16 Years

16 years ago I met this guy...

and I never looked back...

Baby Slings

The contraption in the photo above, my friends, is what is known as a baby sling.  It is what one uses when they have more children than they have hands, like me, (except my biggest baby  is not in the picture and would protest being referred to as a baby) or when one needs to haul their giant sized cup of coffee with them to the annual fair day parade (also see photo above)  Please see photo above while ignoring my seriously unstyled hair...

In all seriousness, Travis makes tons of fun of me everytime I haul out the baby sling.  (this one is from Seven Slings but I also have one from Hotslings that is great too.)  He starts mumbling something about "kangaroos" and such but I just ignore him and go on.  Annie is very VERY attached to me and sometimes I need my hands free to do other things (like attend to Lil) and the sling allows her to be carried around constantly.  I can vacuum the house, fold laundry, whatever. 

BUT the handiest is at  the grocery.  See logistically, if Lil is in the cart and so is Annie, there is no where to put the GROCERIES...but if Lil is in the cart and Annie is in the sling...voila' room to put the milk and the bacon and the....well you get the picture. 

Yeah for baby slings...yay for baby wearing...yay for happy babies in general

Seriously ABC...what is so funny about food allergies???

Grrrr...please note, before you read this blog post, the mama bear in me is seriously coming out.

You were warned....As a mother of three I have next to no time to watch television.  Granted, I catch many hours of Sesame Street, Dora and the like, but to sit down and watch a show without animated characters doesn't happen very often. 

However, for some reason, my babies seem to go to bed early on Sunday evenings after the business of the weekends and I sometimes catch an episode of some random show.  I just so happened to catch an episode of Brothers and Sisters on ABC about a year ago when a hurried stressed out mom encouraged her daughter to pack a peanut butter sandwich to school.  When the daughter piped up that her school was nut free the mom just said in passing, "oh tell them it's soy butter."  Not cool ABC.  As a mom of a severely peanut allergic child and who benefits greatly from a nut free campus at his FANTASTIC school, an event like this could cause a great deal of harm to a child like mine. 

So that irked me but I got over it. 

Then Brothers and Sisters had another inappropriate comment about food allergies in an episode I didn't catch, but I did read an article about it.  Seriously?  Again?  why are food allergies now considered free for all in the world of TV?

BUT...nothing in my opinion topped a few minutes of a show I caught on Wednesday night.  All the kids were sick this week, as was Travis, so I had sat down in the recliner to try to coax Annie to sleep.  In the opening minutes of the show "Happy Endings"  there was a scene were a girl told her friends about her being severely allergic to shellfish, another boy said that he was...long story short...the girl got a shellfish slung on her and her "friend" said he lied about being allergic.  All the while, another friend, jabbed her in the leg with an epipen and then rolled back over to watch TV.  This makes me seriously angry because the whole segment was obviously meant to be very funny.  As a Mom who has had to administer epinephrine to her small son on more than one occasion I can assure you, the instances in which that medication is necessary is anything but comical.

Not to mention that the show depicted the medication  being given totally incorrectly.  And anytime epi is administered the person needs to be taken (preferably by ambulance) to the closest ER.

I suppose in the grand scheme of things this is not a huge deal, but it just saddens me that an issue that is of huge concern to some children and adults alike is for some reason funny in today's society.

I can't imagine that a television show would poke fun at someone with another life threatening chronic condition and rightly so.  So why is it funny that someone would be extremely allergic to a food?  Do you realize that "allergic" doesn't have to mean just coughing and sneezing.  It can mean some serious things like your body going into anaphylactic shock.  Epinephrine is meant to be a LIFE SAVING medication and if not administered quickly enough the results can be fatal. 

Just another reason for me to pass on by the night time shows airing on ABC.  There are plenty of other moral reasons that I don't watch alot of those shoes, but stepping on the toes of people who suffer from a very real condition is just another one. 

This.week.

Sweet.Baby.Croup.Ear Infection.Sore.Throat.Fever.Cutting Molars.

Not.Fun.At.All.

Poor Annie

Not afraid to Use it

Noah has a shot gun which he loves.  I mean loves...however, he doesn't get to shoot it very much because he needs more than one adult preferably to supervise and both girls must be occupied in the house.  But on Labor Day, Nana and Papa came over for chili and a hot dog roast.  Lil was napping and Annie was occupied with Nana so Noah Thomas finagled Travis and Papa into taking him out shooting.  Their target, a watermelon which got a little too ripe in the previously hot week.


Poor unsuspecting watermelon...

Then it was my turn...Dad and Travis totally didn't think I could hit it

They were wrong

Sometimes I wonder...

As a Mom with a third baby who is just learning to walk, I watch her take her steps.  Sometimes she's steady and sure of where she is going and she gets there with no troubles.  Sometimes, she loses her balance, falls, and pulls her self right back up with no help from me.  Sometimes she falls and I don't interfere even though she struggles a little, and I know that she will get back up on her own and it will make her stronger, more sure of herself.  Sometimes, though, sometimes, she loses sight of where she is heading falls, gets up, falls again, and out of frustration she starts to cry and reaches for me to help pick her up.

Even though she could pick her self up again, sometimes, she just needs mommy or daddy's arms to pick her back up and tell her it is ok and she can do it.

It sometimes astounds me how much love I have for my children.  And then I think about the fact that my heavenly father loves me even more than than.

It's hard for me to comprehend and I lose sight of it sometimes. 

But I know that God knows my every step before I even take it.  And he is with me when I fall, even when I get up and move ahead. 

Sometimes when I fall (or fail) I feel like he is watching me, knowing that I am faltering, but that I will learn my lesson through my failures.  As a Mother, sometimes I watch my children try the same thing over and over and experience failure over and over, and I wonder to myself, why won't they just try my way? instead of having so much trouble.  Then I wonder if God doesn't feel the same way with his children.  He sees us try our ways time and time again, when if we would come his way our paths are so much simpler. 

But sometimes, when I fall and and feel like I can't get back up, that's when I can feel him picking me back up.  And you know what?  No matter what, no matter how many times I have fallen, everytime I reach for him, he's always there. 

Thanks Bub

My seven year old already thinks he is way too smart for his silly mother. He overheard me telling someone about how Annie is not a great sleeper at night.

When we got home, he looked at me very seriously, blinked a few times, straightened up his little glasses and said, "Mom, Annie is just nocturnal, that means she doesn't sleep at night."

Thanks Noah, Yes I am aware of what Nocturnal means.

So does that mean if she could sleep hanging upside down from a tree branch like a tiny fruit bat she would sleep? Hmmm... OK you know I am just kidding, well pretty much...