Ang has a great blog about her life (family, house church, etc). The blog is witty and thought-provoking. She responded to my entry about spanking on her blog. It's interesting and you should read it.

I guess there were some things I left out of my spanking post. I was spanked, but not abused. My brother and I were spanked fairly often, but my parents learned gentler ways of disciplining as they got older and wiser and had more kids. My youngest brother was hardly ever spanked. Is it because of the lack of spanking that he has been the least rebellious of my parents' five children or is it just his personality? A combination of both things? I honestly don't know.

I don't think spanking your child makes you evil. Most of my friends who have children spank them and if they don't NOW, they plan to as they see the need.

And I reallylove my parents. I think they're great and will parent Miriam in much the same way they parented me (without the spanking).

Ang's blog also talked about a no bull shit diet. Being honest with each other in our house churches/close relationships, etc is so important for the groups'/relationships' health. I realised tonight that I am not doing that very well. Although people who know me well know that I can be confrontational, it's usually not a pretty thing. I don't enjoy telling people I disagree with them or am unhappy with them, so usually my frustration builds until I confront in anger instead of love.

I belong to a fantastic "house church" (we call it a Bible study, be we're just scared of labels). The people amaze me with their desire for community and growth. I've also been amazed at how people are upfront about the failings of the group as they seek to grow. However, a lot of these people have children and parent in ways that, at times, make me cringe. It makes me upset to hear a baby crying and see his/her mother refuse to pick him/her up. It breaks my heart to watch a child being spanked. It bothers me to see parents giving 2 year olds soda and chips and candy (I know these things are bad for me; I don't want Miriam to have them on a regular basis). And it makes my blood boil to have people threaten to feed my 7 month old foods behind my back.

This is what I decided. I don't want to be a constant criticizer. I won't comment on the spanking (although you'd better fucking believe I'll be taking my child out of the room), as the child is not mine. I won't comment on the soda/candy/chips thing. I won't comment on the child crying piteously (although I might pick him/her up). However, if anyone tries to give my child something that I don't want her to have or if anyone yells at her or punishes her in a way I find hurtful, I will most definitely speak up. My problem is remembering to do it right away and not 3 weeks of brooding later.

Miriam has earned the puker of the week award.

Since Tuesday she's puked at least once a day. And I don't mean spit up. I mean puke. Milky, chunky waterfall from the mouth puke. She'll be playing and kicking and acting like normal and then PUKE. She'll be sleeping and puke in her sleep without even waking. She would just fall back to sleep lying in her puke if I didn't clean her up. (of course, I have ulterior motives here. She sleeps next to me and *I* don't want to lie in her puke all night).

She hasn't puked since about 10 am Sunday and I'm hoping our run of puking is over for this session.

Before I let go of this topic, though, who do you think she pukes on most often? ME. She's puked on Chris once. ONCE. And hardly anything got on him. He even managed to get her to the toilet to do the rest of her retching. I understand that I am the one who feeds her most of the time, but give me a break. Sometimes I feed her, Chris will take her and play with her, I'll take her back and THEN she pukes. On me.

sigh.

I really have to wonder how it works when babies sleep in rooms of their own. Do the parents hear them throw up and go change them? Do parents go to get them in the morning and find them sleeping in caked on puke? I imagine that most mothers have their "baby sense" on and know that something is wrong. I certainly don't remember any stories about caked on baby puke from any of my friends.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

it's one and a half weeks until I fly to PA. I'm going to a women's conference (not so excited about it) with my mom, sister and sisters-in-law (very excited about that). The conference is only a day and a half, so the rest of the time is for visiting and relaxing in PA. I will very much miss my husband, though.

This will be Miriam's first time flying and I'll be alone with her. WAAAhhh.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I've been thinking a lot about discipline lately. I try very hard to understand other people's ways of disciplining their children. Since my child is not old enough to be punished I don't feel like I have the right to weigh in on how I feel about it. But on my blog I can weigh in on whatever I want to! (and I don't have to use good grammar, either!). I just can't wrap my head around spanking. I don't understand why parents think hitting their children to get them to stop doing something (like hitting) is a good thing. I know it works. Perhaps that is the simple answer to my question. It works. But, I don't want Miriam to not do something because she's afraid of being spanked. Afraid of me hitting her. I want her to listen and obey out of respect.

I keep telling people I don't plan on spanking--that I won't spank. I tell people because I want to be held accountable. I want to know when I am angry and frustrated that if I choose to spank there will be very many people who will be able to say "I thought you weren't going to do that." I think if I'm willing to live with the "told you so's", then maybe I will have come to a place that spanking is necessary. I hope that is making sense. It is 1 am.


