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.

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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.

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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