Confessional: I'm broken

This is something I've been debating about writing about for a long time. It is easy to write about others and issues, but not so easy to divulge personal crap that I'm going through. You see, I'm broken.

Biological Misfit. Accident-Prone. The Klutz. The Most Clumsy Graceful Person I've Known. The Doctor's Mortgage Payer.

These are all nicknames I've owned, and still own in the case of the Doctor, except I've moved on from his mortgage and payed for a kitchen remodel, a backyard and pool remodel, and his new "day driver" Beamer.

Since I was a kid, my brain has always been getting me in trouble with my body. I am a daredevil by nature and like to act first and think later when it comes to fun things. It started with things like tree climbing, and walking ON TOP of Monkey Bars and jumping off of things. From there it evolved into things like figure skating, skydiving, and skiing.

All that fun has come at a price, though. It broke me. Literally. A broken clavicle here, a fractured tibia there, and a stress-fractured back there. Nobody bothered to give me one piece of advice when I was younger, that I really could have used though.

Those injuries... they may heal and feel great at the time, but they leave things behind: Damaged nerves, scar tissue, and ARTHRITIS. So, when you get "old" all of those "little" injuries are going to take a physical toll on you. And by "old", I mean THIRTY (which I already am).

So, I'm broken. When I was a figure skater, I fractured a little bone in the bottom of my spine. I was about 14 and I did it while doing repetitive layback spins. (I also had a genetic predisposition to having this kind of fracture which I did not know before it happened.) Here's a photo of me doing these spins... (I mean Sascha Cohen doing an impersonation of me doing these spins):

Photo Courtesy: Tom Theobald

That little broken bone caused my spine to go on a migration. That migration happened for about six years until it finally caused enough havoc that a doctor told me to fuse it.

When I first had this problem, they told me that it was a very low risk that anything would happen due to the fracture. They said it was only a 10% chance it would develop into Spondylolisthesis, which is a progressive slip of the vertebra.  Even if that happened, it would be a relatively small risk that I would even need surgery.

As with every other circumstance, it seems I'm always the 1% or 2% or THE ONE person that will have a bad outcome. I developed Spondylolisthesis and it eventually progressed enough for me to quit figure skating at the age of 20 and have surgery.

Nowadays, if you had that fracture, they would fix it immediately. But, that was not the case "back then".

At the age of 20, this is what my spine looked like (or what it would have looked like if they did an artist's rendering of it):

Unfortunately, when things start migrating in your body, you start to get impingement on nerves and the nerves start to get stretched out. The muscles go crazy and start spasming to try and keep everything aligned.

When nerves get pinched for a long time, they become permanently scarred and damage. They continue to send signals to the brain that they are injured long after the injury has happened and healed.

I finally had the spine bones fused which reduced the pain into my legs by 95% and reduced the muscle spasms a lot, but not totally. So, surgery wasn't a fix-all solution for me, unfortunately.

I keep hoping that one day, I can have something done or do some kind of therapy that will undo the damage I did to my body. I see a chiropractor, I've done tons of physical therapy, had multitudes of injections and blocks, and tried experimental therapies.

I recently (two weeks ago) had a procedure which burns the nerves that sense pain around the vertebrae. It's called an RFA (Radio Frequency Ablation). Nobody told me that a certain percentage of people who have this procedure have increased pain and spasms for WEEKS after the procedure. Of course, I'm that person and I've been trying my best to just get through it here lately. I'm tired of laying in bed and missing out on life, though.

With all of this, people often wonder how and why I still do all of the activities I do! I'm going to get into that in my next blog post, but the short answer is, "My spine is stable and there is nothing I can do that will further injure it (except, apparently, procedures which are designed to lessen pain) and so keeping my back as healthy as I can and having fun lessens the pain."

If I could take it back (the figure skating) I would... but since I can't, here's a photo to enjoy that actually is me:

The Dreaded D Word

This morning I did it.

I dropped my kid off at the dreaded "D" word. Daycare.

Speaking of "D" words, I was in denial. I was in denial that what I was really doing was really "daycare".

I said to myself, "This is just Mother's Day Out at church. It's no big deal. Just a few hours so I can get a few things done and have a break."

I was wrong. It was daycare.

"Parents' Day Out" just started back up at my church two weeks ago for the Fall session. I was supposed to drop him off two weeks ago. On that Tuesday though, he had a little sniffle and a clear, runny nose. So I kept him home. The next Thursday, he still had the sniffle so I said, "I'll keep him home till NEXT Tuesday. By then, he'll be just fine and he can start then."

Then, the next week came. I was having a lot of anxiety about having this procedure done on my back the following day. The Husband didn't have to do anything that day so he offered to watch him instead. Then, Thursday came again and I was having such a hard time recovering that I couldn't lift him at all. So, The Husband watched him again.

Well, here we are again. It's Tuesday, two weeks after "Parents' Day Out started and I finally dropped him off. The whole time I kept thinking, "This is just like Sunday School. It's going to be fine." I imagined a Utopia setting kind of like this (except my baby is smaller and he doesn't wear shoes) where my baby would get one on one attention and learn all kinds of things among all of the other babies:

Then I got there.... and there were quite a few babies and less workers than are present during Sunday School. It hit me: My baby is going to "daycare".

For me, "daycare" is this scary word that fills me with terror. It's a place where your kids go and pass germs around. Your kid may have to sit in a poopy diaper longer than normal because the line at the diaper station is long. They may not get to be scooped up right away if they're upset because there are only so many arms to pick up little, crying babies. They might cry because they're hungry and it won't be time to let them eat. They might just cry all day long and nobody will care because it isn't their kid.

This morning I felt like it was more like this:

I even felt like I should stay and help out. I kept asking if they needed help and if they were going to be okay.

But,  I'm proud of myself because I got over it and left. I trusted them and trusted that they had things under control. I'm sure it only looked scary because I was dropping him off for the first time and was a "wee bit" anxious.

I know that this is just the first in a long line of things my baby will do to become independent. Going to this program twice a week will give him other ideas of how to play with toys and how to interact with kiddos his age. He'll also hopefully learn that other people can meet his needs in different ways than Mommy and that is okay. Hopefully, it will also give me some confidence that his world will not end if he's not attended to with every need as soon as it happens. People call that patience I think.

So, I did it... and he crawled right in and started playing with a toy I had not seen before and never looked back. I'm so glad he's able to take these first steps in an environment he's already comfortable with, at our home church.

Now, excuse me while I try to distract myself and resist the urge to just go get him right away and destroy his opportunity for learning patience.

Why I Chose to Cut My Boy

Recently, there has been a lot of go 'round in the media about parents circumcising their boys. It all started in March of 2011 when San Francisco decided to BAN a parent's right to choose whether or not they could cut their little boys and hippies and others alike rejoiced and said, "LET them STAY the way they were BORN! Stop the useless CUTTING on the village children!". Or something like that.

Anyhow, October 1st, 2011 we made the decision to cast aside the risks and get our newborn baby's penis cut.

It wasn't an easy decision. I did research. Research that is finally making its way back into the media. You see, I read a preliminary study that said that boys and men who are circumcised have a MUCH less chance of contracting HIV. More about that later.

I'm not really into hurting babies or potentially harming them. However, when something can be done that could potentially save the life of my child (or seriously impact their quality of life), I take note and weigh the risks. My husband and I have done the same thing with vaccines.

The vaccines were an easy sell for me. About 10 weeks into my pregnancy with The Baby, my husband caught the whooping cough and gave it to me. We were both so violently sick with cough that we both thought we would die. We both thanked GOD it had not been the following year when we would have had a baby infant. That showed me how important it was to get vaccines. There's a reason why those illnesses need vaccines and I didn't want to take chances.

I still hate the thought of The Baby having a serious reaction to vaccines and something bad happening. But whooping cough (and other diseases like measles) that were almost eradicated, are making such a comeback that they've killed more children this year than they EVER did before the vaccines. Credit that for the amount of world travel that exists now and the scares that vaccines causes Autism (which has been disproved a hundred times over but it was so prevalent in the media that it still persists today).

Anyhow, the current rates of circumcision in the United States are about 58 percent. Eighteen states do not cover the procedure under Medicaid. But, I think that's about to change. The research I did before my baby had the procedure is finally coming out in a panel judgement. The panel of doctors from the CDC determined that the health benefits of circumcision outweigh the risks. There is clear evidence that circumcision helps prevent the spread of HPV and HIV. This story from NBC talks more about the results.

 As a parent I do not want to ever think about my child having sex. I'm just coming to terms with the fact that he has even discovered his genitals. But, one day it is going to happen. I pray that it is with his wife on their honeymoon and he never has to worry about those 3-letter diseases. But, if it doesn't go that way, I'm trying to do my part to protect him from what I can... from whooping cough to HIV. Of course we cannot get around the fact that the Bible called for circumcision in the Old Testament as a necessary procedure to become "clean". Although Jesus said it is not necessary for Salvation, perhaps the Old Testament has more relevant instructions to live by today than we realize.

