Now, if I could just get this thing out of reverse...

Not-so-little Sparky is growing faster than I'd ever imagined possible. At 5 1/2 months, he is almost out of his 6-9 month size clothes. Here is a picture of the five bags of baby clothes I packed up to hand-down to his cousin, Ethan, who will be born in a few weeks. While five grocery bags of clothes might not look like a lot of clothing, you have to remember that baby clothes are little. This is probably the equivalent of 5 or 6 huge trash bags stuffed full of adult clothes.


We did choose a few things to keep: The first little onesies that Mike & Paula gave us when we found out we were pregnant, the sleeper he wore in the hospital, the Daddy's team baseball outfit he wore in his three-month photos and one or two others. It breaks my heart to give any of his clothes away... When I asked Dave if there was anything specific he wanted to keep, he said, "All of it." He's just growing up so fast!

Part of growing up is becoming mobile. The Sparkster is now pushing up on his hands and knees and rocking back and forth. While this is not the best video of his skills, you get the picture. I asked a few moms that I know about how long their babies took to get from rocking to crawling. They said only a few weeks! It is possible that Sparky will be crawling by Halloween! Yikes! Slow down, baby!

On the topic of growing up too fast, I found the sweetest book today titled Let Me Hold You Longer by Karen Kingsbury. Written in rhyme, it talks about how we sometimes focus on a child's "firsts" and miss the "lasts" - the last bottle we give a baby, the last time he falls asleep in your arms, the last hit in a Little League game. I teared up in the store while I was reading it and am tearing up again now. I love my little boy and want him to grow into an independent, intelligent, loyal young man... but, it is bittersweet, because I don't quite want my baby to grow up.

Vapid much?*

Anybody else notice the similarities?

Watch this video, whether you are Republican, Democrat, or whatever and tell me that this is the person that you want to be the next V.P. of the U.S.





Ummm... Sarah? Honey? Have you ever met with one of the leaders of those countries? What about the states that border Mexico? And when Putin enters your "airspace," just what do you propose to do about it?

Listen, I'm all about feminism and electing a woman to the highest office in the land. But to elect a woman simply because she has a va-jay-jay? Don't think so!

And, by the way, McCain? Grow some balls and freakin' show up to the debate.

A coke, with a side of Midol, please!

Notice the label for this post: TMI!

But, for those moms out there, you'll understand... I haven't had cramps like this since June of '07! (Well, not counting labor pains, but you know what I mean.)

I've got the major lower back pain and the caffeine cravings and even had a slight bit of the typical irritability within the past couple of days. (Can you tell I was feeling a little fiesty with my most recent blog post?)

With all the pregnancy and breastmilk production, I've officially gone fifteen months without Aunt Flo visiting. I'll admit - It has been kinda nice.

I guess I've got a couple of potential solutions:

• Get pregnant again.
• Enter menopause.
• Stock up on Midol.
• Blog about it.

I guess I'm going with the last two options for now.

Oh, and just for Dave's sake: "Mucous plug!"

"Drill, Drill, Drill"

A letter from Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for "The Vagina Monologues." I checked the validity of this on Snopes.com before posting it.

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country choose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Amen, sister!

Happy Pirate Day!

Avast! Check out the cutie scrog! It be his first "Talk Like a Pirate Day!"

A more detailed post....

So, it is 6:30 a.m. I've been up for the past hour and a half. "Why?" you ask. Well, it isn't because the baby has been awake. Sparky has typically been sleeping to about 8 or 8:30 in the mornings, which is a beautiful thing. (As a matter of fact, we've cut out the "dreamfeed" and sometimes we'll hear him wake up, talk to himself a bit, then go back to sleep on his own!)

However, this morning, I woke up at 5 a.m. and my mind has been racing ever since. Since I have to wake up in about an hour, I decided to just give up...

I can't believe how stressful things have been around here lately. The classes that I'm taking are completely and totally kicking my @$$. I guess I underestimated how much work I would really have to do and how much time taking care of the baby would take. I thought that if I wasn't working, taking a full load of classes would be no biggie. Wrong!

One of the biggest stressors is the practicum class that I am taking. I have to actually see several clients and video-record the sessions. Then, I have to watch the sessions back and make my notes about the session. Finally, I have to meet with my supervisor weekly to go over the videos and notes. It is time-intensive, to say the least. What caused me to wake up this morning is the fact that I have to meet with my supervisor at 9 a.m. and last night when I got home from class (at 9 p.m.) and tried to watch the video from my session earlier that afternoon, only the first 4 minutes and 9 seconds were on the flash drive. There have been some technical difficulties at the center, to say the least, but I'm freaking out about having to go to supervision unprepared. I did my best to do the notes accurately without having the video, but... *Sigh*

I have a paper due tonight... but, it is already done! Having Sparky around has increased my time management skills exponentially. I'm so worried that he is going to be fussy or something that I won't have time to get something done at the last minute. The paper was a major stressor this week; I have another paper due next Wednesday that I'll be starting within the next day or so.

I'm hosting a Pirate Playdate at the park on Friday, which I committed to way before I knew what this week was really going to be like. (Friday is "International Talk Like a Pirate Day;" one of my favorite secular holidays of the year!) I have a few more things to get ready today, like folding the pirate hats that the kids are going to decorate and making the frozen chocolate-covered banana pirate ships.

On top of everything else, my sister's baby shower is on Sunday. I'm in charge of games and decorations. I've gotten most everything done for this, too: the prizes for the games, ordered the balloons, created the game pages, etc. I still have to run to Kinko's and get copies of the games made, which I think I'll be able to do tomorrow.

The house is a freakin' mess. I can't keep on top of it. If the laundry is finally done, there are dishes piled up. If I've gotten the clean dishes put away, there is mail and junk all over the kitchen table and counter. If the counter is cleared off, the living room is a disaster.

Dave has been a total trooper, making arrangements with his work schedule to be able to take care of Sparky every time I have to be at school earlier or for something new. I worry that he is going to get frustrated, but so far it has been working out okay.

So, there you have it and there you are. I knew going into it that this semester was going to be killer, but hopefully, it will only last for about another 8 weeks before things settle down. And, for those of you who only really come to this blog to check out the pics of my adorable son (and don't think that I don't know who you are), here you go:

Hey, everyone. I haven't had much time to sit at the computer lately, which means even less time to think of a topic and create a blog post. We are just beginning our fourth week of classes for the semester at UMSL and already I am about two weeks behind in the reading I'm to have completed. As a matter of fact, I should be doing that right now, but, well, here I am.

Sparky is going to be 5 months old tomorrow. He is such a sweetie. (Well, except for when he is fussing in his swing, like now.) He has completely mastered the whole rolling over thing and has begun to roll from one side of the room to the other if you aren't looking. He can also push himself up on his arms and get his legs underneath him with his tummy completely off the floor. He's also getting better at passing things from one hand to the other - that is, when he isn't busy sucking on his toes. To show that I am not completely biased, though, I will say that we haven't really moved past making vowel sounds. I'm sure the "dadada" and "mamama" will come soon enough.

Well, I'm going to go ahead and log off now with that boring update. The only topics I have left to discuss are weather and weight loss, and I know nobody is really interested in hearing about either of those. I'll post again when I have more to say. Time to hit the books, for now!

P.S. - 10 days and counting until "International Talk Like a Pirate Day!"