Size to Season Chart

 Today I have decided to help others with a simple practical chart. Everyone hates receiving a beautiful baby gift in the wrong size for the season. You know what I mean? Being due in October and receiving a cute Halloween costume in 6-9 months? Getting a snow suit when you are due in August? Or seeing cute things on clearance and not buying it as a gift because your not sure what size the baby will be in that season? Alright, maybe it is just me.. But I know that I always think about size and season. Before I go baby shopping I fumble through my car, find a napkin.. and a pen.. or crayon.. or sharpie, hell even eye liner will do! And I make a size to season chart!

Well, I have decided to make these charts and share them with others! I hope it helps people!

The only thing I ask is that you credit me for them.. & please do not alter the images. They are copyrighted, but can be used as long as I am credited and they are unaltered. I literally made these 6 times because I forgot holidays or spelled something wrong.. But finally VICTORY!

(By credited, I mean please don't remove my watermark!)

"I'm not ready to be a Grandmother"

 Today I want to talk about a common statement that really offends me. Something that I have seen said to others, and that has been said to me.  "I'm not ready to be a (Insert Title)." Really? Someone should halt their reproductive life solely because YOU are not ready for a title? It is the most selfish and rude thing you can say to someone.

The only thing that can make that statement worse is to say it after someone has had a failed pregnancy/are pregnant. To be completely honest most people don't plan on becoming pregnant. Planned or not, lost pregnancies are traumatic. There is a time and place for many things. But there is never a time, and never a place for you to say these words.




Although you probably are boundary stomping.  I totally understand explaining to someone why they shouldn't have a child yet, or another one. A better thing to say would be "I really would like you to wait to have children until you are married, have your own home, car, and a stable job." But to say I don't want you to have kids because I don't want a grandchild/niece/etc is completely out of line.

 Another thing that is socially common but very out of line is when people decide to run their mouth about how many children a person may have/want to have. It comes down to a simple concept. If YOU are not responsible for those children, financially supporting those children, and caring for those children you really are not entitled to an opinion on how many children someone has.

This was today's PSA. In a nutshell. Watch your mouth.

9 lies that make porn okay

I didnt write this, but I thought it was worth sharing.

• Lie #1 - Women are less than human
  The women in Playboy magazine are called "bunnies," making them cute little animals or "playmates," making them a toy. Penthouse magazine calls them "pets." Porn often refers to women as animals, playthings, or body parts. Some pornography shows only the body or the genitals and doesn't show the face at all. The idea that women are real human beings with thoughts and emotions is played down.
• Lie #2 - Women are a "sport"
  Some sports magazines have a "swimsuit" issue. This suggests that women are just some kind of sport. Porn views sex as a game and in a game, you have to "win," "conquer," or "score." Men who buy into this view like to talk about "scoring" with women. They start judging their manhood by how many "conquests" they can make. Each woman I "score" with is another trophy on my shelf, another "notch" in my belt to validate my masculinity.
• Lie #3 - Women are property
  We've all seen the pictures of the slick car with the sexy girl draped over it. The unspoken message, "Buy one, and you get them both." Hard-core porn carries this even further. It displays women like merchandise in a catalog, exposing them as openly as possible for the customer to look at. It's not surprising that many young men think that if they have spent some money taking a girl out, they have a right to have sex with her. Porn tells us that women can be bought.
• Lie #4 - A woman's value depends on the attractiveness of her body
  Less attractive women are ridiculed in porn. They are called dogs, whales, pigs or worse, simply because they don't fit into porn's criteria of the "perfect" woman. Porn doesn't care about a woman's mind or personality, only her body.
• Lie #5 - Women like rape
  "When she says no, she means yes" is a typical porn scenario. Women are shown being raped, fighting and kicking at first, and then starting to like it. Porn teaches men to enjoying hurting and abusing women for entertainment.
• Lie #6 - Women should be degraded
  Porn is often full of hate speech against women. Women are shown being tortured and humiliated in hundreds of sick ways and begging for more. Does this kind of treatment show any respect for women? Any love? Or is it hatred and contempt that porn is promoting toward women?
• Lie #7 - Little kids should have sex
  One of the biggest sellers in pornography is imitation "child" porn. The women are "made-up" to look like little girls by wearing pony tails, little girl shoes, holding a teddy bear. The message of the pictures and cartoons is that adults having sex with kids is normal. This sets the porn user up to see children in a sexual way.
• Lie #8 - Illegal sex is fun
  Porn often has illegal or dangerous elements thrown in to make sex more "interesting." It suggests that you can't enjoy sex if it isn't weird, illegal or dangerous.
• Lie #9 - Prostitution is glamorous
  Porn paints an exciting picture of prostitution. In reality, many of the women portrayed in pornographic material are runaway girls trapped in a life of slavery. Many having been sexually abused. Some of them are infected with incurable sexually transmitted diseases that are highly contagious and often die very young. Many take drugs just to cope.

http://www.everystudent.com/wires/toxic.html

The NNLP

  Dear The National Normalizing Nursing in Public League,

I was a formula fed baby. I was fed with a bottle as were my two sisters and one brother. Almost all of my relatives bottle fed and all of their friends bottle fed. From birth to 16 I had only encountered breastfeeding once.
 
