My sweet Landon gets scared very easily. Yesterday Sloan was being a “dinosaur” and roaring through the house. Every time he roared, Landon got all teary and his little lip pooched out further and further. Instead of stopping this torture, I took pictures, because as my friend Nicole said in a recent post – that’s the kind of mom I am!

This is after the first roar. It’s his first plea for help.This is the warning look. He’s about to blow.Now I’m starting to feel a little guilty. Maybe I should put a stop to this.Okay, I can’t take it anymore. I must stop the torture.

I took the kids to the park today to meet Sloan’s preschool class. Midway through the playdate, I notice Sloan being chased by two little girls. As we got in the car to leave, I asked Sloan what they were doing.

“I was the prince and they were trying to catch me,” he said.

I had instant flashbacks to my elementary school days when my friend Kirsten and I would chase this little boy named Mike around the playground and haul him to the tires where we would each kiss him, then let him go. The thought of little girls doing this thing to my own son sent me into a panic. “Stay away from him – he’s mine!” the voice screamed out in my head.

Calmly I looked at him in the rearview mirror, his super blonde hair all windblown and his cheeks rosy from all the running. He’s such a little doll. “So, what happened when they caught you?” I asked, fearing his answer.

“They didn’t catch me cause I’m too fast for them,” he replied with a satisfied smile.

That’s right my boy. Don’t ever let them catch you!”

“But I think if they did catch me,” he said, “they would just throw me in jail cause I’m the bad prince.”

Ahhh innocence. I wish it would stay this way forever, but I’ll gladly take it for now.

Yesterday we were driving and listening to Selah, because I’m a Selah freak, and the song “It is Well with My Soul” came on. This is the conversation that Sloan and I had:

Sloan: “Hey Mom? What is a soul?”
Me: “It’s your spirit.”
Sloan: “Oh…What’s a spirit?”
Me: “Uhhh…It’s – the, uh, part of you that, ummm, con-connects with God.” (yes, it was that painful for me to figure out an answer to this question)
Sloan: “OOOHHHH. How does a spirit connect with God?”
Me: *sigh* “Well, your spirit wants to talk with God and sing praises to Him, so if you let it do that, then you connect with God.” I realize at this point I am treading the theological waters and beginning to sink.
Sloan: (thinks for a moment) “What does a spirit look like?”
Me: “Well-“
Sloan: “Hey look, it’s a car transporter!”
Me: “Yeah, look. How many cars does it have on it?” And this is where the conversation ends. *sigh of relief*

I will encourage Sloan to bring this topic back up with his daddy at some point.

