Baby Fever Side Effects

There are babies EVERYWHERE. So naturally, they're on the brain. I spent an hour this morning reading the biography of a historical figure John and I have talked about naming a boy after someday. Then this afternoon, I read this article on 10 words every young girl should be taught.  We aren't planning on having kids in the next couple years.  So naturally I feel the need to do a lot of research and thinking about it in my free time right now.  Or even my non-free time.  Naturally. But there really are a lot of things to figure out, and the more I think about them the less I know.  For instance, the article above. It's a major topic in business, the whole why is it that men cut women off or repeat their ideas and receive acclaim that wasn't given the first time it was voiced?  Why are CEO's and Partners primarily male?  Why do men get promoted up within a company faster? 

It's actually a thing, guys.  I see it happen all the time.  We have 9 partners at our firm.  And while we have tons of women who work here, guess how many of them are partners?  1. Exactly one.  In fact, we just added three new partners to the leadership team, all of which were men. Meanwhile, I watched several of the strongest leaders in our firm leave because their ideas and creativity weren't being given any room. They weren't asking for credit even - just for their ideas to be heard. Of course I'm taking about women. 

I used to be driven mad as a junior high and high school girl by the fact that certain guys had a habit of sitting next to me, and repeating my ideas louder right after me, and receiving praise/credit without ever feeling the need to so much as say "Actually, Kati just said that." Often, they'd give me a kind nod, like "good idea - glad we could accomplish this together."  And that was okay.  Annoying, but okay. It happened in college too - less often - and they wouldn't care to nod.  But it happened often enough. And in Bible Study too, to me and others. And I don't really want that to happen to my daughters. I don't know the solution, but I don't want it to happen. 

"We socialize girls to take turns, listen more carefully, not curse and resist interrupting in ways we do not expect boys to. Put another way, we generally teach girls subservient habits and boys to exercise dominance."

I'd like to teach my girls to be kind and take turns, but I'd also like them to be heard.  To know how to speak in such a way that people recognize they care, they know, and they have something their audience better listen to. I say "better listen to" because, frankly my work experience is showing me concerning things - for instance, kind people get overlooked. And I'm not talking about myself, I'm talking about my favorite people to work with - the ones who do their job well and treat others with respect and take pride in excellence. See, I don't know.  I don't want my children to be pushy, bossy, jerks who tread on others, but I also recognize a real issue where people don't care and unless you make them care. Be it about the promotion you deserve, the cultural problems you see, or your brilliant idea for how to reach new clients. And I'm not super great at it.  But I want my kids to be.  

Daughters and Sons alike, I want them to be both kind and respectful and influencing and impacting.  I want them to take turns and know how to listen - regardless of the gender, race, religion or reputation of the person speaking. Because none of those things are truth and none of them are clear markers of the ingenuity and creativity our world desperately needs. 

Inclusive: Hard Working Women

Warning: This is a bit of a rant.  But it's sincere, thought out, and not actually intended to hurt or cause more division. It's aim is to draw attention to perhaps an unrealized harm. Also, it's on my own private blog. (That's kind of the point of the whole post.)



I have a habit of scrolling through Facebook and Instagram as I fall asleep at night.  After an almost 9 hour work day, I went home and cleaned and folded laundry for about 5 hours. It was a long day.  Past midnight and the last Facebook post I looked at as I tried to quiet my thoughts said something like "Hey Mommy Friends, when do we get to stop? It's 8 and now that the kids are in bed, the dishes and laundry still need to be done."  I get it.  I do. Or I don't.  (I probably really don't.)  But I considered deleting my Facebook account last night. When did it become a mom's chat room?  Here me.

I want ya'all to talk, but that's what moms groups, private messages, gmail, gchat, iPhones or anything else is for.  Women who aren't mom's - also work crazy long days, to come home and start cleaning at ridiculous hours of night, and grocery shop through empty aisles because most of the world is at home asleep, or worse, grocery shop during "rush hour". So maybe start the general Facebook posts with a few less exclusives, maybe write "Hey lady friends" or maybe just "Friends"?  Because life gets busier and busier... even for those of us who aren't moms.  And dear God, when I think of all the women who are these people's friends... who maybe can't have kids, who unknowingly stumble into an internet mommy group every time they open their Facebook, just trying to glimpse through that small window to say hello to all the people dear to them and instead get ambushed with posts beginning "Hey there all you mom's, what do you do when...."  Google it.  That's what the rest of the modern world does with their problems! Then, ask your mom.  Or call your friend.  Or send out a group email.  Don't all you mom's have each other's emails?  Or create a Facebook mommy group!  Please, for the sanity of the rest of us - create a Facebook mommy group.  So that when I fall asleep at midnight, with a 6am alarm to get to work early so I can make that deadline and get home in time to grocery shop and get dinner ready before the out of town guests get here..... I don't feel excluded from the 'real hard working class of women' who just so happen to have the daily privilege of raising tiny humans.

