibility and away from the domination of sexual temptation. As such, it is important that it be carried out, not flippantly or defiantly, but with a focus on awareness, education, and acceptance.

Oh brother, here we go again

I suppose I shouldn't get so negative so quickly, but after last winter, who can blame me? Judah appears to have the flu. Which is totally bogus, since he's the only one we decided-- after weeks of research, discussion and indecision-- to vaccinate! It just goes to show you... Although exactly what it goes to show, I have no idea.

A sick toddler is a sight to behold. His eyes are all droopy and bloodshot and he has this awful, hacking cough. For the moment he's fairly cheerful, though, reveling in the novelty of Daddy-home-from-work-early-to-play-"fight da ba-guys". He's also getting quite a kick out of the squeaky, cracked voice he's sporting at the moment. :D It's sooo pitiful and he knows I'll give him pretty much anything he wants when he asks me in that orphan-child-from-Africa tone of voice. What can I say? I'm a sucker.

I read a cool birth story today (part one, part two, part three) Birth stories are my drug of choice. When I'm down I go find some and they make me feel better :) I guess y'all recognize the name Dooce-- the original mommy-blogger. Having her speak up about natural childbirth is great. She's so articulate and poetic. I just loved her story! Have to give this one a language warning though, just in case it bothers some of you. Enjoy!

I'm off to enjoy some fresh pumpernickel bread.

Apparently boys need a lot of protein

Ever since Judah gave up his morning nap (shortly after turning one) he has a melt down almost every morning between 9:30 and 10:00. It's ridiculously predictable. I'll be going along with my morning routine and Judah will be playing quietly and then all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose! There are tears, tantrums and whining. Oh! the whining! What to do?

And then I read Suzanne's post about diet and nutrition for boys-- specifically about a growing boy's protein needs-- and it began to dawn on me that perhaps Judah was simply not getting enough protein for breakfast in the morning. Our normal breakfast consists of yogurt (plain, low-fat, with a little honey) and fruit. Fairly low protein compared with the levels she was recommending.

So we began to experiment! The first few days Judah got an egg or other protein source as soon as I started to notice the crankiness. It worked! Amazing. The whining and tantrums would subside back into normal behavior. But that didn't necessarily mean it was about protein in particular. Perhaps he was just needing a mid-morning snack.

Next step was to see if we could forestall the meltdown completely by simply adding protein to his normal breakfast. J fixed him three scrambled eggs for breakfast. He ate them all. No mid-morning snack, no meltdown. Hmm. Persuasive.

But the high school scientist in me wanted more proof. Next day we went with the traditional yogurt and fruit. Meltdown began promptly at 10:00. I force-fed him goldfish and cheezits for 45 minutes, attempted to distract him, and then tried to feed him lunch a little early-- which he emphatically refused, demanding to be put to bed. For a nap. Forty-five minutes early. That is unheard of.

That was yesterday.

Today he ate two pancakes and four scrambled eggs for breakfast. No meltdown. Ate a small lunch (beans, carrots, applesauce) and went straight to sleep, no fussing, no whining. He has now been sleeping for two and a half hours.

I am a believer. We will need to buy some chickens.

This I love!

Discovered on the playlist of a new fav blog, as I mentioned here. Proving that playlists may not be ALL bad. Not quite. Music like this makes me miss Hos, Omi and Sus almost unbearably... Ah Storysingers... Those were the heydays!

On the same blog I also discovered another artist new to me, Lenka-- an Aussie musician!

A super-fun new thing!

I have MADE something again! And you get to hear all about how I made it! Lucky you!!

I found this tutorial during a late-night web-surfing session some little while ago and recently pulled it out of the black hole that is my bookmarks folder and dusted it off and gave it a try. It was fantastic! I took this:



An old shirt of mine from high school (yes I know, should have tossed it out years ago, buit what can I say? I like the fabric...)

And turned it into this:



A little wrinkled from lots of wear in the last two days :)

I modified the sleeves from the original tutorial because I wanted to keep all this delicious edging:



You can go here to find that modification.

Isn't it cool how the front



Becomes the back?



Let me tell you, coming from someone who loves buttons and hates to make buttonholes, this trick will make your life sooo much easier! And look! All that cute edging is there with no effort on my part! Is that cool or what??

Boojiboo Flirty Apron GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Boojiboo Flirty Apron GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Oh my WORD!!



Aren't these adorable??



Can you believe she's giving one away??



I super-duper WANT one!!



