Up North Mommy

Happy birthday, honey!

Today is my husband's 42nd birthday.  We're celebrating with dinner at the Willow Tree Restaurant, our favorite restaurant up here. For his present, I got him all three Special Edition Indiana Jones DVD's. I love the first and third movies but don't like Temple of Doom, but I didn't know his feelings, so I got him all three.

Pray for Emma

Heather at Especially Heather and her husband Mark had to rush Emma to the hospital yesterday.   She just posted this morning that Emma is in heart failure and just after a great check up only two weeks ago. (If you are unfamiliar with Emma's story, please read it here.)

Please pray whatever is on your heart. Emma needs all the prayers she can get right now.

Stefanie's Custom Cards

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the sweet Mother's Day card I got from my mom. It was hand made by Stefanie, who has spina bifida.  With birthdays coming up, I ordered a few cards from her: my husband whose birthday is tomorrow, my daughter who will be three on June 8th, and my dad who is turning 64 on June 9th. I told Stefanie the themes I wanted for each card, and this is what she came up with.

For my husband, the avid fly fisherman:

My daughter:

My dad, who loves his tools:

I love them; they're perfect. Not only are they beautiful and one of a kind, but Stefanie put a lot of attention and care into them, and it shows. My husband, daughter, and dad will really appreciate them.   

If you have a special occasion coming up and would like Stefanie to hand make a card for that event or person, contact me and I'll put you in touch with her.

Works for me: small town living

I'm so late for Works for me Wednesday.  Sorry! By the way, I love the new WFMW image, so I'm using it in place of the older one.

Earlier today I went for a walk in my small town.  As I was power walking down one of the streets, one of our employees, Courtney, and her grandmother, Sue, drove up and stopped to talk.  They had just come back from the Cutting Castle, a local salon, where Sue got her hair cut and Courtney got her eyebrows waxed.

"You got your eyebrows done?"

"Yeah, it was like $7.00"

"Really? I didn't know they did that.  I'll have to stop by and make an appointment."

After a little bit more small talk, we said our goodbyes and I got back to the business of power walking.  I turned a corner and saw the Cutting Castle just down the road. Man, I hadn't realized how far I had walked.  I made a bee line for the salon to make an appointment.

When I walked in, I told Linda, the owner, about my conversation with Courtney and her grandmother.

"Actually, Chris can do your eyebrows right now."

"But I don't have any cash on me. I'm just out walking."

Linda shrugged and said, "No problem. You can pay when you bring your daughter in for her hair cut later today."

So I got my eyebrows done right then and there. It took just a few minutes, and I was off and walking again.

As I was heading back home, I thought, "I love living in a small town."

It works for me.

Mom bloggers make impact once again

Subway has issued a public apology for excluding home schooled kids from their most recent promotion (hat tip Young Mommy):

To HSLDA:

We at SUBWAY restaurants place a high value on education, regardless of the setting, and have initiated a number of programs and promotions aimed at educating our youth in the areas of health and fitness.

We sincerely apologize to anyone who feels excluded by our current essay contest. Our intention was to provide an opportunity for traditional schools, many of which we know have trouble affording athletic equipment, to win equipment. Our intent was certainly not to exclude homeschooled children from the opportunity to win prizes and benefit from better access to fitness equipment.

To address the inadvertent limitation of our current contest and provide an opportunity for even more kids to improve their fitness, we will soon create an additional contest in which homeschooled students will be encouraged to participate. When the kids win, everyone wins!

—Subway restaurants

Once again, this shows the impact moms have in the corporate world. Moms are the primary decision makers when it comes to spending family money, and more and more moms are homeschooling their children. Subway was quite daft in treating the children of homeschooling moms like they weren't "real" students.

Teacher has students vote special needs child out of kindergarten

I first saw this at Mommy Life a few days ago, but I just got to it today. A kindergarten teacher brought little Alex, who is being diagnosed with Asberger's Syndrome, up to the front of the class and encouraged his peers to say to his face what they don't like about him. And then she had them vote to kick Alex out of class.  This is so outrageous, I wouldn't have believed it if it hadn't been confirmed by the teacher herself.