When I was in the first grade my best friends mother had twins. My friend was the eldest of 7 children so they always needed a helping hand. I helped with anything and everything. They even taught me to change a diaper.
One day her mother started nursing her twins. I felt terribly uncomfortable. I even turned my back to her and stared at the wall. I was embarrassed, as if I was doing something wrong by watching.Eventually I got to the point where if I thought she was going to breastfeed I would actually run home and pretend I had chores to do. I didn't know that she was feeding a baby. I didnt know what she was doing.. I just knew I wasnt suppose to look at her private parts.

 I didnt encounter breastfeeding again until I was 16. From then on I only saw babies being fed with bottles, it was my normal. When I was 16 my cousin had a baby, while she was pregnant I remember her saying she wouldn't ever breastfeed. I honestly agreed, I thought it was gross.  Her mother wasn't amused by this statement and said "well that's just crazy, that is what boobs are for!" Although it "knew" what boobs are for I never heard someone talk about it in a social setting. Not too long after this conversation my cousin gave birth and she breastfeed. I thought it was a little strange, not to long ago she was border line bashing breastfeeding then all of a sudden she was doing it?

 A few years went by and I got married. There was tons of talk about babies, everyone wants to know how many you will have, what genders you may want, and WHEN you will have them. With all the talk about babies I decided to start researching anything to do with baby. Pregnancy, Birth, Baby Gear.. I was crazy about gadgets and what gadget would you use more than a bottle? I started to research bottles and choose  the Avent Bottles.. then the question was what formula would I put in that bottle? While researching formula I saw a lot of debate about breastfeeding.. I decided to look into breastfeeding. With very little chance I would actually do it myself.. That is when I found your page.

 At first I felt bad for looking at the photos of women feeding their baby. To me breastfeeding was NOT normal. It was never anything I really knew about.. I started reading blog posts by you. Blog post by blog post I became more and more interested in breastfeeding. To the point where I wanted everyone to breastfeed. 

  Even though my views on breastfeeding were dramatically different than before I was still against breastfeed until 2+. Again, you continued to post blogs, women continued to post on the wall and that too became normal to me.

I want to officially thank you for normalizing breastfeeding for me. I know I am just a single person but after all the knowledge I have gathered from this page and similar pages I have gone from thinking I would never breastfeed, to I might breastfeed, to there being no doubt in my mind that I will breastfeed. I hope that I can help the cause by making breastfeeding normal for my children and their peers.

 

The Cyberbully

 

   Cyber Bully -"the use of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior by an individual or group, that is intended to harm others"

 Cyber bullying is today's hot topic. It seems anytime you say something that another dislikes the first thing said is "that's cyber bullying!" I for one am not very sympathetic of this new label being used for people to play victim. I do believe that bullying is terrible. But my definition of bullying is totally different that what society believes bullying is.

 I am not the type of person who will sugar coat the things I want to say. I don't normally go out of my way to hurt others feelings. But sometimes things need to be said, and sometimes those things will hurt feelings. For people who are forwarding nude pictures of their exs, making hate groups for the "school nerd", people who threaten others, and encourage others to hurt themselves YOU are a indeed a bully.

 I have noticed quite a bit of "passive bullies" they imply mean, harsh, and hurtful things to complete strangers just because they can. But the moment a person reacts they are suddenly the bully? For there to be a situation of bullying someone has to be a victim. If there is no victim it is just two or more parties who dislike each other who have no problem voicing it. Childish or not, it is NOT bullying. It's arguing.

 There is now a huge campaign to "stop cyber bullying" including appearances from children who have been bullied on talk shows, and a tv show on ABC Family. The motive for the new awareness campaign is that children are killing themselves after being bullied, cyber or not. They want the government to make it illegal to bully another person, be it in person or on the internet.

 I for one have a huge issue with the campaigns against bullying. Children have killed themselves, but I think it is quite ignorant to blame it on bullying alone. This stems from a lack of self confidence, usually at fault of parents. I mean, what can we expect when parents work 40+ hours and leave kids to fend for them self?

 Aside from that I think it violates my rights as an American. I have the right to speak freely, my right is not you can speak freely as long as you don't hurt the feelings of another. There are laws for things like slander for a reason. I believe that the reason people want a new law to protect themselves from "bullies" is because most of the things they say are true. You cannot sue another for slander if what they are saying is true, so why not make a law that they simply cannot hurt your feelings?


