Mia - New Pics

That's the Worst!!!

Have you ever been goin along... living your life and then somethin happens that causes you to just say "Ick! That's the Worst!!"?

That is the newest segment of my blog. Welcome to the first addition of "That's the Worst".

I've got three to start you out with. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

1) When you're eating a hamburger and you suddenly bite down on one of those little hard white things that are only found in really low grade meat. ICK.

2) When you really want to wear your favorite pair of jeans, and you know they're clean cuz you've just done laundry...but you go to the dryer to find that they're still slightly damp. But you don't have time to dry them, so you just wear them anyways. Bleck.

3) When you've eaten to much salty or maybe sugary foods, and you get one of those little bumps on your tongue that hurts super bad. That's the worst!

THE COOLEST

I got home from work this morning, and when I walked in the door I heard Mia grumbling and the TV on. I came upstairs to find Andrew trying to finish his lunch while Mia lay pouting in her play gym.

Andrew said she had just started grumbling... so I leaned over her and started talking. She looked up at me and smiled as usual. I picked her up and we stood there facing Andrew in the rocking chair and chatting as he finished lunch.

Then out of nowhere... and for apparently no reason... Mia started cracking up. And I mean full on crazy baby laughing. And we kept it going for a minute or two. We still haven't figured out what she thought was so funny. It was either her daddy saying she had just eaten 15 minutes ago.. or the fact that he was making a funny noise as he closed the chip bag.

No matter what it was... it was AWESOME. This is only the second time we've heard her really laugh and this one was much more boisterous than the last.

My daughter is so cute!

C is for Cookie

And that's good enough for me.

A) I'm sick of being pissed off about the boards on my blog for awhile, so I thought I'd write something new. Now, I could talk about how awesomely amazing it is that the Supreme Court upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act... but I'm sure that will elicit more arguments.... so I won't. Suffice it to say... "WAHOO!!!!"

B) My little girl can smile, laugh (very rarely), hold weight on her feet (so exciting!), and say the alphabet from A to Z (okay... so I might be fibbing that one a bit), but she has mastered the vowel sounds of Aeeeeooo... aaaEEEEuuuu....aaaOOOeeee. It's awesome. She has become quite the vocal little baby and it cracks me up that she's decided that there are others ways to get mommy and daddy's attention besides crying. Plus she's not just cooing... but she's started to squeal. I'm finding my days at home slightly more entertaining now that I've got someone talking back to me.

C) I'm back at work and LOVING it. I get to work for about 3 hours a day, 4 days a week while Andrew stays home with Mia. I didn't realize how much I missed work until I was back. I find myself being much more productive at home now that I've got some sort of a schedule to go by.

D) We went to the Dentist yesterday. They told me I had a cavity. Bleck. Then they called later to inform me that the dentist got the x-ray they had to redo and decided I had another cavity. BOO & HISS. So guess what my mother's day present is?? I have to go to the freaking dentist to get 2 cavities filled the day after. EEEEEEEEyuck. I"m not too excited about that bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing sound.

Fin.

Another word from Chuck...

Cures, Cloning and Confusion in Kansas
What Governor Sebelius, the KU Medical Center and Big Biotech don’t want you to know

When the Catholic bishops of Kansas raised their voice in opposition to scientific research involving the cloning and destruction of live, human embryos, critics pounced and told the bishops to keep religion out of politics. But this isn’t about religion—it’s about basic human rights.

As the father of a child with severe disabilities, no one wants to relieve suffering and find cures to diseases and conditions more than me. But proposals to find such “cures” through the cloning and destruction of live, human embryos are not only barbaric and ineffective—they exploit patients and parents for political gain while raising false, cruel hopes.

Few Kansans understand the insidious world of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) and human cloning—and that’s just the way researchers like it.

To harvest embryonic stem cells, scientists need living human embryos, and lots of them. They want to create them through human cloning that requires massive numbers of human eggs, surgically extracted from young women injected with powerful, potentially life-threatening drugs. It’s little wonder feminists from across the political and religious spectrum are demanding an immediate moratorium on embryonic stem cell research to stop the exploitation of women (www.handsoffourovaries.com).

In a bizarre twist of logic, the Cloning Crowd waves the faux flag of ethical purity in opposing reproductive cloning—protecting and assisting the embryo on its life journey to birth, but supports therapeutic cloning—the destruction of the living, growing embryo instrumental to the “search for cures.”