I think that the issue of spanking is an important one for me. And the time is coming when I will discover if I have the will power to discipline without spanking.

An interesting article about spanking can be found here:
A Shortcut to Nowhere

Oh, and I almost forgot--My wonderful friends Jenny and Dave Price and their daughter Claire welcomed a new addition yesterday. Alise Jane Price was born at 10:32 am. She weighed a little over 8 pounds and was 19 inches long. I held her for a while yesterday and marveled not only at how precious this new little one is, but also at how much my little one has grown in just 61/2 months.

Welcome to the World Alise Jane!!

It's been a while.

Miriam has a tooth and another one is almost through. Both on the bottom. That's a good thing for my boob, I hear. She's sitting up and seems to have reached another level of awareness. She notices the cat, gets excited when Daddy comes home and cries when I leave the room.

She keep trying to grab my food and drinks, so I bought her a sippy cup (just for water). She doesn't get the sipping action, though, so I mostly unscrew the lid and hold it while she drinks. If you can call what she does drinking. She either gets too much and spews it right back out or laps it up like a kitten. But if you're holding her and the cup, you'd better be willing to share. She gets so frantic for the cup that her hands shake as she reaches for it. It's a little scary that my daughter is addicted to water. I mean, if she finds good old h2o addicting, wait until she tries sugar or...well, let's not think about all that, yet.

I finished knitting my first project. I made Chris a scarf for Valentine's day. It turned out pretty well. Although there is much room for improvement, I'm really happy that it is usable and that I made it.

My friend Jena just rocks. She gave me a little lamby figurine that's sitting and knitting. He's my new mascot. I need to name him. Jena also taught me how to knit, gave me a cool project bad that she sewed herself, a few skeins of yarn, new knitting needles, a candy bar, etc. It's so nice to have a friend willing to share her habit, I mean hobby, with me. It's so exciting. You all should see what Jena knits. And you can--just check out her Blog-- If you don't see a link here, there is one on the right (Craft Muffin).

And while you're checking things out, you should see some cute new pics of Miriam on our fotopages. Again, there is a link on the right.

Chris took a mental health day today. When he told me he was going to I got so excited because I knew that I would be getting a mental health day as well! :) It's so nice to have someone else spend quality time with Miriam.

And I did all sorts of baking while Chris was doing dishes and I just kept handing him dishes to wash. HA! It was miraculous. I dirtied a dish and he cleaned it. Having no dirty dishes after baking/cooking was slightly heavenly.

Miriam is lying on the couch next to me making the most humorous noises I've ever heard. They're like a cross between a laugh, scream, and heavy breathing--with the occasional desperate suck on her fist. I think she REALLY wants her first tooth to come in. It could wait awhile yet as far as I am concerned.

Three times in the last month or so I've had interesting experiences while out with Miriam. A waiter, a two strangers made comments about how I must be "enjoying a day of shopping". As if that's all I do now that I'm at home. I know that the people were just trying to make conversation--and I appreciate that. But it's really disturbing to me that they didn't assume that I was just running into the grocery store for a few things or meeting a friend for a quick lunch rather than having a "day o'shopping." Am I making any sense?

I try not to see myself as "just" a stay at home mom--And Miriam is, in my opinion, worth staying at home for. (but quitting teaching English has not helped my grammar.) So, I'm at home--and overly sensitive.

Finally, does anyone have advice for getting Miriam to eat anything other than boobiejuice? (angie??)

There are people here right now looking at our house.
They are in the basement. Our basement is an incredible mess.

It's weird that you have to make your house look BETTER than it ever did while you were actively living in it in order to get it to sell. Sigh.

But I came home, lit some candles, and prayed for a successful showing.

On an entirely different note, I recieved a visit from my wandering Aunt Flo for the first time in, oh, 15 months. She really didn't have to visit.

I went to the gym, showered and went to get redressed when I realized I forgot my undies. Try racing home while commando during Aunt Flo's visit.

On the other hand, don't try it.

I made it, though.

And I lifted 5,400 lbs today. I love the computerized weights at the Y. You can do any weights you want and you don't need to use the computer, but if you put in your pin number, it keeps track of how much you lift, how often you lift and how much you're improving, etc. It's cool to "see" my progress that way.

I also did a 20 minute cardio workout.

I will shed this weight.

1 lb down, 74 to go.

ramble, ramble, ramble.

My husband posted about how I "hate" Matthew Ryan and guessed that perhaps I would blog about how much I hated him. Well, that day is not today.

