Random Thoughts

Let me say first and foremost that everyone has their own opinion and I do not judge anyone that chooses to raise their kids the way they do and I am not criticizing anyone’s religious choice, I am rather making conversation about choice. It has been a question in my head/heart for many years and I am simply just blogging a few thoughts about it.
I have always wondered why churches and those attending church baptize at such a young age and actually why we baptize children at all. If we are not “allowed” to disobey our parents and their choices until we are 18 (technically) then why do we baptize as infants and small children.

I know that the catholic religion baptize infants and the LDS (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, aka “Mormon’s” note: not to be confused with the fundamentalist Mormon’s) baptize at age 8. I am not 100% sure on all religions I am just familiar mostly with these two.

Isn’t joining something suppose to be a choice (a human right)? What is the argument/reasoning around baptizing such small humans?

I was told when I was 8 that I was old enough to decide if this is what I wanted. Seriously? At the time I just did it because that is what you do, I never thought about doing anything different. I remember getting a big party out of it and some presents and that seemed very cool at that age, but honestly I did not really get the whole idea. I knew what the church told me “sins being forgiven” etc. what sins I had at age 8, but never really understood the “choice” part.

I am just curious to see what others think about this and the reasoning behind it? I personally (my opinion only) will let my children choose their religious beliefs and if they want to be baptized when they are an adult then so be it. If they ask me before they are an adult and mature enough to be able to think through it clearly I will simply tell them that they need to wait until they know for sure.

I share my beliefs with my daughter and will with my son as well. I do tell them what I know about God etc and hope that they will choose to believe as well but I do not want to be one of those parents that feel like I have failed in everything if they do not choose the same as I do. As long as they grow up to be good adults and do not hurt others intentionally and have a strong belief system and learn faith then I will know that I have accomplished something very amazing with my children.

I know this is a loaded post and I don’t want to offend anyone, and I am sure I will, but know that is not the case. I have asked this question so many times in the past and never really got a good answer from anyone rather than “that’s what we do.” Seriously, this is the church answer I got for years.

Anyone feel free to chime in!

I need to increase my weight loss a little faster. I am starting to get to that point of frustration that it is not coming off fast enough. I know that I should not feel this way but I have a big dance concert coming up the end of June that I REALLY want to be thinner for.

I am still going to do this smart and without any artificial help so I just need to step it up to two work outs a day. Keep the Jillian Michael’s early and bring back my total gym later.

I did a measurement this morning and I have lost a ½ inch of my waist this week as well as ¼ off my thigh. This is good and I am not complaining because what I am doing is getting the job done, I just need to increase this numbers a bit more.

UPDATE on 5-17-2010:
My update to this post is on a new posted dated 5-17-2010

I was already so sore from trimming bushes and digging out my garden the last few days that I barely had the energy to start a work out today. I managed to pull it off though.

I actually did a full 60 minutes of Jillian Michael’s today and after about the first 15 minutes I started to feel pretty good. I am sweating and tired now but is a good sweat and tired so I am OK with it.

Hopefully between Jillian and the yard work I can get this weight off even faster.

OK so I am freaking out today, well not really “freaking” but I am so baffled. I think I may be my own medical miracle today and here is why.
I have had glasses since I have been 16 months old. I have had 2 eye operations to open up my eyelids, one at 16 months and one when I was 8 years old. I have had horrible vision always in both eyes, but worse in my left eye. I have a lazy eye that is my right eye (even though it is lazy my vision in typically better).

When I am pregnant, which I have been 3 times, I do not wear my contacts at all, only my glasses. The reason why is that my contacts tend to dry out a ton more when I am pregnant and it bothers me so much that I can’t see spending the extra money for the contacts.

It is a really tough time financially for us right now because we are on one income and a family of four with massive medical bills. I finally broke down and had my first eye test and contact fitting since I found out I was pregnant back in December 2008. I have always been a bit blurry in my left eye with my glasses but thought that it was just due to the fact that I am always a bit blurry with my left eye.

I got a new set of contacts 5 weeks ago and my left eye was normally blurry and my right eye was a lot clearer with them. When I went into the eye doctor she thought that maybe changing the contact in the right eye by 10 degrees would help. Yesterday I got the new contacts and my right eye is 100% more clear and feels great. I thought that maybe she changed my left eye to as it was so much worse and I could not see anything and was getting massive headaches from how blurry it was.

I came home from my dance class and took out my contacts and it was amazing clear in my left eye when I took it out and blurry in my right eye. I immediately put my glasses on and could see better out of my right eye but my left eye was as blurry as it was when I had my contacts in and it was driving me crazy. I went on and off with the glasses all night long and got such horrible headaches from wearing them and not wearing them and each was due to a different eye when I had the glasses on and off.

I figured that when I got up this morning things would be back to normal as maybe I scratched my eye or something. When I got up this morning I put my glasses on and the same problem exists as last night. I cannot see any eye irritation from and infection or from a scrape. I called my eye doctor and they told me that my left eye contact did not change at all. Baffling? Aw yes! I have an appointment at 11:00am tomorrow.

I decided to try and wear my right contact only and nothing in my left eye since I cannot even do glasses with the left eye right now. Wouldn’t you know it; my vision is pretty darn clear with only the right contact in? This is so strange.

So did my eyes change during pregnancy like they say? Did I just not notice it because I was so use to the blur with my glasses? What happened in less than half a day going from the first pair of contacts to the second? I am so baffled and dumb founded right now. Will this change last, will I only have to wear one contact now and if so for how long? I am just overwhelmed with question and concern today. It would be nice to only have to pay for one contact instead of two, but the frustrating part is that if this is a permanent change then I cannot get any relief with glasses anymore which is nice to wear instead of contacts sometime?

