Okay, I think I have been told all the stories possible about their trip.  They’re still getting over jetlag, still trying to catch up to “feeling like home” again.  They’ve called all their friends, arranged all their get-togethers for the next couple of weeks until school starts again, have destroyed their previously Mom Busted Her Arse To Get Clean rooms.  Ah, life is back to normal!

Brett showed me the Google Earth images of where his dad and new (yup, #4) stepmom live – really quaint, really beautiful.  She’s an officer, I guess, so she has some good bucks to live off post, and it’s a gorgeous part of Germany they live in.  I really like Liz, I’m glad he found her – I think she’ll “young him up”… LOL!  Their Dad never wants to move back to the US, I guess…  After seeing the shops and castles and countryside on GE, I can understand why.  Incredible.  Like right out of a Cary Grant movie.  Yup, I wanna live in Europe somewhere beautiful like that.  London.  Venice.  Somewhere where the life is slower, the grass is greener, the people are nicer, on and on and on… I know it exists – I know people from lots of different countries, and they say it’s just so different there – PLEASANTLY different, I should add.  Oh well.  Maybe if we hit the lottery.  Or if Obama gets elected.  Whoops – did I say that out loud?

 Tonite is the test of Will the Boys Find Hidden Vegetables.  I’ve prepared my meatloaf (it’s yummy!) but have added a pureed mixture of green peppers, onions, carrots, and garlic.  I made it this morning so that they didn’t see me… Covert Cooking at it’s finest.

 

My SIL with cancer is staying at my mom’s house for the three weeks that she’s going to be receiving the radiation to reduce the tumor.  My other brother is driving in from Indianapolis tomorrow and we’re all heading over for pizza night.  I’m nervous, I just don’t know what to say to her.  I know if it were me, I’d just want everyone to get over it, laugh and love, have a good time, it is what it is.  But it doesn’t change my awkwardness or sadness at her illness, my brother’s loss of a wife of 28 years, her children’s loss of their mother, her grandchildren’s loss of a grandma that would read them stories and take them to the park.  It’s not fair.

That being said, I watched Dateline the other night about Randy Pausch, the famous professor who died of pancreatic cancer just a few days ago.  I cried for a man I don’t even know.  If you haven’t seen his lecture or read his story, please do (I’ve added it at the end of this post) – it will open your eyes to what is truly important in your world.  The man is incredible.  I need to remember his words when I hug my SIL tomorrow night.

And I also want to send prayers to all that are suffering an affliction, be it cancer, a simple cold, or a black heart.  TIme here is so short.  Live, love, and laugh – that is what is truly important.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo]

The Wordle.

Here’s a Wordle I made from Dr. Sears’ Attachment Parenting site… fun fun! Go on… you know you want to try one for yourself.

 

Here’s my blog as a Wordle…

Ahhh… therapy for the brain.

I laid in our bed last night, nursing Ayla quietly towards her sweet dreams, and between her musical little sounds of suckling I heard my toddler giggling while she sat on Daddy’s lap downstairs, being read her nighttime story and watching “just one more” Max and Booby (Ruby, to those that can properly form “r’s” when needed)… I listened to my teenager in the upstairs bathroom doing his nighttime routine, and chuckled as I evesdropped on the preteen as he talked to his fish, put his Legos on the floor ready to play today, and prepared for his night of blissful sleep, at home in his own bed.

My God, it’s good to have my family together again.  

Now I prepare for my day, to be regaled with their experiences and a few tales about traveling Germany and England and Italy… but I can’t help but stare at them when they don’t know I’m looking, loving them even more than I did last night.

Thank you, God, for giving me such perfect miracles to hold.  My life is truly incomplete without them all here by my side.

Things that make me want to pop a vein (in no particular order):

