Friday, May 11, 2012

Feeling Fed Up

I have been fuming for the past few days over a few things that have happened this week. I kept thinking that it was pregnancy hormones that were causing me to have such a reaction to things that I normally stay out of but since I haven't calmed down much, I guess I need to vent a little!

Firstly, Amendment 1 actually passed in North Carolina!!! WTF?!?!? I can't even believe it!! I think of NC as being a fairly progressive state and I think of people has being generally evolved when it comes to basic human rights. I was wrong apparently and even though I don't live in NC, it just galls me to think that this horrible thing actually got enough votes to pass.

Next, President Obama did an interview and stated his opinion that he is in favor of same-sex marriage. I personally feel like this wasn't a politically motivated move since our country appears to be very divided on the subject. However, as the news is sometimes on in my house, I hear that he is being called a flip-flopper since his views on the subject seem to have evolved over time or that this was done as a political move to help garner more votes in November or how the vice-president forced his hand with a "flub" where he said that he was in support of gay marriage and how he has just cost Obama his re-election.

I feel like anyone who is threatened by same-sex marriage must simply be mis-informed. How does it effect anyone if a gay couple gets married? How will my life change or be effected if a man and another man get married? Will my taxes go up? Will I lose any benefits at work? Will my children be harmed in ANY way? No to all the above! Love and marriage isn't owned by the Christian faith and since marriage began as a contract made by a man and a woman's father, it doesn't seem like keeping marriage to its original intent is something we should really strive for!! Marriage today is supposed to be about two people who love each other and want a public commitment and contact protecting them and their children. That is what marriage is and I really don't give a crap if it is a man and a woman, a man and another man or a woman and another woman - love is love people!!!

Lastly, have you seen the new cover of Time magazine? It shows a woman nursing her toddler who is somewhere between 3 and 4 years old. The picture shows the side of the woman's breast and other than that she is covered. There is talk that sellers of Time will have to cover the cover to protect people from seeing the side of a breast. There is talk that parents will have to explain this cover to their children. There is talk of how inappropriate is it to nurse an older child. All this talk stems from the sexualizing of breasts in our society. Now, I will grant you that breasts are lovely, I certainly have on occasion worn something to reveal and enhance my breasts to get some attention, but sex is not what a woman's breasts are for (neither is the whole woman for that matter!) they are on our bodies to feed and nourish our children. Period!!

I am simply amazed at all the Facebook comments condemning a woman for feeding her child. Comments about how nursing shouldn't be done in public (because nursing is somehow a sex act?), how nursing should be discontinued when the child has teeth, or reaches a certain age, or my favorite - can "ask" for it. I think that this one is the most ignorant of them all. Babies know that they want/need to nurse from the moment of birth!!! They can scoot and root and find the breast all on the own when placed on a mother's belly immediately following birth. They "ask" for it when they cry, whimper, root around and nozzle. As they get older, they will begin to "ask" for it, by pointing or touching and as verbal skills improve they will come up with a word or sound that lets their mother's know that they are "asking" to nurse. So, when exactly, are these people suggesting that nursing cease??

I seem to have unknowingly surrounded myself with people who are fairly open minded and evolved so I was really shocked to see how many people are still so ignorant about children and their proper development!

Look around at the world, full of people who have anxiety disorders, eating disorders, relationship issues, obesity and all the other problems that plague our world. You don't think that how they were treated in infancy has anything to do with these issues? How can the first lesson you learned in life about how not to trust your parents because when you cried, they left you alone and scared, not effect your life?

Babies are not little aliens, they are human beings that will grow into adults. Why are they given any less consideration than anyone else? You can't raise a person who has good feelings of self worth when you treat them like their feelings aren't important. You can't raise a woman to know that it is never OK for her husband to beat on her when her own parents instilled in her as a child that there was a time and place when getting hit was OK!! You can't raise a person who feels strongly about equal human rights, when they as a child had none!!

OK, I am done ranting!! I just needed to get all that off my chest!!!

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Life At Home

I don't have this staying home stuff figured out yet and it is bugging me. When I was working I had this whole routine and everything got done, but now I feel like I am floundering a bit. It should be like a regular day once 10am rolls around and since I am sleeping until 7 or 8 in the mornings and by the time showers and breakfast are done it is 10, but I find myself thinking about things that need to get done when I am say, laying in bed the night before and then not thinking about them again until the next night as I am going to bed.

