I Love My Bike

I haven't written in ages and I have so many reasons why that I'm no longer sure exactly why I'm not writing. None of them has a large enough piece of the pie that it stands out as The Reason; there are so many reasons that I don't even have the energy to list them. So I'm not going to. I'm just going to dive in and start writing from now without catching you up. Anything that's important will come up again.

I LOVE MY BIKE.

Seriously, I changed my photo on Twitter from my kids and me to a photo of my bike. Let me try to put it into perspective: imagine your dream car. Not the car that you think you might be able to afford and that would be practical, but your DREAM car. It's thousands of dollars that you just cannot spend. You do not have it. And then, one year later, you've been saving and saving and saving and you find a used one for only 2/3 the price. You can buy it now. You can pay cash. Sure it's an older model, there have been two model years since then, but it's a beauty. So you do it. You have your dream.

Now imagine that your dream car makes it possible to take your kids to the grocery store. It's not a small personal conveyance. Your Ferrari or Porsche or whatever-it-is can hold your kids and all the stuff you could want to carry quite easily and it is STILL a dream to drive.

Now maybe you can understand why and how much I love my bike.

My Intro to YouData

Way back when I learned about sk*rt from OMSH (you know, Heather, who commented once that she promises never to make me drink any Kool-Aid). Sk*rt eventually became Kirtsy, Heather became an editor, and I just don't go there often. I do get their emails every week or so and I certainly pay attention to contests. Especially contests where they are giving away a free laptop (it's over -- I didn't win). I was curious about this whole YouData thing and went to their site to learn more.

Well, the first thing you need to do is fill out some surveys about yourself. I'm a sucker for surveys. Just love giving people my opinion about things. So I signed right up and proceded to survey away. That took no time at all and then I could go look at some ads. Just some cute little banner ads in their ad viewer on the website. Boom, I had earned 25-cents. Not much, but more than I usually bring home. (Why, oh why, don't I get paid for each poopy diaper I change???) So, since it was a lot easier than changing a diaper and they promised to put a shiny quarter in my PayPal account, I was having fun. I clicked thru each banner to the respective advertisers' websites to earn some more change, 15-cents here, 17-cents there. The next thing I knew I had learned about Kiva.org and seen some scary (as in eww, I don't want to dust that) Halloween figurines and some crazy expensive baby furniture. Random surfing could have produced the same results. Pretty soon the kids needed me so I got off the computer.

I didn't think about it until a few days later when I got an email from PayPal saying that I've received $3. Huh? Sure enough it's from YouData. Well, thank you! So I instantly go back and view more ads and listen to the happy little ka-ching sound. I am loving YouData.

So I took this little trip...

to Sacramento. I went to a conference and my family communed with our extended families and their pets.

I got very little sleep starting with driving all night to get there. During the conference I either had a late night at workshops/meetings or stayed up late to get in some kid and hubby time. Then we drove straight back overnight. I'm barely awake and doing things.

In fact, I was just going to read 2 blogs and then get that load of clothes in the washer going as the presoak has had plenty long to do its job. What should I find but that Kathryn at Daring Young Mom has actually mentioned *me* in her post about laundry. So now that I've given her some linky love back, I'm off to throw some more clothes in with some Charlie's Soap (love, love, love, love). Then a nap.

Hahahahaha! Moms don't get to nap. :-(

PS -- Before I could hit post both kids were slipping on the Pergo floor. Why would that be? Could it be the spit and chewed up Goldfish cracker paste that must have appeared while I was typing? I can let you know that the Charlie's Soap All-Purpose cleaner (diluted 10:1) got that mess up with no problems. Other than me being disgusted, I mean.

Words That Encourage

{I hope Heather never starts a cult because apparently I would drink whatever Kool-aid she asked me to.}

My Biscuit's Daddy,

I knew when I was 14 that I would never get married or have children. I was deathly afraid to have a daughter thanks to a not-so-great relationship with my mom, and didn't like myself enough to imagine anyone else would ever like me. Both of these things are lodged in my psyche so deeply that I still cannot believe that you proposed. True we had dated for about a decade, but I was still shocked. So shocked that apparently I didn't actually say "yes" aloud and forgot to take a picture of you, even though in my mind I did speak and I did take the photo. Maybe stunned and incapable of functioning would be a better way to put it.

Now here we are 5 years later. I'm not sorry that I made us wait 2 more years for our wedding because I worked very hard to get you a meadow in the moonlight like you wanted. And I think it was a beautiful night. If only you could remember that the word "obey" was not uttered during the ceremony. Perhaps you were stunned as I was when you proposed and just thought you heard it?

I still cannot believe the life that we have. Who could have guessed that an old biddy like me could get pregnant so easily? And that the perfect boy we had for 3 days would suddenly turn into one who would need those awful surgeries? That we would be strong enough to help him recover from them and to develop into the rowdy toddler he is today? That his sister would follow so soon? And that having two children would be so much different than having one?