Since my last post on my concerns regarding immunizations, Lee and I have done a lot of reading and research regarding childhood vaccinations and the mounting concern surrounding them. I have hesitated to post about this because I have not wanted to seem like I’m trying to persuade people to feel the same way I do. But, I am interested in hearing what others think so I will be posting a slightly edited version of what we’re thinking. A couple of weeks ago, I bought a very informative and interesting book that I would actually recommend anyone read, even if your child has already received all of his or her vaccinations. It’s called, “What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Children’s Vaccinations.” I like this book because she presents the issue from an even ground without being overly radical either way. She gives you all the information regarding every vaccination and essentially leaves it up to you, as the parent, to decide what’s best for your child. The first half of the book goes into the specifics of all the controversies and statistics regarding vaccinations. Reading that information literally made me sick to my stomach and I was all ready to decline all vaccincations for Landon. But the second half of the book tells you about the history of the vaccines, why they were introduced, the consequneces of the diseases that they are meant to prevent and other information that gave me a much clearer picture of what they are for. This half of the book also calmed my spirit. That’s not to say that I don’t regret doing this research sooner and being more aware when Sloan and Tia were born.
The thing that stuck out to me the most is the fact that while there is certainly no proof that vaccinations have caused the incidences of autism and countless autoimmune disorders to increase so dramatically, there is definately evidence that there could be some potential for harm in them. Proof cannot be found if no one is looking for it. And that’s what concerns me. No one can question or doubt the good that vaccinations have done. When I read how nasty diseases like polio and pertussis and diptheria, etc…are, I definately see the benefits of working to prevent them. The problem, however, is that I think the medical community, the CDC and the governments are now taking it a step too far in requiring so many vaccinations in such a short period of time for every child, regardless of their genetic makeup. This is where most of my concern lies.
As for Lee and I, we have decided that there are several vaccines that we are going to decline altogether for Landon. What I’m realizing now is that I have very ignorantly gone about this whole procedure from the beginning. It never crossed my mind until I read this book what vaccinations actually were. It never even occurred to me that they were actually injecting my children with these diseases so that they could build an immunity. That’s how ignorant I was about the whole process. And I had no idea what most of the diseases were before now. Did you know that hepatitus B, while undoubtably a nasty, wicked disease, is only transmitted through IV drug use and sexual activity (or from mother to child during birth if the mother has it)? I didn’t know this! So why are we all being told that our children need to have this injection before they even leave the hospital? This makes little sense to me. There are others that we will be declining and I would be happy to share those with anyone who’s interested and why we’ve made that choice. I don’t want to share it all here because I believe it’s a personal decision and I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable or bad if they don’t feel the same way that we do.
I don’t fault anyone who decides to vaccinate their children. I don’t fault our pediatrician for recommending and giving the vaccinations to my children. I do, however, fault the CDC, FDA and government for mandating them and thereby stripping our rights as parents to decide what is best for our children. And I fault myself for not being more aware earlier.
What we’ve decided to do at this point is continue to receive several of the major vaccinations, but at a different rate. When I looked back at Landon’s 2 month record, I was sickened to see that he got 8 vaccinations in that one day! 8! They were combined into 3 shots and one drink. It’s these over-combinations that are causing the most contrversy. It’s not that the vaccinations in and of themselves are necessarily terrible. But giving that many at one time to a child whose immune system is not ready to combat against it is dangerous. No one tells you that. So we’ve decided that we want him to have no more than 2-3 vaccinations at one time. Which means if they want to give him the DTaP, then that’s the only shot we want Landon to have that day. We’ll go back a month later to receive Hib and Polio. We will also be waiting until he’s older for some of the others that we’re still on the fence about.
Anyway, I take Landon to the ped. next week and I am dreading the conversation I will be having with her. I do not like to rock the boat. I don’t like to confront people or be controversial. I do not want her to feel that I am questioning her judgement as a doctor because I’m not at all. I like our pediatrician and have been very satisfied with the care our children have received. But ultimately, what I’ve realized is that these are my children and it’s my responsibility to look out for their well being. For some reason, I feel very strongly that Landon needs us to protect him this way. I have to go with my gut on this.
I know that to enter school there are federal mandates that require all these injections, but there are exemptions that the state of Missouri allows and we are exploring those. We’re still navigating these waters. We will see what happens. If nothing else, we may end up getting all the vaccinations, but not until Landon is much older. But if it’s possible there are 3 that we will definately avoid, and two more that we’re not sure about. Sometimes I wish I would have never opened this can of worms becuase ignorance truly is bliss!
I hope I’ve not made anyone uncomfortable by talking about this. We each have to make the decisions that are best for our own families. I have no problem with people who choose to vaccinate their own children. That’s your call to make, not mine. But I would love prayer for Lee and I as we discuss this with our doctor. If she is not willing to meet us where we are with this, then we have another doctor lined up. He is a doctor of Homeopathy (and also an M.D.) here in St. Louis. I had a consultation with him this morning and really like him. So we’ll see what happens. Sorry this is so long. It’s been a strange journey to go through. Thanks for listening with your eyes!

The Sweetness that is Tia

Lee got up this morning to feed Landon about 4:30. I got up to use the bathroom and just as I laid back down the bed started shaking. We have a punching bag hanging in the basement underneath our room and I could hear it swinging. My first thought was why in the world is Lee punching this early in the morning? But I realized that it was swinging pretty hard. Then I noticed the windows rattling, and since our bed is on wood floors, it was sliding away from the wall. That’s when I got nervous. I hopped out of bed and met Lee in the door jamb of our room. He handed me Landon and went to look out the window. By this time the shaking had stopped. We kept watching our neighbor’s houses to see if anyone turned their lights on, but no one seemed to be awake. We turned on the TV and no one was talking about it, so we started to think we were either crazy or something was seriously wrong with our furnace.