Many of us would love to be doing that - and we get that it's hard work - but we're working hard too.  And we don't get the reward of a child.  Sometimes, I even like the mommy posts and mommy talk coming up in my feed.  These are my friends - and it's their life.  And I want to be a part of it!! But it's getting excessive and borderline inconsiderate.   Just think about it.  Try to find ways to be inclusive.  I feel like that's a good lesson to teach kids - and maybe moms.

The rest of us don't want to feel like outsiders every time we open our Facebook, or sit in a room where there's a majority mommyhood.  Keep posting, keep sharing, but maybe ask yourself a few questions first.  Who all is going to see my post versus who is my post addressed to? Is this the best way to communicate to my specific audience?  Is it going to hurt someone, and if so, is there a way I could do this without hurting those people?  (eg, a different media or different language?) I know you're all moms and you 'have a heart for other moms' and want to support and encourage one another.  But maybe expand your vision.  Because there's a lot of women who aren't moms, who don't have support groups, who still need you.  Women who would love to see an encouraging note of camaraderie on Facebook, that included them.


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As a side note, just to overturn a few things I've heard women say about the difference between being a stay at home mom or a career woman: There are bosses who are as needy and demanding as children (not mine currently), and while the thought commonly exists that you can just quit.  That's not exactly true.  And most jobs aren't just hanging out at work and chatting with friends.  They aren't 'chasing dreams'.  It can be a real test to find purpose in it. And to find friends in it. Women aren't good at compartmentalizing - you know this - so don't expect working women to have this thing that they just go do for a minimum of 40 hours a week and then have all this awesome fun freedom the rest of the hours.  Most careers aren't that way.  We're still always tied to it - thinking about it - being measured by it - and most likely, being emailed about it.  At times, we get talked down to, we have unrealistic expectations set on us, personal boundaries tested and a whole hell of a lot demanded from us nonstop.... at work, and then at home.  Because no one at home knows the big thing you pulled off at work.  You get to prove yourself from scratch, twice a day. You get to learn to be you, while living a very divided life, split between two separate worlds that really don't want you to talk too much about the other.  So, in closing, support and encourage one another, mommys or not.  Please. We already feel like we miss out on enough.

Random memory: For a large portion of my childhood, I thought raccoons were pandas.  There used to be a lot of raccoons in the field behind the Sandstroms house.  And whenever anyone would see one through the window and try to point it out, I'd always get so frustrated why I couldn't see it.  I was looking for a panda.  Eventually I got it straight.  I think it had something to do with the little sets of animal families I played with as a kid.  There was a raccoon family and they were black and white, and the exact same size as the bear family.  :/  It made for a bit of a confusing childhood. 

Man I loved those little critter families. :)



Did any of you play with these as kids? Of all my friends, I don't think any of them had these actually.  I was in LOVE with them.  Especially the little babies in each family.  I still remember opening new ones at each pass on the way to "Antana" for Christmas when I was three or four.  I had the fox family, the bear family, the rabbit family and the raccoon family.  I loved them.  I had barbies, but these guys got way more play time.  Who wants to play with a tall thin blonde when you can play with a raccoon!?  I'm thinking I might pick up the foxes and elephants for my kids one day. :)
 
 



You can't keep a good dog down.

Since saying goodbye to my dog, I've been wanting to watch All Dogs Go to Heaven (yes, I own it).  But I'm not really sure that's a healthy response - and I'm really not sure I want anyone to walk in on me watching that with a box of Kleenex and a bag of Dove dark chocolates.  Me at twenty-five.  It's a fearsome sight ain't it? ;)

Today, my bottom-line thought in response to everything seems to be, "Well, You can't keep a good dog down."  Huh?  Dear God, please don't let that slip out of my mouth at my new job!  But, somehow, I get it.  This girl has seen All Dogs Go to Heaven, Milo & Otis and Turner & Hooch more times than you could count with a bag of skittles.  I guess all that had to be lodged someplace deep in my subconscious.  Apparently Charlie and Itchy are my go-to guys of optimism, courage, stubbornness and a bit of kindness.

What am I talking about?  I don't really know.  I'm bored out of my mind at work. 

I guess my only advice here is this: watch what you show your kids, it may become the basis of their value system. ;) 

This is one of those shows (and books) I can't wait to share with little girls of my own some day. :)

Oh Love!

