This One's For The Girls.........

I just love babies.  They were my first love and will no doubt be my last.  They have brought me so much joy and fulfillment that I don't think there is any substitute.  Traditionally, and I say "traditionally" because I'm getting to be a certain age, women depended on other women for instruction on how to raise children.  When they needed them, that is, because "traditionally" girls grew up helping take care of the house and the younger children naturally.  It was second nature.  It was considered "women's work", and it was sacred to women.  Oh, there were those who looked askance at such things and considered it beneath them, but for the most part this never bothered any mother that I know.  In fact, any mother worth her oats would just look askance at anyone who dared to utter such a thing and shrug, because obviously that person was misguided at best and a complete idiot at worst.  A misguided or idiot person could not rock any strong woman's boat.

Then we got liberated and the world went to hell in a hand basket.  Now, that's just my opinion and I have blogged about this before, in a post entitled The Old Bait and Switch, Feminism Revisited, which you can read here.  After our mothers burned their bra's they were encouraged to have careers, get divorces, sleep with anybody they wanted to, and eventually not worry about raising their own children.  

Not a lot fell for it at first, but like anything new, it caught on.  Careers became necessary once the divorces went through, and those first "pioneers" muddled through with their mothers babysitting their children while they "brought home the bacon".  As time went on, generations were raised by baby-sitters, those who stayed true to their sacred work as they saw it and were considered a bit slow witted by career women.  Eventually even baby-sitter's were considered optional after a child was about 10, which ushered in the generation of "latch-key kids".  After that, women proceeded to tear out each other's throats over the choices they made in a war that wages on to this very day.  The family morphed into an mostly unrecognizable conglomeration of fast food and SUVs where everybody had a house but no one was ever home.  On the rare occation when they were, everyone was in their own room.  It's sad.  But I digress.

Which brings us to today, when poor new mothers may not even have a mother or grandmother to go to for advice.  Oh, there are plenty of books to read.  In fact, there are new ones all the time, containing completely different information than the last bunch because of "studies", don'tcha know.  The worst part is that we are raising generations of people who don't even stop to inquire who did the study, how many poor children were in it, everything that was actually tested or, most importantly, who PAID for the study.  I'm starting to get a headache just writing this, but I consider it my sacred duty.

In the 60's and 70's it was decided that it was not necessary to nurse your child any longer.  Why? Well, because someone had invented formula and needed to make some bucks.  They gave the hospitals a cut and handed it out to everyone for "free" and there we went.   Besides, with women working now nobody had time.  It was the age of rebellion, free love and aquarius.  Those women's mother's arguments fell on deaf ears.  Everybody was doing it!  It must be right!  It was a new age.  Nobody argued that!

Once the corporations realized that women were no longer looking to their mothers for advice, and would believe just about anything that they could cite a "study" for, they really got going.  Books were written and careers were made.  

In the course of my adult life I have seen many phases come and go.  For instance, when I was about 15: Feed your baby food at 3 weeks, put them to sleep on their stomach, pick them up whenever they cry.  10 years later: Feed your baby food at 3 months, put them to sleep on their side, don't pick them up every time they cry.  10 years after THAT: Feed your baby food when they can sit up on their own, put them to sleep on their back, pick them up when they cry a LOT and have not soothed themselves back to sleep yet.  Family beds were big for a short time.  And car seats.  CAR SEATS!!!  *throws back head and laughs*  First there were no car seats.  Then there were car seats for babies.  Then there were car seats for kids who did not meet certain height and weight requirements.  NOW we are up to car seats with, and I cannot say this with a straight face to this day, are you ready?  Ahem, car seats with *expiration dates*.  Yes.  We have gone from a world where if it didn't work no one bought it, the crap was recalled and replaced with something that did work, to car seats with *expiration dates*.  That's right.  It seems that companies were not making nearly enough money on car seats.  Anyway, this is where we are at, folks. Read it and weep.

The sad part is: women, and even men, since we are all so equal now,  are listening to this crap.  It makes my head want to explode.  It is my sad duty to report that we are living in a world where grown women are so easily led they call the health department to ask when to start their child on food, for the love of God.  The health department!  If they do ask their mother or grandmother, those women may not even know, and even if they do, they will be afraid to say anything.  Partly because they aren't sure what is right and partly because what is right changes so often that they have lost track.  Mostly because they have been raised not to question authority, even if authority is very questionable.

