Censorship

Trump has been in office for only one day and so far has already shown his true colors. One of the first things he did was mess with the mortgage rates. This will directly impact our working class families. Then he started messing with Obamacare. He immediately removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr from the Oval office and replaced it with Winston Churchill. Then...and this is the scariest one... He ordered a twitter account be shut down because they posted something that he did not like. They posted a comparison picture of Obama's Inauguration day in 2009 and Trump's yesterday. This has been posted everywhere. However, he shut them down because it looked bad for him. They are now back up, but had to issue an apology. From the man who has screamed about constitutional rights has stomped all over the first one. Freedom of speech. Pay attention people. These may seem like little things to start with, but before you know it it snowballs. The rights he takes away today may not affect you, but tomorrow the rights he takes away might just be yours.

New Year

New Year - New Me

Cliche I know, but I really do want to make some changes this year. I will be 35 in June. My husband and I have decided to try for one more baby this year. I am super excited about that. However, I am at a very bad point as far as how I feel about myself physically. I am at the heaviest I have ever been. I have now hit my pregnancy weight! So this month I am joining a gym. I am joining the same one that my friend is a member of so we can go together. We are hoping that we will help keep each other motivated. It also has a ton of other family stuff for the kids too. The next thing is that I need to quit smoking. I have been a life-long smoker. I started very young and have now been smoking for more than 20 years! I am starting to feel the effects from it. My chest hurts all the time. I am short of breathe a lot. I don't know exactly where to start, but I need to stat. I am thinking about over-night hypnosis. What do you think? 

Our 45th President

Today, January 20th 2017, marks a day in History. Donald J Trump became our 45th President. I think that after his four years people on both sides will be surprised and angry. His supporters will be angry when they realize that he did not do the things that he promised. A lot of which he can not do, but they did not pay attentions. They did not do their homework and research. They read headlines and believed what he said. I wish it were that simple, but gone are the days of taking someone on their word. I am hopeful that maybe the other side will be a bit surprised as well. I am hoping that he will not be as crazy and scary as it seems now. I feel like as a nation we are holding our breathe. Waiting to see what he will really do. We have all spent so much time speculating. I think his Inauguration speech was like none of his other speeches. It was actually put together well. It is a shame that he doesn't mean much of it. I am sure that his supporters were left with a feeling of hope. I have a feeling that they will be terribly disappointed. I have learned through all of this that not ALL Trump supporters are completely nuts. Some of them are good people who are just a bit misguided. Some of them are hopeful that his banter is just that and that he will bring a good sense of business to Washington. For their sake, and mine, I hope that is true, but I don't think that it is. There are many people, including some that I know, who think that we should blindly show support and respect to him mearly because of his title. Well not me. I refuse. I will not blindly support someone. Respect is earned, and he has done nothing thus far to earn mine. I know that probably does not mean a whole lot to most people, but it does to me. So here it is, here we are.

 His first act as President.....

First act as President

FUN RUN!!!

Hi guys.... it's that time again. My boys are doing the Fun Run to contribute to their school. In the mean time they can win lots of prizes along the way. Please help them out by donating. You can do a flat donation as small as $1 or you can pledge per lap. It all adds up. Thank you!


Gavin....

https://funrun.boosterthon.com/a/s/AYE4NR1K



Aiden....

https://funrun.boosterthon.com/a/s/_iyCdDCj  

Week in Review

So we are getting ready for Aiden's birthday party on Saturday! It has been stressful waiting for people to RSVP. We still only got 2 of HIS friends, but we did end up with 8 total so I think it will be a good party! He is pretty excited about it. He is having a completely Star Wars themed party!! Next year we are going to do things a little bit differently. I think we may just invite a few of their friends to go out instead so we don't have to worry about how many will come.

Next week we are finally getting a washer/dryer in the house!! I am SO excited. No more laundry mat!! It is the little things lol. Man I am old, to be this excited about a washer/dryer.

