Laziness

I don't know about other pregnancy blogs, but this one includes pregnant rants and things that annoy me even more now that I'm pregnant. The number one thing is laziness. I understand having a lax day once in a while, but to be honest, even my lazy days aren't lazy. I cannot stand being lazy! There are so many things to do!

Anyway, what I really am peeved about at this moment is people who are lazy readers. They glance at a word and assume it is whatever they want it to be instead of actually READING IT. This is not a new trend. I have found this annoying for some time now. When I was a kid and I would be lazy about reading (usually aloud) my parents would correct me because ITS NOT OKAY TO BE LAZY! When I would do my math work, I would often try to guess a logical answer instead of doing the work, because I was being lazy. I clearly remember my dad telling me "Stop guessing! You're being lazy!" It's not okay to do something halfway, nor is it okay to read something halfway. If you don't learn to do it the right way, you'll always do it the wrong way.

I get LOADS of this in my line of work because people stand in front of me all day and read the menu. But few people actually read it properly. The words that are most butchered are always the words with hyphens in them. Hyphens are not that complicated folks! AND the order of your words makes all the difference. For example, at Chick-fil-A, we have a Chick-N-Strip salad. Today, a woman ordered a Strip-N-Chick salad. Say that out loud. What?? A stripping chick salad?? Lady, this is a family restaurant, we don't have strippers.

Another prime culprit is the Chargrilled anything. I can't even tell you how many variants of that word I have heard! The most common would be "Charcoal". You want a Charcoal chicken sandwich? You want your sandwich burnt until it resembles charcoal? Other options include charbroiled (you're not broiling right if its charring your food), charcoal-grilled, and just plain "charred". Oh my.

We also have a seasonal soup at CFA, the Chicken Tortilla Soup. Now folks, this is not an uncommon soup. You can buy it in cans at Walmart. You can order it at Panera or Newks, or any number of places. Also, considering we living in the south, the word "Tortilla" should be in your vocabulary. I know not everyone took Spanish in high school, but it should be common knowledge that the double L makes a y sound! But anyway, that falls under ignorance, not laziness. When we sell this soup, I am asked at least half a dozen times in a day for the "Chicken Tortellini Soup". I'm never sure if I should correct people. If they're expecting tortellinis in their soup, they will be gravely disappointed, but if they're just being lazy, I don't want to be a jerk and point it out! (Well, maybe I do, but it's not my place)

To sum it all up, sometimes I just want to smack people and tell them to stop being lazy when they read! Please, for the same of my pregnant sanity, READ the words, don't just guess at them!!

You are dismissed.

Will Power vs. Self-Discipline

I've been thinking about this post for a while. As i feel Anastasia kick me this morning, it makes me think about what she will fight for in life, and what I want her to fight for. I talked (ranted) about laziness in the last post which leads fairly easily into the topic of discipline. My parents were firm believers in physical discipline! My mom likes to tell people about when they switched me from a crib to a bed. I think I was 3 years old and she said I got out of bed 42 times that night! And you know what she did? Spanked me each time and put me back!
That may sound harsh to some of you, but I am convinced that regular, expected, physical discipline from my parents taught me to be a self-disciplined adult. It taught me that there are measurable consequences for my actions!
When people start talking about doing difficult things (losing weight, giving up tobacco, quitting a habit) I often hear the comment "Oh, I just don't have the will power" which is an excuse I've used a few times in the past as well. What is the difference between will power and self discipline? I would argue that the only distinction is attitude.
Will power is that thing we blame when we want to be weak. "Oh, I wish I could (insert difficult thing here), but I just don't have the will power..." If you know you should, but you don't really want to, will power comes to the rescue and let's you off the hook, like a genetic predisposition.
Self-discipline is exactly what it sounds like. Hard, annoying, and not fun. But, it is not an excuse. Self discipline says "I am the only person who can make myself do this, so I will." When I lived in my parents home, I let them discipline me. Now that I have my own home, I am grateful that their discipline taught me to BE disciplined! I don't need someone to tell me to wash the dishes or my laundry or to "Pick up that sock instead of stepping over it again!!" I do it on my own because I know there will be a consequence if I don't.
Foresight is a big part of self-discipline. If I am unaware of the future, I don't know about the consequences and thus don't act to prevent them. I must ask myself "If I leave that food sitting there, what will happen eventually?" Well, bugs will come, my house will get infested, I'll be evicted for destroying our apartment, and then we'll be homeless with a precious baby.
Okay, that's a bit extreme. What I I don't write that paper? It's only 20% of my grade. But, unless I'm doing very well, 20% will cause me to fail the class. If I fail, I can't retake that class for 3 years, which means I definitely can't graduate in May.
I know that Anastasia will fight me sometimes. I know that she won't enjoy being disciplined (I sure didn't!!) But I also know that if she is disciplined as a child, she will be self-disciplined as an adult. I hope that she will see the benefit of self-discipline as much as I do. I hope that she will fight laziness and apathy and will instead welcome in the idea that actions bring consequences!