Hot Air has the video Melissa Barton and her son Alex from their appearance on CBS's The Early Show this morning:

My daughter has special needs. She's got hypotonia, otherwise known as low muscle tone. The short story is that her muscles simply don't have the tone or the strength to support her body weight. She's three years old on June 8th, and she's just now taking steps with the help of a pediatric walker. She also has speech apraxia, which means there's a disconnect between her brain and the ability to speak. In other words, she understands everything you say to her, and she knows what she wants to say, but she simply can't make her muscles in her mouth to make the sounds.  Her receptive language skills are sky high, but her expressive language skills are at about an 18 month old's. 

My biggest concern for my daughter is being made fun of when she starts preschool and kindergarten because of her disability.  If one of her teachers were to ever do this to her, let me tell you, there would be hell to pay. I would come down on that teacher's head like a ton of bricks, so to Alex's mom, I say, you go girl.

One of the many reasons why I can't stand the United Nations

Supposed "humanitarian aid"  workers and United Nations "peacekeepers" are raping and abusing children in some of the poorest and most vulnerable countries. This is not a surprise to me since I have followed the UN's corruption for a while now, but to many who aren't aware of how corrupt and evil, yes I said evil, the UN is, it will come as a complete shock. This is why I'm publishing this post at my mom blog.  The report comes to us from CNN:

Humanitarian aid workers and United Nation peacekeepers are sexually abusing small children in war-ravished and food-poor countries, a leading European charity has said.

Children as young as 6 are among those who have been forced to have sex with aid workers and peacekeepers in return for food and money, Save the Children UK said in a report released Tuesday.

After interviewing hundreds of children, the charity says it found instances of rape, child prostitution, pornography, indecent sexual assault and trafficking of children for sex.

"It is hard to imagine a more grotesque abuse of authority or flagrant violation of children's rights," Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children UK, said.

In the report, "No One To Turn To" a 15-year-old girl from Haiti told researchers: "My friends and I were walking by the National Palace one evening when we encountered a couple of humanitarian men. The men called us over and showed us their penises.

"They offered us 100 Haitian gourdes ($2.80) and some chocolate if we would suck them. I said, 'No,' but some of the girls did it and got the money."

Save the Children says almost as shocking as the abuse itself, is the "chronic under-reporting" of the abuses. It believes that thousands more children around the world could be suffering in silence.

I characterized the UN as evil. I mean that completely. The United Nations is probably the most corrupt organization this world has ever known. Some people still don't know about the oil for food scandal that flourished under then Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Here's the background of the scandal.

It began as a U.N. humanitarian aid program called "Oil-for-Food," but it ended up with Saddam Hussein pocketing billions to become the biggest graft-generating machine ever and enriching some of America's most forceful opponents at the United Nations.

Plus, some evidence suggests that some of the money ended up in the hands of potential terrorists who are opposed to the United States.

The roots of the scandal date back to 1991, when a U.N.-backed and U.S.-led coalition expelled Saddam from Kuwait following his hostile takeover of the neighboring country. Although Saddam lost the war, he walked away with one important victory -- he got to stay in power in Iraq.

Thirteen years later, a second U.S.-led coalition made of a smaller group of nations than the first effort finally knocked Saddam out of business. And it did so without the help of the United Nations, which failed to pass a resolution backing the U.S. effort.

[...]

A new FOX News poll finds that 54 percent of the U.S. public believes the United Nations does not reflect the values of average Americans.

Only 29 percent say that U.N. policies reflect said values.

“I believe the U.N., parts of it, have been corrupt for years. But this went to a whole new level,” said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations.  Shays is leading one of several Oil-for-Food probes by the federal government.

The General Accountability Office has already pegged Saddam’s Oil-for-Food take at $10.1 billion. It could end up being a lot more.

Shays says Iraqis aren't the only victims -- Americans are too.

“We're talking about American lives that are being lost in an attempt to bring democracy to Iraq,” Shays said. If France, Russia, China and Germany had told Saddam it was time to back down and honor his commitments, Shays said it’s possible the United States may not have needed to go to war against Saddam.

But why did these countries really object to a second U.S.-led war against Iraq? Some evidence suggests that those countries that said they were opposing the Bush administration on principle were actually making billions from Oil-for-Food.

