This Summers Hair Cut

I got my hair cut yesterday. Here is the Right Side (or left if you are looking at me I guess)

Left side (or right, I am so confused)

Either way, I like it. A very nice Young Lady up the street did it for me. I am her Visiting Teacher and so she can keep an eye on me and make sure my hair never gets too long.

This morning after I did my hair I sat down at the computer to check my email, after a few minutes Baby J came and sat next to me, when I looked down he was staring at me.....
Isn't he cute, his smile got even bigger when he heard the music of the camera turning on.

Always Learning

So, I had some frustrating moments today, some of them brought on by my own actions, others brought on by the meanness of others. I had some ice cream. Ken was also a big help, in fact when I got home from work I completely forgot my frustrations for awhile because I was so glad to see him. And then I started thinking about blog posts and I decided that the world is full of stories of frustration, I want to share some sweetness.

So here it is....a few pictures from 24 hours in the life of Baby J. He is always learning, and these first pictures are of how he climbs the ladder into his loft and what we discovered can happen when he climbs the ladder....(see how happy he is!)

Now, climbing must be great exercise....lots of movement involved, because after the climbing to and playing in the loft was over, we discovered this. Yes, he somehow wiggled out of his diaper, and then the diaper slid down his leg and off his foot, Baby J found nothing wrong with this, in fact he was kind of offended when we put a new diaper on him.

Ken's brother writes books. I am currently reading "The Wretched of Muirwood" it is very good, but it is electronic and so I am glued to the computer while reading it and my boys get bored. "I have an idea Dada, lets play some Ken Griffey Jr baseball!" Baby J Said as he grabbed his Super Nintendo Controller.

Then he found his dad and sat down to play.............

and then he got mad at mom who was blocking the TV/game, silly mommy.

The next morning Baby J was still very playful, one of his favorite activities is "Destroy Mr Potato Head" and on this day (Wednesday) he decided that he wanted to take the "Taters of the Lost Ark" potato head apart- (it looks like Indiana Jones and has a Fedora that plays the theme song)

This is what happened after he was done. Always learning, always laughing. He is one great Kid and he kind of looks like Indiana, doesn't he?

15 Months!!!

It is hard to believe that it has been 15 months since our little buddy was born. It feels longer..... or at least he seems bigger than all the other 15,16,17 and 18 month old kids in the neighborhood and so he must be older right. Well truth is we live near lots of petite people and we are not petite so our Average boy seems huge!OK so the Camera Angle doesn't show it. But there are times when he looks like an NBA All Star (even with Turner Short Leg Syndrome).

Weight- 24 # 14 oz - 56%tile

Height- 32 & 1/2 inches- 87%tile (OK so a little taller than average)

Head- 18 & 1/2 inches- 45%tile

What does he like to do?

Play. Play in the water (as you can see any body of water must be investigated), play at the park, play with big kids, play with small kids. Talk. Talk to his food, talk to his blankey, talk to plants, animals, rocks and dirt. He also likes to talk to kids- like they are going to understand him even, who knows maybe they do. He says Hi, Dada and Baba. He is close to saying Mama, Shoes and Thank You (I think). Walk, or should I say run. Climb. Climb on everything, including the ladder to his loft, which he can now climb into all by himself (don't worry we watch and climb right behind him, and we are getting better at keeping

him away from the ladder when we are not watching). Sit. It is pretty cute, he sees something that looks like he could sit on- a plant potholder, a window sill that happens to be next to the table he climbed onto, a box, or steps- he will get in front of the item, turn around and then slowly back up until he hits it, then he will sit, smile and clap!

And finally, EAT! but the eating must be on his own terms. Do not go near him with a spoon, unless you are eating with the spoon and then he wants some, but if the spoon is a brightly colored kid spoon, nope, he doesn't want anything to do with it? On the other hand he loves to fling food around with the spoons that he demands to hold. Favorite foods change from day to day. Two weeks ago he was on a Banana Binge, at 1 point eating 3 within an hour, he must hold the banana, it must still have the peel, (he would allow me to help him peel it down farther when he is ready but as you can see from this picture, even that has changed, apparently eating bananas, peel and all, from the bottom up is the fun thing to do.)

And last but not least- he is getting some more teeth, I Teeth. So someday soon he will have 10! (total, not 10 I Teeth)

The Doctor said he is perfect and I tend to agree.

Hey Luck, I'm over here!

No here, over here, to the right.....wait.....oh well.

