Coming to a Nursery Near You

Archive for the ‘kids’ Category

What a crazy busy weekend.  On Friday night, Anthony, Libby & I attended a baseball game for the Hagerstown Suns, a farm team for the Washington something or others.  I don’t follow sports, although at least in baseball, I know how it’s played.  The night was simply PERFECT – not too hot, not too cool.  We watched the moon rise over the right field fence and enjoyed a very active game.  This was the first baseball game the kids had been to, and although Libby did get bored, Anthony seemed to really enjoy it.  Jimmy chose not to attend, so he & the baby dropped us off at the stadium and went browsing at Lowes & Home Depot before coming back to pick us up (an hour early LOL)  He got to see a few foul balls come flying over the bleachers.  Then the fireworks that were set off from the parking lot were pretty amazing.

Notice I’ve not included any photos?  Yeah – I didn’t take my camera because I had no idea we’d be so close to the field, and the fear that I’d get mugged.  Ok, I haven’t been to many games, so I chose to be safe   (get it? SAFE!)

Saturday morning was hockey practice for Anthony, then shopping for a birthday present for a party for Libby’s friend LIBBY.  Imagine 2 Libbys in one place.  Her & I went to the party at a local gymnastics gym and she had an absolute ball there.  She flipped over all the equipment (get it?) and really had fun with Libby.  Libby did, that is. I think.

I have pictures from that, but haven’t gotten them off the camera yet, because I suck.

Sunday was Anthony’s first hockey game of the season.  His team has 2 new players this season, and they only had 2 practices before Sunday’s game, and it was 97 degrees! (that was on the bank clock we saw on the way home).  They lost, but they played well and Anthony’s playing, in particular, has really improved, even if I do say so myself.  I’m still struggling with his ability to take a team sport and take all the blame onto himself when they lose – he just doesn’t HEAR me.   Also? How do you tell your kid it’s NOT cool for people to say rude things to each other, and then he gets taunted during the game by other people’s kids?  Not only by the opponent, but by another team when they’d finished their game and came over to distract the other game.  It really was obnoxious, and maybe a “teachable” moment – but when you’re trying to teach a stubborn teenager, it’s not easy.

Today, I’ve found myself in bed all day because of my stomach.  As is typically the case when I’ve done too much on the day before – which is typically on a Sunday – the Monday that follows has me in bed most of the day.  Besides the stuff outside the house, I also did laundry, gave the baby a bath, loaded the dishwasher – it was all too much for my stomach, I guess, because today it feels like I’m being repeatedly stabbed.  Good times.

But there’s my update. I’m sure I’ll be back in the week WITH pictures.

Have you asked for a stronger national chemicals policy? You should.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got more important things to do with my time than research product safety. And I bet you do, too!! Like read to my kids, cook them healthy meals, work, exercise, and the list goes on (and on!).

Of course I spend the time necessary to make sure I buy only the safest products for my family. I’m just not happy about it. I mean, products that are on the shelves should be safe, right? Yet, headlines tell me more often than I’d like that they’re not.

Take a few seconds to sign the petition… today.

We need a stronger law!

Which is precisely why I’m joining forces with Pure Natural Diva and Bottles to Britches  to support the nationwide effort to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act in Congress. This law was passed back in 1976 (remember The BeeGees?!) and hasn’t adequately protected public health since. It’s high time to strengthen our country’s toxic chemicals law – and right now there’s an opportunity to do exactly that. See, this Spring Senator Frank Lautenberg (NJ) introduced The Safe Chemicals Act.

I hope you’ll join me in asking our representatives in Congress to pass this bill. It’s incredibly important, and the time is now. The more of us who ask, the more likely they are to listen. So go ahead,

Tell Congress to put toxics on its “to do” list NOW

The plan is to make it crystal clear that we want an effective national chemicals policy that protects human health, especially our children who are most affected by toxic chemicals.

The way I see it, if we’re frustrated by the current system (check), we should work hard to change it!

QUICK & EASY – SIGN THIS PETITION TO CONGRESS

Numbers talk: 150,000 signatures is the goal. EWG will deliver this petition to key lawmakers on Capitol Hill to show them how BIG and PASSIONATE this Safe Chemicals movement has become. Can you help us reach our goal today? It’s easy to sign and share – and extremely important to our success.

The time is right now. There is a political window of opportunity to move the Safe Chemicals Act forward in 2010, but in the current political climate, windows close quickly and unpredictably. If we don’t give it our absolute all NOW, when the political momentum is there, we may lose this chance.

Sign it, share it. This issue is far too important to let Congress do nothing. We need your help – by signing and sharing the petition – to get the Safe Chemicals Act on the Congressional “to-do” list. Preferably at the top.

Bonus Points? This only takes a minute!

Use this link to send a letter to your Senator quickly and easily.

Thank you for taking time to be heard!

As a mother, it is an innate duty of mine to protect my children.  Of course, I can’t protect them from every thing, seen and unseen, but I can try my damnedest, can’t I? 

