Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act

If you haven't had a chance to support this, I really hope you do. It only takes a few minutes of your time. I feel really strongly about putting money behind law enforcement to track, find, and hopefully give justice to innocent children out there - victims of horrific sexual abuse. Many of you supported the child protection safety act just passed a few months ago, this is another bill that desperately needs support. We have a responsibility to speak up. You can go to Oprah.com for further details on the subject.

It is very simple - copy their sample letter (or write your own), then click on their link senate.gov and go to your state. Then paste their sample letter into an email to your senator. Easy peasy. (That one goes out for my mom).

Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act - Oprah.com

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Baby Fat

I love my babies, but lets be honest here.

I hate losing 'baby weight.'

Brayden is 10 weeks old now. I don't know how that happened, because I haven't yet come out of the fog. Let's face it, I am tired, sluggish in my softish type body, and although Brayden is a champ at sleeping most nights, I have three OLDER children that like to come and pay me a visit regularly during the a.m. hours of the day. They like to take advantage of the empty space next to me in my king size bed that should be occupied by one 'daddy' who shall remain nameless. 2 days ago I woke up with all four children lined up next to me, and decided I had 'had enough of the insanity!'

So in typical "Jenny" fashion, I set out to get some order and control back on the Cook family home front. I have been a little bit in denial about my life the past year. I thought that surely misery of the sorts we had been enduring couldn't possibly be permanent. I have fought tooth and nail to try and change things. I am now starting to bitterly realize that things are not going to change in the near future, and 'this is as good as it is gonna get...' so .... I guess I have to deal.... sometimes tearfully deal...anyways back to what I was saying; In typical 'me' fashion, I got myself all pumped up to get it all back under control and make my own 'happy place' and set some goals for the next two months. I was really quite impressed with myself. I even set realistic goals. I then went further and wrote detailed information on how I was going to accomplish said goals. And yesterday, I was so impressed with myself on how well I followed my rules and expectations for myself on reaching my stated goals.... Then today rolled around. It wasn't so great... And once the afternoon rolled around the cookie dough in my freezer was beckoning and I gave in to one cookie dough ball.... Then another.... and as the day got worse I said to myself 'to hell with it!' and baked a whole dang dozen... and you can guess it... ate the whole dang thing myself. What can I say? I crashed and burned today. One more day of being stuck in this baby body that I am not so happy to be in. There is always tomorrow, right?!

And by the way, why didn't anyone tell me that having 4 kids would be like this?! What the crap?! Why do you all make it look so easy? Are you all just a bunch of liars putting on a show? Or am I really just a little weak and pathetic? I think I have figured out that the timing on them getting to our family is just a little painful! Between the nursing child, the wild two year old that cannot be tamed, the kindergartner that gets off the bus at lunchtime, the first grader that gets off the bus mid-afternoon, I am painfully counting down the days until I will have 2 kids in school all day, making it possible to get to any type of store for any amount of time over 15 minutes without having to rush back home again! And oh, the thought of getting through an actual workout without a crying baby or 'wild child' constantly finding trouble I have to get him out of makes me giddy at the thought. I am trapped, I tell you! Trapped! What I wouldn't give for a partner in crime home in the evenings so I could ESCAPE the madness once in a while!

Alright, enough complaining. I really do love em all, I just didn't know it would be so hard. Cuz it is, it is HARD for me, really it is really hard for me. Did I say it was hard? Cuz it is. I'm not holding back. Did ya notice?!