HappyMama

Okay, I lied again.  I found a good resource and I can’t help myself, I must share it.  Here’s a link to a Seder meal for Holy Thursday evening.  If I can get it done, I want to do this whole thing with hubby (after the kids go to bed if need be.)

Wow, do I have just a million things to do this week.  I will not be posting again until after Easter, so here’s to a joyful celebration!!  Boy am I glad we get to celebrate for 50 days instead of 1!

I wanted to share again this website with immunization info.  I took my son in for his first shots yesterday.  He kept flashing big, beautiful smiles at the nurse, right up until that first poke.  And then he had his first dose of smack-in-the-face pain.  I wanted to cry, too. 

The ethics behind using tainted vaccinations - the ones which were developed using aborted human tissue - is probably the single most complicated issue there is right now in the church.   You will find theologians all over the board on this one.  I’ve spent a lot of time reading through the slush and really trying to discern this matter, and without a doubt, it is one that the average layperson can’t be (and isn’t) expected to decide on.  I have a medical background and a BS in biology and I still struggle with all the fine print.  Feel free to comment any questions on my opinions, but here’s where I currently stand:

• The drug company, Merck, is guilty without doubt of using evil methods of scientific research.  As much as possible, we should boycott this company and let them know our opinions.
• If possible, you purchase alternatives to the tainted vaccines.  This is not as simple a solution as you may think, because Merck makes untainted ones, too - but purchasing them still puts research money in their pockets.  Also, the alternatives are quite expensive.  For example, the MMRII vaccine is tainted.  I’m of the opinion that my boys don’t need the rubella vaccine, but I do want them to have measles & mumps.  I called Merck, which sells these two vaccines separately, but they will only sell a minimum of 10 at a time, at $20-$30 each.  It was going to cost over $500 to order what I needed for just the first shots in this series.  Ideally, your pediatrician would be willing to purchase these vaccines and use them for all concerned parties.
• You should only use the tainted vaccines for a very serious disease.  Therefore, we have chosen to not vaccinate against chickenpox.  The odds of getting it are minute, and the odds of getting a serious case are even smaller.  Plus there are concerns about the safety and longevity of this vaccine.  Plus many people think that the rise in autism is directly related to our vaccines.
• I wouldn’t choose to vaccinate against Hep.B.  My sons have all gotten it because it was combined with others that I wanted, but I chose to not get the HepB vaccine when they were in the hospital after birth.  I realize that there are many women out there who have HepB and therefore their babies do need it, but that isn’t the case for me.  HepB is an STD.  If my sons choose to live promiscuously in the future, then they can go buy themselves the vaccination.  (Okay, that’s a bit dramatic - if they are going to have an occupation that involves contact with other people’s blood they can get it too.)
• When schools require a vaccine, there are always “moral exceptions”.  A simple written statement that you object to them on moral grounds is all it takes to jump this hurdle.
• The younger a child is when he gets his vaccines, the more serious the consequences will be if he does have a reaction.  I am choosing to delay vaccines at least 6 months beyond what our dear federal government currently recommends.  I do this with complete confidence.  My children spend 95% of their time at home with me, and we aren’t traveling anywhere now or going to any big airports or crowded places.  I’m more concerned about the effects of the vaccines on their tiny bodies.

“[The 3-year-old] is continuously busy, happy, always doing something with his hands.  His intelligence no longer develops merely by existing:  it needs a world of things which provide him with motives for activity…

It has been called ‘the blessed age of play’ - something people have always been aware of, but only recently has it been subjected to scientific study.

In Europe & America, where the speed of civilized life causes an ever greater cleavage between man and nature, people try to meet this need by offering the children an immense quantity of toys, when their real needs are for stimuli of quite a different kind.  At that age children need to touch and handle all kinds of things, yet hardly any real articles are placed at their disposal, and most of those they can see they are forbidden to touch…

But in those countries where the toy making industry is less advanced, you will find children with quite different tastes.  They are also calmer, more sensible and happy.  Their one idea is to take part in the activities going on about them.  They are more like ordinary folk, using and handling the same things as the grown-ups.  When the mother washes out some linen, or makes some bread and little cakes, the child joins in.  Though his action is imitative, it is a selective and intelligent imitation, through which the child prepares himself to play his part in the world.”

