What Snew?

Hi,
We are alive.

We had a great Labor Day weekend. We went to a goat and llama farm. The boy told me he loved each and every goat individually. "Mommy, I love that one, and that one and that one and that one..."
and so it went.

The goats really loved his hat. I just love the joy in that first picture. Cousins and goats, can life get better?
Someone most decidedly did NOT like the goat farm, at least not from her seat.

Once I carried her all over she was happy and enjoyed the animals too. I want this goat because it looks like a fawn. I would name it Bambi and love it until it ate something I didn't want it to.

 Also, we experienced a goat-nado. This is when you walk into a pen with seemingly few animals turn around and about thirty goats are following you like a zombie hoard. It was pretty amazing. I took a picture but it's fuzzy. That might make it more zombie goat apocalypse tastic though.

We spent some great time with cousins and we took a trip to pick blackberries. We didn't find any blackberries but we found a tire swing and that's almost as good, maybe better.

I also took my camera off of auto and shot in Manual mode for pretty much the whole weekend. Scary! I was frustrated because I wasn't getting any better and it's like I knew I needed to make that leap and just learn from it, but I was so scared of missing the shots I wouldn't do it.Perfectionist doom! I learned a few things. Probably, duh, things, one being that it's better to underexpose than overexpose. Isn't that true of life in general? If more people underexposed what a world it would be. So, it was scary and I overexposed a lot of great shots, but here's the thing. I have a million pictures of my kids and I will have a million more so I will learn and get better and someday I will be able to say, "Yeah, I know how to use my camera." That will be a great feeling. Plus I got these of doodle and they are making my heart happy...

 I think she wanted the wings back on. Funny story, those were just floating around in the car and the boy found them and gave them to doodle. Happy accidents. He came up and said, "You a butterfly hu?" He's too cute.

 attempted walking

 Hugs!

 My parent's house is busting with apples, if you hadn't noticed apples in almost every picture.

Wanna share?

 There was much playing in the dirt and eating of the dirt and just loving the dirt.

You may be asking yourself, where is Moonpie in all of this. How come she doesn't have very many pictures of him. I've covered this before but I think this sums it up. 

I managed to get a decent one. :)

Hope your weekend was as great!

The end

PS, I am giving up desserts until Thanksgiving. Why Thanksgiving? Well there will be pie and if you know anything about the husbands family, there will be TONS of pie and if there is a pecan pie and there will be, or a lemon pie, and there will be, I will be eating it.  Prayers and love and encouragement accepted. It's day one and I am already thinking this was a huge mistake. Sugar and I have been seeing too much of each other though it's time to take a break and re evaluate the relationship.

Bobby pin safety

Doodle shoved this Bobby pin directly up my nose while I was talking to my friend on the phone. This is a public service announcement.

The day that peed on me...

I don't usually say things like "Damn it" but I found that muttering it under my breath somehow made things better. Gold star for me.

I also don't USUALLY find Doodle splashing gleefully in a puddle left by her big brother on the floor, but that's the reality of this day of days.

It started out pretty good. My nieces were over for a couple of hours. The kids were getting a band together. Things were hectic but good. My sister in law stayed a little while and we chatted and discussed the creative differences of the band. We were mediating if you will. We were trying to keep the band together. My BFF called, during a particularly heated debate about how lame my Kazoo is, and I missed the call. At one point the boy came out from under the piano a little too fast and *whammo* hit the back of his head on his way up. Big horizontal goose egg of doom. I comforted him as best I could and went to the kitchen to get the ice pack and a pillow. I turn around and the boy is standing in a puddle of pee. This is particularly impressive because he has the trainer pants on, you know the super absorbent undies. I don't usually get puddles with these. OK, but he hit his head, he was confused and delirious. Obviously the band breaking up was hard on him. So we go change him. He lays on a pillow with an ice pack under it for about 12 seconds and he is back to playing. Someone mysteriously throws up chocolate milk, it stinks in here. It's one of the nieces. Hooray bodily fluids!

I am not exactly sure when it was that the second pee puddle made an appearance. Again, super absorbent underoos, and yet the world stopped as I watched my grumpy daughter splash and play with a song in her heart and joy on her face. Big puddle folks. real big. The problem is, the boy is really hard to discipline. He just doesn't take you seriously and it doesn't really matter what you do how you say it or anything. He doesn't care. Lake big pee and a ner could care attitude from the boy is just not a winning combination. Cleaning ensues. Muttering ensues.