I just want to say in closing.. these are my own personal reasons.  Whatever yours are, I just hope you have done your research before deciding to cut or not. I see both sides of the issue, and we parents should still be given the right to choose.

Delete This Post When Baby Can Read

In the past couple of weeks, something has happened.

And I've been delaying writing about it.

You know how baby books have those spaces in them for things like "Discovered Hands!", "Discovered Toes!", and "Can Grasp an Object!"?

Well, there's no entry in there for "Discovered and Grabs Genitals"!

But, guess what... just like every other milestone, it happens. And just like every other milestone, once it happens, they don't unlearn it.

In addition to not having an entry in a baby book for this milestone, nobody prepares you for this moment! At the last check-up with my pediatrician, she failed to ask me, "Has your baby discovered his penis yet?" She also failed to prepare me on how to handle this "milestone".

It happened for the first time a few weeks ago while I was changing The Baby's diaper. After I took his diaper off, he immediately reached down and grabbed IT. And then he laughed. And repeated it. And repeated laughing. And then he repeated it every single time I have taken off his diaper since then. And in the bath. And any other time he has access to IT.

Since he's only 10 months and just learning to label things, I told him what it was. But, now I am scared I might have said what it was too much. Or maybe I'm looking at him grabbing IT too much. Or maybe I'm not doing anything properly in regards to this matter.

So, I did what any fearful first-time parent would do: I Googled what the proper etiquette is regarding a baby's gender-bits. Be forewarned, if you do this... be VERY careful what you put into the search box. People are sickos. Anyhoo, the article told me to tell him what IT is in the proper words (ie. the P word and V word since I'm trying to avoid said sickos searching and finding my blog), never tell him "No" regarding touching IT and instead tell him it is private, and he needs to only touch IT when he's in a private setting, and that nobody else can touch it except mommy and daddy.

Well, that was really informative. Except... The Baby is not even a year old. He understands about 50 words and "Private" is really a concept that escapes him. Believe me, I tried to explain this regarding my use of the bathroom... and it didn't work! Also, how many times should I label this thing? His first real word that he uses without fault in the proper context is "Dog" (only it sounds like Dogmm). We barely ever even used that term. It was always "Puppy" and "Bear" as that's our dog's name. However, somehow he picked up the word "Dog" and it stuck. So, I'm pretty sure I do NOT want his second word to start with a P!

The article also did nothing to calm the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. My baby knows and likes to touch his IT. There is no going back. From this point onward, as in every man's life, that will be the center of his thinking in a short decade.

I can't believe my precious newborn baby is almost a year old. This milestone has been the first one that has really knocked me down into a little depression. I know that he was headed for this point from the moment he was conceived, getting older every day. But all I thought about back when he was a newborn was how I wanted him to be raised, not the fact that he was going to be raised and get older SOON.

People talk about how quickly the first year goes by and that it gets even faster after that, but you have no idea how quickly that really happens until you're an adult and in that situation. Days are chocked full of chores and things that HAVE to be done to maintain the household when you have a baby. It is really mind-bending.

This "IT" issue really got me thinking that once he does understand the word "Private" we are going to have to have some ongoing conversations, you know, the tough ones. As a parent (at least a decent one), you know one day that is going to happen but when they are a newborn it is literally the furthest thing from your mind (once you get over the novelty of having to clean those parts). This new discovery makes it all so real and scary to think about!

So, there is only one solution and that is to have another and just ignore the privates on this one! Just kidding. Sort of. Not really. I now know why that Duggar woman keeps having them. Anyhow, the real solution, I guess, is to embrace his getting older and concentrate on the ways he has grown. I need to also think about the future conversations and how and when we will give him information about his "IT". And keep that friggin' diaper snapped tightly.

My ADD is Kicking In.. Just STOP!

I can't tell you how many times a month I hear that phrase from someone. "Sorry, My ADD is kicking in." It drives me crazy! I want to shake the person and say, "You have no idea what it is like to live with ADD or ADHD so take accountability and just stop thinking about whatever you're letting your mind wander to and pay better attention!"

You see, The Husband really does have ADD. It hasn't been formally diagnosed, but since I have lived with him for 4 years, I consider myself a reputable source. Hey, I once told The Husband's Father that he had Type 2 Diabetes and he needed to go to the doctor immediately. His blood sugar was at around 600 when he saw the doctor (normal is 80-110). I also told my high school boyfriend that I thought he had appendicitis and needed to go to the emergency room. He had an appendectomy 12 hours later. I've had enough Pre-Med, Emergency classes, and interest in Medicine to know the symptoms of some major illnesses and know when someone needs to see a doctor.

My husband needs to see a doctor about his ADHD. He knows it. I know it. His MOM knows it. My family knows it. Pretty much anyone who has ever spent any time with him KNOWS it. 

However, getting him to go is a whole other problem. This weekend he did surgery on his own toe. His toenail was badly ingrown and became infected. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you he spent AT LEAST 10 hours operating on it before he conceded it was something he "may not be able to treat himself". One look at it myself and I knew there was no way I could even help him. It was literally buried between the folds of his toe at the nail line at least a half inch deep. I told him the only way I could fix it for him was to go to UT and get a scalpel from a dissection kit and use some Orajel on it. That's when he decided to go to the doctor. (As you can see, I have my ways of getting him to come to conclusions on his own.)

ADHD or Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder usually manifests its worst symptoms in childhood and adolescents*. Kids have to be at least 4 years old to be diagnosed. Right now about 10% of kids are being diagnosed with ADHD, a figure that has risen in the past 10 years (more about that later). 

In order to be diagnosed with ADHD, your child must exhibit at least 6 of the symptoms below for at least 6 months, in MORE than 2 settings. This helps rule out the diagnosis in cases where a child is bored or doesn't like school or where their homelife isn't good which creates bad behaviors. Here are the symptoms:

* Are in Constant Motion

* Squirm and Fidgit

* Do Not Seem to Listen

* Have Difficulty Playing Quietly

* Often Talk Excessively

* Interrupt or intrude on Others

* Are Easily Distracted

* Do Not Finish Tasks

I really was able to solidify "My Diagnosis" of The Husband after I found all of his report cards from Elementary School. His teachers constantly wrote remarks that reflected every one of the symptoms above throughout all of his years. On every one of his standardized tests, he scored extremely poorly (10% or below) on anything that required listening or intense concentration. In other areas he scored mostly above average, showing that he was really intelligent but had listening and concentration issues. When I found these, I immediately understood my husband better and began to try and get him to get treatment for his problem. 

After finding these, it has taken a year of "working it" to get The Husband to really believe and understand he even has ADD, much less ADHD. I have seen him struggle so much and my only goals are to make his life easier and help him deal with his ADHD better. Recently, I told him how the ADHD is impacting our family and how I'm afraid it will impact our family as The Baby gets older. 

Sixty to seventy percent of kids diagnosed with ADHD as children will continue to have problems with it as adults. I really believe this shows that it is not being over-diagnosed. Here are the ways in which ADHD manifests in adults:

*Chronic Lateness and Forgetfulness

*Anxiety

*Low Self-Esteem

*Employment Problems

*Difficulty Controlling Anger

*Impulsiveness

*Substance Abuse or Addiction

*Poor Organization Skills

*Procrastination

*Low Frustration Tolerance

*Chronic Boredom

*Difficulty Concentrating When Reading

*Mood Swings

*Depression

*Relationship Problems

Adults with ADHD are more likely to have:

*Had a history of poor educational performance or be underachievers

*Had more frequent school disciplinary actions

*Had to repeat a grade 

*Dropped out of school more often

*Change employers more often and perform poorly

*Have fewer occupational achievements

*Have a lower socioeconomic status

*Have driving violations and others rate them as having poorer driving habits

*Use illegal substances more frequently (self-medication!)

*Smoke Cigarettes

*Have more marital problems and multiple marriages

*Have higher incidence of separation and divorce

So about 5-6% of adults have this disorder and if it is left untreated, there are obviously very horrible consequences to both the individual and their family. Sadly, this disorder is really on the rise in the South and Midwest (and it is not just that we are getting better at diagnosing unlike in the case of autism). Recent studies suggest two serious reasons why ADHD is on the rise:

1.) Pesticides (makes sense because kids in the South and Midwest are most likely to be near farms)

2.) Early Childhood TV Watching (Due to long winters in Midwest and Socio-economic status, this makes sense too)

The pesticides and TV along with the genetic component are the reasons why we switched our diet to mostly ONLY Organic and why we won't let our child watch TV till he's older. We are trying to do our part to make sure that he has the best chance at not having ADHD.

However, it is too late for The Husband concerning getting ADHD. If you know The Husband very well at all, you would know that he has had problems with every single one of these things listed above except using illegal substances, thank the Lord. He was thankfully able to kick his addiction to chewing tobacco, but still craves it every single day.

