Saddest Christmas ever.

For those of you following my blog…

Unfortunately, there will not be a new addition to our family in August. I am shocked, sad, and angry.  Mostly sad. It’s not fair.

Best Christmas News/Gift Ever!

Yes, I know it may be a bit early but I’m thinking positive thoughts.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Day of Silence

<img src=”https://sites.google.com/site/megoblogdesign/files/sandyhooksupport.png&#8221; />

On Tuesday, December 18th, there will be a blogger day of silence. We will post the button and that’s it. Please try to not post anything else that day if possible.

We are also raising money that will go to an organization in the memory of this tragedy. The organization is called The Newtown Family Youth and Family Services. Here is the official description of the support service we are donating to:

“Newtown Youth and Family Services, Inc. is a licensed, non-profit, mental health clinic and youth services bureau dedicated to helping children and families achieve their highest potential. NYFS provides programs, services, activities, counseling, support groups and education throughout the Greater Newtown area.

ANY DONATIONS MADE TO NEWTOWN YOUTH AND FAMILY SERVICES WILL BE DONATED DIRECTLY TO THOSE EFFECTED BY THE SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SHOOTING.”

Please visit THIS PAGE to make your donation.

We can’t imagine how they must be feeling, especially this close to the holidays. We would love for you to spread the word on your own blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Let’s make a difference and use blogging in a positive way. Thank you in advance for participating.

Love,
The Blog World

p.s. If you would like to, copy-paste and repost any part of this, please do. Share on.

Sadness

What would you do if you knew your child will not be there tomorrow morning to greet you with his smile? What would you do if you knew you would never hug your child again?  What would you do if you found out that tomorrow your child’s lifeless body will be quietly resting  in a cold building among other dead bodies.  What would you do knowing that your beautiful baby is dead? Who do you blame? Where do you turn? How do you feel knowing you can’t make your child feel better, tell him it’s all going to be ok. What do you do when you know you can’t whisk your child away to take him home and hug him close until this nightmare is over?  What if you were the parent of a child who died?   What if your child was the victim?

I keep asking myself those questions and can’t find the answers.  I can’t imagine the grief, anger, and emotions that the parents of the slain children are going through.  I try to imagine myself in such a situation as I’m knocking on wood, praying that I will never ever have to face such reality myself.  I have hardly left my son’s side these past two days.  I picked him up from his daycare as soon as I could yesterday and have been with him since.

I wonder what those parents are thinking.  What could they possibly be feeling?  Isn’t is every parent’s instinct to want to pick up your child, hug him, kiss away the pain, hush him when he’s crying, calm him down, hold him tight and whisper words of comfort?  These parents never had a chance. They never will.  They will never, ever have the chance to say “I love you” and hear it back, they will never hug their child’s warm little body again, smell their hair, see their smile, feel pure joy at their child’s happiness.  They will never again know what it’s like to have their Christmas be a time of joy, happiness and a time spent with family.  It is all too hard to even imagine.

The phrase “hug your little ones closer tonight” makes so much more sense in times of such tragedy.  It sounds ridiculous, I know, but all day today I was looking at my son trying to remember every little movement of his, his smile, the silly things he does.  Why? God knows.  I guess it made me feel better to know I can still do that while those poor parents can’t.  I know that in a few days things will settle for the rest of the world as we go about our business, celebrating Christmas and the New Year but we cannot forget those grieving families who have lost their babies.

I don’t think anyone will ever fully understand why this had to happen.  It never makes sense.  It shouldn’t. There should NOT be an explanation as to why it happened because it SHOULDN’T have! There will NEVER be enough good reason as to why innocent children and adults had to die.  Never.  I think we need to take a good look at today’s society.  I’m not talking about gun control.  I’m almost not talking about mental illness.  Yes, I know that we are labeling the heartless gunman as one having some type of mental illness but who knows? Do only mentally ill commit such crimes?  Or is it Evil. Pure evil.  I will not spend time here writing about the killer.  He does not deserve a second of anyone’s time.  He shouldn’t even be talked about on TV.  I’m afraid that all this talk about the killer might be enough for another lunatic sitting in his parent’s basement planning an attack.   We do not want to glorify those monsters.