• POLITICAL CORRECTNESS BULLSHIT.  There’s too many examples to list on this bandwidth.
• Drivers who put their brakes on BEFORE putting on their signals.
• People who forward emails with “urgent” or “informative” crap – BEFORE they check Snopes to find out it’s all bogus.
• People who drive up the soon-to-be-closed lane on the freeway to try to merge in ahead of everyone else that waited.
• Tom Cruise.
• People that falsely think co-sleeping is either dangerous or a “bad habit”.
• Any loving parenting practice that is called a “bad habit”.
• Rude people in general.  It’s not hard to be nice.
• People that think their baby must have teeth to eat anything other than liquid blah from a jar.
  • (special note – you adults, tonite when you’re eating dinner, chew only with your front teeth – after all, that’s the only teeth babies have for quite a while!)
• Cyberbullies.
• People with 20 items in the 15 items or less lane at the grocery store. 
• Pre-teens in public places that disrespect the rules, just because they think they’re “cool”.
• Doctors who give parenting advice. 
• Ear zits.
• People that can’t get over breasts.  They’re not reproductive organs, they’re nothing – they’re there to feed my baby.  You say they’re sexual – well, so are toes to some people.  Doesn’t mean I get offended seeing bare feet.
• Barney.  You know, the purple monstrosity.
• Al Gore.  ‘Nuff Said.
• People with no kids that give parenting advice.
• Scientology bullshit.
• Misuse of there/their/they’re, hear/here, etc. etc. etc. ETC.!!!
• People who make fun of other people’s kids.  That is the definition of pathetic.
• Puberty.  Not for me.  I don’t remember it.  But for my kids.
• Migraines.
• People giving unsolicited parenting advice – I have four, trust me, I have it under control.
• Liberal media.
• Parenting books.  None were ever written about your specific child, therefore it won’t answer all of your questions…  They are better used for kindling, or to level that wobbly table.
• Scaremongering.  A rapist isn’t waiting in your bushes every minute of every day.  Get out and enjoy your life.
• Know-it-Alls. 
• Lymphedema.
• Slow drivers.  I have better things to do than sit in my car.  It’s the skinny one on the right, lady.
• Britney.  We’re over you.  Go away.
• “I could care less”.  This error is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.  If you can, then DO.  Please.
• Neighbors with no kids and no lives that mow their lawns 5 times a week, seemingly just to make my normal lawn look crappy.  I may go on a mowing strike – maybe they’ll do it for me.  They obviously have the time.
• Democrats.  ‘Nuff said there too.
• Morons on birthboards who toss about insults like they’re holier-than-thou.  Get a clue.  You’re an idiot and no one cares what you think.
• Grammatical errors in any newscast.  I’m sure the local news has my email on a “block” list because I like to point out their mistakes.  Not only spoken, but on the tickers and other words that go across the bottom of the screen.  Need a new editor?  Please call me.  I’m available.

Okay, I think that’s enough blood-boiling for a Tuesday!

Sigh… my boys were unable to make it home from Germany over the weekend.  I’m waiting by the phone today to see if they’re able to come in today.  They will be flying into Baltimore or Boston with someone, then flying by themselves here… I believe it’s about an 8 hour flight, so really, they’ll be here in two hours… LOL…

So we filled up the girls’ pool and spent the weekend in the beautiful sun.  Showing off some pics of my beautiful, perfect little ones:

Ayla must be waiting for her big brother to get home to truly crawl.  She’s been on all fours for quite some time, can go backwards, roll anywhere, and scoot forward… but I promised Justus I wouldn’t let her grow up until he got back. 

My SIL has opted for the radiation to reduce the size of the growing tumor in her brain, simply to make her last weeks here more comfortable.  I can’t imagine having to make such decisions for myself.  Whenever I get frustrated at my own life, making choices like what I have to cook for dinner, I think about Carol, and her choice to live a few more weeks.  Makes cooking meatloaf pretty ridiculous.

We had a cable, phone, and internet outage yesterday morning – I got laundry done, made 6 dozen oatmeal chocolate chip cookies from scratch, and even made French Onion soup from scratch for the first time – and it was delicious!  I’m trying to figure out if I can get the boys to eat it… Hmmm.  So, I need to have an outage once a week, I think – I got a lot done!

There’s so much in the news I could rant about, but frankly I’m not in the mood.  It’ll aggravate me, and I’m in too good of a mood realizing I’ll be holding my boys within the next 36 hours!  I’ll rant later in the week!

I’m getting so many hits on my new blog, and I’m thrilled.. this blog has some neat tracking software to it, and I can see that due to the amount of hits I’m receiving, I’m showing up in MANY more places…. so I’d like to thank those that visit and I hope that I’m either enlightening you or entertaining you!  

Now you’re forcing me to get more creative in my storytelling and think of other things to discuss rather than my wonderful family and infant feeding…

I moved the blog intially because my “Sane Rantings of a Bad Mom” received over 1000 hits in a very short time over on MySpace… so I figured it was so popular I should shoot it out to a broader audience, which I think I’ve attained – the hits are triple digits every day, coming from Google searches, internal weblog searches, message boards I’ve both heard of and never heard of, and word of mouth.

Again, I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to read my musings!

Someone sent me this email and I’m, to say the least, perturbed.

There recently was a death of a 98 year old lady named Irena.

