Faith
27 October 2011
8 Weeks
We are now in the 8th week of school and things have finally gotten into a groove. We usually start school somewhere between 9-10am and usually are done for the day between 2-3pm. With an hour break for lunch between 12-1. So, for doing work with a 2nd grader, a 1st grader and a preschooler I'm only doing school actively for 4 hours a day.
We start our day off with Bible, all four kids come and say the Pledge of Allegiance, (some better than others) and then we usually sing/dance to a song or two. Then we have the Bible verse, and doctrinal drill and some more songs. We then have a Bible story. Right now we are learning about Moses, and the Israelites flight into the desert. We also pray, and the kids and I take turns leading the prayer, and then we usually close with a song.
Once Bible time is over the younger kids are sent to play in their rooms and I work with James and Jade on phonics and language rules. Right now we're working our way through all the special sounds, and with sentence rules, suffixes and root words, and forming complete thoughts when writing. During phonics/language time Jade listens but works on her phonics papers, which is usually only one or two papers.
Then we move on to spelling for James, we go over the spelling list and I help him figure out ways to memorize it.
Next is AM reading for James, then usually Jade, from books provided by abeka.
After reading we move on to writing papers, and we listen to pandora while the kids write. When they are done writing James reads/recites his poem for the month.
We then have signing time, which either consists of watching the DVD, listening to the song or just reviewing the signs in that unit.
Then I explain the seatwork for James and go and make the younger two kids lunch, while James and Jade work on their seatwork. I also eat lunch during this time, and then when I'm done eating I make James and Jade lunch and send the younger two to nap.
After lunch we do PM reading with both Jade and James, and I do anything I need to help Jade with.
After that is science, which right now is mostly just reading, and then we move on to arithmetic. Right now in arithmetic we are still reviewing what was learned in 1st grade, addition and subtraction families, easy fractions, adding with 3 numbers and 2 digit addition and subtraction.
Then James does his reading homework, and any homework I assign extra (copying, spelling words etc) and we're done for the day!
It's working out well, and I think our schedule works well with what we're doing. We go outside around 3ish and hang out with our awesome neighbors, and so the kids get some outside time before I start dinner.
The only thing I seem to have trouble finding time for is cleaning, but I'm sure that may get easier as the kids get older too.
20 October 2011
Why I choose to be an intactivist
My oldest son was born and to me there was no option but circumcision. My parents even felt so strongly that he should be that they paid for it, because my insurance did not. I took him in, and they held him down and I watched the procedure and the nurse yelled at me because he wouldn't take the bottle. He wouldn't take the bottle of sugar water because he was breastfed and had never had a bottle, he was only a week old. Plus, it probably had something to do with the fact that the doctor was cutting pieces of his skin away. It horrified me, and I apologized to him over and over again after it was done. After they handed him back to me, I went to my car and cried holding him and nursing him and I apologized over and over again for having put him through the procedure.
That was when I had decided that I wasn't entirely comfortable with circumcision. I figured I'd have Michael take care of the decision and the actual procedure if we had another son.
We had a girl next, but then we got pregnant with our third child, another son.
My husband and I lived separately at the time, because of an impending deployment. We had discussed and decided on circumcision again, even though I wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea. However, he did not have enough penile skin when he was born to do the circumcision, so the doctor suggested I hold off and we'd review the subject again when he was six months old. I held off and at 6 1/2 months old he was approved for circumcision and two weeks later I was at the pediatric urologist and Steven was circumcised. My father in law went in with him because I refused and I didn't want him to be alone, and I didn't want to be either.
I took Steven home, and he seemed fine. He was crawling around, he didn't seem in pain or anything and I was glad. Until I changed his first diaper. It was about an hour after the procedure and his diaper was completely filled with blood. I had my parents watch my two older kids and I called my in laws and my mother in law agreed to meet me at the ER. I didn't stay in the waiting room too long, but when the doctor saw him he informed me that he had to call the urologist before he tried anything. He also informed me, that even though my young, 7 month old son was bleeding, and it wasn't stopping that he'd seen much worse. Which of course did not make me feel any better.
They left us in the room, for a total of six hours, without stopping the bleeding on my son, who was filling his diaper completely with blood about every hour and a half. I kept thinking that if I had only held my ground my son would have never been cut and I wouldn't be in this position. Eventually the ER doctor came back in, informed me that he had finally gotten a hold of the urologist and he suggested he stop the bleeding. Genius.