My heart is sad for those families.  My heart cries for the children who died, and for those children who witnessed the shooting.   I can’t stop thinking about what those poor children in that classroom were thinking. What was going through their minds as they saw the gun, the crazed gunman, the gun going off, their classmates dying and seeing that they are next. Words cannot describe how sorry I am.

I am praying tonight for the children and adults who died and I am praying for the families that have to deal with such terrible loss.  May God be with them in this time of sorrow.

Rest in Peace Little Angels.  Rest in Peace.

Childhood Revisited

Daily Prompt: Childhood Revisited

by michelle w. on December 8, 2012

That’s right, we’re introducing weekend prompts — let no day go uninspired!

What is your earliest memory? Describe it in detail, and tell us why you think that experience was the one to stick with you.

My earliest memory? Hmmmm…

A little girl in kindergarten. I was always the helper.  I would be the one helping the teachers with setting up for lunch, putting out the cups, the plates, and the napkins.  Then, after snack or lunch, I would be the one to help clean up.

I never thought about why it was so important for me to do this.  My guess is that my position as a helper allowed me to have control over who got what. You see, in my kindergarten, (no, not in America) the cups were not plastic, they were regular cups, all of them had numbers on the bottom, probably 1 – 10.  Silly children that we were, it somehow  ‘stuck’ that the cups labeled with the # 5 were the ‘cool kids’ cups.  Yeah, I know! LOL…. Since I was the one in charge of passing out the cups, I was given the power to decide who will be ‘cool’ for the day.  That, of course, resulted in kids either liking me extra or hating me on that particular day.  The following day, the process would start all over.

I enjoyed this game of favoritism.  I wonder today, why did no one object to me being the helper. Why didn’t other kids volunteer.  More importantly, why didn’t the teacher put a stop to this ( I know they knew about this).

Needless to say, I still enjoy being in control today, I love it when I know that people like me and that I am in control of who my friends are. 

My son’s going to juvie

My mother lectured me today on how terrible my child is.   She loves him dearly, as she tells me,  but every time he stays with my parents, I cringe at the thought of picking him up because I know that they (both my mother and father) will have theories about my child’s personality, character, and outbursts.  I am pretty sure that he will not end up in juvie, Dad.
I will agree that my son is not an angel but her words hurt. They hurt a lot.
My son is a kid who know exactly what he want at a particular moment.  You cannot trick him into drinking orange juice when he specifically asked for apple juice, he will not go down for a nap at 11:45 if he knows he’s supposed to stay up till after Caillou, a show that starts at 12 noon.  When we threaten him that if he doesn’t eat his food a monster will eat it, he smiles and says, “Where is the monster?”
Did I mention my son is 2 1/2 years old?  See,  I don’t have much experience with that age group, as he is my first, but I really don’t think he’s all that bad.  I’d like to call him creative, imaginative, independent, at times self sufficient, funny child.
Yes, occasionally he will tell me to ‘Stay away’ when he’s in the bathroom on the potty, or in his room playing with his toys or coloring.  He will refuse to eat his chicken, then his corn, then his potatoes, only to devour the entire meal an hour later.  Yes, he does get into everything, including my mother’s precious cupboard with glasses, crystals, Lenox and other chotchkies, and when told to give it up, refuses to.  He does have days in which all he will eat is apples and then days in which he will scream EEEWWW at the mere sight of one.  All that leads my parents to believe that he is and forever will be an insubordinate child.  They tell me that if we do not ‘work’ with him he will be trouble in the future.
There’s no sense telling them that when he is home, with us, we don’t see the bad behavior, probably because we don’t ‘play’ with him the way my dad does.  My dad will give my son a toy, right after he made a big deal about it, then as soon as my son is happily occupied and engrossed in it, he will ask for it back.  He does this purposely, just to see how my son will react.  Then, he will comment about how terrible it is that my son starts crying because he didn’t want to give up his toy.  WTF Dad?
My son didn’t speak for a while ( we are a bilingual family).  My parents suggested numerous times that I take him to the doctor as they were concerned there was something wrong with him.  Then, one day he woke up, started speaking and hasn’t shut his mouth since.  His vocabulary is rather extensive but he loves to say No often.  That in turn is alarming to my mother.  The question I get from her always is:  Where does he get this personality?  I am convinced that with each time she asks, I will give in and say that he gets it from my husband ( she does not like my husband). It’s as though it would make her feel better to at least have me admit that.  I will not, ever, ever do that.  I may be wrong, but knowing her, she attributes my child’s behaviors to genes carried down from my husband. I told her about terrible twos. She responds with, he acts like he’s ten.  I tell her he will grow out of it. She tells me that she’s never seen a child his age be so vocal about his wants and needs and that when my sister and I were little it didn’t matter to us what hat we wore or what food we ate.
I remember distinctly that I would not eat certain foods and I know that my sister would vomit everything back until she was a good 3 years old! Take that, Mom!  I also know that I would not dare question my mother’s choice of clothes for me, or of anything for that matter, because I knew there’d be hell to pay.
Maybe it’s me, maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe my mother is right and my child is a child from hell.  He never gets in trouble at his daycare and his teachers have only good things to say about him.  If he  was truly a bad boy, wouldn’t this behavior carry over to his daycare where there are rules, routines and structure?  I would think so.  I want my child to grow up to be a good person but one with an opinion he is not afraid to share, a person who is independent and knows what he wants.  I want him to be the opposite of me.  I don’t want him to be afraid of saying what’s on his mind,  I don’t want him to worry about what others might think of him,  I want him to be able to stand up for himself.  I  was not like that as a child.  I was afraid of my own shadow, I would not speak up ever, I did what I was told even if I knew it was wrong.  I was afraid of my mother.  I know she’s old fashioned and it’s hard to explain to her that children are innately different from how they were  a couple decades ago.  The statement that children are to be seen not heard is outdated and I think that’s what my parents don’t realize.  I know they love him but I need them to love him for who he is and who he is growing up to be and they need to trust me to be able to raise a young man who they can and will be proud of one day.  My son will NOT end up in juvie.