Update tomorrow after the eye doctor. I would LOVE to know if anything similar has happened to any of you. I have heard of eyes getting better, but this fast? Who knows!

Today I finished the major trimming of the bushes, which took about 2 more hours. I was trying to beat the rain storms and had to go in and out during a couple different storms. My 4 year old came out and helped me clean up all the “trees” when I was done and it was so darn cute. She was so excited to help me. It took about 30 minutes of bending over and hauling the bush tops over to my deck and making a few huge piles that I need to get rid of this weekend.
I proceeded to come in and do a 40 minute work-out (Jillian Michael’s work out I have pretty much memorized) while watching Jamie Olive’s food revolution. Btw it is my absolute new favorite show ever! I did not even get to exhausted which surprised me. I thought for sure I would be dead to the world tonight but oddly enough I am doing pretty well. I did take a bit of Motrin because the bending over did strain some new muscles but all in all feel pretty good.

We will see how this yard work along with Jillian Michaels helps drop the inches. I love that I am starting to feel so good and not so totally dead after doing some physical activity.

I have hated this for years and yesterday after moving 2 different times in 10 minutes away from smokers while my child played on playground equipment just really pissed me off.
I am sitting on the bench right next to the playground equipment at our local park with my 8 month old in my arms and TWICE I had two different adults walk up with their kids and pretty much blow smoke in mine and my infants face. Seriously…what the heck?

I don’t care that people are smoking at the park but why do they feel that they got to smoke within 5-10 feet of children’s playgrounds and expose me and my children to their second hand smoke? I was so frustrated by the time I left I wanted to hit a wall, plus it stinks! All I can chalk it up to is ignorance and selfishness. Kill yourself not my children.

Sorry for the brutal remarks but this really does make me mad.

They freak out if you don’t stick to the textbook facts on eating, well facts are only statistics and statistics change and are not studied on every population group. In fact almost all studies on children are done in population groups of like 100 and can you really tell me those 100 children is enough? Kids are so different that this number is definitely not high enough.
I have an MS in Nutrition and learned beyond the medical field. Just because you are a physician does not mean that you have had extensive training on everything. This is why physicians work with nutritionists and dieticians hand in hand. In fact we had a retired physician in our Masters program and he was there because he said he always wanted to know more about it but never got the chance while he was in practice.

Both my children had less colic when starting on solid foods. They ate 6 ounces of formula every 2-3 hours after the age of 3 months and this is not healthy. Too much formula is not good either. I had to add in rice cereal starting at 2 weeks old. Only small amounts like 1 tsp at a time 1-2 times a day so they were still getting their nutrition from formula. When the feedings were getting too close together again I would up the formula a little along with the cereal. At 4 months both children started on oatmeal. At about 4 ½ months started vegetable stage 1 baby food or made my own. I did not introduce fruit at all until 6 months and NO fruit juice until a year and never out of a bottle.

Both my kids are healthy, at normal weight, and happy. Neither of my kids have fat rolls nor do they not stuff themselves. Overeating is a learned behavior; children are not born with it and will only eat until they are satisfied at young ages. Adding solids when their hunger increases will help them feel satisfied for longer periods and not teach them to engorge themselves every 2-3 hours.

Another thing to consider is that most of the studies done about bottle feeding solely for the first year are done by formula companies, go figure. They use to say that you only had to bottle or breast feed for 6 months and then it went to a year. Infants grow so fast and need more nutrition when they are going through their growth spurts.

This is just my opinion but it bothers me that I have to lie to my pediatrician about what I feed my kids for that first year because the first time I told them the truth I got the 3rd degree. I have never told my pediatrician that I have a masters in Nutrition because I figure “what is the point.” I know that I am not hurting my kids; in fact my son went from colicky to pleasant in about a half a day from starting him on rice cereal. He is now almost 8 months old and eats all baby food. He should not even be starting baby food until now according to the medical field. As of last week he was perfectly in line with all the statistical charts.

Again this is my own opinion and if anyone has a question about when to start their infant on any type of solid food that is something that needs to be addressed by each individual separately.

I must be getting some big old “guns” for muscles because I was a warrior when it cam to trimming my massive back yard bushes today. Ha ha, but seriously, I am so not sore. This is weird because EVERY time in the past when I have trimmed these bushes I have sore arms for about 3 days. So sore that I can’t even lift them within about 2 hours after trimming. Well, it has been like 8 hours and I even lifted some dumbbells tonight. This is very cool as I have more bushes to trim this week and I won’t have to wait a week to finish.

This gives me some added motivation and makes me very happy. I guess underneath my fat arms I DO have muscles there. Hopefully that muscle will come out and say “hello” sometime soon and I can have a nice toned arm.

For years we have had a huge problem with our neighbor’s friends parking right behind our driveway. I have been very careful and very lucky since 2004 but my luck changed last about a week and a half ago.

My neighbor’s car was not totally parked behind my driveway but it was halfway behind my driveway, the front half of the car. There car was dark blue and it was 9pm at night and dark, and I had to other cars parked on my side of the road on either side of my driveway. I really did not even see the car behind me and backed my car into theirs. Ugh, I was so pissed. They did not even here me hit it and like every other human I thought, hmm, maybe I should leave, but I can’t do that. I walked up to the door and knocked and told them I hit their car.

Just when my insurance premiums are nice and low, here I go hitting a car! It least the car was drivable and she drove it home and I am not claiming my car because just the back tail light got busted and the bumper scraped. Not worth the deductable to fix.

Moral of the story…don’t park behind any driveway especially when there are cars parked on either side of it already. It was my fault for hitting the car, I know, but I think I would have maybe missed hitting her car if there won’t so many stinking cars parked all around my driveway. Lesson learned I guess.  Oh ya, and it figures because we finally paid the car off!