During WWII, Iliana, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist.  She had an ulterior motive…  She KNEW what the Nazi’s plans were for the Jews, (being German).

Iliana smuggled infants out in the bottom of her tool box she carried, and she carried in the back of her truck a Burlap sack, (for larger kids).

She also had a dog in the back, that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto.  The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog, and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.  During her time and course of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.

She was caught, and the Nazi’s broke both her legs, and arms, and beat her severely.

Iliana kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out, and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard.

After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it, and reunited the family.  Most of course had been gassed.  Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes, or adopted.

 

Last year Iliana was up for the Nobel Peace Prize….

She LOST.

 

Al. Gore. won. for. a. slide. show. on. Global. Warming. 

 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Check it out: www.irenasendler.org

 

http://www.borstvoeding.com/voedselintroductie/blw/engels.html

Won’t he choke?

Many parents worry about babies choking. However, there is good reason to believe that babies are at less risk of choking if they are in control of what goes into their mouth than if they are spoon fed. This is because babies are not capable of intentionally moving food to the back of their throats until after they have developed the ability to chew. And they do not develop the ability to chew until after they have developed the ability to reach out and grab things. The ability to pick up very small things develops later still. Thus, a very young baby cannot easily put himself at risk because he cannot get small pieces of food into his mouth. Spoon feeding, by contrast, encourages the baby to suck the food straight to the back of his mouth, potentially making choking more likely.

Well, my sister in law was taken to the hospital last night.  My brother is not doing well.  Carol’s cancer is in her brain and is causing swelling.  It’s very possible she’ll never go home again.  All they can do is make her comfortable.  I cringe every time the phone rings today. 

Sigh.  Okay, on to cheerier things.  Ayla thoroughly enjoyed my bean soup yesterday.  I’m glad there’s at least one other person here that will eat it, no one else does!  Daddy also made some great steaks over the weekend, and Ayla mastered those now too.  I think now there’s nothing that she hasn’t enjoyed.  This is wonderful!  I wonder why some people go through so much trouble and thought to feed their baby – it’s frankly one of the easiest things in parenting.  Make dinner, feed them.  No steaming/baking/ pureeing/freezing/thawing/feeding.  Eh, whatever.  Right now there’s so many more important things in life to debate, more power to those that have the time to do all those steps.  I like my two-steps!

Autumn is having a blast with Justus’ old LeapPad.  I didn’t even know this thing still worked!  It has reading, math, songs, and more, and she’s really quite adept at using it.  She especially enjoys singing along with Mother Goose’s nursery rhymes.

Two more “sleeps” (as we explain to Autumn) until my boys come home.  I’m so anxious I can’t stand it.  I hope they call today to solidify the plans.  I guess Jim’s wife is flying them into Boston, and she’s going on to Arizona from there, leaving the boys to fly on their own to Columbus.  How exciting for them!  They’ll have the flight attendants wrapped around their fingers, I’m sure.  We haven’t thought much about what special “welcome home” thing we’re going to do – Carol’s situation throws a bit of a shadow over the celebration, we just can’t make solid plans until closer to the time they get here.

Hmm… I found a fun fun site yesterday while playing around – worth1000.com – it’s amateur and professional artists manipulating photographs – sooo much fun to browse – take a look!

Okay, I think that’s my rants for today.  Not too ranting, I know.

I am officially hooked on hiding these vegetables.  Tonight, a delicious cheese manicotti is on the menu.  I have simmered my beef and sausage with tomato sauce and spices, and have added my pureed paste of carrots, onions, peas, and garlic… and no one will be the wiser… yummmmmyyy!

Hiding the carrots and peas has been the easiest so far.  Also, hiding squash in mashed potatos.  My mommy said I can hide radishes in there too, but I haven’t tried that yet.  Green and red peppers in meatloaf, cauliflower in gravies, you name it… I think I have mastered it before the boys come home this weekend!

If anyone is a fan of Gordon Ramsay, you’ll note that he makes his gravy with pureed carrots, potatos, celery, and onions – cooked in the pan that the meat came in, strained and made into gravy.  The starchiness of the vegetables act as a natural thickener and add wonderful flavor to the gravy.  It works!

Sooo… now it appears I don’t have to deal with the “Justus eats peas, but not carrots, Brett eats carrots, but not corn, Autumn won’t eat anything orange this month, Hubby eats corn, but only on the cob” stuff… we love our veggies here, but out of six, there’s always one or two that doesn’t like a particular one, so I’m catering to different tastes…. well now they’re ALLLLLLL gonna eat everything, and not even know it. 

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