So a neighbor of ours won a phone, the exact phone that he wanted and had been dreaming about for months. He said that he is being blessed, his wife says he is lucky. I have been thinking about this and I agree with his wife. Blessings are different from luck.

I was chatting with my oldest sister this morning, and she told me about some decisions she had recently made. Finding herself at a crossroads, Single after 15 years of marriage, Working after 13 years of staying home with children (which now total 5), the whole world is ahead of her. There are so many possibilities out there, so where do you start. Well I think she did the right thing, she started by trying her best to tune into the spirit....it is always good to have Heavenly Guidance. After looking at many options and asking for lots of guidance she realized that she had already been getting the guidance, the same guidance, from several sources. I won't tell you her plans, for those of you who know her, it will be much more fun for you to hear it from her, and her complete plans are not crucial to my thoughts about being blessed or lucky.

So, while we were chatting my sister told me that she is planning on selling her home. "Really. Now. Do you think that you will lose money? Or is that not even an issue?" She purchased the home in question a few years ago at what might have been considered the height of the home buying market. Home prices have fallen since she bought the home, there is no doubt about that. I was not too surprised when she said that No, she actually feels like they will be able to make a little money from the sale of the home, and even if they do lose money, compared to all that they were given (support, understanding, friendship and love) in the few short years that they lived there, she would still feel blessed.........and that is when I thought of it. Blessed or Lucky.

If we win great prizes, get the house we want for a ridiculously small price or sell our current home for a price so amazing that we can't even believe it, are we blessed? What does that say about our neighbors who have been trying to sell their home for 2 years, are they not living right? What does that say about me, I never win anything, have I gone down the wrong path in life? No, some people are lucky, hopefully at some point in all our lives we will be the lucky ones, but I am willing to bet that we all know someone who wins everything they put their name in for. On the flip side, I think it is perfectly reasonable to say that we are blessed if we do lose sometimes, even if our home sells for $30,000 less than what we had hoped for, even is we lose a car or a job and have to start all over again, because we can know we were where God wanted and intended us to be, and as such we were blessed. We can feel blessed even though the world might look at us and pity us. Thanks Big Sister for helping me to see this in action.

I still hope to be lucky, for example, I took a survey yesterday because it gave me the chance to win a $100 gift card (5 out of thousands of people will win, but hey, its a shot right), I also entered Ken and I into a sweepstakes for a new grill (because it was being given away by Sara Lee and I figured I could handle Sara Lee calling me). I don't think I will win, but hey you never know if you don't try.

I do know that my life will be blessed, because I am trying, trying to be where God would have me be and do what he would have me do, so come what may I will love it! (maybe not in the immediate moment of trial or lose but hopefully sometime soon there after).

Greener Pastures

An Update on the Green Bags.

The food went into the Green Bags on Wednesday. The bags need to stay free of moisture, and 75% of the fruit and produce had created plenty of moisture by Thursday morning. So I wiped out the moisture and added a paper towel to each bag. Then on Thursday afternoon I went out of town. Upon returning on Saturday I found that one of my Tomatoes and a few Strawberries that were not in the bags, had started to spoil. The Strawberries and Tomatoes in the bags were still fine.

Now my observation on the Strawberries is this- the Strawberries in the bag had been washed and a few questionable strawberries had been denied entrance to the bag, where as the strawberries in their original container had not had any of those luxuries, I am making an assumption that if I had washed and sorted those strawberries I could have tossed the ones that were going to quickly go bad, thus extending the life of the others. I will test this assumption with this weeks strawberries.

My Thoughts on the Tomatoes is slightly different, the tomatoes in the bag were much firmer than the tomatoes on the counter, this is good. I found the same thing with my Bell Peppers and Cucumbers, none of these had spoiled, the non-bagged peppers and cucumbers looked older than the bagged items.

Now, I opened up my bag full of oranges yesterday and found that one of them had spoiled- right there in the bag! This morning I noticed the the orange on the counter was also spoiled, though I am pretty sure that is was a day or two behind the bagged oranges. If the oranges behave the same way next week I will let you know.

Now for the weirdest result yet. The bananas in the bag looked great, but the fruit, inside the good looking bananas, looked and tasted bruised. The bruising was totally weird because there was no visible bruising on the outside. So once again, we will have to see what happens to this weeks bananas, if they too look great and taste awful, I will let you know.

The Elephant in the Room

When I got to my parents house today and there was a Giant Elephant in the room. An giant exploding elephant. And boy did it explode. I posted a little earlier today about my little sisters bad choices, I have since deleted that post, but I do want to tell you what happened when the elephant exploded.