“I think clearly, American blood is in the hands of a number of European countries, who could have put pressure on Saddam, who could've looked him in the eye and said, ‘the United States is coming in,'" Shays said. “And to me, some of the explanation clearly has to be the Oil-for-Food program.”

Shays added that there is a chance some of the insurgents now operating against the United States and the new Iraqi government are using Oil-for-Food money in their terror campaign.

“I think it's not only possible that insurgents are using Oil-for-Food money -- I think it's very likely,” Shays said.

I also recommend reading this piece at Fox News, which breaks down this scandal's implications.

Please pray for my friend

A pregnant friend went into the hospital last week with severe preeclampsia. After the doctors evaluated her on Thursday, they said she was 22 weeks pregnant. After a second evaluation on Saturday, they said she was 24 weeks yesterday. I'm not sure how they came to change their minds, but either way, she was shipped down to Grand Rapids, Michigan, yesterday morning. Her blood pressure spiked again and doctors had to deliver the baby last night around 9:30pm because the preeclampsia was getting significantly worse.  Unfortunately, her baby girl died a few minutes after she was born. Dena and her boyfriend named their baby Marlee Jean.

Please pray for Dena and her boyfriend. This pregnancy was a complete surprise because doctors told her she couldn't get pregnant, making this loss so much more difficult.

Dads: You're not "babysitting" your kids

This is a great post at Parenting Squad written by Jason White, a dad who takes other dads to task for using the word "babysitting" when they care for their own children. Why is that such a big deal? Because to use the word babysitting makes it seem like they as fathers are somehow not truly responsible for the day to day parenting of their kids but are merely filling in when their wives are unavailable.  Here's a portion of Jason's post:

A couple years ago my former brother-in-law said something that had a profound effect on my views on being a dad. My sister was preparing for a girls night out that weekend and my brother-in-law told me he had to "baby-sit" his son Friday night. Baby-sit? The word itself struck me as odd, but after thinking about it some I realized many Dads use the word to refer to alone time with their own kids. I thought that was called parenting.

I know over the years, before I had kids myself, I used to joke with older guys, or married friends that they had to "baby-sit" this weekend if I knew their wives were away. I'm not sure when this became the accepted phrase, but I would sure like to see men stop using it. Spending time with your children, feeding them, bathing them, and preparing them for bed is part of our responsibility as parents. None of these particular parenting tasks are limited to be performed by moms. If a guy is heading out on Saturday morning for a round or two of golf, moms don't say, "Great, I'll be here babysitting the kids."

It would never occur to a mom (at least most moms) to say that she's babysitting her own children because she has the mentality that she is responsible for the well being of her kids.  Why is it some dads don't naturally have that same mentality?

Inspiration for Mommy character in Family Circus dies

I grew up reading Family Circus in the Peach section of the Toledo Blade.  I can still name all four kids: Billy, Dolly, Jeffy, and PJ. As far as I was concerned, PJ was by far the most adorable baby I had ever seen, until I had my own. :)  Their mom was always so sweet and patient, never losing her temper like I sometimes do.  Sadly, I just read on CNN that the inspiration for Mommy, Thelma Keane, died today.

Thelma Keane, the inspiration for the Mommy character in the long-running "Family Circus" comic created by her husband, Bil Keane, has died. She was 82. She died Friday of Alzheimer's disease, the family said.

"Family Circus," which Keane began drawing in 1960, depicts the good-humored life of two parents and their four children. It is now featured in about 1,500 newspapers.

"She was the inspiration for all of my success," Bil Keane, 85, told The Associated Press from his home in Paradise Valley on Sunday. "When the cartoon first appeared, she looked so much like Mommy that if she was in the supermarket pushing her cart around, people would come up to her and say, 'Aren't you the Mommy in 'Family Circus?' and she would admit it."

[...]

Not only was Thelma Keane the inspiration for the always-loving and ever-patient comic character also named Thel, but she worked full-time as her husband's business and financial manager. Her family says she was the reason Bil Keane became one of the first syndicated newspaper cartoonists to win back all rights to his comic.

"There was nothing that I did in the cartoon world or in the business world that she wasn't the instigator of, and she certainly deserves all the credit that I get credit for," Bil Keane said.

That's a shame.

For more Family Circus comics, head over to Family Circus.

 

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Tags: FamilyCircus, Bil Keane, Thelma Keane, comics