Earlier this week my husband and I went outside to check on the moon flowers I had planted. I think we are finally getting some buds on them. So while he was looking I went to walk down the three steps to look with him. Did I say three steps? Yeah, I only walked down two steps and fell the rest of the way because I am just so graceful. So my toes curled under one of my feet breaking a toe and spraining that ankle and ending on the textured concrete driveway below scraping my leg and foot all the way down! There i was, on the ground, crying like a little kid. Man did it hurt. I have been down for the count for a few days, well as much as I could have been anyway, but now I am back up and moving again.

It was a long three day weekend with the kids. The beginning of school is always hard. It takes them some time to get back into the swing of things. Early bedtimes, wanting to stay up later but being so very tired, homework, schedules. Not to mention they always misbehave a little bit when school first starts. It's like they are around other kids doing things and they feel the need to once again try them out as if they will get a different response from us. I know it will level out soon, it always does.

We did get to see something fun this week. My husband is a manager at his company. So they had a thing going where if his employees met their goals then they would get to throw pies at the managers. Believe it or not, this was his idea. Sure enough the employees did great and won their prize. So we got to watch as they threw pies at him and another manager. My kids even got to throw one at him. It was great lol! 

Update: Aiden's Party

So as I said before, my youngest son has a birthday party coming up. I was worried from the start about people coming to it. It is at the beginning of the school year. He is very shy and it takes him awhile to make friends. I had the phone numbers of a few of his friends from last year, but have had very little luck there. One of them, the phone number I had has been disconnected so I went through the school only to find out that he had moved. Another one will be able to make it, but for just a short time because his brother's birthday party is on the same day (which we will be going to after our party). Now the other child I had a phone number for... I spoke to him mother via Facebook about two weeks ago. She said she did not know if he could make it because her son's birthday was around then and they did not know what they were doing. I then asked her if she was going to do a party because if so I could change ours to the next weekend so we did not have competing parties. At that point I could have changed because I had not sent out invites yet. She never responded. So we went ahead with our plans. Yesterday I contacted her again on Facebook to invite her son to our party. She tells me that he can't make it because her son's party is on the same day around the same time!! GRRR I asked her remember?!? So now I understand, in part, why we have had not even 1 RSVP for my son's party. A kid who has been at that school much longer and has a lot of friends is having his party on the same day at a fun place! I have now had to explain to my anxiety ridden six year old, who is OMG excited about his party, that we only have one of his friends coming to his party for just a little bit and a few of his brother's friends. This made me, and him, so sad. I had to break his little heart. This party thing is just too stressful. Next year we are doing it differently for sure. However, this year there is nothing I can do now since we already have things set in motion and a few people coming. So we explained that even though there would only be a few kids that we would make it the best Star Wars party ever! His brother was surprisingly helpful with creating excitement about all of the cool things that would be at his party. So there it is. 

Week in Review

So the kids started school last week. I think it went well. My oldest is in third grade now. They consider this a transition year so they kind of change classes throughout the day. They switch between all three of the third grade classes for different subjects. It is taking some getting used to for him. He is my worrier and is worried about keeping up with three teachers worth of assignments and homework. I know he will do just fine. He is such a good student and adapts so well. Last year he had straight A's all year long!

My youngest son is now in second grade! He is excited about having the same teacher this year. His first grade teacher moved up to second grade and he got her. He is such a shy boy and has a hard time getting comfortable with new people, it takes awhile. So he is starting off the year with a sense of comfort and confidence that I have never seen. It is amazing what a little familiarity will do for him. The second day of school, he walked right up to a kid in his class and said "hey, you want to be my friend?"! I was amazed. This is the same child that spent 3 months last year trying to jump in and talk to classmates.

We have his birthday party coming up. We are doing a pizza party at the house. We did the same for my oldest back in March and it was a huge success. So now my youngest feels like that is the bar, or maybe I do. Invitations were sent home with kids last week and so far we only have a few kids coming, and only one of them is a friend of the birthday boy. I am so scared that we will not get any of his classmates. He will be so upset. It will break my heart if he is sad.

It is time to start patching his eye again. We were waiting to get the patches in, but also to let him adjust to his glasses again. He tried it on this morning ad it fits well and is easier since it does not stick to his face, but it will be hard to get back in to. He could hardly see when we covered the good eye. Which is the whole reason for doing it in the first place, but still makes it hard. 

