I have heard adults talk­ing to each other and to kids many times about the dif­fer­ence between tat­tling and telling.  These same adults often say, “Kids need to learn to work it out on their own.”  For those who don’t know, the dif­fer­ence between tat­tling and telling is that telling hap­pens when some­one is in dan­ger or hurt.  Tat­tling is the other stuff.  I used to say this to kids when I was teach­ing, too.

Now that I have my own chil­dren, I’m ques­tion­ing the wis­dom in this phi­los­o­phy.  First, are we really ask­ing kids to know and judge in advance some­thing that might be harm­ful or dan­ger­ous?  My kids are 2 and 4, and fairly reg­u­larly my 4 year old does some­thing which I would con­sider to be unsafe.  I don’t think he’s pur­posely out there look­ing for things to do that might hurt him, his brother or his friend, but he is still find­ing them.  The other (main) prob­lem I have with this phi­los­o­phy is the idea that kids will learn to work things out on their own.

It has been my expe­ri­ence that unless kids are taught these behav­iors and words,  and they are mod­eled and used repeat­edly, the big­ger, more aggres­sive, or older child will often get his or her way.  This doesn’t often seem to hap­pen with a calm exchange of words.  More often than not, it is done in a way which I would con­sider to be unkind or unde­sir­able (as far as social norms go).

So, as much as it is frus­trat­ing and at times annoy­ing to stop what I’m doing each time my kids have an instance which leaves one or both upset, I think it is very much worth my time to go to them, model the words they can use (or help them come up with their own words), and help them work towards a res­o­lu­tion, I think it is worth it.  We don’t expect adults to have the skills to work things out on their own when a sit­u­a­tion becomes very intense or heated.  I know many adults who have sought coun­sel­ing either indi­vid­u­ally or as a couple/group for sit­u­a­tions which were not eas­ily resolved.  Why is it we expect chil­dren to be able to iden­tify these sit­u­a­tions and work on them with­out our input?

Zrecs is an amaz­ing web­site!  They have reviews and infor­ma­tion on tons of kids prod­ucts and issues relat­ing to chil­dren.  This hol­i­day sea­son, they are post­ing a Hol­i­day Gift Guide.  The Best Soft Toys were too cute not to share!  If any­one was ask­ing, I like the Organic Sleepy Bear the best.

Wanted:  One friend old enough to be my mother or grand­mother.  Must like to talk about her­self and her fam­ily.  Must have opin­ions to share.  Must be will­ing to share ideas and thoughts about both her life and mine.

For a while now I have been think­ing about this topic.  I feel like I am miss­ing the friend­ship and knowl­edge of older women.  Right now, as I’m in the midst of try­ing to make wise choices about finances, grow in my faith, pre­pare healthy and tasty meals for my fam­ily, raise two boys, and con­sis­tently grow and improve my rela­tion­ship with my hus­band, I think I could use a friend like this.

I have many incred­i­ble aunts, a great mom, a great mother-in-law, and friends my age who I can talk to about the things I listed above.  I’m look­ing for some­one in my area who I can invite over for tea or cof­fee.  I’m look­ing for a friend who can pop over while she’s out run­ning errands.

Do any of you have friend­ships like this?  Any thoughts?  Have you found this to be ben­e­fi­cial for both you and your friend?  If you don’t have a friend like this have you ever thought about it?  Does any­one else feel like it would be so amaz­ingly great to have some­one to talk to about these sorts of things?

For the third time in as many years (I think), NBC has pre­miered a new drama series, let it run a few weeks, and then taken it off the air.  First, it was Wind­fall.  That wasn’t a great show, but I was sort of look­ing for a weekly soap opera drama, and it fit the bill.  Then, it was Kid­napped.  I really thought that was going to be good.  Unfor­tu­nately, it dis­ap­peared one day, and I found out thanks to my Tivo that it had been moved to Sat­ur­day night.  We all know that the move to Sat­ur­day is never a good sign.  Now, it seems as though The Lis­tener is gone.  These days, we don’t watch much tv, but on the days that I do want to sit down and watch a drama, I want to know that it will be around for more than 2  months.  If I am going to learn the char­ac­ters’ names and fig­ure out how they are con­nected, I want my effort to be rewarded.  I think soon I am going to have to stop watch­ing NBC shows, because I am not sure that my impa­tient tv watch­ing self can take much more of this.