Don't you?

I may be a wee tad bit fickle

I know I was just claiming a new BFF the other day, but now.... I dunno... This lovely lady and her Etsy Shop, Blog and Playlist may be my very newest, bestest Internet BFF. Go ahead. Go check it out. There's nothing to see here today anyways....

I've been un-blogspired (oo look! I just made up another word!) around here these days. I need some quiet time in a cafe with wi-fi to recharge the muse. That's what we do to muses in the digital age. We recharge them. Bronte and Austen probably fed their muses with food celestial, but we recharge ours with caffeine and wi-fi. At least I do.

But today, instead of a quiet cafe and wi-fi, I have bored children and a messy house. The messy house is my fault, but the bored children is totally J's fault. He's at "guy's weekend" in Manassas for the weekend. Every five minutes I have to answer the following questions:

"Where's Daddy?"

Out at Mr S's house

"Whyyyyy???"

He's having a fun weekend to visit his friends

"But why does he have to go sooo long??"


Well, his friends live far away. We visit our friends too, right? But our friends live close by so we have short visits. But Daddy's friends live far away so he has to take a longer visit.

"Whyyyy??"

*sigh*

Not that I begrudge him the time. I really don't. These are good friends from college, and I love it that we are all still in touch. It's great to have friends that we've known since we first got married. It keeps us grounded. Gives us perspective. And besides, J always comes back feeling bad for having left me over the weekend with the kids all by myself and it's good for a few shopping trips without the kids in the next week or so ;) And oh yeah, he owes me a girly movie, too since I watched this one with him the night before he left. So I've got a girly movie night and at least two trips out without the kids coming to me in the next week. I can handle a day or two with bored kids and a messy house.

Oh yeah, baby!

*wipes away a tear*

This is it, people. This is why I homebirth. This is why I encourage other people to homebirth. This is why hospital births, no matter how "good", how peaceful, never quite cut it for me. This is why I cringe when people say to me, "But all that matters is a healthy baby, no matter how it gets here." I just don't buy it that the manner in which a child is born, the atmosphere into which he or she emerges into this world has no bearing on their future.

This is where it's at.

HT to Jill.

ps. don't worry, it's not at all graphic or gross

Super Cool Linkfest

A great series on cloth diapering-- informative and full of btdt advice! Simple Mom

An absolutely wonderful article talking about birth in the US, with lots of statistics and links to more technical articles as well. Those of you getting ready to have babies in American hospitals need to read this! Nursing Birth

A promotion by Burt's Bees-- they're giving stuff away every day this week :) You just have to check in at the right time to get one of 1000 lip balms each day. Burt's Bees

Some gorgeous new blog addictions for my fellow Antique/Shabby Chic lovers.

A la parisienne

Gosgrain

Mocking Bird Hill Cottage

There you go then, that should keep you all busy for a while :)

For Jeremiah and Ben, with love, remembrance and a LOL

Scroll

All

The

Way

Down...

to the last pic.


Not even the jungles of Honduras....

ROFLMAO

Oh man, do I have a treat for you guys today!

Go ye, get thyself a glass of wine and some chocolate. And a box of tissues. And then load up this page and read away. Best romance I've read in like, well... since the days when I was first enjoying Pride and Prejudice. Not that they're at all similar, it's just something about it. I predict this woman has a book contract in her future. You have to check this out. Your life will not be complete without the story of The Romance of Pioneer Woman and Marlboro Man.

Not a Post

A good friend from my high school days has recently (under pressure from me and S) taken up blogging. Today she has a post up that I really liked and since I'm totally smashed and still have MORE work to do before Sunday morning, I will, without further ado, send you there to check it out. All of you leave lots of nice comments and tell her how wonderful she is so she'll keep blogging, 'cause I never get to see her any more and the blog is the only way to keep up with their lives :)

Run-on, anyone?

Birth plans

In the same vein as an earlier post, here are some links to take a look at some birth plans that I recommend. Birth plans are an excellent way to help you communicate your wishes to your care providers. A birth plan can be helpful even if you are planning a home or birth center birth. I had a birth plan of sorts with both of my water births, although we never went as far as writing it up in a formal manner. Remember, if you are birthing in a facility, your birth plan is not a legal document guaranteeing you certain things, but it does help you and your birth support team (husband, friends, etc) when interacting with your care providers.