His Little Eyes

My youngest son will be seven in a few weeks. Since he was around 14 months old he has been wearing glasses. He has Strabismus, meaning he is cross eyed in both eyes. He is far sided, had an astigmatism in both eyes. He is red/green color blind, and has no depth perception, meaning he can not see in 3d and can only see in the direction he is looking. He also has Amblyopia. That is where his brain is ignoring one of his eyes and only focuses on his right eye.

For the astigmatism and the farsidedness he wearing glasses that change about every six months in strength. For the Strabismus he has had botox injections in both eyes, and then finally eye muscle surgery. For this they had to remove his eye muscles and reattach them so that they were aligned. Although they could slip again at any time, his eyes have remained straight since then. It has been two and a half years since the surgery. Depth perception develops at around six months of age with straight eyes. With his eyes being crossed at the time, he did not develop it and never will. You only have one shot at that and he missed the boat.

As for the red/green color blindness, there is really nothing we can do about this either. He sees color, but not in the same way we do. He has learned with repetition that we call red, but what we see as red he sees as green. All of the colors look different. Everything is dull an he can not see different shades of colors. Fortunately he was born with this so does not know any different.

Now as for the Amblyopia....we have been doing patch therapy. We put a patch over his good eye for a few hours at a time to force him to use the bad eye. The hope is that if we do this for long enough we can retrain his brain to use that eye as well as the other. We have been patching for six years now, with no luck. This last appointment I finally asked the doctor if we were going to fix this problem. He told me that it is possible, but more often than not, no. He said that eventually we would give up on that eye and stop patching. This will happen in a few years. At that point the eye will continue to get worse until he goes blind in that eye.

This has hit me so hard. I keep thinking about his life and what this will mean for it. Will he be able to drive? What kinds of jobs will he not be able to do? Will this be a disability? There are already things now that he can not d, like sports. I just can not believe how many problems his little eyes can have at once.

One good thing did come from his last visit. The doctor turned me on to a website that makes cloth patches! They slip on right over his glasses and we can reuse them over and over. No more sticky bandaid like patched that hurt his face! I am so excited, and so is he. It is Amblyopia Awareness month! Help spread the word about the disease and help to stop the stares! If you use patches or have a child that uses them you should check this site out!

www.patchpals.com

Then and Now

My son was talking about learning how to tell time on an analog clock. I was telling him that when I was a kid there were not digital clocks. That set us off on a conversation about how things were "back then".


Then......

Now....

Then....

Now...

Then....

Now....

Then....

Now....

Then....

Now.....

I remember having t wait while the movie rewinds, playing mario for hours because you couldn't save, blowing on my Polaroid picture to dry it, carrying a quarter in my pocket in case of an emergency, and having to go to the library to look something up. 

The End of Summer

The past few weeks have been kind of busy. First we went to my husband's family's house for a few days. t was our end of summer visit. It was nice to see everyone. Then we went to my parent's house. We just gt home last night. It was great to see them. We try to do a visit at the beginning and at the end of summer. Now that my husband and I share a car I do not get to take the kids as often during the school year. We will not be able to visit again until January. That is when we do a holiday visit. Anyway, now we are home and getting ready to start the school year. Today is orientation at the school. We will bring supplies and meet the new teachers. Then they start school on Wednesday. The summer actually went by fast this year. I am sure I will blink and this school year will be over too. Every year, faster and faster. Now it's time for early betimes, EARLY mornings, school lunches, and homework. It is also the signal that the holiday season is right around the corner. Soon it will be time for Halloween costumes and turkey and Christmas trees. Where does the time go? Although I am not wishing time to go by faster, I am looking forward to cooler weather, open windows, hot chocolate when the kids get home from school, and of course.... pumpkin spice everything! 