Let’s be clear. Human embryos created naturally through the marital act or in a lab dish are scientifically and biologically identical. It is the intent of the parents and scientists—life or death—that is the only real difference.

The Big Biotech Industry has partnered with the University of Kansas School of Medicine, Governor Sebelius and a group ostensibly called the Kansas Coalition for Lifesaving Cures hoping to ride a tsunami wave of momentum powered by the secular Media, misinformation and money. They will stop at nothing to get their way, which is to say until they dig deep into the pockets of taxpayers.

This Cloning Coalition will tell you ESCR is the “best hope” for cures and treatments to a seemingly endless menu of diseases and conditions. What they won’t tell you is despite 20 years of unrestricted research on live embryos in labs around the world, not one cure has resulted and none are expected for decades—if ever.

Despite scientific evidence to the contrary, the quest to clone in Kansas marches onward. The Cloning Coalition dumped some $350,000 cash into statewide elections and now its payback time. They see green in their future, as in the color of money, an appetite not easily satiated.

No organization in the history of humankind has done more to relieve suffering, discover cures and care for the sick than the Catholic Church. That’s why Catholics support a kind of stem cell research using mature or adult stem cells that are found throughout the body in umbilical cord blood, bone marrow and even your nose. These stem cells already help people suffering from dozens of debilitating diseases and conditions.

The Catholic Church has always and will always come to the defense of the defenseless, injecting the Judeo-Christian ethic into public policy issues ranging from poverty and hunger to racism and other forms of human exploitation. Most importantly, the Church defends the sanctity and dignity of the unborn, and that includes the smallest of all humans—the embryo.

Chuck Weber is Executive Director of SaintMax Worldwide, a non-profit communications group that produced an educational documentary on stem cell research that can be viewed online at www.saintmaxworldwide.org.

American Idol Gives Back??

Okay... so maybe I'm letting my husband influence me too much these days, but I had a thought the other night when Ryan Seacrest was talking about the "Idol Gives Back" campaign. For those of you who don't watch the show, they're getting a ton of celebrities and business people and normal ol tv watches to donate money to help the poor kids in the US and in Africa. They keep showing all these sentimental videos of Ryan & Simon's visit to Africa and how these kids need school supplies and stuff.

Anyways... on Wednesday before the finally booted Hailey (the very leggy but no so great singer)... they showed this trunk full of school supplies that you can buy for like $150 bucks and it will educate a class of African students all year. So I was thinking about it and it struck me that it's a bit ironic that these big trunks-o-junk may be manufactured in China in sweatshops.

Isn't it interesting that we're paying the poor kids in China to build cheap stuff for the poor kids in Africa just so the U.S. can profit more??

Now, granted, I have no idea if these school packets are actually made in China with very cheap labor... but most things these days are made in China so it's a possibility.

Ridiculous!!

There goes time flying by...

Sorry dear readers for my lack of posts as of late. It's been a busy month with moving and everything. Here's a quick update:

Andrew and I are now eastsiders and we're in our great new apartment! It's bigger and brighter and Mia even has her own room (even though she probably won't sleep in it for awhile longer). I start back to work tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to getting back into the swing of things and since Andrew and I are taking turns taking care of Mia, I'm really not worried about leaving her for a few hours.

Speaking of el babino... I took her in for her 2 month check up today. She's 13 lbs 2 oz. (which is apparently quite chunky for her age). But... she's also tall so she doesn't really look like a super tubbo baby. I almost cried when she got her shots. She definitely cried and it sucked watching her in pain. Someone should invent a shot that doesn't hurt. Poor baby.

Easter was fun. We got to see a lot of Andrew's family that we hadn't seen for awhile. Oma and Opa were here to visit and have some baby-time with Mia. And we had LOTS of yummy treats and food.

Here's a question for ya... have any of you considered or had experience with a way to tie the Easter bunny into the Resurrection of Christ. They are rather unrelated things and I'm not so sure I want to spend 6 or 7 years lying to my kids about this big crazy bunny who brings treats to people when they should really be learning about how awesome Christ is. (And their daddy is very adamantly against the big crazy bunny thing... so unless I can come up with a way to tie the bunny to Christ, I'm pretty sure we're not gonna do the Easter bunny thing.)

Toodles!