Things your child’s teacher won’t tell you – why people become teachers

As some of you know, my job in in education. What some of you don’t know is how difficult it may be at times.  I’m not even talking about the pay.  Not that many teachers go into education ( I haven’t met one yet) because the pay is great. That’s a given and I’m not complaining about it. What is my pet peeve? All the other things that are just.plain.wrong. in education.

“What is it?” you’ll say. Hmmm, let me count the ways….oh, here’s one…

1) the freaking PAPERWORK – and not just students’ paper.  I never understood why teachers complain about having tons of grading to do. The way I see it: if you assigned it and told students that you will be grading it, then it is your job to grade it. Period. End of story. You don’t want to grade it? Don’t assign it. Ahem… sorry. Now let me go back to #1. What I’m talking about is the paperwork that we get from ‘up above’ as I call it. The reports, the data, the reports about the data, the data on the reports, the written plans and strategies to change the bad reports, the reports on the new reports that (hopefully) have better results. NO. I’m not kidding. This is every teacher’s life. Then there’s the paperwork for your supervisor, the counselor, the parent contact update to the admin… aahhhh

2) The lack of responsibility, accountability, whatever you want to call it from, let’s call them “people”, outside of school, the people responsible for the children after they leave school.  You know, nowadays, it seems that once a child steps foot in a school building, we, the teachers, become the parents, and then when they leave, we are still the parents.  Now, I may be speaking from only my experience but I have been around a few years to see that this happens in different districts, different schools and it’s getting worse.  Not everyone, of course, but this is a trend that is hurting the children.  We, the teachers are unable to parent 20, 25, 30 kids sitting in front of us for 60 minutes a day. It’s impossible. We would love to be able to do it, but we can’t.

3) A child’s success is everyone’s doing but a child’s failure is always the teacher’s fault. I’ve sat in many meetings feeling attacked, accused, questioned and doubted.  As a result, my parent communication log is already overflowing with copies of emails, notes and phone call logs with parents (It’s only Dec.2nd). This CYA attitude is the consequence of #2 because at some point, someone said that I didn’t do this, I didn’t do that, I said this, promised that…. the list goes on.

4) I realize that in today’s society in which everyone is out to get you,  it’s easy to believe that teachers are out to get students, to catch them doing something wrong, that we really do not like teaching, we really, really do not like children and we do this only so that we can have summers off.  Some believe that we actually get up in the morning, stare in the mirror and say “Mirror, mirror on the wall, which student’s parent will I call?  I don’t know where this myth started but let me put it this way: no person who goes to college to be a teacher just so he/she can have summers off has lasted, and those who thought they can pull off 10 months of being a teacher to have a free summer probably quit a long time ago.

