Elijah wants a hair cut like Daddy

Jeremy keeps his hair buzzed pretty short.  Yesterday he came home from work and decided to give himself a hair cut.  Elijah was taking a bath and watching him, and he declared he wanted his hair cut like Daddy too.  So Jeremy and I agreed to let him try out a super short hair cut, and Jeremy did the honors (Jeremy has been in charge of all of Elijah’s hair cuts for years now anyhow).  I took a few photos of the process that I thought I’d share with you all.

The haircut begins! Obviously, Elijah’s hair wasn’t that long to begin with.

What I learned in my Self Esteem Class

Last semester I had to fill one credit hour, so I decided to take a one credit self development course called Self Esteem. Over the course of this two day class I not only decided that the class would be more appropriately titled “Bitch about how much you hate your parents”, but also that I already have pretty good self esteem.
I found the class to be pretty annoying straight from the start. Almost the entire first day was spent with the professor lecturing us that we’re all racist, which, if you define racism as ever saying or doing something insensitive out of ignorance or cultural training, then yeah, I suppose everyone is racist. The second day was spent mainly allowing students to complain about everything that’s gone wrong in their lives (mainly that their parents sucked) and the professor validating and encouraging all the complaints.
I couldn’t join in. Not because I had perfect parents or siblings, I didn’t. I couldn’t join in because I recognize that I too am an imperfect parent or sibling, so it wouldn’t be right to pass judgement on my parents for something I myself am guilty of. This acknowledgement that I am not perfect and it would be unreasonable to expect other people in my life to be so was something that many of my fellow classmates seemed incapable of. Or perhaps they just weren’t wanting to make that acknowledgement. Either way, it was clear to me that making that acknowledgement was probably the first thing these people needed to do.
I listened to all the stories of unfortunate childhoods, some of the complaints against truly miserable conditions, others complaints I found petty, and I found myself thinking in response to it all, “If you can’t forgive others for what’s wrong with them, no wonder you can’t accept yourself full of faults either.” It became obvious to me that those most critical of others were also the most critical of themselves. And it wasn’t constructive criticism.
I’ve been guilty of non constructive self criticism of myself, too, but over the years I have found it extremely important to be less critical of others and try to be more understanding of how circumstances in their lives might have led them to do things that are less than ideal. This has brought me a great deal of peace, but it wasn’t until taking this class that I realized it’s done something else for me. It’s made it easier for me to be easy on myself. Do I still have imperfections that I dislike and criticize? Of course. But I no longer hate these features of myself, I no longer feel desperate to change them at any cost. I accept myself as a human being complete with flaws, and I am able to do so because I accept others as human beings complete with flaws. In the whole session of complaining about our parents the only legitimate complaint I had against either of mine, and the only one I shared with the class, was that my mother never saw herself as as beautiful, strong, and admirable as I saw her, and that hearing the woman I most looked up to in the world say negative things about herself probably helped me to develop a bad habit of not recognizing the beauty in myself and only focusing on my flaws, a trait I don’t want to pass on to my own son. I brought this up only because other people in the class had children, and I found myself desperately hoping that they did not say the kinds of things they were saying in class around them.
I’d like to attribute my enlightenment to my age and experience, which is considerably more than many of the students I share my campus with, but in this class the balance was more towards people my age and older, rather than fresh out of high school students. This is not something you figure out with age, obviously. And I really don’t know that I have it all figured out, but I completed the class feeling pretty sure I had more figured out than anyone else in the class, including the professor, who spent a great deal of time bitching about her parents as well.
The message I took away from this class was that it’s important to be gentle, understanding, and forgiving with others, so that it is easier to be that way with yourself as well. If you set high standards for those around you, you’re going to be disappointed in yourself if you can’t live up to them either, which chances are you can’t. I ‘m very glad that I do not waste a lot of time being angry at my loved ones for not being perfect, and not being able to mold me into a state of perfection. Accepting them as they are has been a vital step in accepting myself as I am.