It's gotten to the point that young mother's are getting stressed over taking their babies to the Dr. because they are harangued by said Dr.s over how many ounces the baby eats how many times a day. It seems they must have done a *study* and established a quota that everyone is supposed to meet.  Or else!  As a mother and a grandmother, I am happy to tell all you young mothers that this makes me LAUGH.  My sweet young honey pies, please do not believe that for centuries mothers sat around and kept charts of how many ounces their babies drank and how often.  NOBODY did that!  That would have been crazy, especially when mother's had babies about 2 years apart like clock-work and several little ones like stair-steps running around the house.  Plenty of those children ate plenty of dirt, played and slept with dogs and cats, fell out of trees, stepped on nails, hit each other in the heads with hammers, or bricks and turned out to be fine upstanding citizens.  My own dearest Rock Star once pulled a smashed piece of brownie off the bottom of my sock and ate it before I could stop him.  I gave myself grief over that for years, and yet he lived with no ill effects!  Nothing happened!  Take it from me, you are to eye any Dr. that asks you such poppy-cock questions with serious suspicion, grab your diaper bag and leave the building like Elvis, babe.  That Dr. is probably reporting such drivel for a study!  Screw that!  If they want that kind of information, let them sit at home and write down every ounce their own kid eats and how often.  Make them do their own work!!  You do not need such negativity in your life and that Dr. can stick it where the sun don't shine.  I wouldn't even pay them.  I would make THEM pay ME.

The point of this post is not to lament women, or doctors, losing their way.  The point of this post is to help women regain empowerment.  And because I am the QUEEN of this domain, I grant you the authority to raise your own child(ren) the way you see fit and think is best, (unless you were horribly abused or neglected as a child and were raised by the state-which it pains me to say is more common every day, may God have mercy on those souls).   I am not afraid to say anything, and I fear that I may be a dying breed, so listen up while I'm still alive and talking.  I'm talking to you!  When you have questions, I urge you to call your mother, aunt, grandmother or some other woman who you trust and perhaps helped raise you.  Go to women you trust.  They will tell you the truth and at least you know they are not making money from whatever they tell you to do.

Pick your baby up any damn time you want to.  It's your baby!  You got this!!   If you want to see if it will stop crying on it's own, don't pick it up.  See what happens.  Bring your baby to bed and let it sleep with you if you want.  You can!  Or not!  It has a bed, let it sleep there if you want!  Do what you want when you want as long as your baby is happy.  Lay it on it's stomach, side, or back, whatever works best for your baby.  I know people whose heads almost explode if I say this, (because they did a study!!!  No, not them, someone.......someone they don't know.......blah blah blah)  and yet, I laid THEM on their stomachs when they were babies and they did not die!!  No one can raise that child like you. God gave it to you and if He trusts you, no one else's opinion is needed or matters. Don't let it matter to you.  This is your baby.  This is your sacred duty.  This is your life.  And if you encounter those who want to harangue you for your choices?  Try to be polite, but stand your ground.  They get to see what happens just like you do.  Never be afraid to grab your diaper bag and make like Elvis!

 If your baby seems hungry all the time, give it a little rice cereal.  If your baby is not hungry all the time, don't worry.  it will eat when it's hungry.  And you will know when it's hungry!  You will know just by the way it cries, after a few weeks, exactly what it needs and your baby will know what you will do when it cries.  If the rice cereal isn't cutting it, try some baby food.  Green beans, peaches, it doesn't really matter what.  Even mashed potatoes and gravy are a big hit when you never tasted food before.  The Rock Star had his first taste of a hot fudge shake from Tastee Treat at 3 weeks, courtesy of his father while his mother protested strongly and he did not die or suffer any ill effects!!  Will it's cries and needs change?  YES!  All the time!  For more years than I care to mention right now because I know you are really tired!  But guess what?  You will figure it out together and you will be great at it!  There will also be times when you are not so great at it, and you will learn and do better next time.  There are no instructions, which is the bad news.  The good news is that there is no test at the end and no final grade to haunt you except for the one you give yourself.

Will you make mistakes?  Yes!  Will some bad things happen?  Probably! Will it ruin your lives if you do something wrong?  NO!  That's life!  There is no cheat sheet and psychics are hard to come by, but regardless, you will do fine and your baby will grow up and you will get older and one day it will all be over and you will have survived.  It will be over.  That baby will be walking around in the world acting like the person you spent the last 18 years raising, and you will be proud and amazed.  You wouldn't have missed it for the world, and you will realize that you did all right.  Not perfect, but what fun would that have been?  Each baby is unique, and if you don't believe me, ask another mother with more than one child.  In some ways you always have to start all over, except for one thing: self-confidence.  Your self-confidence will get better and better with each day and each child.  They are all different and need different things at different times, but a mother's love can handle it all, a thousand times.  Not in the same day, but they only happen one at a time.  Don't stress out over anything that isn't happening today.

