Mommy and Me

Mommy and Me
Sharing life with you is fullfilling

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Mommy from two

At the creation of this blog there was only one little person tugging at my pant legs and saying mommy, mommy, mommy!  Now there are two.  F has grown so much in the last two years, she is beautiful, even if her vocab is short for her age, she has a lot to say... most of it babbling, but then there is the beautiful sound of her voice the moment I walk into the house after a breif trip without my children, a rare treat for any mother, her tiny legs working douple fast, pumping and kicking to get to me as quickly as possible, and her hands striving for good balance and reaching to the sky to have me pick her up as soon as possible "mama, Mama! Mama!" and then it continues long after she has reached her target.
C also has grown so much!  Currently I'm watching him attempt to life F off the floor by her hips while her hands and head are still very much on the floor.  They are best friends, and annoying counterparts of each other.  C is a creater, building amazing animals out of giant legos, creating both the animal and the story that will tell me about it's life, and purpose.  His latest amazing creatures are a 3 foot ostrich build with the help of his daddy, and a much smaller sea turtle.  He builds dragons, horses, giraffes and dinosaurs too.  He is not one to sit still playing with cars, though he occassionally picks them up.  He would rather build something and tell me the story about it.
C is also an expert on all things animal.  He memorizes the names and facts of animals like no other child I know.  He can tell you which animals are preditors (a word I believe I learned in 3rd or 4th grade, definetly not at 3 years old. It would not surprize me at all if he grew up to be a veterinarian, or zoo keeper, or some other animal related worker.
F is interested in taking apart her brothers creations, I don't think she does so out of spite, or just to destroy them, I think she is taking them apart like a surgeon would in surgery, she wants to know what each item does, why is it there? How do you put it back without distroying the whole creation.  This is something that reminds me very much of stories I've heard of P when he was a child.  He once took apart a chair causing problems for his unsuspecting grandmother who later sat on the disassembled chair.  Her care is deep and concentrated, she also cares for the needs of others in this same manor.  Pretending a baby doll is crying is second nature to her, as is shushing the baby while patting it's back, or for that matter shushing her brother when he is crying.  her cute little lips (one of her best features all the way back to birth) pursing and her eyes saddening for whoever is crying. F knows a tissue or wet wipe solves a runny nose and offers them to everyone in the house regardless of whether they have a runny nose.  She knows that every baby needs a paci to stop the crying.. and that a blanket and the hug of a mama can help any saddness.  Her heart is big! And joyful!  Every pinwheel, flower and hanging decoration needs a good blow, and when you guess correctly what it is she wants she will reward you with the biggest smile and cutest 'shy' duck and cover there ever was.
Hearing mommy over and over and over again can be a blessing and a curse.  There are days that I just want to send them to bed and be done with the needs of my children for the night, but then there are nights like tonight and yesterday that I would much rather observe them and love on them, smile with them and listen to the story of C's latest flying dragon made of legos, or blow one more time on that pinwheel F has been planting on my face for the last ten minutes. 
I cried yesterday because we homeschool and have only just started this year, but P was talking about sending C to public school to 'teach' him to be obedient better.  Honestly I thought how could he be taught better by a person who is responsible for 30 children's education, than by one who is solely dedicated to his education and integrity training?  P didnt actually mean to send C away immediately, or even to enroll him next year, but was just thinking ahead because C seems so adverse to instruction.  I can teach him to learn, I can teach him the basic skills he needs in this world, I can do that, I'm perfectly confident in that... what I fear I cannot teach him is advanced Math, and Science... but those things are not going to be learned in 1st or 2nd grade, so I feel I should be allowed time to develop his character, without the assistance of a person who has no long term need to help him become the man I hope he will be.  That is not to say I wont accept or even ask for assistance when needed, but to say that I don't want to give my children into someone elses hands unless I do have need for their assistance.
I am blessed to have these little being that cuddle me, demand my attention and give me the best gifts anyone in the world has ever received... a reward for simply loving them.  I am an addict, I want another.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Super Tuesday

This blog promises to be an open hearted discussion on how I feel about the politics and religion of our culture... mostly the politics among those who have religion.

As you have read I have had a rough time with the loss of Jaemi, my ectopic baby.  Here are some things as facts would have them that pertain to the later part of my post....
1. Jaemi was ectopic, actually a tubal pregnancy, located in my right Fallopian tube.
2. I had bled for nearly 20 days, some days light, some days so heavy I couldn't stand up, the last day I passed out in my bathroom.
3. The dr.s did what they could to look for my baby, but only found it that last day, located in my right tube.  They monitored the amount of blood loss I had, and checked my hormone levels every other day.
4. In the end they found Jaemi in that right tube, and then without a moments notice they were packing me up from the ER to go to the OR to have Jaemi 'removed'.  I felt like I didn't have a choice, I felt like they were about to murder my child to save me, but I also knew in my situation that if I didn't allow that very thing to happen I would probably die from hemorrhaging, and that if I died I wouldn't be here for my children.
5. During the surgery they opened my right fallopian tube and found that it was completely clear of obstruction, no baby there.  And I started hemorrhaging worse than before, before preforming a D&C they found a tiny fluid filled sac with as they claimed 'nothing in it'. My belief is that Jaemi was taken home by God before the Dr. could remove him/her, and that being that my hormones were not increasing at the rate they should have been Jaemi just hadn't formed to the normal level of a pregnancy at that many weeks, or the dates were wrong and that was what we would have seen at that point in a normal pregnancy.  either way, the 'abortion' I had, turned out to be a D&C with no abortive qualities as I had miscarried beforehand.