Welcome to the third trimester

I haven’t posted a pregnancy update in a while, but I’m here to share my latest milestone with you now. I am officially in the third trimester! And I feel …. Exactly the same as I have been feeling. Some days I feel great! I feel like I’m not even pregnant! Other days I feel wiped out and huge and sore and just generally uncomfortable. And most of the time, when I feel one way I completely forget that I ever felt the other way.

Everything seems to be happening so quickly this time around. Last time time just seemed to creep by. This time I find myself wondering where the hell the time is going. When I remark about how fast it feels like it’s moving, I get very little agreement from Jeremy. He does not share my shock and awe over the swift passage of pregnancy time. It must be moving more slowly for him. Maybe it’s a first vs. second pregnancy thing. First pregnancies seem slow, second seems fast. This is his first, after all.

So eleven more weeks (give or take two weeks or so) before baby is here. It’s hard to imagine how this is going to reshape our family dynamic. As it gets closer I feel less and less fear over it. It’s not that my confidence is growing, but more a sense of acceptance. I am coming to simply accept that our family dynamic is going to be very different, I don’t know how, and I don’t know what the adjustment is going to look like, but worrying about it is not going to change anything, so why bother?

I am noticing that Elijah seems to be getting antsy over the baby’s approach. He’s been much more snuggly, getting into bed with us more often, holding hands more often, insisting upon being in laps more often, and wanting to be skin to skin. The other day, he actually tried to nurse on me, which was weird. If he even remotely remembered how, I would have let him, but he doesn’t, and it hurts. My mom warned me he might want to nurse when the baby comes but I didn’t think so. Now I’m thinking she might be right. It is so important that we work to make sure Elijah still feels loved and nurtured when the baby comes. He is such a sensitive little spirit, and he needs lots of love. I want to make sure he gets what he needs in the most healthy and balanced way possible for everyone in the family.

He is excited though, and has expressed his desire to be there when the baby is born, which makes me happy. The other day, in fact, he told me “Mommy, I want to stand under your butt and hug the baby.”

Confused, I told him it would probably be better if he hugged the baby through my tummy, and lifted my shirt so he could do that. He shook his head “No. I want to stand under your butt when the baby falls out, and catch it.”

My heart about melted! I explained to him that Katherine, our midwife, will probably be catching the baby, but that he could be right there next to us, and hug the baby right away. I’m glad he is so excited for the baby to come, and feels he’s an important part of this process. I think he is important to the baby as well, since the baby responds to the sound of his voice more than anyone else’s. I tell Elijah every day how much the baby loves him already.

At this point I also find myself thinking of all I want/need to do in these final eleven weeks. Get the birth kit, get the birth pool, get a maternity swimsuit for my trip to Florida, set up our diaper service, paint the crib and rocking chair, sew, sew, sew, sew, sew, get my garden planted, get some food preserved, get some freezer meals set up, etc. I’m hoping people will bring us meals after the baby is born. We don’t need a lot, baby gear wise, but not having to cook or do as many dishes after the baby comes would be an amazing help. We bought a baby hammock off of Craigslist and got a baby bouncy chair from those people as well. I found a killer diaper bag that I think I’ll be proud to tote around with me for the next couple of years (it’s actually a purse, but really what’s the difference?). Jeremy’s mom procured us a used crib that should suit our purposes just fine, we’d just like to paint it (I’m thinking grey). I even got a free, brand new Boppy by doing some product testing for the company. If the baby came tomorrow, we’d be in okay state, I think (since if the baby came tomorrow we’d be in the hospital and wouldn’t need the birth kit). Babies really don’t need much.

That’s where we are with the pregnancy so far. I’m still enjoying it, and hope I will continue to be able to for the next all too short weeks. Before I know it this baby is going to be wiggling on the outside of me, and I’m going to be sitting around wondering how that 40ish weeks passed so quickly. At least this time I’m recognizing it as it’s happening, so I can take the time to really appreciate pregnancy while it’s here. It’s so short, in the scheme of things.