He then proceeded to slather liquid adhesive all over my son's swollen penis and told me it was fine. Allowing that to happen was mistake number 2.
I brought him home, bleeding stopped and thought to myself, now everything will be alright. I was completely wrong. I don't know what exactly the urologist did wrong, but I do know what the ER doctor did.
A week later I noticed that the swollen skin had started adhering to itself and was starting to grow up and covering the head of the penis. I was concerned by it and so I brought him to his pediatrician. He referred me back to the urologist and I went back to him and he informed me he'd never seen anything like that and he didn't know what to do and then left me in the room, officially dismissing me, and my son.
Three days after that I noticed that the skin was growing even more over the head of the penis, and that urine was starting to get caught underneath. I tried to pull the skin back some and it hurt my son a lot and so I stopped, called my pediatrician and asked for a referral to a new urologist. I got that one and was given steroid cream to use and to wait a week and see what happened. I tried the cream for a little over a week and when it didn't work I went back in. That urologist told me that surgery was the next step but that he refused to touch a child under the age of one. I had to call my pediatrician and get a referral to yet another urologist. This time I had to drive to Orlando and talked to a urologist who would do surgery to fix the problem on my son. It was scheduled for a month later, when my son would be 8 1/2 months old.
Things began to go downhill, just a few days later Steven wouldn't stop screaming. I tried everything I could to calm him down, and when I tried to nurse him I realized he screamed in pain every time I held him against me, so I checked his diaper and his penis was swollen up about twice its normal size. The urine couldn't get out of the tiny hold that was slowly closing in over his penis. The urine had made the skin swell and he was in a lot of pain. I took him to the ER and they were able to get a catheter in and drain the urine. Over the week I took him in the ER for them to cath him over 10 times.
I called his urologist, and talked to the surgery nurse who told me they just couldn't get him in earlier, and that I should just keep taking him into the ER. I finally got an ER doctor who called the urologist and informed him that he couldn't even get a newborn catheter in to drain the urine. I had already been in the ER twice earlier that day and that Steven needed surgery NOW.
They got an OR two days later for him. I went to Arnold Palmer hospital at 6am and his surgery ended up being at 12:00 pm. He couldn't nurse after midnight, and so I pumped twice once before he went in, and once during.
I was a nervous wreck during the surgery, not that I didn't think he wouldn't make it through, but that I knew that the reason he was put under, the reason he was having surgery to begin with was because I didn't go with my gut, I allowed something to happen to him that I didn't feel was necessary to begin with. I know that if I had told my husband that I felt strongly that I didn't want him circumcised that he would have stayed whole, but I went along with it. For over a week I watched my son scream in pain every time he attempted to urinate, leading up to a surgery.
When the doctor came out to tell me what he had seen during the surgery he informed me that it was good we had done it then rather than wait the full month because as it was the skin was completely infected, and that he had to literally cut all the skin away from the head of the penis. The swollen skin had completely adhered to his glans. He has a lot of scars all over his penis now, and he had to remove the infected skin, and so he has a slight chunk of skin missing, it's not as noticeable now as it was when he was younger, but it's still there. He'll always have those scars.
I promised then that I would share my story with everyone I could, in order to educate, in order to teach. I never even dreamed that anything like this could ever happen. I was never told it was a possibility, not when he had the circumcision or when the ER doctor slathered the liquid adhesive on him.
I have two circumcised boys, and I am an intactivist. My husband and I have no plans to have any more children, but if we do, and if we have a boy, we are both in agreement that he will remain intact, just like our other two boys should have been.
There will be a day in the future that I will sit my boys down and I will apologize to them both for not allowing the decision to be theirs, and I can only hope that when I do they will feel compelled to forgive me.
That was when I had decided that I wasn't entirely comfortable with circumcision. I figured I'd have Michael take care of the decision and the actual procedure if we had another son.
We had a girl next, but then we got pregnant with our third child, another son.
My husband and I lived separately at the time, because of an impending deployment. We had discussed and decided on circumcision again, even though I wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea. However, he did not have enough penile skin when he was born to do the circumcision, so the doctor suggested I hold off and we'd review the subject again when he was six months old. I held off and at 6 1/2 months old he was approved for circumcision and two weeks later I was at the pediatric urologist and Steven was circumcised. My father in law went in with him because I refused and I didn't want him to be alone, and I didn't want to be either.