(ibid.)

“Let us now turn to the child of two and his need to walk.  It is natural for him to feel this need, for he has to prepare the future man, and must therefore build up in himself all the essential human abilities.  The child of two is well able to walk for a mile or two, and also to climb, if he is in the mood for it.  The difficult parts of the walk appeal to him most.  We must remember that the child’s idea of walking is quite different from ours.  Our belief that a long walk is beyond him, comes from making him walk at our pace.  This is as stupid as it would be for us to go out on foot with a horse, and expect to keep up with it.  The latter, seeing we were out of breath, would then say (as we do to the child): “This is no good.  Jump on my back and we will both get there together.”  But the child is not trying to “get there.”  All he wants is to walk.  And because his legs are shorter than ours, we must not try to make him keep up with us.  It is we who must go at his pace.  This necessity we are under of taking our time from the child is clear enough in this case, but we ought to note that this rule applies whenever we are educating little children, no matter in what field.  The child has his own laws of development, and if we want to help him to grow, it is a question of following these, not of imposing ourselves upon him.  The child does not walk only with his legs, he also walks with his eyes.  What urges him on are the interesting things that he sees.  Here is a sheep grazing.  He sits down near to watch.  Presently he gets up and goes a far distance - sees a flower - smells it - sees a tree - goes up to it, walks around it several times, then sits down to look at it.  In this way, he may wander for miles.  His walks are broken by periods of rest and at the same time full of interesting discoveries.  If some obstacle lies across his path, for example, some fallen rocks, or a tree-trunk, then his happiness is complete.  Water he loves.  Sitting down by the side of a brooklet, he murmurs happily, “Water, water!”  His grown-up companion, wanting to get somewhere as soon as possible, has quite different ideas on the subject of what walking is for…

To the educator, the child who goes for a walk is an explorer…  All children should be able to go for walks like this, guided by what appeals to them.”

The Absorbent Mind, Henry Holt Publishers, pg. 162

I’ve also been meaning to say that I love the book the Proper Care & Feeding of Husbands, by Dr. Laura.  It’s one of those books that every newly married woman should read!  I’m currently reading her new book on the Proper Care & Feeding of Marriage. 

I’m a big believer in so-called attachment parenting.  I also know that I don’t function well on little sleep, which can be a consequence of “strict” AP.  I’ve been using the advice from the No Cry Sleep Solution book with our most recent baby and I’m seeing amazing differences in how he sleeps.  He doesn’t associate nursing with falling asleep; he associates being laid down in his crib (which is close to our bed) with falling asleep.  He’s the first baby we’ve had who is happy in his crib.  (The others screamed bloody murder whenever I tried to put them down in it.)  He also wakes up happy.  We’ve also been helped tremendously with our 2-year-old’s nap dilemma.  It used to be that if he napped, he’d stay up late at night (until around 10PM), but if he didn’t nap he’d be too tired to behave well in the evenings.  Now, using the advice from this book, he’s willingly taking a nap at the same time each day AND going to bed around 8 or 8:30.  I wish I had this book 4 years ago.  I think it would have saved my family from a lot of grumpy-mommy-mornings. 

Okay, Angie & Jill - I’m getting ready to join you for bootcamp.  I’ve ordered the P90X workout & pull-up bar.  (Hey, with 3 sons, I’m sure one of them will want to use it down the road, too.  Or I could use it as punishment, ha ha.  You talkin’ back to me, son?  That’ll be 20 pull ups.  Now!)  The workout was cheaper than buying a new wardrobe, which is what I’d have to do if I don’t lose the rest of my pregnancy weight. 

My goal is to make getting into shape a prime priority for the next 3 months, run a 10K on July4th, and then re-evaluate my wardrobe.  Hopefully I’ll be able to pack away all of my maternity & post-partem fatpants back into storage until I’ve got a real excuse to be wearing them again! 