Me in the early third trimester. I swear this baby is smaller than Elijah was.

I’m sorry you’re offended

In the circles I run with, I see a lot of breastfeeding cheerleading. People posting awesome breastfeeding photos on Facebook and Pinterest and what not is common, as are the comments about them, which have become predictable. Mostly positive, but interspersed are a few people expressing their distaste for the photos, probably family, old friends, or acquaintances of the poster who aren’t quite as crunchy as the rest of us.
Recently, I got in on a discussion of one such lovely breastfeeding photo in which one man stated, essentially “I support breastfeeding, but only under a blanket or behind closed doors. The sight of it offends me.”
The responses to this were also predictable. Babies shouldn’t have to eat under a blanket. You can’t say you support breastfeeding and at the same time want to cover it up. If you don’t like it, don’t look. Etc., etc. I was immediately struck by the sexism of the sentiment, but I tried to step back for a minute and really consider the statement.
Every day I am exposed to things that offend me. Some things I make a conscious effort to avoid, with mixed results. I generally avoid reading comments on online articles, for example, and when the anti abortion activists set up their two story dead fetus towers on my campus, I go out of my way not to walk through that part of the campus (thanks for the extra exercise, prolifers!). Other things I have no choice but to see, and I deal with it. I deal with it. I do not demand that people put a blanket over their Nobama bumper stickers. I do not insist that men who choose to walk around shirtless when not at the pool or working out cover up. And as much as I might like it if smokers were condemned to only indulge their habit behind a closed door, in a sealed room so their smell and sight does not offend me, I do not have the right to ask for that. I deal with the second hand smoke, and even though it does offend me, I try to do it politely with a freaking smile on my face. When I am offended, I deal with it.
Smoking is a great comparison, actually. If it were our goal to ask every potentially offensive thing to be hid under a blanket, it would be reasonable to ask smokers to do their business under a blanket as well. After all, not only is it offensive, but it’s physically harmful to surrounding people (a claim no one can make about breastfeeding). And I’m pretty sure that more people find smoking offensive than breastfeeding, seeing as how it’s been banned in all indoor public places in many places, where as breastfeeding in any public place is generally legally protected. So why not ask people to smoke under blankets? Sure, it would be uncomfortable and a pain in the ass for the smoker, but make the blanket flame retardant and I don’t think it’s too much to ask. We could even design fashionable smoking covers so that smokers could use the opportunity to express themselves creatively. It could become a cool thing for them! And what’s important is that other people around are comfortable, because we need to cover up everything that might offend someone, right? The smoker’s comfort and feelings of acceptance in society is a small price to pay to make sure that no one is offended.
See the parallels? I’m not saying you shouldn’t be offended, go right ahead and be offended. But just like I need to do when I’m offended at things I see other people doing in public places, you need to deal with that on your own. It is not your right to ask the mother and baby to inconvenience themselves to accommodate you and your feelings. I am genuinely sorry that your feelings are hurt, I am genuinely sorry that you are offended, but those are your issues, and if they are bothering you, I suggest you try putting a blanket over your issues. That you do have a right to do.

Passing the CAFO

This episode of SNL makes me very happy.

There was once an episode of Saturday Night Live that had some of the funniest sketches I can remember (at least that were produced in the period of my life in which I was old enough to watch Saturday Night Live, please keep in mind that I am not yet 30). The host was Cameron Diaz, and the musical guest was The Smashing Pumpkins (it should be noted that this episode might only hold such a dear place in my heart because I was a hard core Smashing Pumpkins fan, and totally in love with Billy Corgan). One of the sketches involved Cameron Diaz and two other female cast members dressed up like the witches from Hamlet making their brew, chanting “double, double, boil and trouble” while they threw their disgusting ingredients into the cauldren. Then, they start reacting to a terrible smell that is eminating from the near by vicinity (or possibly the brew). They begin to describe the smell in hillarious, disgusting terms.

