New blog, new pics

Don't you just love the picture I picked to head up my blog? It was a great little spot on Lake Powell a few years ago, that probably isn't there anymore due to the changes in the water level.  Jeff, Ivan, Mandy and myself went there one summer. 

Anyway, here's the new look and feel of my blog. I mean it when I say Jeff/Me/Miles/Bob of the Day. I change the pictures everyday. Well, except on the days I don't. I do have twins after all. 

I love March. It's my fave month I decided. There's just something about the sun shine and the air. I'm glad I get to spend this March in Page, because there is something about it here that's different from anywhere else.  

I deleted some of my blogs, so check to see if your faves are still there. ;) Anyway, come back often, vote on the polls and leave a comment! 

Love from

Viv

Another great pic from that same day on the lake. 

I need sunscreen just looking at it!

Says who?

Remember that great word, "so"? Here's another great response to nonsense:

"Says Who?"

I've been thinking a lot on the things that are driving me nuts about motherhood, the main stress factors, the things that are keeping me from enjoying my babies. They all go away with a good resounding angry* "Says who?" 

For example:

I breast feed my twins.  It's how they get their food, and it's also how I put them to sleep. Someone said to me "They're using you as a pacifier," like that's a bad thing. I thought about it a great deal and came to the conclusion "Who said it's a bad thing?" Is it a bad thing? A lot of people say it, "Don't let him use you as a pacifier!" but no one ever says why that would be so horrible. So instead of sitting around chewing my nails and fretting that I'm being so ill used, I let it go. I still put them to sleep by nursing them and see nothing wrong with it. 

This brings up some other bits of child rearing advice: "They need to learn to put themselves to sleep." Says who? Ask yourself how you put yourself to sleep. Do you read a book? Watch an hour or two of tv? Have a glass of wine? Take a pill? Why do we expect a baby to do what we can't seem to manage? After all, we tell older kids bed time stories to help them sleep. This advice would call that practice into question. If a baby must learn to fall asleep on their own what business does a child, or an adult for that matter, have using any form sleep aid? 

Here's the parenting breakthrough that just might cure my post postpartum depression. It's not so much advice as it is an assumption, a myth, that a lot of advice stems from. A myth that puts a lot of pressure on mothers who have enough on their plate already: 

Sleeping through the night. 

I can hear some of you now saying, "Hold up Miss MioneBeast. My babies slept through the night at X number of months!" To you I say, congrats. That's very peachy for you and I'm sure that was lovely. But let's get real. I'd like to know "who said?" Who said babies should sleep through the night? I was getting so frustrated with my babies, until it hit me, I don't sleep through the night. I haven't for years before I got pregnant. I'd have to pee, or finish the next chapter in that good book I'm reading, or been stressed out about something, or had a bad dream, and I won't even get into all the new nighttime fun that came into my life when I got married (like a snoring husband ;) ). Sure, we'd all love a nice 7, 8 or 9 hours of uninterrupted blessed deep sleep. But when does that ever happen? After you take a sleep aid? So, I had to ask myself once again, "why do I expect my babies to master something at 5 months that I haven't mastered at 27 years?" I don't dread nights now that I know I'm not doing anything wrong and neither are my babies. 

I have a theory on who said, when it comes to baby advice that only stresses us out and makes us feel like bad moms. A man. That's who. Some man who's never been pregnant, never given birth and has no mother's instinct said it. It may have even been the same man in the 1890's that first said "Children should be seen, not heard." To him I say, "Then look at a picture, mister smarty-pants." Clearly he never had to see a set of twin boys through learning to crawl, teething and a growth spurt all at once. And do you know why he thinks it's so easy to dole out his great wonderful advice? Because while his wife was doing all the hard work, he was at work. Then when he got home, he left her to do more hard work while he went to the bar and smoked cigars with his buddies. 

So I say, a nice resounding angry* "No" to all nonsense.