I am a neglect­ful blog­ger.  I admit it!  Every time I get started blog­ging again, some­thing else comes up, and I take another long hia­tus.  I am sorry to any­one who does still read this blog.  I am try­ing to do bet­ter. 

Those of you who know me in per­son have most likely heard me talk about want­ing to move back into town.  Three years ago, we bought the house we cur­rently live in, and it is about 10 miles out of town in a small bed­room com­mu­nity.  For var­i­ous rea­sons, we want to go back to town.  We decided some time over the win­ter that we were going to put our house on the mar­ket and see what would hap­pen with it.  Our orig­i­nal goal was to have it up by May 1, then May 15, and finally June 2 or 3.  Well, for the last month, Jason and I have been clean­ing, orga­niz­ing, and declut­ter­ing.  We missed our goal of hav­ing it up on the mar­ket by June 2 or 3, but we did list it on Fri­day.  By Fri­day at noon, we had appoint­ments for three show­ings (with a fourth added later that evening).

It was a crazy day.  I ended up tak­ing all of our extra stuff out of the house and tak­ing the boys to a friend’s house.  We were sup­posed to have had another friend and her fam­ily over for sup­per here, but because of the tim­ing of one show­ing, we decided I would make sup­per at her house.  I threw all the food for sup­per in the van, too.  I got the boys out of the house at about 1:00 for the 1:30 show­ing, and we were out for the rest of the after­noon and evening.

We found out that two of the par­ties who had seen our house made offers.  We accepted the sec­ond offer on Sat­ur­day, and our house is offi­cially pend­ing right now.  Isn’t that amaz­ing?  The buyer had ini­tially pro­posed a clos­ing date of July 8th, but because we haven’t looked at ANY houses yet, we are plan­ning to close some time on or before July 16th.  Any prayers for the sit­u­a­tion would be appre­ci­ated!    God has worked this all out so won­der­fully, I am not wor­ried, but I know that even with every­thing going as planned buy­ing and sell­ing houses can be very stressful.

We are plan­ning to look at houses this week with our real­tor.  We made a list of all the houses that fit our price range and cri­te­ria.  We looked through it, and we man­aged to elim­i­nate 2.  Now, we only have 11 more to look at!    Eleven seems like it might be a smidge too many, but I just couldn’t not see them!

This is why I am not blog­ging right now.  I am not read­ing.  I am not exer­cis­ing much.  I am not cook­ing as much as I want.  I was only clean­ing, orga­niz­ing, and think­ing about clean­ing and orga­niz­ing.    It seems unbliev­able that when I go to BlogHer in about 6 weeks, I will no longer be liv­ing in this house!

As you might notice, I have not blogged in almost 2 months.  What?!?!?  I know.  Lame, right?  This is a breast­feed­ing blog.  I breast­feed 2 kids.  How could I not have any­thing to say about it?  I don’t know.  I just don’t.  It is such a part of our lives, it just hap­pens.  We don’t have many strug­gles.  I don’t have much to say about it.  It just is.

Then comes my iden­tity cri­sis.  I think of other things I could share.  I wanted to write about my books I am read­ing.  I wanted to share some new recipes.  I wanted to talk about run­ning and how my asthma is affect­ing it.  Then, I think “The Beau­ti­ful Let­down.”  It is a breast­feed­ing blog.  I con­sid­ered for a while start­ing a new blog with every­thing other than breast­feed­ing, but I decided against it.  I am not keep­ing up with this blog.  I don’t think that the best thing to do is add another one to my list.  I know that there are peo­ple who do this, but I don’t think I am one of those who should.