“It smells like someone pissed on a pile of burning hair!” one of them cried out.

“It smells like a bunch of long shoremen having sex outside a porno theater in July!” was another memorable outburst.

The source of the smell was never identified in the sketch, but if I had to guess what horrible thing it could have been, I would guess that the witches were smelling a CAFO.

A CAFO is the place where all of our country’s meat (with the exception of a very small percentage) comes from. It is an acronym that stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation. When you see a truck full of cows being shuttled down the highway, those cows are on their way to a CAFO. Animals are raised on a farm, some large, some small, and when they are almost big enough to slaughter, they are sent to a CAFO, where the animals will live out the last few weeks of their lives being fattened up on feed that is a mixture of low quality corn, soy, newspaper, and parts of other animals (cows eat chicken parts and chicken feces, for example). While they are being fattened up, they live in densely crowded conditions, often knee deep in their own and their peer’s feces, urine, and mud, without room to so much as stroll. As you can imagine, these conditions often make the animals sick, so they are pumped full of antibiotics to keep them healthy enough to make it to the slaughter floor. These antibiotics later remain in your meat, contributing to antibiotic resistance and the destruction of healthy flora in your digestive system and vagina (if you have one), making it more likely that you will get sick or get yeast infections, and less likely that medicine will work on your illness. I might add that the feed they use to fatten these animals up increases their risk of having deadly diseases that can be passed on to humans, such as mad cow disease (of which an outbreak in California was just reported a few weeks ago) and e-coli (which tends to end up in animal feces, which then gets washed downstream and ends up watering plant crops, such as spinach). Because of cramped conditions, CAFOs are also breeding grounds for diseases such as bird flu and swine flu. And it would be a tremendous understatement to say that the fat and nutrient composition that this feed produces in the meat, milk, and eggs that ultimately comes from these animals leaves much to be desired. Conventional animal feed is probably playing a huge role in the increases of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and all other metabolic disorders in humans.

Cattle CAFO

I have known all this for years. I have known it, I have despised it, and I have probably even blogged about it in the past. And yet, I still tend to eat conventionally produced meat more often than not, because conventionally grown meat is cheap and convenient. You can buy it anywhere, and there’s always plenty of it to be had. I try to lessen it’s health impact by buying the leanest meat I can find, but it’s still the same crap, even if it has less of the bad fat in it, and less of the hormones, toxins, and antibiotics that tend to be stored in the fat. It’s still that disgusting CAFO meat.

Hog CAFO

But knowing it’s disgusting on an intellectual level is a totally different thing from actually driving past a CAFO in the middle of the night when they do their slaughtering so as to make the smallest possible impact on commerce, as I did a few weeks ago. On our whirlwind road trip to Iowa, my mother and I had the pleasure of driving past more than one CAFO at night, when they do the slaughtering. They have to do it at night because the smell is unbearable, even for cars passing by on the highway, and it lingers for miles and miles. There are not words to describe how foul the stench was, I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like to work in that place. I had a good ten minutes to stew in this smell, as we drove at 75 miles an hour through Nebraska passing just one of these stench factories, and it was practically unbearable. I imagine even the baby could smell it. It was that grotesque.

Chicken CAFO

And what was the worst was thinking back to the burger I had had for dinner at a truck stop restaurant, and knowing it very likely came from this stench hole, or one like it.
I don’t want to eat meat that comes from a CAFO ever again. I don’t want to bring that meat into my home. Jeremy and I have been discussing our options for buying a whole cow and splitting it with our families. It actually ends up cheaper in the long run, but is a big investment up front. I’ve been looking into local grass finished beef producers, and am in the process of narrowing one down. We have a chest freezer. This is a realistic option for us.
I also want to work on avoiding meat in restaurants. I have no idea where the meat comes from in those places, but it’s not likely to be grass finished, non CAFO meat.
You just can’t experience that and walk away unphased. At least, I can’t. It’s time to make a change. A big one.

