Sad News 1/21/2008

Poor Wes. The guy has been deployed for almost 4 months and his other grandfather passes away this morning. The ship was going to let him come home for a week since he lost his other grandfather just 3 weeks ago (the day before Christmas) but we would have to pay for it and we couldn’t get him here in time for the funeral so he is staying. I wish there was more I could do from here, but sometimes there just isn’t anything you can do to make someone feel better.

Crazy Minivan Mom/Annoying Grocery store Parent 1/20/09

I love my child. I love him with all my heart. But tonight he forced me to almost be turned into one of those Crazy Mini Van Moms! You know, the ones you pull up along side of and all you see is a left arm and shoulder driving because their head has turned around backwards like that scene in the Exorcist and they are flailing their right arm at whatever kid they can reach! Yea, that was almost me, just minus the minivan because I was in a truck. But ugh! I know he is 2 (well almost anyway), I know he doesn’t understand everything, but I know he understands when I tell him there is no juice in the car!!! I don’t even have a long drive from his sitter to home anymore, and tonight we had to stop at Lowe’s to pick up a dishwasher connection thingy for the dishwasher that is being installed tomorrow. (YAY!) He screamed the whole way there. Then in the store he pitched a fit and I became that annoying parent in the grocery store who’s kid is screaming and won’t stop. Everyone is walking around the store wondering why you won’t shut your kid up and is annoyed that you haven’t just left. I totally get that now. 1) your kid has to learn to deal with life! I do not produce Fruit Snacks and there for I can not pull them out of my a$$ whenever you want them. The fact that I told you we could get some when we get home should satisfy you. 2) My kid may be being a pain, but remember I am the one having to deal with it. 3) Obviously I am in the store because I NEED SOMETHING!

I just wanted to smack the woman standing next to me at Lowe’s. She actually had the nerve to ask me if I could take him outside! And do what, have the guy at the customer service desk bring the part out to my car? Then she tried to hand him candy from her purse! Who the H do you think you are! Thanks for that lady! Now he knows if he screams loud enough someone will give him candy and then his B of a mom will tell them no! I of course politely declined but seriously would you ever do that? After several more minutes of her huffing and puffing and rolling her eyes and whispering to the guy she was with I finally said something to her. I was like, if it bothers you why don’t you go stand in another line? But I am having an appliance being delivered tomorrow and I have to pick up this part, my husband is deployed so I can’t just go sit in the car and leave my kid out there because he is being loud, I just got off work, and I have to take this kid home and deal with him all night so I would appreciate it if you would stop trying to help me parent my child when I don’t know you before I start to get louder them him.

Needless to say the lady turned around and shut up and the nice manager of Lowe’s appeared very quickly with the part and I exited the building.

Trip to Memphis and Awesome News! 1/19/09

Life has been busy for us in VA to say the least. I honestly feel like since Wes deployed in September my life has not only been the usual stuff I was doing plus the usually things he was doing but about a million others that were not going on while he was here. Last week over the Lee/Jackson/King day (which it is officially called by the Fed! And kind of makes me happy, really I think we should just call it famous persons day and celebrate whoever you want, but that is a whole other topic) three day weekend we traveled home to Memphis as well as made a Pit stop in Tuscaloosa for yet another baby shower (which I will talk about later). Anyway, it was a great trip!

We had a nice time getting to see and spend some time with my grandparents. Kercher has been full of himself these days talking and chatting everyone up. My grandparents actually babysat him for 3 hours just the two of them. It was the 1st time I think I have ever seen my grandmothers house that messy! It was just the den, but still I have one of those grandmothers who everything is always in place. Back when my grandfather smoked, I don’t know what the woman did but the house never even smelled like it. The second he would finish she would be cleaning out the ash tray! It was so cute.

Kercher also had a great time with my younger brother and sister. Barbara was still home from college (I swear I should have gone to Ole Miss she had 6 weeks off at Christmas!!!) and Caleb wasn’t as busy as he usually is with scouts and football so Kercher got to play lost of Guitar Hero, he is actually better then me which is ridiculous!

It was just nice to be home. Even though we had visited in November for 10 days it was such a great time. It is hard to live so far away when you are so close to your family. Which is why I was beyond ecstatic when we got the news that Wes was selected to go to Charleston SC like we had been hoping!! He will detach from the TR sometime in June and must report to NNPTS (Navy Nuclear Power Training School) no later the July 14th! Although we are still over whelmed by selling the house and me finding a job there we could not be happier. We will finally be close to some family! Wes’s mom and step father live in Aiken which is only 2 hours from Charleston and it will put us 6 hours closer to my family and 7 hours closer for Wes’s dad and step mom. We are sad to leave our friends behind here in VA, but at the same time we know that this will be a great move for us and for our family. My good friend Amy told me that is the one thing she dislikes about being a military spouse, even if you don’t move, your friends do. We have already had friends transferred out to South Caroline, Connecticut, Georgia, and California and now I guess it is our turn.