I took Steven home, and he seemed fine. He was crawling around, he didn't seem in pain or anything and I was glad. Until I changed his first diaper. It was about an hour after the procedure and his diaper was completely filled with blood. I had my parents watch my two older kids and I called my in laws and my mother in law agreed to meet me at the ER. I didn't stay in the waiting room too long, but when the doctor saw him he informed me that he had to call the urologist before he tried anything. He also informed me, that even though my young, 7 month old son was bleeding, and it wasn't stopping that he'd seen much worse. Which of course did not make me feel any better.
They left us in the room, for a total of six hours, without stopping the bleeding on my son, who was filling his diaper completely with blood about every hour and a half. I kept thinking that if I had only held my ground my son would have never been cut and I wouldn't be in this position. Eventually the ER doctor came back in, informed me that he had finally gotten a hold of the urologist and he suggested he stop the bleeding. Genius.
He then proceeded to slather liquid adhesive all over my son's swollen penis and told me it was fine. Allowing that to happen was mistake number 2.
I brought him home, bleeding stopped and thought to myself, now everything will be alright. I was completely wrong. I don't know what exactly the urologist did wrong, but I do know what the ER doctor did.
A week later I noticed that the swollen skin had started adhering to itself and was starting to grow up and covering the head of the penis. I was concerned by it and so I brought him to his pediatrician. He referred me back to the urologist and I went back to him and he informed me he'd never seen anything like that and he didn't know what to do and then left me in the room, officially dismissing me, and my son.
Three days after that I noticed that the skin was growing even more over the head of the penis, and that urine was starting to get caught underneath. I tried to pull the skin back some and it hurt my son a lot and so I stopped, called my pediatrician and asked for a referral to a new urologist. I got that one and was given steroid cream to use and to wait a week and see what happened. I tried the cream for a little over a week and when it didn't work I went back in. That urologist told me that surgery was the next step but that he refused to touch a child under the age of one. I had to call my pediatrician and get a referral to yet another urologist. This time I had to drive to Orlando and talked to a urologist who would do surgery to fix the problem on my son. It was scheduled for a month later, when my son would be 8 1/2 months old.
Things began to go downhill, just a few days later Steven wouldn't stop screaming. I tried everything I could to calm him down, and when I tried to nurse him I realized he screamed in pain every time I held him against me, so I checked his diaper and his penis was swollen up about twice its normal size. The urine couldn't get out of the tiny hold that was slowly closing in over his penis. The urine had made the skin swell and he was in a lot of pain. I took him to the ER and they were able to get a catheter in and drain the urine. Over the week I took him in the ER for them to cath him over 10 times.
I called his urologist, and talked to the surgery nurse who told me they just couldn't get him in earlier, and that I should just keep taking him into the ER. I finally got an ER doctor who called the urologist and informed him that he couldn't even get a newborn catheter in to drain the urine. I had already been in the ER twice earlier that day and that Steven needed surgery NOW.
They got an OR two days later for him. I went to Arnold Palmer hospital at 6am and his surgery ended up being at 12:00 pm. He couldn't nurse after midnight, and so I pumped twice once before he went in, and once during.
I was a nervous wreck during the surgery, not that I didn't think he wouldn't make it through, but that I knew that the reason he was put under, the reason he was having surgery to begin with was because I didn't go with my gut, I allowed something to happen to him that I didn't feel was necessary to begin with. I know that if I had told my husband that I felt strongly that I didn't want him circumcised that he would have stayed whole, but I went along with it. For over a week I watched my son scream in pain every time he attempted to urinate, leading up to a surgery.
When the doctor came out to tell me what he had seen during the surgery he informed me that it was good we had done it then rather than wait the full month because as it was the skin was completely infected, and that he had to literally cut all the skin away from the head of the penis. The swollen skin had completely adhered to his glans. He has a lot of scars all over his penis now, and he had to remove the infected skin, and so he has a slight chunk of skin missing, it's not as noticeable now as it was when he was younger, but it's still there. He'll always have those scars.
I promised then that I would share my story with everyone I could, in order to educate, in order to teach. I never even dreamed that anything like this could ever happen. I was never told it was a possibility, not when he had the circumcision or when the ER doctor slathered the liquid adhesive on him.
I have two circumcised boys, and I am an intactivist. My husband and I have no plans to have any more children, but if we do, and if we have a boy, we are both in agreement that he will remain intact, just like our other two boys should have been.
There will be a day in the future that I will sit my boys down and I will apologize to them both for not allowing the decision to be theirs, and I can only hope that when I do they will feel compelled to forgive me.
10 October 2011
Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street
Read the link. I'm at a point that I'm left wondering, do these people really know what they are protesting?