Super easy Alfredo sauce

Alfredo is one thing Elijah eats with enthusiasm. Luckily, I make a pretty good Alfredo from scratch! It takes only a few minutes and it’s better for you than any crap from a jar or powder.

Ingredients
Butter
Garlic
Whole wheat flour
Cream (you can substitute with milk, but it’s not as rich and yummy. Sometimes I use a mixture of both)
Parmesan cheese (the real kind, I prefer shredded, not that powdered junk in a shake bottle)
Salt and pepper
Egg yolk (optional)

First, melt your butter in a pan. You’re going to want a lot, when I’m making sauce for the whole family, I use about half a cup.

When it’s melted, I add the fresh garlic (I press it through a garlic press) and let it simmer for just a minute.

Then I add a couple of tablespoons of flour. Stir it up into a paste, and let that cook for no more than a minute.

Now add your cream (or milk), enough so you have a nice sauce like consistency. If you think you’ve added too much, don’t fear, it will thicken up as it cooks and when you add the cheese.

Toss in your parmesan. I get pretty generous with the parmesan, but everyone has different preferences. You can always start by adding a little, then tasting it, and adding more as desired. If you need more cream (or milk) after adding the cheese, go for it.

Salt and pepper to taste.

If you’re adding the egg yolk, it really takes the sauce that extra mile. Unfortunately, I can’t add egg to Elijah’s sauce because he has that egg allergy. The best way to add the egg yolk is to scoop a small amount of the sauce into a cup, let it cool just a minute, and mix the egg yolk into it. Then mix that egg yolk sauce combo into the big pot of sauce.

Enjoy over noodles, veggies, meat, etc.

A single mom question that drives me nuts!

Of all the questions I get over and over again from single pregnant women, none bothers me quite as much as “Should I have my child’s father in the delivery room with me?”

What are you, insane? Seriously? To give you an idea of how nuts this question is, let’s rephrase it a little. What if you asked “Should I have my ex boyfriend/husband, a man who has hurt me terribly and causes me a great deal of stress, sadness, insecurity, anger, and a plethora of other negative emotions, in the delivery room with me?”

It’s the exact same question.

Sure! Why not? Why not invite all your ex boyfriends while you’re at it? Because your comfort and emotional security during one of the most physically trying, intimate, and powerful experiences in your life isn’t important. What’s more important is that any man you ever slept with gets to horn in on that moment with you, because sleeping with you at any point gives him ownership over you or something.

“But, he’s my baby’s father.” I often hear in response, as if that makes him somehow more worthy to be there with you. Why not have his parents in there too? They’re your baby’s grandparents, after all, maybe they have a right to be there. Maybe all his siblings do, his aunts and uncles, his cousins. And while we’re at it, let’s get every distant relative of yours in there too.

Blood relation, no matter how close that relation is to you or your baby, does not give anyone the right to be in the room with you. The only people who should be in the delivery room with you are people who are going to love you and support you through your birth process. And medical professionals.

Trust me, your baby is not going to know or care if it’s biologic father is staring at your vagina as it crowns. It’s not going to be looking for it’s daddy as it first opens it’s eyes. It’s going to be listening for the voice it’s been hearing every day for the past twenty weeks, it’s going to be searching for the smell that’s permeated it’s nostrils for as long as it can remember, it’s going to be seeking out the food that was specially designed for it, and none of these things belong to it’s biologic father, they are all you. Your baby is going to be looking for you, that’s all it’s going to care about. It might recognize the voices of others it’s maybe heard every day through your womb (Elijah recognized my mothers voice at birth), which is not likely to be your ex’s voice, but by far, the voice it’s going to care most about is yours. It’s not going to know a man who wasn’t there with you throughout your pregnancy from a wall. If all your baby cares about is you, maybe you should care about you too, and not have anyone in the room with you that doesn’t offer either loving support to you, or medical assistance.