Finally, a little before 5, they came on and confirmed that there had been a 5.4 (now it’s a 5.2) earthquake 127 miles east of us! That’s crazy. I have a new respect for the power of earthquakes. Not that I didn’t respect it before, I just didn’t think about it. Anyway, it was kind of comical. It really scared us, Lee in particular. After he handed me Landon, he changed his clothes and got all dressed. For what, it’s hard to say. He looked like he was ready to go into hand to hand combat with Mother Nature. When we finally crawled back in bed we were both laughing – mostly at Lee. “I feel invicible!” he said. Then, of course, we came up with a better course of action should we ever experience a more powerful earthquake. In case you’re wondering, Lee will grab the little ones and I’ll grab Sloan. Likely we’ll never have to deal with that, but it’s nice to feel prepared.

Luckily Sloan didn’t really notice it. He did come out of his room and asked what it was, then went back to sleep pretty quickly. This morning we were talking about it and he remembered seeing this movie about earthquakes and volcanoes (it’s that really ridiculous Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche movie set in California). To dispel any fears, we talked about how God created the earth to cry out to Him and praise Him and how the rocks must have been feeling full of praise so they had to clap together in joy. That seemed to satisfy him. So there you have it. We experienced the midwest earthquake. Crazy!

update: we just had an aftershock that we totally felt! I was in the basement doing laundry and noticed the clothes shaking. Sloan was upstairs watching a movie and starting yelling that the earth was shaking again. It wasn’t as strong as the first one, but we could feel it. I clicked over to the news and they confirmed that we’d just experienced a pretty noticable shake, likely related to this mornings! This is wild!

This morning, Sloan came up to me radomly and threw his arms around my neck.

“I love you, mommy,” he said. “You’re my favorite mommy.” Then he kissed my cheek and took off to play, leaving me in a puddle on the floor.

Isn’t it interesting how quickly “mommy guilt” can take over us? From the second our children are born, we mother’s are plagued with fears that we aren’t doing things right. We should have fed them an hour sooner, we should have let them sleep longer, we should have kept them in bed with us, etc… I don’t know a single mother who hasn’t felt guilty or bad about something they’ve done. Yet, ultimately, we all do the best that we know how and we all have to learn along the way. There are times that I feel like an utter failure as a mom. But then, just when I feel like I can’t go on anymore, Sloan throws his arms around me, or Tia cuddles up on my lap and I realize that my kids are awesome, they’re healthy (relatively), they’re sweet (mostly), they’re smart (brilliant) and they love me. Maybe I’m not that bad after all.

Sloan is in such a bad habit lately of walking away from home and going to to our neighbor’s house to “talk.” Really what the little mooch wants is some kind of treat, which she usually doles out readily because she’s very sweet and is a grandma so her pantry is stocked. It’s rather infuriating though because I don’t want my kid to be that pesky neighborhood kid that everyone dreads. Today he went over to our other neighbor’s house and asked if he could come in and play. I couldn’t find him and was walking all over the place calling his name. It freaked me out and infuriated me. There are people building a house behind us so I started fearing that someone may have snatched him away. When he finally came traipsing out their back door, I was livid. I made him come inside, then when he protested further discipline was much needed. I’m having a hard time getting him to understand that it’s annoying for him to just walk into other people’s yards. I’m also trying to get him to understand that he doesn’t need to just go up to any stranger and befriend them. It’s hard to teach a kid like Sloan that because part of what makes him Sloan is his extreme friendliness and outgoing nature. I love that about him so I don’t want to break that spirit. I do, however, want him to be more careful. I am fully confident that if someone came up to Sloan and told him they had candy or a puppy somewhere that he would follow them. That scares me to death. I’m not sure how to teach that caution. Any suggestions?