After educating myself and others on why he has these issues and how his ADHD manifests, I have so much sympathy for him. He has really done his best to overcome this on his own.

Could you please join me in praying for The Husband and our family in this issue? Also, if you or someone you know has adult ADHD, could you share your stories publicly or privately to encourage him!?

And the rest of you.... the ones who keep saying, "My ADD is kicking in," please stop saying this! The only reason you are distracted and aren't listening is because you're trying to multitask and STUDIES SHOW that multi-tasking is really impossible. All you're doing is quickly switching between tasks and one of the tasks (or both) is going to suffer because of it. So, if you're trying to have a conversation with me, get off of facebook, close your phone, or do whatever else you need to do to have a proper conversation. Or show me your Ritalin script and I'll be sympathetic. ;)

*All facts and statistics listed that are not linked to an outside source are courtesy of www.webmd.com.

How I Folded my Paper Towel Habit!

A couple months back I wrote about my love and addiction for paper towels. And how my husband burned me with the comment, "You cloth diaper, but you still use paper towels!"

I was using about $10.00 a month in paper towels because they were easy, absorbent, and a little soft, blankety comfort I had always had growing up in my own house. Don't let that blankety softness fool you though, they are made from paper. Paper is made from trees or other fibers, and it takes quite a few processes to make trees into blankety softness. He was right.. it was time to change my ways. $10.00 a month is $120.00 a year for a bunch of BLEACHED processed trees.

Here in the good ole USA, we are currently the top user of paper towels. In fact, we use 50% more paper towels than all of Europe combined. Europe has about 738 million people living in it. The United States has about 350 million. So we have half as many people here and use twice as many paper towels. Using my mad math skillz, that comes out to the average person here uses four times as many paper towels as someone in Europe.

So, environmental issues aside, we are just really trying to make our own family become sustainable. By "sustainable", I mean living off the grid. We're slowly getting there, but paper towels were seriously one of the things I didn't think I could get rid of. My love for blankety softness ran deep. I could imagine myself living off the grid and having to go make a trip to a Wal-mart because I NEEDED to stock up on these things, despite their bulk and lack of storage ease.

Instead of outright going cold turkey on the PT issue, I researched paper towel alternatives for weeks on end. I looked at everything from bar mops, to cloth diapers (Okay, maybe I just looked at cloth diapers to look at cloth diapers), to birds-eye cloths. I even thought about somehow rolling bar mop towels up on a dispenser. In the end I couldn't find a suitable alternative.

That's when I realized my addiction to blankety softness was indeed more than a physical need to have something available to clean up spills. It was a psychological addiction. Nothing I researched was good enough to replace the convenience of buying something to clean stuff up with and then throwing it away. I was addicted to the thought that I don't like using cloth to clean up spills.

So, I let myself buy that one last package of Bounty (Never the Select-a-Size) Paper Towels. And felt guilty. Very guilty. In fact, I got the third degree by The Husband when I brought it home. I tried defending myself. It didn't work. If I was going to make a change, I would have to do it within myself.

I thought about the reasons again why I don't like using cloth to clean up spills. Here they are:

1.) I don't like cleaning up a mess with something that is dirty. (Aka a cloth that has already been used.)

2.) I HATE doing laundry.

3.) Cloth is not nearly as absorbent as paper towels it seems.

4.) I don't like streaks. 

5.) Paper Towels make AWESOME napkins.

After thinking about the reasons why I was psychologically opposed to cloth towels, I thought about solutions to those problems.

Perhaps if I had enough towels that I could easily use a clean one every time I needed one, then I wouldn't have to use a dirty cloth to clean up. I already do a boatload of laundry. What if I actually got on top of the laundry problem and always had the washer empty and could throw the dirty towels in there? Then, maybe I could use a special bucket beside the washer if it is full. With cloth diapers you quickly realize the solution for absorbency is two-fold: material makes a difference and you can in NO WAY use ANY softener on it or it reduces absorbency. As far as the streaking goes, I could possibly find a cloth that doesn't leave streaks. The realization that I needed to buy some everyday cloth napkins was slow to come, but I finally realized that I couldn't solve my paper towel problem with JUST ONE solution. I needed several different cloths for different things.

When I got to the final solution, it came with a realization: THE reason why I was so addicted to Paper Towels was because they were literally a "one-size fits all" solution to many cleaning problems. I couldn't expect to go back to the basics and replace the paper towel with a different "one-size fits all" solution.

So, now I have an arsenal of cleaning cloths. For around $25.00, I replaced my paper towel habit with 12 cloth napkins, a dozen bar mops and various kitchen towels, 2 microfiber towels for cleaning streaks, and several sponges which I only use on dirty dishes and put in the dishwasher every day. 

My husband is very happy with me. I'm happy for myself that I kicked the habit. 

Now, my next challenge is to think about Family Cloth.. I don't know if I can psychologically get over this one. But, I may try.

Why I have been SILENT

A couple of months ago, I decided to make a pact with myself about blogging. Remember my post on how I'm an awful sinner and a terrible wife?? Well, I decided to work on that. I asked God to give me a pure heart when it came to serving my husband. One of the things I felt called to do was to put my husband (and thus household) first in everything I do. I was frequently guilty of doing what I wanted to do all day long and I put things I hated to do (laundry, dusting, etc) off as long as humanly possible.

Well, that wasn't working for our family anymore. (Sidenote: It was never all good with The Husband.. he strongly disliked it)  I no longer have the leisure of doing laundry at midnight if I choose. Some little angel wants to go to bed about 9 o'clock every night and since I'm his human pacifier, I get to go to bed too.

Anyhow, God pulled on my heartstrings and answered my prayers about becoming a better wife and mommy. In the meantime though, I chose to give up blogging (and pretty much every other fun thing I ever have done) until I could get my house in order and get my spirit right. THREE MONTHS LATER, God is laughing and I have realized that one of these things is an impossible goal. My house, so long as I ever live in this particular one, will NEVER be in perfect order and all clean and straightened at one time.

Recently, my husband posed the question: Why can't every room of our house ever be clean and straight at the SAME time? Thankfully, for him, he did not pose it in a derogatory way (or I would have offered to cut out his eyeballs so he would never have to see the clutter again)! About the same time, we measured our house's square feet for insurance purposes. Before I go on, I must make a public decry:

OUR HOUSE IS NOT 650 SQ. FT. as I have often touted. Because of the addition and the laundry room, it is 734. So, I stand corrected. Sorry.

Back to the husband's question.. It is really a multitude of reasons. So I have developed this handy dandy flow chart in order to solve every husband's wondering of this same question:

So, I realized something important through all of this. I need to put my husband first, but I still have to take care of me. So, now that my heart is in the right place and I'm actually feeling good when I serve my family and want nothing in return, I feel good about resuming blogging. Here we go again... WEEEEE!

P.S. Lest you think I've forgotten, I'm still a horrible sinner. The difference is, since I'm a Christian I gotta WERK (Cover Girl!) on all the things I'm doing that are sinning..

Not MY child!!!

Today, my MOther-In-Law and I spent a fabulous day together. We didn't do anything too outrageous, unless you call going to Cracker Barrel crazy! We pretty much just spent the whole day talking and visiting afterward on her porch veranda overlooking the Smoky Mountains. While we were there we were discussing parenting philosophies and it really got me thinking about what the future might hold for us!

 What got us started on that was her very sweet offer to take The Baby for us one day a week while we tend to our own relationship or errands we need to run. I told her that I'm glad she offered but right now I can't leave him for more than a few hours because he's still nursing. I also told her that The Husband wasn't too keen on leaving him there because of their tendency to feed The Baby's 2 and 6 year old cousins Diet Coke, McDonald's, Slushies, and anything pure sugar. Considering our new trend for eating and growing organic, we might just die if he ended up demanding chicken nuggets.

 Anyhow, Momma D told me how she used to get nervous anytime her boys (my dear husband and his older brother) went somewhere with their dad, Big E. She said he used to take them to the flea market and he would get so engrossed in what he was doing, he would practically forget the boys even came with him. She said that they would take off on their own and roam the flea market, unsupervised at very young ages (perhaps around 6 and 8). She says it is a wonder nobody kidnapped them.

 I told her nobody probably kidnapped them because they were such troublemakers. She glanced at me with a quizzical look and I began telling her one of those "secrets" a husband tells his wife about from his childhood. My husband told me at anytime they went anywhere, their first priority was to go into the restroom, always unattended. They would then destroy every single thing they possibly could in there: unrolling all the toilet paper onto the floor, trying to clog the toilets, flooding the sinks, and pretty much anything else little boys could think was fun (and disrespectful) to do.