First of all, hate is a strong word.
Secondly, I would much rather blog about music I like...
Such as Over the Rhine, Coldplay, Innocence Mission, Pierce Pettis.

Speaking of Pierce Pettis, I particularly like his song about the virgin Mary. Although my daughter is named for my grandmother, I believe this song helped make her name beautiful to me and my husband.

Here are the lyrics.
Discuss. ;)

No banners were unfurled,
when God stepped into the world,
held in the arms of a little girl named Miriam.

Who would ever believe, the fiancée, the family,
the teenage pregnancy of Miriam?

But laws of nature were suspended,
death sentences rescinded, throughout all the world,
all because of a little girl named Miriam.

Medieval paintings glaring down,
stony figures judge and frown,
wearing a halo like a crown. Could that be Miriam?
Gentile temples’ stained glass swirls,
cherubim with golden curls. Oh! How unlike your Hebrew world, Miriam.

I don’t know if you ascended. I don’t care what’s been amended.
There was one sure miracle: the faith of a little girl named Miriam.

Oh, you are blessed indeed! Blessed is the fruit of your tree,
Yeshua, king of kings, and son of Miriam.

No banners were unfurled
when God stepped into the world,
held in the arms of a little girl named Miriam.

Copyright 1996 Polygram Music Publishing (ASCAP).

Miriam is screeching away in her walker. She has finally learned to walk forward in it, but it was so entertaining when she could only go backwards. She bumped into things, but kept trying to go backwards anyway.

Today has been a good day. Miriam took a great nap, my friend Denise came over for a few hours, I did a bunch of dishes and made two desserts for our house church tonight. I also began sorting out my craft closet.

Moving sucks.

However on the positive side--I am going to "clean sweep" my house as I pack things up. And I'm going to be hard on myself. Chris and I are such packrats and one packrat is bad enough--two in the same house spells chaos.

I'm going to add to my links on the side, but here are some neat things to check out:

My friend Jena's cool craft blog: Craft Muffin
My husband's blog: The Way of the Cross

if I made those link incorrectly, I'll fix them later.

You know, I was expecting this blog to be more comical than it is. I'm sorry to those who are reading it (jena and chris) that it is so dry now. Perhaps I'll be inspired tomorrow.

Gotta go--baby's fussy.

Well.
Let's see.
The rash from hell is indeed an allergic reaction. How do I know? Because after getting steroid cream from my doctor and applying it for 4 days I was driven nearly insane on Saturday night with itching. Also the rash was not getting visibly better either. I looked disgusting. I'm not exaggerating. Nasty rash, some just red, some of it bumpy like mosquito bites. All of it very itchy. Anyway, it got bad enough that Chris said, "let's go to the hospital." So at midnight we went to the hospital. Miriam slept the whole time we were there. We were home by 2:30, though we decided to skip church the next day and just go to the lunch/annual meeting at noon. I got up at 9:30 to put our contribution to lunch in the crockpot, when the phone rings. It's our friend (and real estate agent) Dave telling us that someone wanted to see the house at 4 that day.

Three problems with this. 1--Chris and I were both exhausted. 2--I don't like being home alone during the week, so I was away almost all last week and never cleaned. 3--Our house was a pig sty (due to #2)

We got ourselves up and cleaned the house, went to the lunch and came home to finish. While I was doing massive amount of laundry (ALL our clothes needed to be washed to get the offending laundry detergent out of them) at the laudromat (with the help of dear friend Sarah), our friends Denise and Patrick came over to help Chris dust, sweep and mop.

Phew. At least the house looked presentable.

If only Chris had told me Dave had officially put the house on the market, I might have been more prepared.

But maybe not.


Anyway, due to that chaos, I've decided to stay on top of things on the homefront. No more gallivanting around Indy and avoiding cleaning, cooking, etc.

To that end, I accomplished much today:
I went to the gym, worked out (lifting a total of 3,400 lbs and doing 30 minutes of cardio).
I went grocery shopping.
I made 2 dozen muffins.
I made 1 loaf of banana bread.
I made 1 apple cake.
I made sausage casserole for dinner.
I made sausage patties for Chris's breakfast.
I washed the dished from all of that "making".
I sorted and put away all the laundry from yesterday.
I swept the kitchen floor.

fun things--
I was online for awhile.
I listened to fun music while baking.

AND I breastfed my baby multiple times.

what a day. :)

ps--my rash has gotten so much better thanks to oral steriods (safe while nursing as long as you wait a few hours after taking them.) I've never had an allergic reaction before and hope to never have one again. ugh.