Brief explanation of the Elephant. Pregnant Baby Sister, Bad Life Choices. I asked my father if he thought it would be better to have all the sisters there before we told her how we felt about her recent choices and how she needed to stop- basically an intervention. Dad had already had that talk with her and he felt it would be better if we each spoke to her privately. One of our Older Sisters was there and she expressed that if Baby Sister didn't change she was going to call the Prosecutor........Well, Baby Sister heard this and so started the Explosion.

In the end I think it all worked out well. There was Crying and Yelling. There was love. I was able to tell her what I wanted to say, That I love her, and I love her Baby and he deserves the best, he deserves love now and by love I mean every good thing she can give him and a good clean body and blood supply is what he needs most right now. She understood but still said that we didn't understand. She has not used any kind of substance in a week. I told her I thought that was great but I knew it would continue to be hard and I wanted her to know and understand, that I will be there for her, if she needs me, night or day, I will help her. Even if all she needs is someone to hold her, I love her and I will be there. I think she understood.

So now I have to figure out what to do next, how do I help her remember that I love her and I know she can make the changes she needs to make and that she can make good choices going forward. How can I give support on the days that she is not asking for immediate help. For now, until I figure out a more tangible way, it will be through prayer.

I feel good. I feel like the spirit guided the things that I said to her. It kept me calm enough to speak.

I love her, she is worth loving, even if she has made dumb decisions in the past. Hopefully this change will stick and she will see just how much she is worth.

Going Green

So, last week I bought two green peppers to eat on my salads. I would have preferred red peppers but they were twice the price and so I bought green. Four Days later they had both gone bad!!! Should I go shopping every other day, should I assume that my food will not last longer than 3 days max, I don't want to make that assumption, but it really seems to me that the cheaper the food, the faster it goes bad. (A really good example would be the fact that the $1.00 cherries and $0.77 Strawberries I wanted to buy today all had mold- I was able to find some that didn't look too bad after 5-10 minutes of searching through mounds and mounds of bags and pints, ARGH).



So, the morning after throwing the peppers away I found myself daydreaming about some new product I saw on an infomercial. As I only saw about a minute of the comercial all I can tell you is that it was for hard plastic containers that were the next step up from "Green Bags". Both items claim to be made with special plastic that negates the gasses fruits and vegetables create that cause them to spoil. They make everything- absolutely everything- from Peppers to Pasta, from Brussel Sprouts to Brownies, last longer. If I only had those containers I would never have to throw away food that I would have loved to eat (were it not furry). On Monday we found ourselves at Target, (they had a Sale on DVDs), and on an end cap some "As seen on TV" items caught my eye. There they were, "Green Bags", 20 bags for $9.99. So I got some, I figure if they work, then they will pay for themselves, and if they work, then maybe the containers would actually work too, and maybe, just maybe, I would be able to save up the money I save from not throwing away produce and get some containers that would save our bread, and cookies (but I guess cookies don't stay around long enough to go bad).



I don't have a camera right now, but if I did you would see a test going on in my kitchen. I left one of every item out of its bag, just like they normally would be, stored in the fridge or on the counter- where ever I normally store them. And I will see how fast they go bad as compared to the items in the green bags. I will let you know what the results of my very scientific test are.

All the Little Things

What a great day we have had. It only goes to show that you can have a good day when your house is messy. Sure we spent an hour outside the house, walking to the big park, touching every tree, blade of grass and speck of dirt along the way. At the big park we climbed lots of stairs, slid down lots of slides and walk across a wobbly bridge over and over and over again. After all that exercise I was surprised when Baby J started crying after only napping for 1 & 1/2 hours. I went in to get him and decided that I would just sit down and cuddle with him for as long as he was willing to cuddle. I was enjoying the quiet moment with my boy, smelling his hair, feeling his breathing, feeling like crying because he is such a good little boy and I love him so much. Then I realized that he had fallen back asleep- so there I sat, holding my baby for an hour. Joy! It was right about the time that I started to fall asleep that he woke up, Happy this time.

Then the phone rang, it was John from the Community Food Co-Op. I sent an email last week asking about my missing asparagus from May's order. I also mentioned the fact that my cucumbers had been missing in April and I was just wondering if it was a common thing, if there just wasn't enough asparagus to go around. I wasn't expecting a call, and even more, I wasn't expecting to be told that I would be receiving a credit (of $1.60) and that yes it is perfectly acceptable, and also expected, for me to check my food right there at the table and let them know if anything is missing. John thanked me for my participation in the Co-Op and told me they looked forward to receiving my next order. I thanked him too, but what I felt like saying was "Wow, You like me, You Really Like Me!" I felt like I had received an award, which I know, is weird because I didn't but, hey who am I to fight my feelings.