So, I read on my dear friend Tiffany’s blog not long ago that there are three topics one should avoid – sex, religion and politics. Well, I’m diving in folks. Let’s talk about politics for a moment shall we? I am admittedly fairly uninterested in politics. That’s not to say that I don’t take seriously my right to vote for those who I think are going to best meet the needs of my family and our country. But when I start trying to understand the political world, I must say I get pretty overwhelmed, and also pretty annoyed. I especially get tired of it all during presidential election years. Is it just me or are most politicians a bunch of overgrown toddlers all kicking and screaming every time they don’t get their way? This whole back and forth stuff between Obama and Clinton (which, unfortunately, McCain has now joined) is ridiculous. Hillary Clinton is one prissy hip pop and eyeroll away from “I told you so,” and Obama is treading perilously close to “I know you are but what am I.” And now McCain is getting into the back and forth game throwing out his own barbs. Is there no one out there who is above all this? These people, one of whom will be our future leader, are not all that different from Sloan and Tia. They just have a vocabulary that’s further expanded than “uh-huh,” and “uh-uh.” Seriously, let’s grow up and be adults here. Politics seems to have become more of what the other guy did wrong, and less of how we can move forward as a country. For the last eight years, the democrats in Washington have been practically on their stomachs, kicking and screaming, looking for every way possible to say “That’s not fair!” Don’t get me wrong, either. The Republicans have not exactly stepped up to the plate as the bigger “Person” either. When the Dems took the House, the Republicans walked around with their lower lips sticking out and chin’s trembling. And I fully expect them to take on the role of pouter if a Democrat takes office. I guess I’m just tired of it. It’s sad that the very people we are supposed to be entrusting our well being as a country to are the very people that we tend to distrust the most.
Now I don’t think that politicians do everything wrong. I think they do a lot of things right…and a lot of things wrong. Obviously we need leaders to step up and get things done. And most politicians do a fair job of that. Mostly I’m just tired of the immaturity in Washington. I put up with my kids bickering all day long, so forgive me if the last thing I want to do is sit and watch a candidate give one more “tattle tale” speech. How about telling us what you’re going to do and stop telling us what the other guy’s not going to do? And while you’re at it, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
When I was in eigth grade, I attended Crestview Jr. High, which at that time was a three year Jr. High. In the girl’s bathrooms at Crestview, the toilet paper holders were really annoying (I’m going somewhere with this, I promise). They were just a long peice of metal that the janitors shoved a roll of toilet paper on (and I use the word paper in an almost completely literal sense – that was rough stuff!) So you couldn’t just pull down on the roll to get toilet paper off, you had to unravel it from around the bar, and the stuff was so thin that you needed a lot of it, so it was a real hassle to go to the bathroom! Anyway, the ninth grader elected school president that year, Tracy whatsherface, told us all in her campaign speech that she would make sure, if we elected her president, that all of those toilet paper holders would be replaced. Well of course every girl in the school voted for her and she won. And I never really saw or heard from her again. And I feel quite certain that were I to walk into Crestview Middle School today, those awful toilet paper holders would still be there. Sometimes that’s how I feel about politicians. They are promising us better holders, and perhaps even a little 2 ply, yet we’re still wiping with the same course hard paper that we have to unroll square by square. Do I sound bitter? I’m not bitter. I know many politicians do a lot of wonderful things. And, while I haven’t agreed with everything President Bush has done, I have respected him for sticking to his guns and doing what he felt needed to be done. Perhaps he could have been a little more teachable in some areas, but you have to give the guy credit for doing what he said he’d do. Okay, you don’t have to give him credit. Whew. I’m probably really stepping in it now huh? The point of this is that I am mostly just tired of the fighting. I don’t even know what half of them are talking about anymore because all they’re doing is trying to smear the next guy. I find it difficult to make an informed decision on who would be best for our country when I can’t see past the name calling and finger pointing. So there we have it. You don’t have to agree with me. I won’t be offended and I hope I didn’t offend. This is my personal opinion that’s been brewing because every time I go to the gym, CNN or FOX News is on and I am stuck watching this stuff while I work out. And now you can all breath a sigh of relief because I am finished with this little rant. From now on, I’ll try to stay in the safe zone and stick to stories about the kids. But I won’t make any promises.