The Sickness 1/13/09

Ugh I am so over being sick! I have had strep 4 times since September! And now I have it again along with the stomach flew and I am suppose to be flying home to Memphis tomorrow afternoon!! The Dr gave both Kercher and I a 15 day prescription for Augmenten (or however you spell that stuff). Poor Amy is at L and D because she has it as well and is dehydrated and having contractions and I am sick and can’t even go check on her! Ugh these meds had better finally wipe this thing out because I am so over it!

The only advantage I can think of is that I haven’t been able to go to the gym because I have been ill and on meds, so hopefully when I am done with all the medication and get back to the gym all the fakers will be done by then =)

Pictures: a snap shot of your life 1/12/2009

I am a picture frame nut. Well use to be anyway. I am not sure if it was because it was the only thing I could afford to splurge on when I was in college and just out of college or if I just had that many shelves to put stuff on, but I have a LOT. Well, I have this interesting habit when it comes to picture frames in the fact that once I put a picture in it, I never take it out. Now I will put a new picture in every so often, but I just out it over the old one and leave the one that was there. Strange, yes I know. But it is really fun to be honest. You don’t change them out all that often, but when you own a frame for 6-10 years (yes some of mine I have had that long) it is interesting when you change the photo out. It is like a mini real of your life without actually having to make the scrap book. Although there are no cute embellishments (or stickers), no explanations of what was going on, or where you were, or who you are with, it is kind of a rush of emotions.

Last night I changed out a few of my frames with some new pictures I had printed a few months ago and just hadn’t put them in frames yet. It was crazy! In one I went from my 16th birthday and an ex-boyfriend I haven’t seen or hear from since 1998, to my high school graduation with a girl named Brook and that is all I know, to a Freshman formal with a different ex (however I know what this one is up to), Easter my Junior year of college right after I had lost a TON of weight, a picture with me in my Bama Belle uniform with the former quarterback at UA, graduation with my parents, the 1st condo I sold in FL, the night I met my husband, a picture from the night we got engaged, Wes holding our son for the 1st time, Kercher when he was 9 months old, and now the frame holds a picture of Wes and I and Kercher and the whole Scott family.

It was funny to look through them. As I did I have very different reactions to each. I stuck my tongue out and crinkled my nose at the 1st one (I think mostly for the ex), asked myself why I didn’t listen to my mother when I bought my graduation dress, it was not as cute as I thought it was, Freshman formal was fun, Robbie was a good dancer and it was the 1st one of my college career, wow I should really get back into that size I look really good!, ahh Bama Belle I hate they got rid of that it was such a great program, I can not believe I graduated on time!, whoooo hooo the 1st and last condo I sold in Florida, The Red Room in Birmingham with a very intoxicated picture of my husband and I hanging all over each other that cracked me up, I literally laughed out loud to myself, it isn’t everyday you meet “The One” in the new trendy bar after working a double and smelling like fried food, and no I didn’t take a shower before we went out, I remember being more embarrassed then excited when I got engaged and shocked…which is hard to do considering I knew we were getting married on Aug 13 before I had a ring because we had already booked the church, my mom, obviously new what was up because she took the picture before we left, then I cried. Kercher was so tiny and 2 years has passed way to fast for me when it comes to him (for most everything else it can keep on rolling), then I smiled and cried some more…Kercher loved that stuffed monkey that he was holding in those pictures and he took it with him all the time…then I though crap where is that I better have that somewhere he is going to want that one day!

I placed in the new picture and smiled. It is amazing what all can happen in a lifetime and all of those days were good ones…even if I turned my nose up at who I was dating. I think the thing I loved the most is that they were mostly of pictures I haven’t seen or looked or even thought about it years…

Now I want to go through all of my frames! LOL!

The Harsh Reality of Choosing Not to Vaccinate

As a parent we are faced everyday with decisions to make for our child that could effect him or her for the rest of their lives. The decisions that we make for our children often come naturally, others we make after a lot of research and discussion with other parents and spouses. One of todays most difficult decisions we as parents make is weather or not to vaccinate our child.

For me, this decision was easy. My son faced a higher risk of becoming ill from a preventable disease then he did from suffering a major reaction to one of the injections. The fact of the matter is, all of our children do. Being in daycare and schools, travels, and other factors expose your children every day.

With the influx of media coverage on this issue, and the broad spectrum of Anti Vaccine groups out there, today’s parents are often swayed one way or another without ever understand why or what they made their decision based on. Extreme groups and radical Dr’s use scary words and terminology like Neurological Disorders or Autism and we are instantly second guessing the vaccinations that have saved multiple generations of Americans.

Last night one of my favorite televisions shows, Private Practice, brought to light the harsh reality of not choosing to vaccinate your child. Although I am one who is usually against TV and persons that are famous and looked up to doing things like this, last night I was actually impressed. Although the scenario they showcased could have been much worse, they did a great job of showing how the decision not to vaccinate your child can effect you and others around you (although I am sure that today there are many groups up in arms about last nights episode). The show left me bawling like a baby and lead me to bring my son into bed with me for the night because I wanted to be close to him. But it left me wanting to write this. I have talked to many other parents about the decision to vaccinate and it is something I have felt is very important for all of our children.