Then Momma D got this faraway upset look in her eyes. She finally realized just what it was her "angels" had been doing their whole childhood, in the restrooms. It was if I had just told her Santa Claus didn't exist. She then said,"OOOOh, I TOLD Big E to go in and check on them EVERY time we went somewhere. I would always tell him that they had been in there forever and ask him to go see what they were doing! He would always tell me if they weren't out in another minute, he would go get them. But, sure enough, they would always come back before he checked on them." she told me that she had always wondered just what it was they were doing in there that took so long. She would have blistered them if she had known.

While she was telling me this, you could see the combined look of horror and disappointment, not only with her boys but with herself. If only she would have known, she would've stopped it. And how could she have such "evil" children, as she put it! It really got me thinking about a mother's love for her children. No matter what your kids do or how they disappoint you, they will always be loved. I thought about all of the wrong things I've done, that I intentionally hid from my parents.

I was a really troubled teen and I did a lot of pretty awful stuff, some illegal, and some definitely immoral. Yet, I know, had my mom known about all of this, she would probably had the same reaction as Momma D had today: intense disappointment, some shock, but still claim her love.

That got me thinking about my Father's love for me... No, not my human father (although I'm sure he'd share a similar reaction as my mom). I'm referring to our Heavenly Father, God. If he only loved us as much as our human mother, then it is enough to love us despite our greatest sins. For even a mother of a serial killer will still claim to love her son.

 Deuteronomy 7:9 states (NIV):
Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, He is the faithful God, and keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations who love him.

 1 John 4:7-11 states:
Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God, knows God. Whoever does not love, does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed love among us: he sent his one and only son into the world that we may live through him.

I think that this is the kind of love only a parent could give. That God loves you so much that he will overlook the ways you fail Him because of love. It is not the kind of love you can earn, for no matter how many things I hid from my parents, it wouldn't make them love me more. (which is pretty good since I wish you luck in hiding anything from God's eyes).

There is no doubt that I have that God-love for my son and also for my spouse and definitely for my parents. I overlook any of their faults because I know that, in whole, they love me despite my own faults. But, I have to admit, curiosity has me wondering what faults I will soon be looking over in my own son... What things he might do behind my back that I will love him in spite of.

In fact, when you think about it, loving your kids is a pretty good mirror to God-love. I know one thing is for certain... My kids will NOT be going to the restroom unattended anytime soon!

My REbirthday!

First, sorry I've been inactive the past week! Last Tuesday was my BIRTHDAY! Woot! So, I had a post for that day but didn't get around to posting it. I've been wanting to post this for awhile, but it is taking me some time due to the emotional nature of it. This is definitely the hardest post I've ever written, but one that I've been promising you for months.. so here goes...

 Birthdays are an amazing thing to celebrate.... I think we get a "little" spoiled here in the States, recently. In fact, the past 200 years have been considered "the years that changed the world" by some. You see, if you were born in 1809 or before, the average life expectancy was FORTY years old. Can you imagine that? It is not that a lot of people were dying off at the age of 40. It is just that due to disease and the dangers of childbirth, a LOT of children and mothers died. Also, deadly diseases that we now vaccinate against killed thousands of children annually.

 Imagine the fear in a mother's heart when she was about to give birth, knowing that there was a good chance she or her child, or both, might pass away. Imagine the fear in a parent's heart whenever a fever came to call or a strange rash. So, birthdays were definitely a big thing to be celebrated! You or your children or parents had lived another year, despite the odds!

 Now, birthdays don't seem to mean much, other than a quick look at the actual date you were born and some candles on a cake (or in my case, some rice at the Hibachi restaurant). But, for me, my birthday is so much more. You see, it is also my REbirthday...

 The year 2008 was a really tough year for my family. In the midst of a separation and pending divorce from my first husband, my parents and sister came to visit me in Knoxville to celebrate Christmas 2007. For some reason, my mom wasn't feeling well. She was having pains in the middle of her upper back and some nausea. I was concerned she needed her gallbladder taken out.

 For some reason, I decided not to go to the hospital with my mom, although that is typically something I would have done. Anyway, I got a call from my mom and dad. It was "THE CALL". The one you seriously dread. When you can hear and feel the sickness and dread from the person before they've barely said, "Hello." My dad said, "Daughter, your mom's got a tumor on her pancreas and they saw some shadows on her liver. They don't know what it is yet, but she needs immediate surgery on her gallbladder." Then, my mom was put on the phone and she was not calm. She was crying and I could hear the panic in her voice.

 I remember that hospital visit and her surgery and the visit with the surgeon as one big, messy, nauseating blur. I could barely eat after they told me it did look like cancer when they put the gallbladder stent in, but that they'd have to do a biopsy to be sure. I remember meeting with the pastoral staff and them telling me, "She's not dead yet. Don't mourn her before she is gone." I remember going to the chapel and outright SCREAMING at God for over an hour. "How could you DO THIS?! I NEED MY MOM RIGHT NOW!"

 The next two months passed by very quickly. We went with my mom to Mayo Clinic where they basically told her there is nothing we can do. Go home to die. Anyone who has heard about Pancreatic Cancer knows the death sentence that it currently is. The 5-year survival rate is 5%, and those are only when they catch it incidentally at Stage 1 or 2. My mom had stage 4.

 In April, after a couple rounds of chemo, my mom was hospitalized. She had some swelling and they were doing some tests to see what was going on. I remember having to leave the hospital to fly back to Tennessee and my mom saying, "Daughter, is it really time to go already? I feel like you just got here." If I had known what those words and tests meant, I never would have left.

 A couple days later, I got a call from my mom and dad. They said that while the preliminary testing had shown the cancer going away on her liver, it had just moved. It was now in her breast tissue and she was taking on fluid. My mom was about to have a live-saving procedure, paracentesis, to take the fluid off her chest. The last words she said on the phone were, "Daughter, just pray for me." But, I didn't know how. Instead, I prayed for me, that I would not lose my mom.

 I quickly rushed to Florida to see my mom but by the time I got to the hospital, she was mostly unconscious. It was very disturbing to see my mom dying. We helped get her ready to go home and into hospice care. The next week would be roughly the worst days I've ever had.

 That Sunday, when we got my mom home, I called out to her, "Mom, we're home now. You can just rest." I said it a couple of times but she didn't seem to notice as she was mostly unconscious. Then, one of the EMTs who helped transport her, settled her in and said, "Terri, we've brought you home now, dear." My mom opened her eyes and said, "Woohoo!" I said, "Of course she would respond to you since you're from England and have an English accent.. that is so typical." My mom was a huge Anglophile, having visited Europe many times and loved their culture. It was as if God showed me that my mom was still my mom and was still in there. She was just in transition...

 On Tuesday, my sister asked her preacher, Father Tom, to come visit the home and pray with us. We all gathered around my mom's bed and prayed. Then, Father Tom told a beautiful story of how death mimics birth. He said that when you are a baby in your mother's womb, you are warm and comfortable and although you get certain glimpses of the world beyond (your mother's voice, the outside light), you have no idea what it is like.

 Then, one day, after some pains, you are born into the outside world! When that happens, you are comforted by your family and grow up. And once you're in the outside world and have experienced all of the love and comforts of being with your family, you could never want to go back and never COULD go back to the world you knew previously.

 He said that passing away is a similar process. You occasionally have glimpses of heaven here on Earth (God's grace, beauty) but that you really can't imagine what heaven will be like. And then, one day, through maybe some pains, you are in heaven. You are filled with the love of your heavenly Father and comforted by Him and your family in heaven. And once you are there, you could never want to go back and never COULD go back into the world you knew previously. When Father Tom spoke those things with such assurance, I knew that I wanted to feel that assurance too; to know that I would go to heaven and be comforted and see my mom again. That day planted the seed for my becoming a Christian.

 The next few days drug on hopelessly. I hated the in-between part that my mom and all of us were experiencing. Her organs were shutting down, but yet, she was still living despite having had no food or water in days. After a week passed, I began to beg God to take her. I knew that it was inevitable, but yet, it seemed that it would never happen.

 Then, on Sunday morning, she opened her eyes and shed a few tears while we rushed in and held her hands and told her we loved her so much. When that happened, I just couldn't take it anymore. My sister and I ended up in a stupid fight over something entirely pointless, caused by the stress of it all.

A short time later, my dad came and knocked on the bedroom door telling me the nurse felt the time was drawing near. We all gathered around my mom's bed and placed our hands on my mom. As she took her last few breaths, we told her how much we loved her and would miss her. We held onto each other, crying desperately, knowing the end truly was near. I pushed her pain medicine button a few times just to make sure she was in no pain. I remember the tears dropping from my face onto her face as I leaned over to press the button. A short time later, my mom was gone. My best friend, my biggest supporter.

 My dad planned my mom's funeral arrangements and because my mom was cremated, we had more of a "celebration" of my mom's life. Not even thinking, my dad had planned that memorial ceremony to take place on my birthday, of all days. Even more horrific to me, at the time, was that I had planned to speak at my mom's service (along with my sister and aunt and dad) and when my turn came up, it was literally the same time I had been born, 27 years prior. Thinking about my mom passing and having her service on my birthday was very unsettling for me, of course.