I am not remembering to drink my water as regularly, I am not remembering that I wanted to work on say diapers today until its too late. I need to do things that I normally did before but I somehow forget about them, like I was blogging at night and posting first thing in the morning, now I am blogging and posting in the middle of the day while Smug-Baby is napping, but I forget to catch up on my reader at the same time. It should be routine right? Blog and reader at the same time, just like before, but I forget!

I have found the time to watch most of what is on the DVR and other than that my days are just kind of floating along. I have things that I need to do, places I need to go, but I just don't feel like doing any of it or I simply forget that I need to do whatever it is.

It has been super hot in my house the last few days and I finally broke down and turned on the AC yesterday and it took until this morning for the house to cool down. Perhaps I am feeling so lethargic because I have been dripping sweat constantly for the last few days! Maybe now that the house is feeling more comfortable, I will get myself back into the right frame of mind and get some things done!!

Maybe this is a normal part of adjusting to not having a job, maybe it is normal to spend some time decompressing from one chapter in life before fully starting another.

 Maybe I am just huge and doing anything, like something as simply as picking up ant traps from Lowes seems like a major ordeal!

The weekend is going to full of fun things and I am looking forward to the Girl's Night Out with friends on Friday, so maybe I just need to give myself this week to veg out a bit and work on creating a new schedule for next week! Maybe I should just have some pizza and ice cream and watch soap opera's today and leave the washing of diapers until next week :)

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Divine Order

I have been struggling with something as this pregnancy draws ever closer to being complete. I truly believe that everything that happens in life happens for a reason and even the "bad" things that happen happen to bring a person to a better place. Meaning that even bad stuff happens for good reasons and if you look for it you can see the reason, the good in what happened.

I have been thinking a lot about Smug-Baby's birth and all the fear and pain and struggles we went through t get her home. I have fears that something bad will happen surrounding Little-Smug's birth too. I feel like I can't find the good in what happened with her birth and I don't look back at it and say "I learned..." or that by going through that with her made Smug-Hub and I stronger or that we appreciate her more than we would have.

I am afraid that perhaps I didn't learn what I should have learned for her situation and therefore I still have that lesson to learn and will be given an opportunity to learn it again by something bad happening with my son's birth.

I talked all this over with mom and she said that if nothing else, I learned that I could do hard. I had this horrible thing happen in my life, to my precious child, and I survived... we all did. We lived and we made good, strong decisions for our child and she not only got better, she thrives and is super strong and amazingly smart with no lasting effects (as far as we can tell) from having gone through what she did.

I don't want something to go wrong with my son's birth and I want his birth to be perfect, but if something does go wrong and we are thrust into another horrible situation, we will survive it and we will be stronger because if it.

I believe in divine order and that everything in life happens for a reason and I trust in that.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Life of Leisure!

So, here I am! A stay at home mom without a care in the world! A "kept-woman"! Living a life of leisure! OK, so totally NOT!!!!

I am sitting here blogging while Smug-Baby is napping. Blogging you say? Not napping myself? What is up?!?!? Well, I have been sleeping tell about 6:30 or 7 in the mornings so I am not nearly as beat by noon as I once was and I have less need for a nap. I spent yesterday's nap filing out all the online unemployment stuff and boy was that complicated! I hope that I don't screw it up!

I also spent my first day of unemployment doing laundry, cleaning the kitchen, working on diapers (finally finished refreshing all of them, so I just need to strip and wash them really well and they will be all ready for the little man). I also made a nice dinner and had the house looking all straight by the time we all went to bed.

Today, we have been to story time at the library and I have finished up some computer work and am blogging before lunch and a walk before the rain hits.

I only need to collect the trash and recycling and make dinner the rest of the day. I feel pretty good about things!

While I still have lots to do to get ready for the baby, I feel like by not getting up so early and going to work that I will have the energy to tackle them. It is very strange to me that something as small as just sleeping an hour or two more in the morning has already made such a difference in my energy level.

OK, I have to get back to eating bon bon's and watching trashy TV - just kidding :)