I just need to get over it and write, right?  Write for me.  Write about what I want to say.  Write about what inter­ests me right now.  Post some cute pic­tures, and viola, I am back in busi­ness.  So, that is my plan.  I am going to rein­ject a lit­tle life into my blog, but it will not be exclu­sively (or even pri­mar­ily) a breast­feed­ing blog for the time being.  I am think­ing about doing a cou­ple posts that do relate to breast­feed­ing.  Because of the name of my blog, I get a lot of searches for “should I feel my let­down” “what is a let­down” “I don’t feel my let­down” and other vari­a­tions of thsoe ques­tions.  Maybe I could save a new mom a lit­tle time if I made a post about this even if it is not some­thing I am won­der­ing about.

I hope that this isn’t a major dis­ap­point­ment to any­one, and I don’t think it will be.  I enjoy blog­ging, and I enjoy hear­ing from peo­ple who read what I write.  I miss that, and I think get­ting my thoughts out and back on this blog will be some­thing that can be inter­est­ing, thought pro­vok­ing, and enjoy­able for all of us!

Sorry that I haven’t been post­ing as often as usual. I am cur­rently orga­niz­ing a fund raiser for our local MOPS group. That has been tak­ing up a lot of my time, and even more impor­tantly, I’ve been think­ing quite a bit about it. This leaves less time to think up all my super-interesting blog posts. I’ll try to be back to nor­mal after tomorrow.

Yes, appar­ently one or both Jason and I say “oofta.” Yes, we also live in North Dakota, so it prob­a­bly hap­pens more than we ever real­ize. This fact was ham­mered home to us the other night at sup­per when Jason said, “oofta” after A had a cough­ing spell. K looked at him and said, “Asa poopy?” So appar­ently, we not only use the word oofta, but we use it as an exple­tive when chang­ing a smelly diaper.

More and more over the past few weeks, we’ve been hear­ing K repeat things that we have said to him. One night, Jason was giv­ing him two choices for get­ting his dia­per changed. K kept telling Jason that he didn’t want to have his (poopy) dia­per changed. He wanted to wear it. (On a side note, you can tell we’re not exactly steam­ing down the road of potty learn­ing . ) Jason told him, “That’s not a choice.” Later that night dur­ing the bed­time rou­tine, K and Jason were talk­ing and at one point, K said to Jason, “No, Daddy, that not a choice.”

Last week, we spent a lit­tle time with my mother-in-law and father-in-law. One of the days, my nieces (ages 6 and 4 were over). At one point, I heard them argu­ing, and the six year old was say­ing, “That’s fair!” to her sis­ter over whether or not she needed to share some toys with her. Fast for­ward to this morn­ing. I was show­ing K the new library books we had checked out for this week. He was pretty excited about them, and he kept pulling them out of the bag and say­ing, “That very fair!”

Then, there are the things he picks up that I’m not sure where they came from. “You know bet­ter, Mommy!” “A, you being bad!” “No, no, no, no, no!” These are not things we say to him. I know that now that his peers are speak­ing more and we are around more and dif­fer­ent peo­ple, his pool of expe­ri­ences to draw from also grows.

He’s at an age where he is such a sponge. He doesn’t have pre­con­ceived ideas of what is fun or not fun (video games vs. books) or what music is good or not good (pop music vs. opera). He loves so many dif­fer­ent things. I think that his new ten­dency to repeat things that we say at just the right time is good for us in more than one way. While it reminds me that he’s always lis­ten­ing to what we say, it also reminds me that he is pick­ing stuff up All. The. Time. I am rais­ing a lit­tle sponge, and I want him to be able to absorb all that he can before this time ends.