 Although a lot of the memorial service was a blur, I do know that I gave my life to Christ that day. I wanted to be sure that I would see my mom again and know that I would feel not only her comfort, but my Father's comfort. It took several months, and repeated times of me asking for forgiveness of my sins at the alter (why is it so hard to believe we have been granted forgiveness?!) before I knew I was truly saved. But, that April 24th was not just my annual birthday. It was my REbirthday as well.

 I think sometimes that it is very sad that my mom had to pass away in order for me to find and know the comfort of my Jesus. But, how many million times more sad was it for God to send his son to die for all of us so that we may find comfort in salvation? Even though I miss my mom terribly and I went through a deep depression when she passed, I thank God that He changed my life through this circumstance. I thank God that I got to be born again that day in 2008. I thank God that he sent his son to pay the ultimate price for my sin, past and present. I thank God that one day I have ultimate confidence that I will see my best friend again.

 Perhaps if our life expectancy wasn't so long now (over 75) we wouldn't take God for granted. It seems the longer we've prolonged our lives, the more we forget that they will indeed end and that in that ending, there will be a judgement placed upon us. If you don't know Jesus or you don't know how to get this forgiveness, please message me. I will help you find your way.

The Win/Lose Day!

An interesting thing happened to me over the weekend.. It was really fortuitous considering the blog post I wrote on Thursday regarding Cloth Diapering and how I carry poop proudly! Anyhow, The Husband and I had a great day on Saturday that ended in a calamity... at least for SOMEONE!

We started out the day by going to Chick-Fil-A and I have to say any day that starts with their yumminess is just going to be a good one. However, the bun to my Spicy Chicken Sandwich was a disgusting, buttery mess that fell apart in my hands. Unfortunately, that was the second time in two visits that that particular thing has happened and it was really disappointing. And ominous.

After that, we stumbled upon a Heritage Festival and Civil War Encampment being put on at the Thompson Brown House. Before we went in, we changed The Baby's dirty diaper. Ugh. Anyhow, the festival was pretty awesome as they gave free admission to see the artifacts inside the house and outside, they had a lot of demos, book signings, and people dressed up and a band playing, "Leaving On a Jetplane" (Go figure?) The thing I really enjoyed was seeing some artifacts from Kermit's house... no, not the green muppet of a man, Kermit. This guy was Kermit Caughron. He was the last descendant of the families that were allowed to stay living in Cades Cove, until his passing in 1999. (Read more about him: here.) As we were leaving, we again changed The Baby.

Next up, we stopped in at Little River Trading Company, by far one of the most fair and nice outdoor outfitters near the Smoky Mountains. As we looked around, I came to find The Husband checking out the ONE thing I really wanted for my birthday, which brought a huge smile to my face. Even better? He got it for me right there. I am now part-owner of a Kelty kid backpack carrier. Because of my bad back, I can't use traditional baby carriers, but this one puts all the weight on my hips! Even better? It's green! Happy Birthday to me! As we left, I again changed The Baby's diaper.

After we did that, we stopped to look at a property for sale near Townsend. We had seen it, in the dark, the day before. It was the kind of fading infatuation that one might experience as you party all night in a dark bar and after last call you are still chatting with someone who you think is pretty good looking. Then.... the lights are turned on and you realize the person you've been chatting with is about a 4 on the 1 to 10 scale, even with a couple of drinks in you. (Of course, these are from my pre-Christian days ;) We realized the property literally had nothing in it, besides walls. Also, it needed a new everything.. help with its foundation, new decks, new stairs, new siding, new windows. It pretty much needed a new house. Anyhow, after seeing this we fed and changed The Baby.

I was pretty psyched for our next location! We were going to an antique store in Townsend I've been wanting to go to for a long time. For some reason, we always say we want to stop in and then somehow miss its' open hours due to kayaking or hiking longer than expected. It was a sad disappointment. Everything in there was marked up for tourists at at least 50 percent! Our entertainment came from trying to find the most overpriced item in there to show each other! 

After the antique store, we decided we had better head back to Knoxville and go to the grocery store as our cupboards were BARE! We drove around for a bit trying to decide where to go for dinner first as we were St-ar-VING! At the last minute, we decided to reprise Friday's dinner at El Jimador. Oh man.. I love that Mexican restaurant in Maryville. It is, by far, my favorite Mexican place to go to! They have THE BEST monterey chicken, bean burritos, queso, tostadas.. the list goes on! The Baby LOVED the refried beans so as we left,  I had to change him one last time before heading to the store. 

Ever since having The Baby and the whole Pink Slime Debacle, we have been much more conscious of what kinds of foods and chemicals we're putting in our bodies. It is really scary the number of pesticides that are used on many foods that turn up in human breastmilk! Anyhow, because of this, we decided to try and buy as much organic as we could at the store. We spent my entire life savings  about DOUBLE what we usually do on groceries and ended up with far less. So, it is time for a change of plans on that. (Time to expand our garden!) We, somewhat shell-shocked, loaded up and headed home.

As soon as we got home, I began to load The Baby's diapers into the wash while The Husband brought in the groceries (in one load as we bought hardly anything..). As I was doing this, I looked for the wetbag I used that day to put The Baby's dirty diapers in. I could NOT find it. I searched high and low, in the car, in the house, in the washer (Did I already put it in?? No, I did not but I'm grossed out from touching these things), and then repeated my search. To. No. Avail. I was officially missing one wetbag full of wet and poopy diapers. 

Enter Crisis Mode. I have never left the wetbag anywhere. The only time I've ever even misplaced a diaper was when they got missing at grandma's house when she watched The Baby and when I accidentally lost one to the side of the washer for a couple weeks. Wearing my panic voice, I called the grocery store and tried to explain what I was missing. "Yes, uhmm, did someone find a zippered bag.. no not a purse... that is about the size of a gallon Ziploc. No, not plastic.... it is green cloth with blue and red dots on it. It is uhhh... full of dirty diapers." <LONGGGG silence> "Uhmm.. no... ma'am.. nobody turned anything like that in. They check the parking lot at night though, so call back again tomorrow morning."

Now repeat the above conversation, only calling EL JIMADOR!! THE MEXICAN RESTAURANT... and half in spanish. "Una bolsa? Purse?" "NO, not a purse.. a plastic type bag made of cloth with a zipper.. full of cloth diapers." "QUE?!" <sigh and a long pause> "No no no, no bag." 

Soooo, I'm officially upset. Nobody has turned in my bag of dirty diapers that I somehow knocked out of the car. The good news is that of all the diapers I could have been using that day, I lost the least expensive ones (a few Flip liners, a prefold and a purple cover, and a few WIPES.. sigh) However, I was still upset. The Husband comforted me, though and told me this story:

"Wife, just imagine the poor soul who found this bag and thought they had some goodies on their hands. Someone like my dad or dad's cousin, who would see this bag in the parking lot and their curiosity would get to them. They'd get the bag off the ground and bring it in their car in the low light of the evening, and perhaps their dome light was off or not working. They'd open the bag up and reach their HAND into it!!! Not having a clue as to what was in there since it doesn't have the typical diaper stench. They literally just found a BAG of SHHH.... crap!"

Of course, we just about died laughing thinking about this! So, for the poor person who found my bag: "Sorry but you should've just turned it in!!!" 

Losses on the day: Losing a bag of dirty diapers, going through a laundry washer full of diapers, realizing that house wasn't a great buy

Wins for the day: Spending a great day with my family, getting my birthday present, getting my favorite Mexican food, realizing that Organic Pop Tarts are The Bomb, Imagining the poor person who decided to open my bag of crap and giving me a blog post.

All in all... not too shabby.

This post is part of:

We Carry Poop Proudly!

The other night, at a game night at the Preacher's house, the Preacher said to another lady and I, "Bless you ladies for wanting to save the Earth and all that, but I can't get over the fact that, when you're out, you bring POOP home WITH you!" I have to admit, I am really (sinfully) smug over the fact that I pass the diaper aisle while I'm in the grocery store. (I'll repent tonight.) Perhaps, I should consider the fact that sometimes while I'm doing that, I am carrying a poopy diaper in my diaper bag. Now's your turn for the smug look!

Honestly, I want to tell you that cloth diapering is not as dramatic as everyone makes it out to be. For us, it has been a really easy choice. I'm not joking about the "US" part either.. they Hubby has been on board from DAY 1! (As soon as I mentioned the money savings, of course!)

Here's the deal: I do a couple extra things every week that someone who uses disposables doesn't have to do. In return, I am saving over a thousand dollars and I don't ever have to worry about running out of diapers. Also, my baby has only had a significant rash (one that didn't go away by the next change) ONCE when I was on an antibiotic and nursing and he ended up with a yeast rash.