A site to help you build a birth plan


A friend's birth plan-- concise and comprehensive


The birth plan of a favorite blogger of mine; also simple and short

Back to Birth

An article I found recently on one of my new favorite birth blogs and an email from a friend asking for some info for a friend of hers got me all fired up about birth again this week. I've been collecting some links in a draft post for a while now and now I would really like to share them with you. Those of you who are new-ish readers and don't know me so well should be warned. I'd a radical about natural childbirth. These articles may clue you in on that....

You should be grateful

Cesarean Death stats

US Neonatal Death Rates

One woman's story reminded me so much of my births, I wrote this email to her and received her permission to link to her stories.

I just read your story of the birth of your precious daughter, Aurora Miranda (and then two sons), linking in from The True Face of Birth. I just wanted to say, what a beautiful, beautiful story and would you mind if I linked in as well? My first child was a posterior, asynclitic birth, just like your second son. And I, also, had the blessing of a homebirth and a midwife who trusts the birth process. After 35 hours of labor, my daughter was born with apgar scores of 9 and 10, a 15 inch head, a minor skid mark that didn't need stitching and no unnecessary interventions. I midwifed for five years in a state where homebirth is illegal and met many women like the those who assisted at your second birth-- women who were willing to risk all kinds of legal ramifications because they believe that every woman should have to opportunity to do this mighty thing-- give birth in her own way, in her own time and on her own terms. I am so glad that you were able to experience this. There is truly nothing like it.

Her first (medical) birth

Her first home birth

Her second home birth

Wedding Season is Upon Us

This is wedding week 1 for our little design business (no, the site's still not finished-- we've been too busy doing weddings! and having babies... and such) and I know that blogging will have to take a backseat to all the panic and stress that usually accompanies wedding week. I've been browsing through my archives and picking out my favorite Mommy-Posts-- the ones where I talk about being a mom and what it means to me and the things I'm learning about being a better mom. I'm going to post some of them to cover these busy days and keep my place marked in all y'all's Google Readers and such. It's good for me to re-read them and remember the things the Lord has been teaching me, and perhaps there are some moms reading that might enjoy a chance to Empathize :) If you've read them all already, bear with me. I'll be posting pics of the weddings and the whole process for the first time on our new My Sisters' Weddings blog! I know, I know!! I can hardly wait either!!!

New Review Up At Blissfully Domestic!

I forgot to post a link to my newest post at Blissfully Domestic! Here it is :) I'm talking about woman and relationships-- a topic dear to every woman's heart. Tell me what you think!

Dang, she's done it again

I've been convicted severely yet again by Conversion Diary's latest post about overcommitment. Wow. It's like she knows me and is writing right at me. Please someone go and read it and tell me if it hit you as hard as it did me.

Dealing with outgrown clothes

Kim asked for clothing storage tips.

Living in a small house with no closet space, my clothing storage suggestions are pretty much limited to "less is better!". But I do have one tip I'd like to share.

One of the problems I used to always run into was dealing with too small clothes as the kids grew out of them (at an alarming rate, I might add). I seemed to always be dealing with overflowing drawers filled with outgrown shirts, pants and pjs and the prospect of the afternoon spent sorting, washing, folding and packing away was daunting to say the least. And I could never find things afterwards when someone asked about hand-me-downs of a certain size or gender.

BUT. I have now developed a system! (yay for systems!) I store an empty Pampers box under the changing table, next to the dresser-- fits perfectly. In this box I stack the outgrown clothes when I put away the folded laundry. When the box is full, up it goes into the attic, with a label indicating the size range and season and which child the clothes came from.

Now when I need a box of hand-me-downs for a friend, or want to take some things in to consignment I know exactly where it all is and what size and gender is in each box-- no hassle! Organized clothes for the busy, organization-challenged mom!!

First of all, I'd like to thank..

Debbie and Anne and the two annon. followers. Yay! Thank you so much. You've saved what little dignity I have left from total annihilation. I appreciate it very much. I promise I will be updating my blogroll very very soon (or at the very least in May after the last of the weddings is over) and you will all be on it!!


Soooo. In other news... I just found out about a cool thing the Blissfully Domestic e-zine (which, if you remember, I've been doing book reviews for for quite some time now, although not quite on the weekly basis I anticipated) has started recently and I'm participating in their carnival with a post regarding their suggestion of tips for organizing clothes storage. Of course, organization of clothing not being my strong point, I only have one tip. Check it out here. And go here for more good ideas and here for tons of lovely reads!!

And the cute Judah-ism of the day...

"Jusa minit, Mama. I be wight dere!"

Later!