I don’t take that responsibility lightly.  I try not to be the "helicopter" mom, hovering over my kids every second of the day.  Particularly when they’re in the house, I’m HAPPY not to hover.  But when they’re out & about, whether it’s in the yard or now, on the hockey rink, I’m … ‘mindful’ of them and their surroundings.  "Please step back from the brink of disaster" is my motto.  Ok, maybe not a motto. More of a constant soundtrack that plays in my head, but that virtually never leaves my lips.

I worry – CONSTANTLY.  Things seen and unseen crowd their way into my dreams.  I know, I’m a mother. It’s part of my DNA to worry.  I try not to let it get to *me* or them. 

It’s one of the main reasons why we decided to homeschool, way back when Anthony was a preschooler.  It remains one of the main reasons why we still do it. 

Anthony has LOVED hockey since he could walk, but has never played, for a number of reasons – accessibility being the main one. So, when I found out about the hockey league here in our county, I checked it out. 

This league offers two "seasons" a year for hockey. They play outdoors in 2 rinks and they play on inline skates.  Once I found out that it’s a "no check" league, which means they can’t purposely plow each other down like they do in the NHL, I was excited for Anthony.  Just getting him out and around other kids on a regular basis, I knew, would be beneficial for him. 

I made sure to get him the necessary equipment he needed, to protect him from the obvious things that can happen to anyone on skates.  Helmet – check. Elbow pads – check.   Knee pads – check.   Shin pads -check. ass pads, You name it, I bought it (I <3 Ebay!) and for the last eleventy-nine weeks, he’s played street hockey and made friends.  He’s taken a few falls, but overall, done WAY better than I could have expected after that first practice, when he looked like Bambi on ice.

 

The "socialization" aspect has gone well, as there are 3 other boys on his team, all brothers, that are also homeschooled, and they seemed to take a special interest in helping Anthony adapt, as well as skate and play well.  His team is in the playoffs, so obviously they’ve done well with their new, newbie teammate.

The problem with all of this is that, despite my very best intentions in letting him play one of the two sports I swore he’d NEVER play (the other being football), he’s so hypercritical of himself that even though he’s finally gotten to play his favorite sport, he’s so wrapped up in his head, I don’t think he’s even enjoying it. 

There’s been a couple of times that the other teams has scored as a result of something Anthony did.  Certainly not a ton, but a couple.  His team, to my knowledge, has never pointed fingers and did the thing I assumed they would, MAKE FUN OF HIM (unlike what would have happened in NH).  They’re all very supportive of him, no matter what’s going on – it’s all in HIS head – and of course, the talks him & his father have afterwards.  His father tells him what he could/should/ have done or whatever, and although I know Jimmy isn’t intentionally saying negative things ABOUT him, it’s what he’s hearing.  

At 13, it’s hard to take any kind of criticism.  Hell, at 43, it’s hard too.  But ME, on the other hand, just encourage him and tell him what a great job he’s done – and he really has  – and remind him that he can only play HIS best.   I told him last night, that no matter how the game goes tonight (game 2 of playoffs and the winner goes to the championship game this weekend), NO ONE would think less of him, that it’s just a game.

Right?

Wrong.  He doesn’t want to let his team down.  "again".  He’s so worked up about the POSSIBILITIES that he’s miserable.

I signed him up for this to help build him up – and instead, it’s pulling him down.  

I do NOT look forward to the outcome of tonight’s game because, win or lose, he’ll criticize himself.

Of course, he’s a winner in my book.  He shows up, he plays hard, he’s worked at bettering his skills as a skater so much so that now, I don’t worry about him falling so much as I worry about him crashing into something LOL 

So now I have to wonder if it’s worth putting him in the Fall season, when I know how much of an emotional toll the whole process takes on him. 

It’s hard when the mama bear can’t protect baby bear from himself.

I have never been able to do the whole "cry it out" routine.  Well, almost never.  When Anthony was a baby and I was trying to get him into his "big boy bed", there was a night or two where I just had to shut the door and keep telling him it’s ok, go to bed, go to bed.

But add 7 years onto my age, and another newborn and that resolve was gone. Specifically trying to get Libby to sleep IN HER CRIB, I tried to let her cry it out.  That baby sobbed and sobbed for who knows how long.   She finally did fall asleep, and when I went in, she was in there sleeping while she hiccuped and caught her breath and it was so  traumatic for ME, I could not bring myself to force her into it again.

Here we are, 7 years later, and I’m working on another baby, trying to get Zachary off the bottle. 

My kids have never had any kind of attachment to objects, like blankets or stuffed animals.  Anthony was on the bottle until he was 3+ and the day I decided to at least TRY and take it away, we’d been at a restaurant for breakfast, and when we left, he asked me for it as I was putting him in his car seat, and I said "oops, we left it in the restaurant – it’s all gone" – and THAT WAS IT.  He just accepted that.  It was like an angels sang, butter commercial kind of realization.  NO MORE BOTTLES! Weeeeeeeee!

Libby never had a bottle.  She wouldn’t take one!  She nursed until she was 16 months old, and then went right to a cup.  (I refer to that as my smart years.)

Zachary nursed until 11 months, when I had to quit him to have surgery and be able to recover from that surgery. I also had hoped that it would be a step towards him sleeping somewhere else but of course, hindsight blah blah blah.