Let's get to the root of why people are mostly opposed to cloth diapering: the thought of having to deal with poop on something you don't throw away. Now, I have used both disposables and I'm a 6 month user of cloth diapers so I'm semi-qualified to tell you this: Poopy diapers are not nearly as big a deal when they are cloth. We used disposables for the first couple weeks while letting the umbilical cord heal and twice when we were in the Hospital with The Baby. We also used them the whole weak of the yeast infection to let us know immediately when he was wet.

We are so stinkin' spoiled in cloth! Disposables are literally crappy. For one thing, they do not absorb the liquids from the "semi-solids" well. The solids clog the holes where the liquid normally passes through and the whole mess just sits on top. Disgusting. Cleaning up after a poopy disposable is equally disgusting. You use about 10 flimsy wipes if you're using disposable wipes as well. Yuck! After this experience, it is no wonder why people dread the thought of bringing all that home.

Cloth poopy diapers are a totally different experience. The cloth allows the moisture to be wicked away from the solids. The result is, you have a somewhat small, dry mess sitting on top of the cloth. If you're baby is not completely on solid foods yet, you can pretty much get away with throwing these directly in the wash! So, to me, this isn't a big deal. Plus, you use less wipes to clean up with. If you're using cloth wipes, it is even easier. Cleaning a baby with a washcloth is way easier than a flimsy disposable wipe!

Now the one caveat to the whole "throw the poopy diaper in the washer" routine is when the baby gets more solids in its diet and more "solids" appear at the other end. This needs to be gotten rid of in your sewer system before going in the wash. BUT! There are great solutions to this other than the old nasty "dunk and swish" of your mom and grandmother's era! (More on that later!)

You really don't even have to carry poopy diapers around with you if you don't want to. There are so many different choices, from liners to hybrids, etc. (More on that later, too!) But, you may be still trying to get over the fact that I carry poopy diapers around with me. Perhaps you're thinking about how flippin' nasty your baby's diapers smell in the can or Diaper Genie even. Here's a little secret: Diapers don't stink nearly as much when they are cloth. The chemicals (chlorine, etc) in disposables make everything smell soooo much nastier when they combine with the smelly poop. But, poop itself does stink some, so I carry a wetbag. Basically, this is like a watertight REUSABLE, WASHABLE ziploc bag! It keeps all the smell in (As long as you don't leave it in the car to marinate for a couple days).

So, if you're still following along and haven't been too grossed out yet, I commend you! Before I became a mom, I thought, "How am I going to do this? I am so disgusted by grimy kid-fingers, slobber-covered drooly faces, crusty yellow noses, and dirty bare feet?" But, something inside me changed when I had The Baby. I grew Christ-like love for him. Jesus washed all those disciples' dirty feet with love, even though he knew that they would, the next day, betray or condemn him. I guess having a baby is similar to that... You are disgusted by all the other kids, just not your own, because you LOVE them and want to take care of them (except Jesus loved all the kids, whether they were his own (saved) or not (unsaved)).

So here's another secret of cloth diapering (time for my smug look again): I've had only a handful of blow-outs, in cloth, The Baby's whole life. They occurred only in times where I made a mistake. Either The Baby was growing out of the size cover I put on him or I didn't set the size setting properly, or I didn't "prep" a diaper properly (more on this later, as well). Seriously, the way I hear my friends talk about blow-outs, it sounds like it is a weekly occurence in their life. For people who don't like touching poop or dislike the thought of cloth diapering because of the "dirty" factor, this is pretty nasty. I even have friends who have admitted to throwing away clothing because of this!

Not having rashes, not having those chemicals touch baby's skin, not having as many blowouts are all great reasons to cloth diaper, but the primary reason we do is to SAVE MONEY! I've had a friend and read studies that try to dispute cloth diapering as a money saver, but there is just no way that it isn't in our lives. I will one day break some of those studies down, but we have figured out that cloth diapering costs us (on average) $1.75-$2.00 extra per week for laundering costs. Now, the initial investment on our part was about $300.00. (We did get about $200.00 in free cloth diapers from our family and friends for our shower, but we could have bought everything we needed for $300.00 if we had been pickier).

Most of the diapers we chose were One-Sized diapers meaning they fit from about 8lbs(a couple weeks old) to 35 lbs (potty training). They also all have a one-year warranty on them for defects. They are truly designed to not only last from one child, but MULTIPLE children (Music Minister: I hope you're reading this. With all the kids you're wanting, you may need this!). Even if we don't get blessed with another child, we will probably spend about $600.00 total on diapers and washing and drying. If you shop the sales and get bargain disposable diapers, you would still be looking at spending a minimum of $750.00 to $2,500 until your child is potty trained!!! So, no matter what, you're going to save money if you use cloth. That is, unless you get seriously hooked from all the seriously cute patterns and end up having. an. addiction. to. buying. new. fluff. <ahem, no problem here of course)

The secondary reason why we cloth diaper is the environmental impact. God has charged us with taking care of his Creation! Psalm 24: 1-2 (NIV) says "The Earth is the Lord's and everything in it; for he founded the seas and established it on the waters." The majority (over 90%) of the 20 BILLION disposable diapers that are sold each year, do not biodegrade. In fact, it takes the average disposable CENTURIES to biodegrade. Also, the chemicals in these diapers is NOT a great thing (see this Wiki about Dioxin) To me, this is not being a responsible steward of the great and magnificent Earth that God has entrusted us with.

So, you get all that, but you just can't get over the "rinse-factor" once things get more solid? Read a package of disposables. They tell you that you must get rid of solids in your sewer before disposing. Have you ever rinsed a disposable? Ha! Anyhow, there are all kinds of things you can do to take care of this matter in cloth. There are flushable liners that you lay in the diaper to "catch" solids. There are hybrid diapers that are waterproof cloth cover and contain a disposable insert. A friend I know uses these while she is out and uses cloth at home.

Or, just get over the poop thing and deal with it, much like wiping a nose. There's a diaper sprayer ($20.00) that attaches to your commode water line and you can easily spray it off into the toilet. You can do it at the time of the changing or do them all at once before wash time. I will keep a wet bag hanging on a hook in the bathroom to put them directly in. Then you just empty the wetbag directly into the washing machine at wash time! Easy Peasy!

Honestly, I think that this only adds about 30 mins of actual time to my routine each week as I have everything set up well. I would save even more time if I only had one type of diaper, my favorite, the Bumgenius Freetime. The payoff in money and "warm fuzzies" in my heart and on my kiddo's bum is really worth it!

Surprisingly, my husband is 100% on board with all of this. He loves that we are doing this and that I took the initiative to learn about it and do it! He loves that we save money and he will even do diaper laundry if I'm not feeling well. He also does a lot of diaper changes in our house and he will tell you that everything I've said about disposables being "crappy" is true! He HATES them and loves our cloth, especially the BG Freetimes, as well!

Here's a photo of The Baby in a BG Freetime! It's not your mama's Cloth:

Next up: I'm going to tell you HOW to CLOTH DIAPER if you are sold on this. If you aren't, I am not going to judge you. It's not for everyone, especially as some daycare facilities don't allow it. (Which I think is ridiculous because it is seriously so easy that all the daycare workers at our church do it with a 30 second lesson!) Also, it would be VERY hard to do this if you don't own a washer and dryer, although I have heard of people who do it.

If you're not completely sold and you want a little try-out, let me know! I would be so happy to show you things in person and let you test a few out for a bit and see how easy it is!

Happy Earth Day, Readers!

I'm the UNLUCKIEST person!

Yesterday, I spoke about what a crappy person I am (and we all are), and I want to thank you for your prayers.  It isn't easy adjusting to a new little person in the house, but it is one we all, who are blessed with children, have to make in order to continue on the path to a "successful" marriage! But, there is something else I must confess to you....

Do you know someone who is always finding money? Do you know someone who goes on a walk and finds THIRTEEN four-leaf clovers? Do you know someone who is always winning things from a radio station that they were caller number nine and had the correct answer? Do you know someone who won a rubber duck race and won a JEEP? Do you know someone who goes to a basketball game and is sitting in the seat that is called to have a chance to win $50,000 by making a half-court shot and then DOES? Do you know someone who won the trip of a lifetime in a contest they didn't enter?

Aside from the basketball winner, I know someone in all of those circumstances and that person is NOT me.

I am one of the most "unluckiest" people I know. When I was growing up, I remember having raffles at school and the more tickets we sold for the adult raffle, the more tickets we got to enter in the "kids" raffle. The prizes were usually something like a brand new bicycle or basketball goal. I could have sold all but one of the tickets in the raffle and I NEVER won.

When I got older, I can remember my grandparents putting lottery tickets into the adult "kids'" stockings. I remember scratching them off and the only thing I ever "won" for my mom or dad was a FREE ticket! Wooo!

In high school, I only once was on the honor roll. (I was a lot more focused on figure skating than I was school at the time.) There was a nearby Ford dealership that gave entries to win a Ford Mustang if you were 16 or older and on the Honor Roll. Nope, no winning here.