I like the idea of a 3-month plan.  It’s long enough to allow significant change in my body, but short enough to be manageable.  I like the idea of having 12 different work-outs to do every 2 weeks, so I don’t get bored.  I like that I can do the workouts in my home, with the boys watching or participating - I won’t have to rely on hubby to watch them everytime I want to work out. 

Adding workouts to my daily schedule means that something else will have to give.  Probably blogging will be the first thing to sacrifice, although I might commit to a weekly update on my progress.  Pleasure reading will be out for now, along with learning Latin.  But it’s just for 3 months.  Thanks for your support, and feel free to give me a bad time if I get lazy.  Feel free also to join me!!  I’ve already asked big bro. to join me on the 10K.  Any other takers?

Well, I’ll keep this brief.  Priority 5 is Everything Else.  God, Self, Marriage (Vocation), Children (Second Vocation), and then Everything Else.  Your occupation, your home, your community, your extended family, and so on and so on.  This is where the to-do lists seem to go on forever, if you don’t take time to reflect and prioritize these items.  There.  End of lecture!

A note on scheduling.  I have always been strongly opposed to structuring our home-life tightly.  After all, isn’t one of the benefits of being a stay-at-home-mom the flexibility to do what I want, when I want?  Well, not really.  Because I’m also naturally quite lazy and inconsistent.  I like to do things when I feel like doing them.  If I get a burst of inspiration, I’ll run around like mad, cleaning every corner of the house.  If I don’t, well hey, no one is scheduled to visit, so who care’s if it’s a bit of a mess, right? 

Wrong.  I have lists of things (mentally & written) that are my responsibilities.  They need to be done whether I feel like it or not.  My experience with the Missionaries of Charity allowed me to better understand the idea of a rule of life.  Regardless of all the miscellaneous variables they encounter each day, the sisters always keep the same schedule.  To the minute.  Mass, holy hours, mealtimes, rest times, rising times, and so on.  And all this, while caring for dozens of homeless AIDS victims around the clock, and without knowing where tomorrow’s food was coming from.  If I had joined a convent, I would have been handed a Rule from the moment I walked in, and it would tell me more-or-less what to do with every hour of my day. 

There are 4 benefits to scheduling your priorities into your daily/weekly/or monthly schedules. 

• First, you will consistently fulfill the obligations of your vocation, whether you feel like it or not, in a spirit of obedience to God’s will for you.
• Second, you will spend time reflecting on your time and figure out how best to put your priorities into your life in a way that actually works.
• Third, you will develop habits to help you live a more consistent life.
• Fourth, your children will benefit from knowing what to expect each day.

An example to illustrate:  Under my Priority 5, I know that my home needs to be periodically vacuumed.  Keeps the carpet in better shape, makes the house look better, and gets rid of sand dragged in by the kids, which is a pet-peeve of my hubby because it scratches the wood floors.  I have discerned that I should vacuum once a week.  So I looked at the family schedule.  Fridays are slow days here.  At 4:00 on Fridays we have clean-up time.  The kids put all their toys away and we clean up everything that is out of place.  That’s an ideal time to vacuum, because the floors are clean. So, Fridays around 4:30 I vacuum.  (Assuming it’s a typical day.  Flexibility is always an option for good reason, granted.)  What happens if Friday comes around and I’m grumpy, tired, hungry, or I feel like doing something else?  Well, then I pray for the grace to do my chores with a spirit of obedience.  That’s what made young St. Therese into a saint.  She had her rule to follow, and despite a hundred excuses she could have come up with, she determined each day to not only obey her rule, but to do it with as much joy and love as she could muster. 

I often fail.  Sometimes I need to re-evaluate my expectations.  Sometimes I’m just too lazy.  I’m a work in progress, but I’m trying to keep getting better each week, each month.  I know that my husband doesn’t always feel like going to work, but he still does it.  Just because I’m not on a time-clock doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t have any accountability at home, either.  Which reminds me, it’s time to go start a load of laundry.  Ciao!