Believe in yourself.  Be easy on yourself.  Give yourself some of that overwhelming, all consuming love that you have for that baby, and don't worry so much.  It will be all right and you will laugh about all this one day.  Take it from one who knows.  Please!  And those books can be found adnauseum in any 2nd hand store.  Nobody else wants them either. 

Thanks for listening.  I just had to get that off my chest before the world gets all the way to hell.  This hand basket is even starting to fall apart.  I need to go talk to an older woman than me who remembers how to weave........you love those babies anyway you see fit.  They're yours.  Own them.

Time Off

Well.  We are still living without air conditioning because I don't want the dust everywhere.  That may change this week.  We will see.

We have about decided to do without the bead board and just paint two different colors on the walls and put up a chair rail instead.  Not because I don't want the bead board, but because of the cost of having the bead board PLUS the cost of the glue to hold it to the walls.  I still might do some.  We will just have to wait and see how good of shape we can get these walls into.

I took yesterday off.  Instead of working anywhere, I made cookies and delivered them to The Angel's house, where they were hosting the cutest little black-eyed grandson you ever saw.  Black-eyed as in his eyes are very very dark brown, so dark they seem to be black, not blackened from falling or getting hit.  He is only 2, so those kind of black eyes are still far in his future, though they will surely come.  At least they seem to come to all other boys I have known.  Life doesn't seem to be complete for any boy until he has a shiner.  They actually seem to like this, at least the first time, for reasons that remain unclear to me.  It's just a boy thing I guess.  At any rate, my spirits were much higher after spending time with that little cutie than they were before.  What would we do without little ones?  I would be lost and not be able to summon up the strength to keep going.

After that I took what remained of the afternoon and laid in the sun by myself for two hours.  I covered myself in coconut oil and got my mattress all blown up, then as I went down the ladder to get onto the mattress, half of the ladder came off the dock.  I stood there, poised to jump but without enough time to position myself properly to land on the mattress like I had planned, when we both splashed down into the pond.  I only used the dang thing to begin with in order to miss the moss floating in spots, which may seem ironic to you, as it does to me.  At any rate, I took a somewhat flying leap into my own namesake and for good measure drug some of it, along with the ladder, which happily floated, to shore.  There I finally got de-mossed, positioned on my mattress, and headed for open water, where I floated undisturbed by anything.  It was heaven.  When I got home the boys had fed themselves and gone on with their lives and did not seem to even notice I had been gone. What's a mother to do?  Praise God and take a nice long nap, that's what.

Lately I am noticing all these things that I am again able to do for the first time in so long.  How many years go by in our lives without our noticing?  You have kids and then little ones, and you change so much, really just in order to survive, that you don't really notice until things change back.  All those years you spent wishing you could still "whatever", then you kind of forget about whatever those things were, and then one day, it seems out of the blue, you can do whatever again, and it seems so odd.  You have to think about whether you still really can do those things, and about 1/2 the time you find you really have no desire to do those things anymore.  It is still nice to know that you can, though.  Even if you don't plan to do them often.  Options: what would life be without them?

Tomorrow it will be back to the grind.  This weekend, though, and this extra day, I have taken time to take stock.  I have not felt hurried or pressured or anxious.  I've just been hanging out.  Sleeping when I feel like it, being up when I feel like it, mudding or sanding or cooking when I feel like it.  It's so nice when you don't have a schedule hanging over your head all the time!  I call this going with the flow, and I find that most often I am the only one who puts myself under pressure.  I now know that I can control that, and having realized this, I'm never going back.  My house will get done when it gets done, and it will be done right.  Most importantly, I don't think I'll have to worry about it again for a long time and I can't even imagine what I might do then, but I can't wait to find out.