One more little thing, the one that has made me smile these past few days. As you may know from reading a previous post, my brain has gone AWOL. I believe it is because of the Worst PMS ever. I blame this on the fact that I stopped taking birth control this month (in the hopes that sometime within the next 2 years I might get pregnant again) and now my body doesn't know what it is supposed to be doing. I am now 1 1/2 weeks late. Now if you were me, earlier this week you would have thought "Oh My, I am Pregnant" and then after the pregnancy test was negative you would have wanted to cry. OK, if you were me you would have cried. And since I am me I have also done other things that I do, like ask Ken lots of questions that are really unanswerable. Questions like "Ken, why am I broken? Why is my body trying to drive me crazy? It is my body that drove my mind away, isn't it? Stupid Body! Why?" Poor Ken, he deserve an award, or a present, or some new DVDs.

So, back to the one more little thing, back at the end of April when I was thinking about all the possible dates that our next baby could be born- I realized that there was pretty much no way that we would be able to have a baby on the March 21st, thus filling in the gap in our birthdays (3/19, 3/20 and 3/22). To get that Birthday our baby would either have to come two weeks early or two weeks late. Well, after the negative pregnancy test, I was playing around with a Due Date and Ovulation Calculator online and I suddenly remembered that I had done this all before, I had been mad at my body for not being normal, I had 30, 32, 34 and 36 day cycles that got me really excited (because if your period is late it can only mean on thing, right?) and then crushed me to the depths because eventually it came, (late, but still coming to visit- not a good guest!) So, when I realized that 35 days was pretty normal for me and then remembered that I could adjust the length of the cycle on the due date calculator I gave it a try, guessing on the LMP of course- and the very first one I tried gave me a due date of 3/21/2010! Wouldn't that be pretty cool, that would be fate! If it works out that way we know that we should try to have all our children in the 3rd week of March! Guinness World Record Here We Come! So that made me smile, and has continued to make me smile each time I think about it. And after all, in my opinion, right now, it is better to smile than cry.

So those are my little things, I guess they could be called Tender Mercies. All in all, right now, I feel pretty loved, I feel cared for, I feel like everything will work out the way God intends it too.

Missing- a Used, yet Beautiful Mind

I believe I have told you my story of waiting to conceive a child. In April of 2006 I felt like it was time to stop preventing pregnancy. Days, weeks, months went by. Tears were shed. Finally in July of 2007 we got pregnant. Looking back on it now it was very much worth the wait, the baby that came after all that waiting was and is AMAZING!

Well, for a month or more now I have felt that it was time to try to have a baby. I told Ken, and he agreed. (Right Sweetie?) My Mom has even commented that based on our experience the last time, we have to start early or Baby J might not have a sibling until he is 5. It has been just over 14 months since our little Baby J was born, which means that I have had a return trip to the doctor, and it had been decided before the visit to the doctor that I would not get a new prescription for birth control. I talked with the doctor about our desire to have another baby, and about my worries that, once again, it would take a long time to get pregnant. She told me that it was fine with her if we started doing some testing now, instead of waiting 6 months. So if I want to, I can go in and get my progesterone level checked. (I didn’t do it this month, but I feel good knowing that the order is out there.)

Now, to the reason for the Post. I seem to have lost my mind, sometimes it is around and working, but many days it is malfunctioning or completely gone! And this has made me wonder, was I like this during those long months in 2006 and 2007? Do I need Hormonal Therapy to be Normal?

Here are some examples-

-I suddenly cannot remember words, or sentence structure.

-I cannot spell my son’s name, even worse than that I spell his name wrong on the back of photos that I then give to my family and they say- “Oh, I didn’t realize that you spelled his name this way”

-I cry, at weird times, and about things that have never brought me to tears before.

-I am tired and cranky.

So, I feel bad for Ken (especially if I was really this way previously), and now for Baby J (because I am sure he would love to have his old mommy back). I hope that this is a new and very short type of PMS and I really hope that I never go through it again. Why, Why are hormones so hard on the mind? ARGHH. .

So, if you see a mind, that looks lost and alone, could you ask it if it belongs to me? I really want it back