When I was 17, my mom got a call on St. Patrick's Day and I was sitting in the room at the time. The person on the other end of the phone said, "Is this Mrs. B?" My mom answered in the affirmative. The person then went on to tell her that she had won an all-expenses paid TWO WEEK trip to Ireland for two people. My mom told the person that they must be mistaken, because she hadn't even entered a contest and then hung up. The person called her back to tell her that she was with the Purdue Alumni Association and when my mom had donated to them, she had been automatically entered into the contest. My mom was, of course, very shocked! My sister and I were going to be watched while my mom and dad went on the trip together. My dad fell very sick with the flu a week before the trip and my mom offered to take me instead. We went to look at my passport, which had expired, and unfortunately there was no way to renew it before the trip. So, I sat at home while my mom went to Ireland.

I have played the lottery just a few times in my life, partly because it's not a very good thing to get wrapped up in (Note: Gambling is not specifically talked about at any point in the Bible, but the Lord does say that the love of money, and inherently the love of trying to gain money, is the root of all evil. 1 Timothy 6:10) and mostly because I know I will NEVER win. However, I did win once. I bought a ticket on my eighteenth birthday because I COULD. I won $2.00 that I never even turned in because in my youth, I was dumb enough to want to keep it as a keepsake because the lottery ticket had my birthday as the draw date. <sigh>

I have called in probably a hundred times to radio stations, on land lines, cell phones, payphones, work phones, doesn't matter... I have only once even been given a "caller number" and that was three. Nope, never even won so much as a CD at a radio station.

Recently, I've been spending a few free minutes each week to enter contests to win some FREE cloth diapers! Blogs are giving these out all of the time. I have just about given up because I've entered a couple hundred contests and have yet to win.

Basically, until this point in my life, the only thing I've ever won in life was the 4th Grade Science Fair, my 5th grade class Spelling Bee (lost miserably against the other classes), a contest to sell the most Girl Scout Cookies (after my parents bought 200 boxes), a few figure skating competitions, a contest to sell the most items in my Sales class in college (didn't even use the prize), and a photography contest sponsored by the National Ski Patrol (I won 3rd in one of several categories). So, everything I've ever won, UNTIL NOW, I have done it by merit alone (mine or someone else's). I've never won anything that was based on pure "luck".

But folks, I have great news! A few weeks ago, hubby and I got some FREE tickets, from a friend, to go to a home and garden show downtown. We entered a few of the contests while we were there to win different prizes. A few of the contests we entered were to win things like: a free patio set, a free bathtub renovation, and free gutters. Oh, so exciting!

A couple weeks after the show, I got an email stating I had won something! I couldn't believe it! In fact, we thought maybe it was a hoax and I even asked on Facebook if anyone else had "won" this prize! But, it was not a hoax!

HERE IT IS! IN ALL OF ITS GLORY!!!!

BEHOLD:

Out of all the contests I've ever entered to win (cloth diapers, bicycles, lifetime trips, music CDs), I have won a DUMPSTER! What does this say about my "luck"?

Well, I have to be honest here.. I think in all of this God is just protecting me by not allowing me to win. In the Bible, God cautions us against worshiping fate or "luck" in Isaiah 65:11-12. Here's the NIV translation:


"But because the rest of you have forsaken the LORD and have forgotten his Temple, and because you have prepared feasts to honor the god of Fate and have offered mixed wine to the god of Destiny, now I will 'destine' you for the sword. All of you will bow down before the executioner. For when I called, you did not answer. When I spoke, you did not listen. You deliberately sinned--before my very eyes--and chose to do what you know I despise. Therefore, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: "My servants will eat, but you will starve. My servants will drink, but you will be thirsty. My servants will rejoice, but you will be sad and ashamed."


Whoa, buddy! Those are scary and powerful words from the Lord! So, if we forget to worship the Lord and instead place all of our focus on "fate" and "luck", thus worshiping fate, we are destined to be executed! I guess I'm actually glad I haven't won enough of anything to be tempted by Lady Luck into an addiction of worshiping fate like a god or idol. That is definitely something to rejoice in! 


Now, excuse me while I go finish filling my free dumpster!

Confessional: I need your prayers.

I am a crappy human being. Just when I think I'm doing good to get rid of sin, I am reminded I am even more sinful than when I started. Ughh..

This past Sunday in our morning Sunday School Class, we talked about how becoming "saved" as we Baptists like to call it, is just the beginning. The question was posed by our leader, "Once we confess our sins and proclaim Jesus to be Lord, why don't we just go to heaven then?" One could argue that sometimes this indeed is the way it goes and that just in the nick of time, someone confesses their sin on their deathbed. Thank God for moments like this because otherwise I would not be confident that I would see my mother again.

For others of us, we are "saved" at a young age, or middle age, or even old age, and yet we remain here on Earth. God does not call us home immediately. We have more work to do! We're here to raise and cultivate and fish for more Christians! Another question was raised, "If God's grace covers our sins, why not commit more sin because we are 'all good'?" The preacher's wife (who is in our group and I just adore) said, "Because when we are truly saved, we are filled with the Holy Spirit which then gives us convictions."

Yep, so the whole time I'm thinking in my head, "I'm such a good Christian. I am filled with the Holy Spirit and it keeps convicting me to be a better person." Then on the way home, I proceed to argue with my husband about some things and think nothing of disrespecting him.

Self-righteous pride, much?

Ugh.. so in the past three years of marriage, God's been pruning me so I can bear fruit. It has been painful, to say the least. But sometime in the past few months, I got this attitude that I was "all good to go" and that it was no longer me that needed to grow and get pruned, but my spouse.

Reality check time.

I have felt, especially in the past, that I had a Christ-like love for my husband. Despite any wrongdoing or hurtful statements to me, I have tried to continue to respect and love him. It turns out, that's pretty easy to do when the mental illness you're experiencing constantly reminds you of how much you suck. (Especially at controlling your anger and emotional "crap"). I was constantly doing stupid stuff against my hubby and so I was constantly in need of his forgiveness. During that time, it was probably a lot easier to forgive him of hurtful things because I was really bad to him.

The past year or so, life has gotten easier in some ways and I've stopped doing as many stupid, hurtful things to my husband (or so I thought), and with that I have become self-righteous. I have tried to demand love and security from him, while not giving him the respect he deserves (regardless of any hurtful actions he may do intentionally or not). So, it turns out, I didn't have a Christ-like love for him. I just forgave him because I needed forgiving.

After realizing this thanks to a lot of not-so-gentle prodding from my preacher and others, I have really realized how passive-aggressive, self-righteous, and horribly sinful I've become. I have so much empathy and forgiving spirit towards everyone but my husband. Without even realizing it, I have done and said things that demonstrate disrespect and humiliation towards him. The worst part is, I've done this while demanding he show his love for me.

I have no dog in this fight. I want to love my husband as Christ loves me. I want to be the wife the Bible asks me to be. But for this, I need prayer. Because sin becomes so ingrained in everyday patterns, it isn't easy to break this bad habit. I am asking you readers for your prayers for our marriage. I have always believed that God chooses us the perfect partner who is specifically designed to give us the opportunity for growth that God wants us to have. The book I was given to read is a definite reminder of that need within me.

I love my husband dearly and want to spend the rest of my life with him. I am so thankful for the human being he is. I adore his intelligence, creativity, and spirit. But most of all, I love that he has given me the perfect opportunities to grow as a person and to mature as a Christian.

Today, I also thank God for this inner compass with the Holy Spirit that dwells within me, and the faith that I'm forgiven even though I keep on sinning, as unintentional as it sometimes is, and as intentional as it sometimes is. I thank God for the grace I don't deserve, and pray that I use more in my own relationships.

Thank you readers for listening to this. I am sorry for all the ways I've jabbed my husband passive-aggressively. Thank you for your prayers and I hope you keep reading this sinner's blog.

Disproving Carbon Dating

We have a property, near where we live, that we've been working on for over a year now that has got us in a holding pattern. We bought the nearly 2 acre property back in 2010, thinking that there was obviously room to put in a septic system. When we first bought it, the land was filled with JUNK everywhere, rocks, and brush. Little did we know that in 2006, the property had been denied a permit for a septic system (you live, you learn).

Scared of the mistake we might have made, we even called the owner of the adjacent property to see if she would agree to a payment for use of her property for septic or to see if we could outright buy her adjoining property. However, after a long time spent cleaning up the property, filling in a few spots, and planting grass, the Husband decided he thought the land could work with a drain field. He called in a private soil scientist who said initially that he did not think it could pass. He said he could do testing on it, but he wasn't optimistic.

For whatever reason, we waited and prayed about it. A year later, we found the name of another private soil scientist. He also was hesitant about the ability to pass it, but he came out anyway. On his drive to the property, all he saw were rock quarries, cedar trees (sign of rocky, poor soil), and huge boulders and rocks scattered throughout neighboring yards.