*We don't use anger enough. We repress it when we really should use it, smile politely when we should take a stand and lay down as a door matt for people to wipe their feet on when we should stand up for ourselves. We do not have to tolerate rudeness, or take anyone's nonsense. Christ didn't smile nicely and tolerate the money changers in the temple.

Soviet Babies

I heard this story the other day about an over crowded, under staffed orphanage in the Soviet Union where a lot of babies died due to the lack of human contact.  Only the babies closest to the door got touched when the rooms were being checked. The further they were from the door the less contact they got and the less chance they had at staying alive. 

Every time I open my email inbox and see a FWD I feel like one of those babies in the back. It's like the leaving of cookies on someone's door step. Sure it's cute and fun, and brings a warm fuzzy into someone's heart for a moment. But isn't it possible that it would mean much more to open the door and find a friend standing there. Just like it might be nice to open one's inbox and find a real email, sent just to them. 

Where is the human contact? The real contact? The "Reach out and touch someone"?

Ever hear the biblical story of Mary and Martha. I'll paraphrase. The Savior came to visit them and Martha ran around trying to make sure everything was just right for their guest, while Mary stayed with him. Martha chided Mary, telling the Savior Mary needed to be helping her out with the dishes or whatever it was. The Savior pointed out that Mary was in the right. 

Do we really understand what this story is trying to teach us? The message can be summed up very easily: "People are more important." They are more important than the dishes, than nap time, than a t.v. show, than homework. Whatever it is, you name it, people are more important. Are we really making time for the people we care about when we point and click 20 some odd email address's into the "Send To" box and pass along a funny picture or an uplifting story? Would it really take that much more time to point and click on "Compose Mail" and send a little note of "How are you? Here's what's new with me."? 

Reach into the back of that orphanage that is your email address book and make a real connection with a person who may be withering away from the lack of human contact.

The Eighth Deadly Sin

We've all heard of Sloth and Lust and Greed and all those old Deadly Sins.  But what the authors of the Seven Deadly Sins failed to take into account was that some day the internet would be invented and there would be a need to tack on a new Deadly Sin.  I am, of course, referring to Blogging.  

In fact, Blogging is such a bad sin, that it would go at the beginning of the list of Deadly Sins. 

Blogging

Lust

Gluttony

Greed

Sloth

Wrath

Envy

Pride

Just as there are corresponding virtues to counter the original Seven, there is a virtue that can keep you pure from the most mortal sin of Blogging: Not Blogging.

Not Blogging

Chastity

Temperance

Charity

Diligence

Patience

Kindness

Humility

We can see from this that lowest you can ever get is to Blog, which will put you in the deepest circle of Hell, and the highest most noble cause you can pursue is to Not Blog, which will put you right up there guarding the Gates of Heaven with St. Peter. 

So what does this mean for me, sitting here Blogging?  Well, I'm ok with ending up in the deepest circle of Hell. I take comfort knowing that by just reading my blog you'll be dragged strait down with me.  

Which means I'll see you all in Hell!  Have a great day!

Glous- Glouster? Aw whatever!

Here's an amusing anecdote for y'all:

My dad likes to think he knows all.  Don't get me wrong, he knows a lot.  But when it comes to certain subjects he thinks he's top dog.  (Never let him talk you into a game of *Huggermugger. He's the only one that has fun.  Stupid word game....)  Shakespeare is one of those subjects.  

Well, one day I was watching some educational t.v. (oh come on, like you never do it!) and there was a show that took a Shakespeare play and analyzed it, broke it down, told you what was going on in understandable english, that kind of thing.  Well, I caught an episode about King Lear.  I forget all the details, but anyway, I found the whole thing very fascinating, so when I went to pick up my dad from work, I was telling him all about it.  (He likes to sing that song from Kiss Me Kate "Brush Up Your Shakespeare".  He's so the top dog with Shakespeare that he even knows songs about Shakespeare that give reasons to have Shakespearean quotes on hand.)

Anyway, I just happened to bring up about Gloucester getting his eyes gabbed out. (Sorry, I guess I should have put a spoiler up!)