This is a quote from the book of 2 Samuel in the old tes­ta­ment of the bible. Through Octo­ber and Novem­ber, I was attend­ing a bible study at my church study­ing the life of David. One of the day’s home­work was about this verse. “and David was danc­ing before the Lord with all his might.” At first, I read over it and blew past it. Then, when I went back, I thought about how it must feel to be doing some­thing with all his might. Then, I thought about how he was prais­ing the Lord with all his might. To me, that sounds like a very beau­ti­ful pic­ture. Although, I’m sure to some of those around him, it prob­a­bly looked more strange than any­thing else.

One of the ques­tions in the study was “When was the last time you saw some­one doing some­thing with all their might?” or some­thing sim­i­lar. I thought about it for a while, and I really didn’t have many exam­ples. The one thing that came to mind was think­ing about how ath­letes cel­e­brate after win­ning a cham­pi­onship game. See­ing them jump­ing and scream­ing and cry­ing and just lay­ing on the ground in awe is what came to my mind. Then, I won­dered when was the last time I did some­thing with all my might. I apol­o­gize in advance to any­one who thinks this is more than they want to know. The last time, I did some­thing with all my might (here’s your last chance to stop read­ing) was child­birth and push­ing. Most of you other moms who have been through labor know what I’m talk­ing about, right? That was great, because it was for my kids. Of course, I would do all that I could for them.

So, again, I was think­ing, think­ing… This month, I com­mit­ted to NaBloPoMo. I missed two days, but I have def­i­nitely blogged on days when I would rather have skipped. I men­tioned at the end of last year that Jason’s sis­ter is doing a pho­tog­ra­phy project that involves tak­ing a pic­ture every day for a year. She’s shar­ing them online at her Flickr account. It’s called Project 365. It got me wish­ing that I had some sort of neat project that I could com­mit to like that. I’m actu­ally still wish­ing that, and since it’s com­ing to the end of the year (can you believe it?!?!?), I’ve started think­ing about it again. Unfor­tu­nately, last year, I didn’t do much about these thoughts. I’m hop­ing and pray­ing that this year, I will make a com­mit­ment to some­thing. I’d like to do some­thing mean­ing­ful and chal­leng­ing. For a year? Maybe not. I’m not com­mit­ted to a year, but I would like to do some­thing that stretches and chal­lenges me. Maybe, I can do some­thing with all my might.

I’m still wait­ing on the results of my pul­monary func­tion test. My appoint­ment for that test was on Novem­ber 5. When I asked the tech about how long I should expect to wait for the results, she said that I could prob­a­bly expect them within a week. Well, it’s now been a week and two days, and I’m still wait­ing. In the mean­time, my cough is get­ting bet­ter. I was able to sleep in my bed last night for the first time since Octo­ber 23rd. It was nice to be back in my room. As much as I don’t like feel­ing sick and cough­ing, I really don’t like sleep­ing in a bed that’s not mine for over 3 weeks.

I was hop­ing that this would be fairly eas­ily resolved. I thought maybe I’d be lucky. I’d do the PFT test, and they would get a clear result. I’m actu­ally still pray­ing for that. I do think it’s more likely from what I’ve read and heard that the result will be incon­clu­sive mean­ing that more tests are needed. I find that to be pretty frus­trat­ing. For one, I want to know what’s going on with my body and fix it. The other rea­son is that I haven’t given up hope for being able to run the half marathon in Fargo in May. It’s a pretty slim chance, and the door is clos­ing on my chances the longer I have to wait. I still have that as my ulti­mate goal, though. If I end up not being able to do the half, I do know a few peo­ple who have decided to run the 5k, so that is my backup plan.

I told Jason today that life is kind of funny. When I was run­ning, I was hop­ing that some­thing would hurt or stop me from being able to run. Now that I’ve had to take a break, and it looks like this is going to be a harder goal to achieve than I orig­i­nally though, I really want to do it!

I’m plan­ning to call my doc­tor on Mon­day to see if she’s heard any­thing. I hate to be a bother, but I’m won­der­ing if maybe some paper­work got mis­placed some­where or some­thing. It just seems like 7 work days is a long time to wait for results of a fairly sim­ple test. For all of you who pray, I would appre­ci­ate any prayers in this area.