I suppose it doesn't help that Mr. loud mouth Mgee and the up all night band were having a wailing good time last night, I was also tired. As a side note, I am waiting for the day that E buddy in all of his loudness and glory actually has a serious crisis and I, being the gold star mother that I am, ignore it because I think it's a lost pacifier. He's the boy that cried, I would say wolf, but he's really just the boy who cried loudly, very loudly.  I'd call it a blood curdling scream.

Anyway, somewhere lunch happened and grumpy happened and nap time happened, glorious, wondrous nap time.  Or so I thought, The boy pooped his pants, oh and peed some more. Added bonus he broke the side rail right off of his bed so that it is splintered and shattered and broken and dangerous and must be fixed right now. *toss of confetti* *insert muttering here* Here's the thing about potty trainees, they pee or poop in their pants, they still want to go sit on the potty for like 15, 20 minutes. See, it's not nap time in the bathroom. Cleaned everything up, found an Allen wrench, duct tape the bed back together. There. That looks niiiiiiiiiiiiice. So much for selling that in the future. This is why we can't have nice things. Get the boy to bed, in a diaper. I am done with bodily fluids at this point in my day.

On any given afternoon you could very well see me out in my backyard with the power hose spraying poo out of pirate underwear. This afternoon was no different.

Then there was the part where I had the audacity to step on a scale. Why did I step on that scale? Take this day and gently fold in self loathing. There, that should be good.

Remember that diaper? Yeah, that backfired, I tried really hard to rectify what my impatience and frustration had done. I knew, I shouldn't have put him in a diaper. This morning I accidentally tried to put a diaper on him and he looked so offended, "I a big boy mama, I a big boy, no diaper!" Now he was running through the house exclaiming triumphantly " I A BABY! I A BABY! I A BABY!!!"

At this point my BFF called, she felt that I was going to have a taxing day. It was, she's very clairvoyant. I told her that if I had been able to talk to her this morning, I wouldn't know what she was talking about. Phone calls from BFF's are good. Husbands coming home from work so I can lock myself in the back bedroom and talk to my BFF, they are great to have around.

And that's it. The day that peed on me. It ended with me mopping the kitchen floor on my hands and knees, giving my stinky children a bath, Eskimo kisses,butterfly kisses, snuggles and really, that made all the crazy of this day kind of melt away. We will just skip over the part where I sat in the dark corner of the hall with the potty reward bowl. After all, tomorrow IS the first day of the rest of my life. And maybe, just maybe, we will get some pee in the potty tomorrow. Here's hoping.

E buddy...

Sometimes I feel like E buddy doesn't get the love from the camera he deserves. It's not that I don't take pictures of him it's just that he's busy.
When he's not super involved in his in depth study of pine cones.

 He's super involved in his in depth study of the camera...

Or he's on the move and blurry, or he's conducting a study of whatever is around and he won't look up at me.

He's a mover and a shaker and I love him. I am going to try to do a serious study of getting more pictures of the little go getter.

The problem with boots....

I do this as a public service.  I wish I had pictures of my son's feet. Here's the thing, boys, and probably little girls love boots. They can put them on by themselves, the are cool.  If your kid happens to fancy himself a pirate, they are a necessity. 

But folks, they stink.  Plastic boots sink heaps and heaps worth of stinky units.  We can smell where the boy has been, like a little skunk,  and that's with the boots off. He wore them on the wrong feet without socks and his feet look burned.  He had horrible blisters, does this deter him? Not at all. 

So now, being the good mother I am, I am forced to hide the stinky pirate boots under my bed so his feet can heal.  I am in for a boat load of tears and searching, but his feet cannot go on in this condition.  I am also going to be smelling him in my dreams.

He loves them so. Maybe they should hide under dad's side of the bed?  Thank you brain. :)

Heavy things, Heavy Heart...

Last Wednesday we took our little family to the temple grounds for Family Home Evening. We figured we had better take advantage of the nice weather while we had the chance. We took a blanket and our dinner and talked to our 2 year old about the day we took him to the temple to be sealed to us. We talked about getting married in that temple and how grateful we were to be a forever family. We watched brides and grooms getting their pictures taken, a group of young people descended upon some of the flower beds to do a service project and Sam ran through the puddles the sprinklers left on the sidewalk.