These people with all their corporate gadgets, their books printed by corporate publishers, their iphone's, ipad's, ipods, android phones. They are protesting capitalism, and yet they buy from capitalists. Steve Jobs, RIP, was a capitalist! He was RICH! He worked hard and made a name for himself, and these people think it's unfair that he did the best he could and was rewarded for it?
Um, right. There's logic.
I'm glad my children are not going to be seeing this going on. I've said nothing about it to them, and I will wait until they are older to explain the immoral and depraved actions of many of the people there. I will also teach them about how capitalism works, and how if you work hard everyone has the opportunity (notice the word opportunity not entitlement) to succeed!
This whole situation there makes me sick to my stomach. And to think that our president supports this depravity doesn't surprise me, but it's horrifies me also.
Disgusting!
Read the link. I'm at a point that I'm left wondering, do these people really know what they are protesting?
These people with all their corporate gadgets, their books printed by corporate publishers, their iphone's, ipad's, ipods, android phones. They are protesting capitalism, and yet they buy from capitalists. Steve Jobs, RIP, was a capitalist! He was RICH! He worked hard and made a name for himself, and these people think it's unfair that he did the best he could and was rewarded for it?
Um, right. There's logic.
I'm glad my children are not going to be seeing this going on. I've said nothing about it to them, and I will wait until they are older to explain the immoral and depraved actions of many of the people there. I will also teach them about how capitalism works, and how if you work hard everyone has the opportunity (notice the word opportunity not entitlement) to succeed!
This whole situation there makes me sick to my stomach. And to think that our president supports this depravity doesn't surprise me, but it's horrifies me also.
Disgusting!
03 October 2011
This may offend you....
And I really don't care.
Yes, this is a rant, and it's about something I read online. So sue me.
For new mothers who may not know this, or for anyone who knows nothing about babies. There is this thing called a growth spurt. There is a period of time before this growth spurt that your baby will seem hungrier than normal. It's because it's the biological signal in them that says, "hey I need to up the breast milk supply so that when I start growing I"m getting enough milk and nutrients to support that growth". It does NOT mean you need to give them "other" foods instead of your milk. If you give them rice cereal, which has NO real nutritional value because it is bleached (which just means it's been deprived of all the nutritional value). So if you give them cereal to "fill them up" you are DEPRIVING your child of the nutrients they are supposed to be getting and you are not increasing your milk supply like you are supposed to.
A LOT Of times, when I hear women tell me they just didn't make enough, or their supply just couldn't keep up, it's around one of these growth spurt times and instead of just going with the increased amount of feedings, which generally only lasts, at the most a week, they give up thinking they don't make enough, or they start giving cereal because well meaning but ignorant people tell them to do so.
Thus breastfeeding doesn't work under the guise that they just didn't make enough milk, when really they did, and then they pass on the information about their "lack of supply" on to others who decide that must be the same thing.
Oh and I know I'm sure I'll offend someone here and I'm almost positive I've probably already offended someone on the group I'm on for talking about this, but like I said I really don't care. My motivation behind this is for the well-being of the baby and not your feelings.
Yes, this is a rant, and it's about something I read online. So sue me.
For new mothers who may not know this, or for anyone who knows nothing about babies. There is this thing called a growth spurt. There is a period of time before this growth spurt that your baby will seem hungrier than normal. It's because it's the biological signal in them that says, "hey I need to up the breast milk supply so that when I start growing I"m getting enough milk and nutrients to support that growth". It does NOT mean you need to give them "other" foods instead of your milk. If you give them rice cereal, which has NO real nutritional value because it is bleached (which just means it's been deprived of all the nutritional value). So if you give them cereal to "fill them up" you are DEPRIVING your child of the nutrients they are supposed to be getting and you are not increasing your milk supply like you are supposed to.
A LOT Of times, when I hear women tell me they just didn't make enough, or their supply just couldn't keep up, it's around one of these growth spurt times and instead of just going with the increased amount of feedings, which generally only lasts, at the most a week, they give up thinking they don't make enough, or they start giving cereal because well meaning but ignorant people tell them to do so.
Thus breastfeeding doesn't work under the guise that they just didn't make enough milk, when really they did, and then they pass on the information about their "lack of supply" on to others who decide that must be the same thing.
Oh and I know I'm sure I'll offend someone here and I'm almost positive I've probably already offended someone on the group I'm on for talking about this, but like I said I really don't care. My motivation behind this is for the well-being of the baby and not your feelings.
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