My growing babies

I read a post on another blog that I follow this morning. It really got me thinking. It was about kids growing up and moving into new phases. She spoke a lot about her five year old who is almost too heavy to pick up anymore. She talked abut how this will signal a new chapter of parenthood. She is right. I realized that without knowing it my oldest son crossed that thresh hold. I can not remember how long it has been since I have been able to pick him up and hold him. He cuddles with me on the couch every so often, but no longer can I pick him up and wrap my arms around him and hold him. He is not little anymore. He is growing up so fast. Every time I blink another year has gone by. He is now 8 years old and getting ready to start third grade. My youngest is also growing quickly. He will be 7 next month and starting second grade this year. He is on the small side so I am still able to hold him somewhat. I treasure that so much. There is nothing like the feeling of your little ones arms wrapped around you with a big ole smile on their face. They are happy and safe and I am happy. Very soon he too will be too big to scoop up in my arms. Treasure every moment you have with them because before you know it they are big. 

Losing your Love

Our neighborhood is full of a small town community feel. Most of us know each other somewhat. We exchange homemade goodies around the holidays. We collect packages if needed. We share good news, and bad. Across the street from me lives and elderly man, he recently turned 80. He and his wife have lived in that house for 47 years. His kids went to the same school that my kids are going to now. They were excited about becoming great grandparents soon. One day his wife was ill so they went to the doctor. Turns out she had stage 4 cancer. It had spread throughout her body including her lungs. She remained in the hospital for about a week and then they brought her home. There was not much they could do. So they had hospice care come in and he and their two children took care of her round the clock. After about two weeks I saw an ambulance arrive at their house. She could not breath. She remained in the hospital for a few days before being transffered to a nursing home. They tried, but it was just too much to care for her at home. Her body shut down and she passed about a week later. It was all so sudden. I thought so much about their family through that time. I was so sad for them. I kept thinking how fast it all was. In a matter of a month she went from fine to gone. Now I think about him a lot. They had been married 50 years! Can you imagine? It still blows my mind that my husband and I have been together for 10 years. What do you when you lose your spouse of 50 years? Now I watch him fill his days with yard work and errands and his new great granddaughter that was born a week after his wife passed.

Women's 400m

So a new controversy within the Olympic wins has arose. Last night in the women's 400m Shaunae Miller dove over the finish line to beat USA favorite Allyson Felix. Is that allowed? The rule states: "The first athlete whose torso … reaches the vertical plane of the closest edge of the finish line is the winner." Well I suppose it is legal, but I don't think it should be. I think once your body is down on the ground then that should be it, you are out. Although, the NFL has a similar rule when it comes to touchdowns. when you are running for a touchdown all you have to do is get the ball to touch inside the orange pilon. You don't even have to cross. That being said Allyson Felix did win the silver medal making her the most decorated U.S. female track athlete of all time. Way to go Allyson!! 

Storm Pictures

When I was a kid I loved looking at the clouds to see what shapes I could find. Now as an adult I still love clouds. I especially like it when a storm is rolling in. We live in the mountains now. The clouds look cool rolling in over the mountains.

Kids Today

I can't believe I am old enough to say this, but.... when I was a kid....

I was playing outside! As an adult I love how far we have come with technology, but with the good comes the bad. My children are six and eight. Most of their time is spent on some sort of electronic device. My eight year old is trying his hardest to convince me that he is old enough to get his own laptop. He wants it so he can play this computer game that he can not get anywhere else. I, of course, have said NO! Although he is a good and responsible kid for his age, he is not old enough for a computer. When I was his age I was playing with my barbie dolls in the barbie fold-n-fun house. I was climbing trees. I was digging in the dirt. I occupied myself most of the time, and that was just fine. I was not devastated if I did not have something to focus on for two seconds or if my mother did not spend every waking moment of her life paying attention to me. In school I got on my first computer, on dos. We learned how to make pictures. We learned how to type. I did not get on the internet for the first time until I was about 15 and even then it was this thing to do when all other avenues of entertaining myself had been exhausted. I had a beeper then. A clear purple one that was mostly used for my mom to check on me when needed. She would page me and I would use the change I had to have at all times to call her back, from a payphone! My kids have never seen one. I got my first cell phone when I was about 19. It was a very heavy little Nokia. My 11 year old nephew is about to get his first cell phone. It seems crazy to me. However, if your child is at an age where they are starting to do things on their own then I suppose it is needed. How else will they call someone in an emergency? There are no more payphones. My kids, again 6 and 8, have a tablet, MP4 players, PSP, playstation, x-box, portable dvd players, and a 32 inch flat screen t.v. in their room. When I look at that list I think wow, they are some spoiled kids, but in these days that is just the way of it. It did not seem crazy when we gave them those things. If anything, they are a bit behind as far as what they have sometimes. Fortunately, my kids are appreciative of everything they have. They do not act spoiled, and they still enjoy some simple things. Like movie night with popcorn, little toys from the dollar store, and hot chocolate on a snowy day. I remember the most expensive thing I ever asked for for Christmas was this name brand jacket that everyone seemed to have. I never did get it, and my world did not crumble. The cheapest thing on my son's Christmas list's is usually about $50. It is so crazy to see all of the differences between the generations.