When he met the Husband at the property, he was shocked to find a reasonable place for the drain field just where the Husband had said it would be! He was able to give us evidence of a proper drainage area by taking soil samples and providing a map to give to the county.

This story would be great and praiseworthy if I ended it right here. It gets better. The soil scientist that we met is about the Husband's age and had known the Captain a long time ago through his love of outdoor things like kayaking and rock climbing. He is now a Christian with a science degree from the University of Tennessee, two things which are not normally compatible. He had all kinds of tracts explaining how Creation did indeed happen the way the Bible said it did and that Biology actually DOES support that!

It was such an answered prayer for me. I had been battling, for a long time, the "evidence" presented in my college Biology classes. I had asked God for several months to send me some answers to how Evolution can't be true and to resolve my last hesitations about the Bible. God delivered, in amazing fashion, as he often does when we WAIT! The soil scientist sat with me at our kitchen table for over an hour answering all of my questions and gave me more tracts to read. Later that week, I learned that my own church was going to be putting on a mini-series on Creation and would finish with a trip to The Creation Museum, where the tracts from the soil scientist came from.

My biggest hangup with my own faith had been Carbon dating. How could scientists give us "evidence" the world was millions of years old, yet the Bible state the Earth was relatively young? How could the scientists claim that we evolved but the Bible claim that man was created in a day? I'm going to explain the problems with Carbon dating as best I can in short, written form.

Here is what an atom of Carbon looks like:

Carbon is an atom that is found in every living creature as well as plants and other things. This atom that I have shown you is known as Carbon-12. That means that it has 6 protons plus 6 neutrons and its atomic mass then equals 12. This is the "stable" version of Carbon.

A living organism also takes in a different type of Carbon, though, which is not stable. It is called Carbon-14. Carbon-14 differs from the picture shown because it has an atomic mass of 14, because it has 6 protons, but 8 neutrons. Carbon-14 is constantly being added to our atmosphere and every living thing (plant and animal) is constantly taking it in through the atmosphere and through breathing and digestion.

Remember, Carbon-14 is not stable over time though, so as the organism dies and begins to decay, the Carbon-14 atoms convert to Nitrogen through a process called "beta decay". Scientists then use an AMS, or Accelerated Mass Spectrometer to determine the ratio of Carbon-14 in the organism.

Now, we need to know how fast the Carbon-14 is decaying. A half-life is simply the amount of time it takes for half of the atoms to decay (in this case it is how many C-14 atoms have decayed into Nitrogen-14 by converting a neutron into a proton, which I'm not going to go into but you can find more (biased) info here: How Stuff Works: Radioactive Carbon Dating).


So, to use Carbon-dating to find out how an organism died, scientists need three things:
1.) How much Carbon-14 was present in the organism at the time of death
2.) How much Carbon-14 is present now (we found this out using the AMS machine)
3.) The half-life of Carbon-14 (found in our experiments to determine decay)

We're still missing how much Carbon-14 was present in the organism at the time of death. We now have 2 out of 3 (which ain't bad if you're Meatloaf), so we need some more information. How can we determine how much Carbon-14 was present at the time of death? Scientists solved this problem by comparing the amount of Carbon-14 (unstable, changes after death) to the amount of Carbon-12 (stable, doesn't change after death).

Okay, so we're good, we have the amount of Carbon-14 present now, the half-life of Carbon to find out how fast the Carbon-14 is decaying, and a ratio of the stable isotope to the unstable isotope that will tell us how much should have been present at death. Bingo! Now we have a date.

Or do we?

We just did something that in another scientific field would never be allowed, EVER! We just made an ASSUMPTION! We just assumed that the ratio of Carbon-14 to Carbon-12 has always been stable.

But, has it?

If this assumption is not true, then we can't use this dating process.

I know what some people might be thinking, "Well, we weren't around then with our spectrometer machines to test it, so we'll never know."

Well, I guess that is somewhat true, but lets look deeper. What could cause this ratio (currently 1: 1Trillion) to change over time? If the production of Carbon-14 doesn't equal the amount of removal of Carbon-14.

Time Out Here: Now, I'm not a scientist and I don't claim to know a lot about this, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if there are either a lot less or lot more living organisms (plants + people) there is going to be a lot different ratio. In fact, I would hazard to guess that this ratio could have changed a little bit in my lifetime.

Anyhow, the tract I got from the Creation Museum, written by Mike Riddle, talks about Dr. Willard Libby, a physicist who was the FOUNDER of Carbon Dating. In his studies, he SAID that the atmosphere DID NOT appear to be in EQUILIBRIUM. IE at the time of his founding OF THIS METHOD used to DATE things, the ratio of Carbon-14 to Carbon-12 did not appear to be stable ratio.

In fact, Dr. Libby's calculations concluded that it would take about 30,000 years to get to equilibrium.

ANOTHER Time Out: The guy who invented Carbon-dating decided to completely ignore the fact that it would take 30,000 years to get to equilibrium and the Earth is still not at equilibrium? Whuuuutttt??? Why would a scientist completely ignore that data?!!! Ohhhh yeah... because he wanted to become famous and rich and the guy thought he could ignore that data because HE thought that the Earth was actually millions of years old and his Carbon-dating scheme could help prove that.

Okay so guess what! Those calculations he chose to ignore are actually totally true! The rate of production of Carbon-14 in the Earth's atmosphere is higher than the rate of decay and not stable at all!

So, guess what else! There are scientists out there that are figuring out that a HUGE FLOOD (umm see The Bible, Genesis 6:9) on Earth could have caused a major disruption to the Carbon ratios!

This Tract, "Doesn't Carbon Dating Disprove the Bible" by Mike Riddle talks about this group of scientists, "RATE" who set out to discover the age of the Earth. Now, granted these researchers were sponsored by the Institute for Creation Research, who believes in the Biblical account of Creation. However, if they have been honest and truthful in their research findings, then they have many found many powerful findings that support the "Young Earth Theory", that Earth was created only a few thousand (less than 10,000) years.

Here are some of the things that support a Young Earth and oppose the "Millions of Years of Evolution Theory", as listed directly in the tract mentioned, "Doesn't Carbon Dating Disprove the Bible" by Mike Riddle:

1.) Helium in the Atmosphere
2.) Helium in biotite
3.) Meteor Dust
4.) Buildup of Carbon-14
5.) Human Population
6.) Natural Plutonium
7.) Sodium in sea
8.) Sediment in sea
9.) Erosion of continents
10.) Earth's magnetic field
11.) Oil leaks in earth
12.) Natural gas in earth
13.) Orphan radiohalos
14.) Neutrons and strontium
15.) Coral reef growth
16.) Oldest living plants
17.) Human civilizations (This one is a big topic of discussion in our house. How can people have been as smart as they are for "millions of years" and only now be getting to electricity usage?)
18.) River delta growth
19.) Undersea oil seepage
20.) Uranium in sea
21.) Neutrons and lead
22.) Rotation of spiral galaxies
23.) Interstellar gas expansion
24.) Carbon-14 in Metiorites
25.) Decay of comets
26.) Interplanetary dust removal
27.) Lifetime of meteor showers
28.) Peat Bog growth
29.) Multi-layer fossils
30.) Hardening of rocks
31.) Decay of Saturn's rings
32.) Potassium in the sea
33.) Titan's methane loss
34.) Internal heat of Io (moon of Jupiter)
35.) Leaching of Chorine
36.) Radiogenic lead
37.) Niagara Falls
38.) Stone Age Burials
39.) Seafloor calcareous ooze
40.) Uranium decay
41.) Squashed radiohalos
42.) Carbon-14 in diamonds
43.) Carbon-14 in coal
44.) Magnetic planetary fields
45.) Recession of the moon
46.) Hot spots in the moon
47.) Helium in zircons
48.) Heat in rocks
49.) Blue stars
50.) Rings in trees

Need I give you more examples (to google of course) of things that appear to disprove that the earth is OLD!??

And what about this? Why is nobody making a big deal about this in the media? <Raising Hand> I know, I know!! Because, if we start to look at these assumptions being made in a lot of "science", then all of a sudden a LOT of things we are assuming to know are no longer "provable" and we have to admit that GOD MIGHT EXIST!

I know what you're thinking now.. How in the world is she going to take these "Random Thoughts" and connect the dots. Well, hold on to your hats and glasses, folks, because here it comes:

The Husband and I know for certain that the Earth is not millions of years old. If it was, that danged property with its millions of years of rocks would have been covered with a lot more topsoil from decaying plants given its location near the bottom of a natural hill. Then, there would have been no question as to whether or not a drain field would be permitted!

Thankfully, it wasn't that way though, and the Hubby and I had to pray about it and meet the nice soil scientist who helped me figure out that just science is supposed to based on observable facts, it doesn't mean that assumptions haven't been made along the way. He also managed to help us do the impossible: Get a permit on a nice piece of property that had previously been deemed unfit! Two HUGE prayers answered!