Stole this unashamedly from Elsa.

I will. And I just might read them a few no one else has ever heard. Call it an unfair advantage. ;) I'd like my children to be a little extraordinarily brilliant. Imagine, a little squad of adorable little children with long brown slightly tangly hair and words too big for themselves. I often do. And I already love them.

Thanks, Meg. :)

"People interested in changing the world have to be looking towards the future and are therefore interested in children.”
-Julia Mickenberg

Tales For Little Rebels: Radical Politics in Famous Children's Books

[I'm going to have to find this!!]

MARY SHELLEY

Between the time Mary Shelley published anonymous edition of her iconic Frankenstein in London in 1818 and the publication of the second edition in France in 1823, where her name appears for the first time, she penned Maurice, or The Fisher’s Cot — a children’s story Shelley wrote in 1820 for a daughter of friends. Shelley tried to have the story published by her father, William Godwin, but he refused, burying the text for nearly two centuries. In 1997, scholars discovered a manuscript copy was in Italy, considered one of modernity’s great feats of literary forensics.

The story, written in the straightforward Romantic language of poet William Wordsworth, whose work Shelley was reading at the time she composed Maurice, is about a boy searching for a home and his encounters with a traveller who turns out to be his long-lost father. With its melancholy tone and autobiographical undercurrents, the rediscovered text revealed a new glimpse of Shelley’s character and offered a precious missing link in the evolution of her literary style.

source.

Oh child. Kisses.

I cannot wait to meet my children. I mean, while I can wait... I can't wait. :)

Oh my oh my, child.

Remember when I loved Pandas?? My little miniature family of them? And the stuffed animal Aunt Karen and Uncle Ralph gave me? Second to Book Bear, it was my favorite stuffed animal.

(I still think Pandas are so cute. Shh!!!)

Interesting how who we were, is somehow still so much who we are. But it's the who that so few know. And in many ways, the me we are each most fond of. When we remember it, or find ourselves surprised to suddenly meet again when coming across some little moment, like sitting on a sidewalk all alone, we smile at one another and for a moment carry on hand in hand.

I may not stop to examine every slug, asking about its mother, father, siblings, destination, middle name, and favorite pastimes...or sit and try to train an ant circus, but I realize I'm still that same little girl. I want to know the secrets. I want to know the details of people. Their favorite memories and moments, their likes and dislikes, their fears and insecurities, their parents' names. And above all, I somtimes want to yell, "CAREFUL! Don't step on them!" just like the little, loud 4 year-old I once was. I want to see everyone along the path, and take the time to examine them. I can still turn a 15 minute walk into an hour and a half long journey. ;)

Sometimes I still do this too...

Today is the birthday of a very important man in my life.

He helped teach me how to read. Well, more accurately, how to memorize what words went along with what page. And how to make my mom think I could read.

Nonethless, a very special man indeed.

And I would read his books in the deep. And I would read them in the dark. And I would read them with some tea. And I would read them with no feet. And I would read them to a dozen little children who like to scream. And I would read them all alone, just me.

Yes, Sam, I would read his books anywhere.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

You helped me grow into the strange (creative) creature I am. Who lives with Who's and Thing One and Thing Two's. Who tries different foods and see's wisdom in fools.

ps, I blame my common disconcern for 'done' hair, on you. You taught me early, straight up is cool. ;)

I have to write this before I can fall asleep, it is just too overpowering on my heart.

At dinner with my sister my hands were shaking. I showed her and thought it might be because I hadn't had enough to eat, or that it was a very stressful morning. She thought perhaps I'd had too much caffeine (but I'd had less than normal). Then I realized what it was.

I was supposed to have read this book for Honors English by today, and being limited in time and having two papers to write this week I ended up scanning through it in the hour and a half before class. I read the intro, some of the middle, and the last few chapters. In that I came across a lot of junk. The book was very dark, and included one reference that made a mess of me. (I should preface this that I am taking a noir class on detective fiction). There was a character murdered who had 'dealt in little boys.' In my minimal reading, I came across a passing reference to him molesting a little boy. It was subtle, but it punched me in the stomach as I was pretty certain it really was saying what I thought. Oh GOD. Even writing it right now, I hurt and feel sick. As I told a friend before class how much I disliked the book and why he said "Kati, it's fiction." But it's not. That character may have been made up, but 'that' story isn't really fiction.