And my dad stopped me, and said, "No, King Lear got his eyes gabbed out." 

A heated debate ensued which ended with my dad making a bet.  If it was in fact (which he insisted it was) King Lear, I had to pay him a dollar.  If I was right, which I was, he had to do the dishes.  (I know, it's an odd bet.  I know there must have been a reason for it, but off the top of my head I can think of why.  Cut me some slack, I can't even remember why Gloucester got his eyes gabbed out in the first place!) 

When we got home, I went for the VCR, because of course I taped this for future reference, and I'm glad I did.  My dad went strait for his volume of the complete works of Shakespeare.  While I was getting the tape ready I heard my mom in the other room ask my dad what he was doing.  He told her and her response was "It was Gloucester."  When I showed my dad the part of the show that proved me right, (which I of course showed him again, and again and again and again...) he still refused to believe it.  "No! They got it wrong!"

To be fair to my old man, very very very old man, the first Shakespearean play he ever saw was King Lear, and it was imprinted on his memory very vividly.  (My first was twelfth Night. I love that play! No one got their eyes gabbed out that I remember.)  Only problem was, apparently this production he had seen took some creative license and gabbed out King Lear's eyes.  I think they were trying to give poor Gloucester a break.  After all, his parents inflicted him with a terrible name!

But finally he found in his volume of the complete works of Shakespeare (doesn't that alone make him sound smarter?) where it said, and I quote "Your daughter's right" he conceded and did the dishes.  I think he may have even given me a dollar for saving him from no longer laboring under the delusion that King Lear was running around without eyes. 

But the out come of the bet isn't important, what is important was how fun it was to take him down a peg.  I don't know why this brings me so much joy.  Seriously though, my dad is a very wonderful man.

Who cringes every time he hears the name Gloucester.  Maybe I should name one of my twins that.... hmmmm....

*If you've never heard of Huggermugger, count your blessings and say a prayer that you never will. 

*** Note: I had to make a few changes to this blog. One being I had the musical wrong from whence Brush Up Your Shakespeare came from.  I've corrected that. Also I had to change the color that the comments link shows up in because my dad is too old to see it other wise. 

Everyone! Stop what you're doing!

There is a serious problem, injustice, and just down right wrong, practice taking place in our hospitals! I hope you all cut and paste this into an email to be FWD-ed for the rest of man's natural existence because THIS MUST BE STOPPED!

This problem is so serious that we must stop all research into curing cancers, AIDS and all those other things we've been wasting time, money and brain power on, until we solve this one problem.  Even you smart people at NASA, put down your projects and help out with a more than worthy cause!  Those of you trying to come up with a clean, cheap alternative to oil, put down your pencils and start working on something we could all benefit from.  Come on now, I'm sure if we put our minds to it we can come up with a painless catheter! 

I mean it, this is just ridiculous!  We have the technology to survive re-entry into Earth's atmosphere (let alone leave it in the first place), and yet when a nurse needs to get a urine sample millions are put through days of excruciating pain.  Oh I know they say "You'll only feel a slight pinch" and "It may burn a little next time you urinate" but its all lies!  When you stick a tube into a hole God designed to be an out hole, you're going to get a lot more than a pinch and little pain peeing.   You're going to be writhing in pain and screaming on the toilet for the next week at least! 

There is a reason why catheters are painful and its even more upsetting than the pain itself.  It's a secret punishment nurses inflect on us because we dared to have an emergency.  Perhaps this hidden anger comes from having to do twice the work of doctors for a fraction of the pay.  

We have to put a stop to the conspiracy to block catheter improving research! Write to your Governors, Congress Reps, Senators, even the President!  Demand a painless catheter! If we all band together our collective voice will be heard and change will not be far off!

Absolute Zero

Its the elusive temperature that scientist have been trying to get to for decades now, but has always stayed just out of reach.  Well, I've reached it, or at least the Pedialyte freezer pop that's been in my freezer since my first trimester has.  The longer you have it in the freezer the colder it gets apparently.