This may sound cheesy but it takes a special human being to be a teacher. I would almost say that teaching is a calling. One requires patience, and lots of it.  Imagine being in a room of minimum 15 children, any age. That’s 15 different personalities, 15 different backgrounds, family histories, 15 different house situations, economic status, 15 children who probably can’t wait for you to stop talking so that they can get on with their social lives. It is UP TO YOU to hold their attention for 60 minutes, teach them, assess them, make sure they learn and come back wanting more the next day. Oh, and just so you know, all those fun, interesting, attention grabbing things you want to do with those kids you have to prep ahead of time (probably not on school time because you will be filling out paperwork, see #1). Now that’s just one day… now try it for a week. How many hours do you think it will take? Yeah, I thought so… many, many hours.  And guess what? After you plan and plan and plan some more, chances are your administration may still not like it.

So why go into teaching? It’s definitely not for the two months off ( most districts don’t pay during the summer). It’s because we love what we do, regardless of how much time it takes, how much of our own money we spend, and how little appreciation we see.  We love the kids. We love it when their eyes light up because they learned something new. We love the ‘aha’ moments and the twinkle in the eyes of those who finally got it.  Most often, that’s our only reward.  After all, we’re here for the kids and that’s enough to keep us going.

If you’d like, please check out the link from Reader’s Digest, 13+ Things Your Child’s Teacher Won’t Tell You.

http://www.rd.com/slideshows/slideshow-13-things-your-childs-teacher-wont-tell-you/

December is here.

It’s December.

For me, December means everything Christmas, snow, cold weather, and family.

Soon, the snow will fall and make the world white. When I was a child, it wasn’t Christmas if there was no snow. It’s just not the same.

This year, I will try to do more with my son, who is two and a half. He understand a lot and is very excited about snow, the Christmas Tree and Santa.

I have no presents planned for him yet but we will be writing cards and a letter to Santa. I can’t imagine what a two year old could possibly want… he sure can’t verbalize it yet.  I know for a fact though, that the opening of the presents, whatever they may be, will be fun for him, no matter what’s inside.

A new page, help please

I’ve started a new page on my blog.   It’d be cool if you checked it out .

My question, however, is this: Is there a way for me to write Posts under the new Page or will WordPress not allow me to do that?

THANKS A LOT!

I want what you have

Here goes: I am often jealous of what others have.

A friend of mine got engaged after I did.  Her ring is bigger, nicer, “blingier”  than mine. Mine isn’t all that because I told my then fiance that I’d rather have him save money for a house than buy me a ring which I will probably not wear every day.

A friend of mine has a nicer body. I’m a big girl. She has nice legs, flat stomach and lots of energy. I have none of the above. I have big legs, a round stomach and I loose my breath when I run.

Yes, I admit it’s a disgusting admission but I know I’m not alone.

I have lots of things to appreciate and be thankful for. I have a great husband and a healthy baby.

It’s not that I am not happy for my friends. Of course I am. I, like everyone else, congratulate them all on their successes at work, a new house, a ring, a wedding, a car. I admit though, though, that secretly, it makes me sad and a small voice in the back of my head whispers “ Why not me?” I can almost guarantee that I’m not alone.

Some will say that it is ‘something’ from our childhood, while others believe it is our own insecurities.

I’m not sure which it really is, all I know is that it makes me miserable. Once I found out that my friend bought a house, I immediately wanted to find out what it looks like (thank goodness for FB). I congratulated her of course, but once I turned off the computer, I sat there a minute and a feeling of disappointment came over me. Disappointment over my house not being as big as hers, my kitchen not being as finished as hers, my house costing not nearly as much as hers, my house not being in the town as good as hers. I turned to my husband and expressed my thoughts. His response? “Aren’t you happy with what we have? You’ve worked so hard for it all”. True, I agree with him but I would feel better if I had what she has.

So why do we do this? Why can’t we just let go? Why can’t we be genuinely happy for our friends? Why does it all bother us when others get ahead? Is it human nature to want to be better, smarter, stronger, richer, prettier? Is it society’s doing that we need to be competitive? If we live comfortably, if we are healthy, if we have no worries, why do we get bothered by it?