I’ve been wanting to get Zachary off the bottle. He only has it when he lays down – he only has milk (never put juice in a bottle – OR Hi-C, like I saw at the Sheetz yesterday!).  But he does NOT go to sleep without the bottle.  In fact, he has 1-1/2 bottles at night when we first go to bed.  He drinks them both, puts it down and then rolls over to go to sleep.  However, perhaps 4 out of 7 nights, he’ll wake up in the middle of the night for MORE. 

At this point in my life, those middle of the night disturbances really are doing me in.

But it’s gotten to the point where god help us if we don’t have BOTH bottles for him.

The other day, though, he brought his bottle to me in the afternoon.  He’d found it in the bed, and wanted it.  It had soured from the night before, and so I opened it up and told him to smell it.  He did and WOW, what a shocker that was for him.  He decided he didn’t want it.  Ah ha!  LIGHTBULB MOMENT FOR MAMA!

Thursday night, I decided to try it again.  Of course, he was upset for about 30 minutes, alternating between crying (but not those sobbing heaves that Libby had endured) and whining and crawling all over the bed, and BEGGING – "please mama… pleaaaaase mama" – but I just kept telling him the bottle was yucky (I offered to let him smell it again – he declined).  Eventually, we went out to the kitchen and I got his sippy cup, put some milk in it and he grabbed it – drank a few sips from it  -and he was asleep.

[Note:  He is perfectly capable of drinking from a regular cup and does so all day long.]

That was around 10:30pm.  He woke up around 4am, and cried and cried, and I just kept offering the cup and he eventually fell asleep.  Of course, in the process, he did wake Jimmy up [suffice it to say, he *guards* his sleep.  So much so, that he took one of Zachary's bottles that I'd thrown in the trash - OUT - "just in case he doesn't sleep on Sunday night" (because daddy guards his sleep and HAS TO HAVE HIS SLEEP because HE WORKS A JOB.  Yes, really.].

People on Facebook had made several suggestions:

1. get the bottles out of the house. IMMEDIATELY.
2. telling him a story about how other babies needed his bottles.
3. having the "bottle fairy" come visit and whisk them away.

The problem with those ideas is that Zachary isn’t mature enough to understand those concepts.  He doesn’t understand "other babies" – nor fairies (or Easter Bunnies, Santa Clauses, etc.) so I couldn’t make stuff up. I had to go with the stinky, yucky bottle because that’s what he saw, smelled and if he really wanted to, could taste.  HAD he been mature enough to turn around and say "Hey mom, throw this in the sink and wash the stupid thing" – I’d have been screwed.

I stuck it out that first night and Friday, I was so proud of him.  Friday night came, and I was nervous.  That baby laid down, drank a few sips from the cup and set it down next to him  – AND WENT RIGHT TO SLEEP. 

AND SLEPT ALL NIGHT!!!!!!

I woke up Saturday morning (at 4am, cuz I’m me) shocked and amazed.  He went all day without a problem.  But then last night, we didn’t go to bed at our usual time, and he was OVER tired.  SUPREMELY over tired, I’d say.  He cried and cried – and finally got up and went to go find daddy.  Daddy isn’t 100% behind this because daddy operates under the condition of "if it shuts him up, GIVE IT TO HIM".  (We’ll see how that works out for him.)

I went to bed, as I was exhausted.  I woke up this morning, and Zachary’s cup was next to me, but Zachary wasn’t.  I went into Libby’s room, SURE that I would find him *and* his bottle.

There he was, sound asleep beside Libby, with daddy curled up at the bottom of the bed. AND NO BOTTLE IN SIGHT!

An hour later, Zachy came in to me asking for his bottle.  I brought him over to the bed, gave him his cup.  He took a sip or two, and is now back to sleep. 

He has not had a bottle now in three nights.  I’m thinking we may have kicked this habit. Keep your fingers crossed!  My last baby.  My last baby bottle. weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

On April 29th, 2003, I entered the OR of Littleton Regional Hospital around 7:30 am, very pregnant and very anxious.

A short while later – at 7:59 am, a little baby girl was born.  She came out screaming and rather funny looking, and she was simply perfect.

Jimmy & I cried with happiness because she was perfect, healthy & LOUD.  Oy, the loud.  Our world was changed forever.

Now, she’s growing up. Her baby features are morphing into something beautiful and innocent.  She’s growing into herself, discovering herself.  She’s discovered a talent for drawing, and wants to be an artist when she grows up (in about 2 years).  She also wants to do something with animals, because she has several other jobs she plans on doing as well. 

She’s one of the very few people who can make me laugh with my whole body – belly laughs, heart laughs, everything.  She’s so affectionate and caring, loves to help cook, loves to goof off and draw attention and make people laugh and smile.

She is, simply put, beautiful.  Inside & out.  She’s loved by her brothers, both big and small.  She wears her heart on her sleeve, and with a glance, you’ll know quickly how she’s feeling. 

Happy Birthday, my beautiful Liberty Ann Justice.  You are a treasure and we love you.