 There was once a time that kids were cautious about the things they did. They knew that if they did something stupid that they would have to answer to their peers. Now anytime they have to answer to their peers they become the victim, when in reality, in most cases, they are responsible for the ridicule they are receiving. Parents need to focus more on raising stronger children. Children are being raised to be victims. They are not raised with the confidence to stand up for them self when others are mean to them. No, they are raised to cry about it or kill them self?

This problem needs to be addressed by parents. Not by the government.


 People are constantly trying to get attention. They are on TV for getting pregnant at 16, they are pretending to be writers, they are getting naked in front of cameras, and are on TV for being the housewife of a mobster. Call it entertainment if you want, most of these people set bad examples and are poor excuses for what is really acceptable in society.

 Anytime someone makes a public statement against the actions of these people, they are called bullies and haters. I don't understand why making it clear to followers of a bad example that the things this person is doing is WRONG is all of a sudden bullying? As far as the haters comment? I think we have forgotten what hate is. Hate is what Hitler felt against the Jews, not what I feel about a bad mom or crappy writer.


All in all, my advise to you is simple. Spend more time with your kids, raise them to be stronger and more confident individuals, and stop playing victim because you someone hurt your feelings. Know that when you do bad you get bad. You will always have to answer to your peers, so watch what you say and do.





Note: Some kids really are BULLIED. This is an obvious issue, in cases where children really are bullied I do sympathize. At the same time I think that people crying wolf over bullying make the whole cause less interesting.

The Breast Milk Baby

  As a child I remember always receiving baby dolls as gifts. Along with those dolls were diapers, clothes, bibs, and you guessed it a bottle! While there is nothing "wrong" with a baby using a bottle, there is something wrong with the fact that as a society we have normalized bottle feeding and deemed breastfeeding sexual.
 
  A company in Spain, Berjuan Toys, decided to make a change. Instead of a doll that takes a bottle, they have designed their dolls to breastfeed. This has made quite a splash in the United States. People are screaming that this over sexualizes little girls, encourages teen pregnancy, and is all around "inappropriate."

 If the argument is that pretending to be a mother is going to encourage teen pregnancy, then we have a bigger issue at hand. I know very few girls that have never actually played with dolls, or imitated their mothers. If this doll does anything it teaches girls what your breasts are for. To feed children.

 People scream that this doll sexualize girls and that it is all around inappropriate. Yet they slip tiny girls into skimpy clothes and parade them around. It looks like this company is being faced with the same discrimination that women who NIP face everyday. 

 It is socially acceptable to wear short shorts, tight jeans, low cut shirts, and bikinis.. It acceptable for a woman to bare her cleavage to impress a man or to catch his attention, but it is almost social taboo if a woman shows her cleavage to feed her child. While some are fighting to correct this cultural issues, others are fighting to keep things the exact same.

  The reality of this issue is that we as a society are uncomfortable with breastfeeding. In the US the breastfeeding statistics are down right sad. Only 42% of babies are breast fed until 6 months of age, and only 22% are breastfed until the age of one.

  Women are bullied into bottle feeding. Right from the start we are taught to feed our babies with bottles, when motherhood actually approaches we are then  told that we are unable to produce enough milk, that our milk isnt always good enough so we need to supplement with formula, that breastfeeding your child in public makes you some kind of exhibitionist, and what gets me the most is that breastfeeding in public is often compared to public urination.

 If we as a society are uncomfortable with a real mother breastfeeding her child of course we are going to be uncomfortable with a girl nursing her doll. Until we as a society fix the social stigma surrounding breastfeeding this doll will never be acceptable. Nether will breastfeeding.

  To those of you who are interested in this doll you may order one at www.thebreastmilkbaby.com. On the main page they have a demo video that will show you how the doll works. There are 6 dolls with 3 different races, and the option of a boy or girl for each race.  I wish this company lots of success. I believe it is vital that our society learns that there is nothing wrong or sexual about breastfeeding. Doll or not.

Motherhood is calling (And where your children rank)

I DID NOT write this. But I recommend everyone read, at the least, the following passage.

Children rank way below college. Below world travel for sure. Below the ability to go out at night at your leisure. Below honing your body at the gym. Below any job you may have or hope to get. In fact, children rate below your desire to sit around and pick your toes, if that is what you want to do. Below everything. Children are the last thing you should ever spend your time doing.
If you grew up in this culture, it is very hard to get a biblical perspective on motherhood, to think like a free Christian woman about your life, your children. How much have we listened to partial truths and half lies? Do we believe that we want children because there is some biological urge, or the phantom “baby itch”? Are we really in this because of cute little clothes and photo opportunities? Is motherhood a rock-bottom job for those who can’t do more, or those who are satisfied with drudgery? If so, what were we thinking?


Read the rest here