Over the last few weeks my heart has been very heavy. I have been following the trial of Dr. Gosnell. He is an abortion doctor who is charged with murder. Not only of babies born alive and then killed but also for at least one woman dying in his dirty disgusting office. I can't read a full article without getting sick to my stomach. The fix? The political powers that be are pushing for fewer regulations. I have cried myself to sleep at night. I wish I could unread some of what I have read. It's effected me deeply. Some of the babies that survived the abortion and then were killed were further along than my twins were when they were born. I was told this was one nut job, but it's not only the methods he used which were appalling, it's the fact that babies this far along are considered a mass of tissue, nothing but a fetus. Completely and utterly devalued. Not that, that excuses abortion in any stage, but after a four month stay in the NICU with my own preemies, my heart hurts for these babies. Babies surviving an abortion being left in a shoe box for twenty minutes before they are finished off. Painful and slow methods before they are born. Talk about an attack on the family. My heart ached for the choices those millions of babies would never have the opportunity to make. My heart ached for the women who felt they had no other option. But mostly, I couldn't believe my own apathy on the issue. I have always known I was against abortion, but I am not doing anything about it. How could we have let it get this far? The new push is going to be for after birth abortions because the risk of the mother being impaled by bone fragments or having complications due to the doctor having a hard time removing all of the baby, something called free floating head. Seriously? What have we become?

As we walked the grounds and looked at the towering hollyhocks we came to the front of the visitor's center. The boy shreiked with joy, he had spotted the large statue of Christ, arms outstretched welcoming all who would come in. "Sheshus" he said and pointed, "I excited!" We strolled our giant stroller through the doors and were greeted by the sister missionaries. There is a room off to the side, usually when we go it's Christmas time and it is full of nativity scenes from all over the world, all different. This time it was art work depicting the life of Christ or the artists' views of how Christ is in our lives now. One piece just struck me to the bone. I am not even sure if I can explain just why. Maybe the only way to explain it was that it was full of truth to me, and it reminded me of who is in charge. I felt a warm rush of peace. I know my options are limited at this time, but I can't sit idly by. If any of you have been inactively against abortion, as I have been, I invite you to get active. We can find a way to try to help.What's the quote, The best way for evil to win is for good men to do nothing? Or something like that? Or this...We may not be able to do much, but we can do something.

The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing

It says:

I am NOT the experience nor actions of my parents

It matters not how I became,

but that I AM.

I AM courage

I AM compassion

I AM hope

I AM strong...I AM here

You cannot define me as I CHOOSE who I become.

I AM THE FUTURE.

- Christina Rankin

I am so grateful that the boy's birth mother didn't abort him. I stayed with her at the hospital for three days and watched her agonize over her decision, I watched her heart break over and over again. Mine broke with hers while it rejoiced at the opportunity I was given. He is truly such a joy. I am so grateful for the staff at TMC and at Graham county regional for taking care of my 28 week preemies. I am so grateful they survived and bring me so much joy to this day. And mostly I am grateful for the knowledge I have that families go on. That those babies are safe and happy even if they were not given the opportunities of life that so many of us are afforded. I am thankful for my savior and the plan that he has for us. I am thankful that he can lighten my heavy heart. Don't take anything for granted, live your life with joy for all of those who never had the opportunity to, I know I am going to try to. Value your children, love them with reckless abandon. The darker the shadow, the brighter the light. Let's be that light. 
See more photography by Helen Thomas Robson here


 Arizona Right to Life

 An article that is good and will not give you nightmares:
http://www.lifenews.com/2013/02/04/why-my-support-for-abortion-was-based-on-love-and-lies/
"I realized in that moment that perfectly good, well-meaning people—people like me—can support gravely evil things through the power of lies. From my own experience, I knew how the Greeks, the Romans, and people in every other society could put themselves into a mental state that they could leave a newborn child to die: The very real pressures of life—“We can’t afford another baby,” “There’s no dowry for another girl,” “This disability would overwhelm us”—left them susceptible to that oldest of temptations: To dehumanize other human beings. Though the circumstances were different, it was the same process that had happened with me, with the concurring Supreme Court justices in Stenberg v. Carhart, the abortion doctors, the entire pro-choice movement, and anyone else who’s ever been tempted to dehumanize inconvenient people."

*PS, this is my heart and soul please don't start some lame political argument. That would be my luck, the one post that gets comments and it's haters...

The dichotomy of my life...