I hope you had a great weekend also, and I hope you took time to notice your life at this moment.  It changes so fast and furiously that it feels like a crazy ride at the carnival.  The kind where you get in and you can't get off but occasionally you do see some familiar faces, just for a second, before they are whisked off in another direction away from you again.  You might have time to scream "HI!" at them but you are working pretty hard just to stay safely in your own crazily spinning orb that you are trapped in, and it's all just a blur, really.  I advise you to take some time out, even if you have to steal it from the middle of the night, and take stock of where you are in life and what you value.  Especially in the middle of the night, I have noticed, things seem better.  Your children sleeping invoke much different feelings than they do when awake.  You have time to think instead of react to what they just threw onto the walls or floors.  You might be surprised what is really important and how much time you are spending on what does not, in the end, matter.  To anyone.  Just adjust your course on the river of life, (it's a wide river) and trust that you will end up not where you planned perhaps, but exactly where you need to be.

Because you will, I promise.

Men, Women, and the Importance of Your "Hair look"

Advice on life from a 5 year old.   I hear you laughing, but you might be surprised on how good that advice can be.  

I had my two pretend grand babies this week.  24-7 for 9 days.  All these days were good, full, hilarious and exhausting.

One night Abigail decided to comb my hair before bed.  Combing Abigail's hair is always full of drama.  Her hair is very long, and beautiful, and she does NOT like it if you have to work out tangles.  My hair, on the other hand, is very fine and not too long, and she was amazed at how easy it was to comb.

So picture the scene, we are both in fuzzy pajama's, I am sitting on my bed, facing my dresser mirror, and she is standing behind me, combing out my hair, bouncing occasionally, and we are talking to each other in the mirror.  Why?  Because I can't turn my head.  It's a thing with her.  Abigail has rules, and they will be followed.

Once she got into the rhythm, she seemed to channel a hair-dresser, and she started telling me that in order to get a boy to love me and marry me, I needed to have a good "hair look".  

This made me roar with laughter, and liking that response, she really got into the role.

She has a lot of dramatic flair, and she immediately flashed her eyes at me and said "THAT's why that man (she didn't specify, and I was unsure if I had a role also or she was really talking about me) mar-wied some other girl, because he didn't like your HAIR look!" 

(Nodding her head wisely and making eye contact)

I laughed even harder and moved my head, which she immediately righted to her own satisfaction once again)

"You're hair should be long and beautiful, and then boys will fall in love with you all the time, because they will like you're HAIR look." (Making sure I had absorbed this nugget--I had).  "That's why boys fall in love and want to mar-wie me all the time, because my hair is long and beautiful."  Taking a moment to focus on her own hair and stroke it, staring into the mirror.

"But, but, what if I don't want to be married?" I asked.

Incredulous look, as if she was wondering about my intelligence, shaking her head, with furrowed brow, "Well, you need to find a husband to protect you, because it's your job to take care of the children, and us (meaning her and Rose), and the dogs and everything." She waved her arms around to indicate everything, as if I needed reminding---which I did not. "And so you need a man to PROTECT you."

I had to admit she made a good point.  She would not hear any argument about my having guns to protect myself either.  "That's not the same.  That's for in case you HAVE to protect yourself."

I choose to go along and take the advice, because this was getting better and better as the moments went by.

I pointed out that one thing I hated worse than anything in life was cleaning the bathroom.  She thought I was getting off topic and so I mentioned that ALL boys pee on the floor a little bit right in front of the stool, and I hate cleaning it up.

This stopped her for a few minutes.  "ALL boys pee on the floor???"  She did not want to accept this.

"Yep." I confirmed.  Forewarned is forearmed is my motto, and I don't believe in sugar coating the most basic facts of life.

"Well", making a brushing away move with her hands, "I will find you one who doesn't pee on the floor."

More laughter from me.

We compromised, with me telling her she would never find such a man, but if she could find one who would just clean it up, we would have a deal.

BIG mistake.  This sent her into channeling the most ancient of all female spirits, you know, the one who just sticks to the facts and will hear no argument for "modern theory"?  Do you now know this spirit?  It doesn't matter: she knows you.  In fact, she changed your diapers.

She shook her head back and forth, almost sadly, and explained to me that "It's your job to clean, and keep the house nice, and cook and take care of the children, so he can protect you, because being a mother is the most important job in the world."

Ah.  I had it now: "So, I grow my hair to be long and beautiful, like your's, a man will like my hair look, marry me, and protect me, and I will always have to clean the bathroom."

Nodding happily, brushing my hair once again, "Yes, that's right........ and you're hair is getting much longer."

So there you have it, folks, the sure path to love and protection.

It's all about the "hair look".

I don't know why we keep trying to make it so hard.  

Do you?

You can always just ask you're own grandmother, but the advice will probably be the same and you will not get as thorough of a comb out. 

By appointment only, we have bathroom's to clean. :D