Now here is why that matters. 
With the election coming up I've felt a lot of pressure by those who are either religious, pro-life, or Republican (individually or all of the above) to vote for Romney because if I vote for a 3rd party then I'm essentially voting for Obama. 
Do I want Obama?  NO.
Do I want Romney? I don't know.  Do I cast my non-important vote (thanks electoral collage) for a man that I don't necessarily want to win just to prevent a man I don't want to win from doing so?  I don't know.
If I vote for a 3rd party, does it matter which one considering that they just are not going to win anyway?  (I still would use my moral compass to select regardless of whether my vote mattered).

I'm sure you are wondering how these things are related since with Romney abortion is a non issue.  He would like to see each of the states decide... which doesn't sound incredibly bad to me, but I'm not sure about how that works for people traveling between state lines... anyway. 

My vote is a moral one.  I look at ALL of the issues, I weigh who is the most likely to adhere to my own personal moral convictions, and then I vote.  One of the biggest moral issues is the value of human life, and up until this election I could say that very flippantly.  Meaning that Romney wouldn't have a chance at my vote because he said that he was for women having abortions due to rape, incest, and issues where her own life were at risk.
“I am pro-life. I believe that abortion is the wrong choice except in cases of incest, rape, and to save the life of the mother.”July 26, 2005, Boston Globe, Why I vetoed contraception bill
A baby conceived of rape or incest is a baby too! 
The hard part of my answer has been eating at my soul for the last few weeks and I've only just now come to a conclusion, two days before the election.  What about babies of mothers who like me needed to save their own lives?  Before having my children C and F, I would NEVER have entertained the thought of riding myself of a baby to save my own life.  And actually I never really thought that getting rid of an ectopic pregnancy was that kind of issue, I just never connected the dots.  But yes it kind of is.  Here is the thing, if a pregnancy grows in the fallopian tube the tube will rupture, it can not stretch the way a uterus was designed to stretch as the baby grows.  When that tube ruptures the mother is at great risk for infection, and death.  So is it moral to be rid of the pregnancy and therefore the baby in order to save the life of the mother, when the baby never had a chance to live in the first place? 
I found a video that helped me come to terms with this.  Even the pro-lifers have an answer for this... despite what many people have said about me having to be pro-choice, if I made a choice to save myself rather than my baby. 
My husband came home to see me bawling on the floor in the kitchen the other day, this truly tears me up.  Why?  not because I have not dealt with the loss of Jaemi, but because in the end the only mater that I can not come to terms with on voting for Romney is his stance on abortion.  The rest of the stuff I either agree with him or don't care about enough to make a case for or against voting for him.  I have plead with God to help me choose who to vote for, but all I get is to go with my morals.
My morals can not allow me to vote for a man who does not value the life of a child whose parents made bad choices (a rapist, or the relative who created a child with their own sister/daughter/mother/granddaughter... who ever they did it with)... I DO NOT mean to say that I don't feel for the woman who did not ask for this treatment of her own body and now carries a baby to remind her daily of what happened, but two wrongs never did make a right, and someone else's wrong that created a baby does not mean that you can go on to do a wrong in destroying the life growing inside of you.  If this happened to you, then I suggest treatment, therapy, whatever you need to get through it, but not killing the baby.

So while my vote lands there I have these quotes running through my head.  "I'd rather save 90% of the babies by voting for Romney than to have 100% of them destroyed" (speaking of the pregnancies at risk for abortion, not all pregnancies), or "In the election on Tuesday, we have only two realistic options. If you don’t vote for Romney, then you have helped Obama. And if a significant number of evangelical Christians do as you do, Obama will be elected. I could ...
not live with my own conscience if I contributed, even by default, to electing a president who promoted same-sex marriage and baby-killing, which may well lead to the destruction of America."
both of these people are people that I value the opinion of, and are close to me, both of them I've talked to about my stance, and both of them agree that I have to vote for who I feel God is leading me to vote for, but I still feel as if their only reason for voting the way they are is because of fear.
 
I believe that God wasn't lying when he said 'for I have not given you a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind'.... no matter who wins this election (as it certainly wont be a 3rd party'er no mater whether I vote for them or not) God still is in control, and I can't be held back from what I believe God has shown me on my vote, so that I can prevent my fears from taking place.  This 'nearly republican' will not be voting for either of the two parties most loved, or feared by the Americans... I will stand up for what I TRULY want in our country... GOD!  And I'm sorry but Romney doesn't serve the same God as I do, he serves a sub-par version of my God, and has sub-par values for human life.  I will not vote for him.