Level of "Crunch"

I plan on being a pretty "crunchy" mom. (If you are unfamiliar with this term, it basically means "natural".) Some of that comes from the way I was raised. My mom stayed at home with us all of our lives and I've always wanted to do that. We were homeschooled all 12 years (and if you just asked yourself "What about kindegarten?" you're obviously not a homeschooler. It doesn't count, that's just life. Why pay for curriculum to teach a kid colors and shapes that they've known since 3 years old??) For me, crunchy also means my children will be vaccine free. I am so grateful that God blessed me with a husband who, unbeknownst to me, is as opposed to vaccinating as I am. When I was a kid, my sisters and I all had a round of booster shots that left myself and my older sister bed bound for weeks. A lot of other kids in the area who received vaccinations from that same batch had even worse reactions. By the grace of God, Kate and I recovered without any physical damage to our bodies, but since then my parents refused all vaccinations for us and Gary and I intend to refuse all vaccinations for our sweet baby too.

Thanks to my dear friend Rachel, crunchy for me also means I will be rear-facing our daughter in her car seat to the maximum weight limit (Probably 35 or 40 pounds, about 2.5 years old at minimum). It has been proven over and over again that children are LOADS safer when rear-faced in a collision. This is because their heads are either in or very close to the car's center of gravity. The impact on their bodies is much "gentler" and they are a good deal less likely to sustain permenant injury. But! That is another topic for another post, which I will eventually get to!

Another crunchy thing I'm doing is using a midwife instead of an obstetrician. If you've watched "The Business of Being Born" you are probably aware that most obstetricians never see a live birth until they have their M.D. and are the attending physician at one! If you've never seen that documentary, you may be shocked to know that obstetricians receive zero in delivering babies while they are in school, even though American's think that birth is as OB's #1 job. That is one of the reasons I chose a midwife, they have received a masters degree in nursing and then gone on to study labor and delivery as a profession in order to receive their CNM license. They know a great deal about a woman's body and what causes her to labor well and are more open to "long" labors than an obstetrician. It is unlikely that your midwife will start off pushing pitocin and an epidural. Now, if your labor has gone on for days, YES, she will probably recommend it in order to give you relief, but, that is what interventions are for! They are for women who's bodies need a little help, but it is important to realize that that is not most women, which is what a midwife does

Gary and I have looked into hiring a doula as well. "Doula" is a term I had never heard until I got pregnant. Basically, having a doula is like having a mom who has helped dozens of babies come into the world. She just encourages you, tells you what things mean, calms you down, and helps you interpret the signs your body is giving. It sounds like an AWESOME idea to me, especially since my mother is 700 miles away! We met with a doula today and talked with her for about 45 minutes and she was so cool! She said she would help me come up with a birth plan and give me direction in choosing a labor technique which is really nice too. Unfortunately, the going rate for a doula is about $600 for a birth, a reasonable price, but not an option for every budget. (Especially the dirt-poor budget!) We're planning on doing a water birth and most doulas rent birthing pools to their clients for lower-than-going-rate. This doula's was still about $150, which is, to be honest, what you can buy one for. So, since that discount isn't substantial, I think we'll be skipping the doula aspect for this birth.

The closer I'm getting to delivery (16 weeks!!) the more nervous I am! It's about time for us to tour the hospital, write a birth plan, pick out a full name!!!!, and now, find a birthing pool. It's come upon me so quickly! I'm thankful that I'm in school this semester because the weeks go by so quickly! It's coming close to the time to meet our sweet baby :) But first, we get to meet my sisters baby, Zoe Amanda! Hurry up, Zoe!!!

Newborn Photography

I'm really lucky that my husband and I have similar ideas on basically everything. For example, for the most part, we both think maternity pictures are creepy. This is great because if he really wanted me to have some taken, I might feel a little annoyed! It's not that I think pregnant women are ugly or unattractive, I just think that most of the poses pregnant women are placed in are creepy and the most of the ideas for maternity shoots are tacky. (With a few exceptions, of course, like this picture).  I don't know why it is so hard to simply take an attractive picture of a pregnant woman which showcases her growing belly without throwing in a creepy husband, photo-shopping a sonogram onto her stomach, or insisting on "tasteful nudity" (which is usually not tasteful). Please, stop being so weird, people.

On the other hand, we both place a high priority on newborn photos. We agreed before we were pregnant that we would much rather spend a few hundred dollars on a newborn photography session than getting pictures of me looking fat and uncomfortable. We both want precious pictures like this of our sweet baby girl that we can proudly hang on the walls, show to her boyfriends, and cry over when she get's married.

I started looking for a photographer about a week ago. I have seen plenty of pictures of baby's in unsafe positions (see below and to the right!) Obviously I want my baby to be safe, so I looked at photos from several local photographers before contacting any. I'm a pretty frugal person, so I was trying to find a photographer who took good pictures AND that I could afford! That meant, basically, that pictures were included in the cost. I found a lot of photographers who charged $150 per session, but most of the packages didn't include a single picture! (and they didn't have prices listed for prints!). I understand that photographers do a lot of work learning about photographer, as well as taking and editing pictures, but I still can't justify spending that much money just to have the pictures taken. What if I had the session done and then couldn't afford to purchase any of the photos? That would be a huge waste of money...

 
Anyway, the moral of the story is, keep looking and you'll find what you want (probably). I kept looking and eventually realized I already knew a photographer who charged a reasonable amount and included digital files in the price! AND her prints are very reasonable, so I'm thrilled to say we booked a session to photograph our precious baby and it won't include any of the miserable ideas down below.