I’m not saying this because I’m angry and bitter at men for running away from their responsibilities as fathers. I’m not out for revenge by saying “don’t have him in the delivery room”. Honestly, most dudes are not going to want to be there anyhow. They couldn’t handle the pressures of being there for a pregnancy, which literally is the easiest part, they certainly aren’t going to feel comfortable in the delivery room with you. They don’t even want to be having sex with you anymore, why would they want to do something this intimate and hard with you? They don’t. Not asking them isn’t revenge, it’s doing them a favor. And trust me, I don’t like doing these dead beats a favor either, but your first priority has got to be doing what’s best for you and your baby, whether that impacts your ex positively or negatively.

As for those few men who want to be present while their ex girlfriend/wife is in labor, I honestly believe it’s because they are abusive at some level, and want to take this opportunity to take advantage of you in an intimate and vulnerable state to fear monger you, harass you, control you, and cause you more pain. At least that’s the majority of them. Don’t let these sick bastards do that to you. Keep yourself and your baby safe from abuse, please.

No, this opinion isn’t based on a need for revenge, it’s based on science and my knowledge of birth. Labor is regulated by certain hormones, primarily love hormones, such as oxytocin. For labor to progress, you must continue making those hormones throughout the process. If for any reason you stop making them, or start making fear and stress hormones in quantities great enough to over power the labor hormones (such as by having someone in the room who makes you feel sad, self conscious, angry, betrayed, hurt, afraid, intimidated, etc.), labor is going to stall, complications are going to pop up, things are going to go wrong. This is a fact recognized by medical professionals, scientists, and birth experts around the world. When a source of negative emotion is in the room with a laboring woman, it jacks up labor. And this isn’t a hippie dippy, new age, superstition. There’s good science to back this up. When you feel emotions, your body creates hormones. These hormones can either help or hinder. Choose the people in your room wisely, so that their presence inspires the creation of helping hormones during your labor. Even animal’s labor will stop when in the presence of a perceived threat. Humans are no different.

Jacking up your labor progress puts your baby in physical jeopardy. Your baby will never know, nor remember, whether or not a man who wasn’t there with you during the pregnancy was there for it’s birth. However, if your labor stalls and then has to be augmented with labor stimulating drugs, which cause stronger and longer contractions than usual, resulting in oxygen not getting through to your baby, resulting in brain damage, your child has to live with that the rest of their life. If your child is seriously injured by vacuum or forceps extraction because of a stalled pushing phase, which is known to sometimes happen, your child will have to live with that their entire life. If you end up getting a cesarean you wouldn’t have needed in the first place had your ex not been there wigging you out and causing your labor to stall, and your child gets cut in the process (a known risk of cesarean sections), your child will live with that scar the rest of it’s life. If your c-section results in baby getting pneumonia because the lungs don’t drain as well as they do during a vaginal birth, your baby is going to have to live with that (and the greatly increased risk of death it now faces). If you end up with an infection in your incision which makes you too ill to care for your child for the first week or two of it’s life, your baby is suffering too. Or if the c-section goes wrong so that you lose your uterus and are unable to give your child siblings one day, should you wish to. And god forbid if one or the other of you dies because of complications that took place that wouldn’t have taken place if you hadn’t allowed some creep into your delivery room. Complications and the interventions used to remedy them increase both you and your baby’s risk of injury and death. About 10 to 15% labors will need some intervention anyway, but why why would you want to increase the risks of that happening to you and your baby? Especially when they probably wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

So should you invite your ex to be in the delivery room with you? No, I should say not. He has no legal right to be there anyhow, and if you ask me, he lost any ethical right to be there the minute he decided (or you realized) he was not man enough to be there with you during pregnancy. He can wait in the waiting room, if you’re feeling really generous. Or, you can just call him after the baby is born, either once you’re settled in your recovery room, or when you get home and settled.

Don’t let an ex boyfriend ruin your birth experience. It’s supposed to be beautiful.