Smells like Mom

I was helping my son who is six. When all of the sudden he stops and says "mommy where are we going?". I say "nowhere baby, why?". He says It is because of how I smell. He starts to tell me that he knows how I smell when we go out and he likes that smell. I realized that he has picked up on my perfume. These are things I just never thought about. It hit me so hard, in a good way though. I thought, this will be one of those things he remembers as an adult. 

Last year my mom gave me a quilt from her house. It is one that I use every time I go over there. I never noticed any smell to it when I used it there, but when I brought it home it was very different. It smelled like my mom's house. Which is not a smell I could explain exactly, but it smells good and like her house. I remember thinking my husband must have thought I was a little bit crazy. For some reason I was so happy that it smelled like mom's house. I would lay down to g to sleep and feel like I was there. The smell faded over time of course, but now that it what I think of when I use it.

So now I think about that conversation with my little boy and think, one day he will catch a whiff of my perfume somewhere, and maybe it will make him feel like home. 

My Not so "Little" Baby

So this evening my oldest son, who is 8, said he wanted to be able to close his bedroom door when he is in there. Now I have never told him he couldn't, but he assumed so, and he has never expressed a want to close it before. I am fine with him closing his door. However, this is just one of many things here lately that signal his getting older. It is strange to say the least. When did this happen? When did my child become "older"? Just yesterday he was a "little kid" who needed me to do everything for him. Now he can get his own drinks. He can make his own breakfast and lunch if he wants to. I don't know if I am ready for this. He wants more control, as he says, over choices. He wants to pick what goes into his lunch for school. I know these seem like small things, and they are, but he is my baby. He knows music that he didn't hear in my car. He has independent opinions about things, including music, t.v., politics, and religion even. What happened? I used to talk to him about Handy Manny and pretty pictures he colored. Now I listen to him having conversations with his six year old brother about God vs. science. I am so proud of him and so freaked a the same time. Here we go into a new chapter. 

More From the Crazy People

This man makes my blood boil. It seems that is happening more and more these days. Where is he getting his information anyway? He must not have any real understanding of social security disability. Does he not realize how hard it is to get? It is a long painful process. One can not simply fake a few documents and receive money. It does not work that way. I have watched my step-father go through it. He is disabled. Once he started receiving it, after only one year he was denied again. BTW you can only apply twice. If you get turned down twice you are done, forever. So he had to fight like crazy to try and get it back. The man who needs help with his shoes was being watched by people in the bushes. They would take pictures in hopes of catching him do anything that would indicate that he could in fact go back to work. Sick! At the moment I do not even know how to respond to the horrific racism that oozes (and anyone who knows me knows how much I hate the word "oozes") throughout his remarks except to say how fitting that his last name be Cotton. Now the crazy and ignorant have a leader, Trump.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) suggested recently that population decline and drug abuse in poor areas could be the result of too many people on Social Security disability. Speaking to the conservative Heritage Foundation, Cotton warned that communities with a high percentage of residents on Social Security disability had reached a tipping point that was linked to population decline. But he said that communities which used fewer benefits were enjoying a population increase.