Now tonight, lying in bed reading Perpetua, whatever was in my heart and spirit is finally released. God is so faithful. So loving. I am struggling to put words to what is in my heart- accurate words to the crazy feelings in my stomach. I'm reading this novel based on the journals of an old Roman Christian Martyr, Perpetua. In the story, a little 2 year who she adores (he's practically her nephew) is sacrificed. It wasn't that, that most got me. It's when she is hearing the story of Jesus and she is seeing WHO He is for the first time. It's like as she is placing the little boy (Tumi) into the story of Jesus telling the disciples to let the children come unto Him, I was placing the little boy from the story this afternoon into it as well... the darkness can seem so stifling sometimes, and when the Light peirces through, sometimes it's so bright and beautiful and loving that you wonder if you've ever really seen it before. Jesus is Love. Not in a cheap or weak way- but in the realest way I've ever tasted known- or NOT known. I want to tear away this veil that keeps me from the reality of who He is, and His power to restore. I want to magically find the words right now that stop saying the cheap, poor things that have been said before and somehow spills out the throbbing tears in my chest right now onto this page-- that they can grip the people who read this, not as my revelation of the magnificence of Jesus- but as their own heartbreaking experience that wrecks them. I want to feel this every moment, of every day... because if I did, I'd know Him... and I'd actually love people, and do something that really healed their heart and brought them into that same real love. I want to see something real happen. I want to see people's lives changed. I want to see those who have been molested, raped, broken, beaten, abandoned see a God who can make them completely new, whole, healed, restored, loved. I want to see their pain forgotten. I want to see brightness in their eyes again. I want to see innocence brought back to a person who's long forgotten it. I want to see value in the countenance of someone who's long been told they are nothing. I want to see an orphan KNOW they are a son- with an inheritance and purpose. I want to see an alcoholic, not need a drink... and be free. I want to see a woman who has lost everything she loves, and been forgotten by those who should be seeking her good, find a Love that convinces her she can trust and that He has never forgotten or forsaken her. That what she misses, He's taking care of.

I don't want to live a life of shadows, good messages, debates, toeing lines and just handing out sandwiches on Friday nights. I'll do all that- but I won't be satisfied with it. I'm in love with a King, who became a slave!! How can I be satisfied with slogans?! I'm in love with the Teacher, who treasured noisy children. I'm in love with the man who wasn't afraid to have dinner with the criminals and have a prostitute cause a scene at His feet. I'm in love with a God who broke down in a garden, and who taught His disciples that His father wants mercy and obedience more than He desires sacrifice.... and then gave mercy, obedience, AND sacrifice, through death. And then, He even conquered death.

So I want to live something greater. I'm with Paul- It's no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me! To live is Christ, and to die is gain! I know you'll judge what you see today... but I'm not going to back away and delete this post, because the longing in my heart is just too great. I want to see the hurt around me healed. I want the love I feel for my friends and family to become so overpowering that it actually becomes something that's not me, but is Christ and therefore has the power to actually overcome the circumstances in their lives that are causing them that pain, and change their lives as they know it!

"Tumi! Tumi!" Jesus called. The little boy let go of my hand and turned back, running towards Jesus. A flying leap landed him square on the Lord's lap, muddy feet and dirty hands making prints all over God's clothes. Jesus cuddled him closer than I ever did. I watched Him speak into Tumi's ear as I approached, all the while tussling his hair, squeezing his chubby arms. His hands remained protectively around my baby when He turned, and rebuked those disciples: "Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God..." They looked shamefacedly at the ground. "Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it." He stood as He spoke, and transferred Tumi back into my arms with one long look into my eyes. I reluctant moved away to leave room for the mothers who'd come back at His words. He scooped up child after child, touching and blessing, caressing them. Perhaps he spent the rest of the day playing with children. Perhaps He taught His disciples how to."

Amy Rachel Peterson, Perpetua, p 67

Above is the passage that set me over the limit. Perpetua has just witnessed the sacrifice of the sweet little boy the night before, and here, as she is learning about God for the first time, she's imagining Tumi with Jesus. If Jesus rebuked His disciples for turning the little children away... how His heart must break and His fury fly for the children who are molested, abused, sold into the sex trade, and forgotten and abandoned. Oh God! Heal the hearts of the women who have aborted their children. Heal the hearts of the women who have lost their babies against their will, dreams, and desires. I know Your love is greater for those children then theirs, mine, or any man's. I know Your love for those mothers is incomparable.

Don't let us just cry at night in our beds for pity or passion... let it become a holy fire... use me, somehow. I don't know how. But move on their behalf. Move through me.

Oh Lord, You are beautiful. Your face is all I see. And when Your eyes are on this child, Your grace abounds to me. I want to take your Light and shine it all around, but first help me just to live it Lord.