I know that sometimes you feel I am not on the team and am questioning your decisions. I know that you feel I tell you that you are wrong too often and that I go into debate mode too easily. I will try to remember (and I hope you will too) that those beautiful kids are proof that I think you are right. I don't think you are wrong, I just want to make sure that all bases are covered when you make these big decisions. If you've already considered those points then great. I'm glad we had the Volvo and I'm glad we turned it in when the lease was up. I'm glad you quit that crappy job where they didn't appreciate you. Yes, it is scary to not be out there and earning my own money and to know that it is not only me that depends on you for a roof and food but our children do as well. But look at what you have done! You've taken a firm non-believer like me and made me a mom. I never could have imagined I would love being a mom so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you for seeing the potential in me and helping me to unlock it. If you can do that then in my eyes you can do ANYTHING. I will gladly follow you anywhere.

And now the whole world knows it (so I can't come back later and say I don't remember I said it).

Lumoi

Will we ever be the same?

Yesterday Kate at Sweet|Salty wrote:

We’re so drained. Our skin still smokes and hisses, fresh from the brand of tragedy, to the point where I wonder if we’ll ever be ourselves again.

No, you won't. No parent is. I was just thinking about this the other day. My husband has a friend who is 1 of 4 sons (he's somewhere in the middle). This guy claims that no one should have more than one kid because you have less love for each child that way. My husband and I maintain it's not a zero-sum game; parents don't have a finite amount of love. Love expands and grows with each new family member, whether from birth, adoption, marriage or some other way I can't think of right now -- but why?

The answer hit me last week. Each new person in the family brings out something different in you. I feel like a different parent now that The Cupcake is here and it is a very good thing. I have to figure out her moods and body language. I have to understand how to soothe her and, sadly, the tricks that worked with The Biscuit do not always work on her. In fact the things that soothed him the best and the fastest make her scream. And while that can be frustrating and frightening, she is changing me into a better parent that has even more tools to work with and better ways of coping.

We felt like we became experts on our son and his heart problems and how to navigate the hospital bureaucracy. Now we are newbies again. We are brand new to the world of a "typical" girl who doesn't have to go to the cardiologist and get echo cardiograms. In fact, the first week home I was taking her temperature all the time. She feels so warm to me despite a totally normal thermometer reading because he was slightly cooler than normal. And yes, it did take me a week to figure that out. It was my first clue that despite it being the second time around, I'm a newbie and have to learn all over again. But I know that I don't know, so that puts me at the second level, right? At least compared to last time when I was so lost that I didn't know what I didn't know.

Maybe it only makes sense from where I sit.

I Missed Blog for Choice Day

But that won't stop me from writing about it!

I first heard about it on Daring Young Mom's blog and felt like I had a lot to say, almost too much. Then when I saw Owlhaven's post, with it's simple and heart-felt message that cuts right to the heart of things I figured out how to say what I wanted.

There are countries in this world that are thrilled to announce that their Down syndrome birthrates are declining. Sadly, the reason these rates are declining is not because they have found a cure -- unless you call very early prenatal testing and abortions a cure. I don't.

I found 2 articles (so far) that share my view that people with Down syndrome are worth giving birth to. Their lives are not so short and empty that they should be aborted. And since there is no cure, what else can early testing lead to?

The first is by Patricia E. Bauer and was in The Washington Post.

The second article is by George F. Will and appeared in Newsweek.

My husband and I were lucky, I guess. My OB/Gyn asked us if we wanted amniocentesis and we asked back weren't the risks of miscarriage great at my "advanced maternal age"? He said yes and then asked the big question: Is there any reason that you would want to terminate the pregnancy? We both said no, so he agreed that the increased risk of miscarriage wasn't worth it. What if we hadn't been so sure of ourselves? I wonder now if his advice would have been different. As I sit here typing this and listening to The Biscuit through the baby monitor, I thank God that we didn't know so that we didn't have to deal with medical professionals that might have prodded us towards not having him.

It seems like the Choice debate always centers around women and their right to choose or the child's right to be born. We are missing out on something and it is quietly slipping by: doctors give pregnant women advice. When the doctors' information is not up-to-date, women get out-dated advice and then make life and death decisions based upon that old way of thinking. The doctors MUST be taught that the best advice is to talk to someone who is living in the situation, whether it be an adult with Down syndrome or the parent of a child who has Down syndrome or whatever. A doctor, just like any other human being, cannot know what it is like to live with something unless they are actually living with it. And we have to learn to be self-advocates and ask to be referred to support groups. Maybe after meeting some adults with Down syndrome and learning about the wonderful things that are happening today it wouldn't be so scary. And maybe then, with this better advice, 85% of these children wouldn't get aborted.