“When a county hits a certain level of disability usage, disability becomes a norm,” he continued. “It becomes an acceptable way of life and alternative source of income to a good paying full-time job as opposed to a last resort safety net program to deal with catastrophic injury and illness.”

“And guess which population has the highest number of members on Social Security disability? African-Americans, and typically ones residing in urban areas. In fact, there are widespread suspicions that faking injuries and falsifying documents in order to appear terminally ill is becoming an increasingly popular practice with unemployed and uneducated black people,” Cotton stated.

He also added that African-Americans seem to be taking things even further: “After a number of failed attempts by black people to fake their way into being classified eligible for disability, they have even started resorting to actually injuring themselves severely, so as to ensure and maximize their chances of being able to exploit the safety net that is Social Security.”

“They even have entire groups of people who are former marines, medical staff and other government-trained personnel, and who know how to inflict serious injuries without actually endangering the body’s elementary functions. And that’s just one example of the lengths black people are willing to go just to avoid working at a job. Their laziness must be genetic or something,” Cotton concluded.

My Search - Part 2

So as I posted about before, I have been searching for my birth siblings. Although I was raised as an only child, I am actually one of 8. I have known only one of them, my brother. My birth father had three other children besides me, two boys and one girl. My birth mother had four other children besides me, a boy and three unknown. Also remember that I was adopted by my birth mother's twin sister. So I remained in the family, but do not have much of a relationship with my birth mom.

I started with my birth father's side of the family first because I had a lot more information about him. I figured it would be easier, and it was. It took only a few days before I found them. I first spoke to his mother, my grandmother. That is still strange to say. Then I spoke to one of my aunts. Sadly, how I found them was through an arrest record pertaining to my oldest brother. It turns out he is kind of a mess and I have not spoken to him. I don't know that I will. I don't know if he would be interested. Plus, he is into drugs and I can not invite that into my world. The next brother is doing well. He is married with six children. He is a bit pensive about the whole thing though and I have yet to speak to him. I chatted with his wife a bit at first, but now nothing. I have been told it will take him awhile to come around. I hope he does at some point though. Next comes my sister! I can now say that, my sister, without sounding like I am trying to sound out a word in a foreign language. I have talked to her quite a bit. She is great! We are SO much alike. We were talking quite a bit for awhile, but now it has slowed down a lot. It is hard to turn strangers into family. I figure it will come over time.

Next I started searching for my birth mother's other children. She kept the youngest boy. He is the only one she kept. He just turned 21. I do have a relationship with him, but don't have much info on the rest. All I have is that two were born before me and one after. The one after was a girl and her father was African-American. I don't even have firm dates of birth. So I have added my name to adoptee lists all over. I hit a few dead ends. I did find one girl who sounds promising. She fits the where, the time frame, the sex and race. What little info she has about her birth mother also fits. I reached out to her and we talked a bit online. We were set to talk on the phone, but she got nervous. Now nothing. I told her to call me when she was ready to talk and we could go from there, but I have not heard anything from her. That was more than a month ago.

Well that's it I'm afraid. I have hit a dead end for now. I am trying to save some money to do DNA and sgn up with some of the sites that cost money. I set up a GoFundMe page, but no luck so far. The link is on the right side of my page here. 

Premenopausal Really?

So The women in my family have a tendency to start menopause early, in their 30's. I have always known this, but when I wasn't looking I became that age. I have been struggling with anxiety, but now I think it may be anxiety/hormone imbalance brought on by menopause. I have some other symptoms as well, some hot flashes, and messed up cycles. I just can not believe I am having this conversation. I am 34 years old.

I feel like this may also make the decision for me about having another baby. Not just because my body may not be up for creating one, but also mental health. If my anxiety is being driven to such an extreme that I can not go grocery shopping then what business is it of mine to have another baby? A crying, unpredictable, uncontrollable baby. Hmm.. but I still want one more. I can not seem to get passed that. I have an entire list of cons to having a baby, but I still want to. I am telling myself, almost begging myself to make the responsible choice. That it is not a good idea to strap ourselves financially again. I just don't know. Boy we ended up off topic.

Anyway, I think a new chapter may be starting in my life. Not really a welcomed one, but nonetheless.