In the show and American child who has been living in Switzerland contracts measles on a flight back to the states. His mother did not vaccinate him because her oldest son was autistic and although there is NO SCIENTIFIC evidence that vaccinations are linked to autism she chose to not vaccinate her youngest two children. This 10 year old boy sat in a waiting room for 30 minutes with other children, infants, elderly patients, and pregnant woman exposing them all to the measles. Although the show did not have anyone else contract the disease from this child, it did make mention of the heighten risks of exposing the elderly and pregnant women to diseases like the measles. In the end the little boys dies, and the Dr forces the youngest son to have a MMR against the mothers wishes. It was truly a tragic ending. The mother kept stating that when her grandparents where younger everyone got the measles, it wasn’t suppose to be that dangerous. Highlighting the misconceptions we have today at the devastation that these diseases had on society before vaccinations. The Dr reminded her (this is before the son is in the hospital not after he passed away) that many were ok, but many also died.

Today I think we forget about the damage these diseases caused to societies around the world. Our generation has not been exposed to common childhood deaths to disease, to children being crippled or blinded while they suffer from Polo, massive amount of children plagued by smallpox (and we do not even have to vaccinate against this anymore because of vaccines), and many more terrible things that were once common place amongst children before the development of vaccinations. Vaccinations have made the US a safer place for our children to grow up. While other countries continue to suffer from large measles outbreaks, we in the states have only seen a few. However, those numbers are starting to climb as more and more parents decide not to vaccinate their children. In 2008 24 cases were reported before May. 11 of those cases were directly associated and linked to a child who had not been vaccinated and had traveled to Switzerland, which has been facing massive outbreaks for the past 5 years. As people continue not to vaccinate their children more and more cases will be seen and that harsh reality of the effects of childhood diseases could once again plague America’s youth.

I truly do sympathies with the parents of children who have been diagnosed with autism. I can only imagine what their day to day lives must be like and the difficulties and challenges that face them. However, I do not believe that vaccinations are the cause of the development or increase in cases of autism around the world. There have been no links found that can correlate the two. The same percentage of children are diagnosed with autism that have been and haven’t been vaccinated. Most diagnosis happen between the ages of 1 year and 3 years which is a heightened time for children and vaccinations. I do however believe that children who are not vaccinated pose a great risk to the society as a whole. Vaccines are not 100% effective, so for children who receive vaccines yet the vaccine doesn’t work or children who are allergic to elements in the vaccine, they rely on the immunity of those that surround them to protect themselves from these diseases. I hope that the vaccines that my son has received will prevent him from contracting one of the diseases, but in order to ensure his health I would hope that those around him would also be vaccinated. There is also an increased risk in mutation with large numbers of unprotected children, around those that are. The diseases could one day warp into a new form that the vaccines can not protect against making us all venerable.

Studies are ongoing around the world to find the root to what some call “the autism epidemic", but so far hundreds of studies have found no link between the two. Although my son has not suffered any reactions other then a light fever to any vaccines, I keep a close watch on new information and have decide that with my next child I will vaccinate on a altered vaccine schedule. There is still NO SCIENTIFIC evidence that even shows that the risk of autism is associated with the amount of vaccines our children receive at once, however this avenue has been less studied then the the chemicals in the vaccines. I have attached several articles and places where you can find alternative vaccine schedules. I do urge you to not follow any Dr's recommendations that recommends that you do not start vaccinations until your child is 2. I personally believe that this is too late. I have found a schedule that will still complete the vaccine’s at the same time as other children, however your child only receives one injection at a time. So, it may mean more trips to the doctor’s office, but your child will still be protected.

I urge all parents to do extensive research for themselves. To look at results from many multiple studies and sources. Not to rely on facts and/or postings by extreme groups or even certain groups of medical professionals. I understand the fear, as I too have a 2 year old son. However, I do believe that until we really know what is the cause of autism, that our children are safer being vaccinated then they are not being vaccinated. Also, most of the fears people have are what is in the vaccines, the one item they attribute it to is Thimerosal (mercury), this was taken out of all vaccinations in the late 80’s early 90’s and no longer poses a threat to our children. If the combination of multiple drugs scares you, then talk to your Dr about breaking them up. If he/she will not support you, then find a Dr who will! Many Dr.’s do not believe that vaccines are the root cause of autism, however they do understand a parents concern and I have found that many are very supportive of an alternative vaccination schedule. I also caution you though to still start vaccinating right away and not wait until you child is older to begin the routine. Although there has been no proof that a child with a mild fever or that has recently been on antibiotics may cause a different outcome when receiving a vaccine, I would also recommend holding off till your child is completely well. Then if you had the unfortunate outcome of your child having an adverse reaction to a vaccine you would know right away.

I am not a medical professional, I do not conduct any types of medical studies, nor do I deem myself fit to make decisions for you and your family. I am just another concerned parent who wants what is best for my child as well as all the children he will know and come in contact with. I believe that autism is something that is scary and very real. I believe that it very well could be genetic, environmental, chemical, or a mix of all three, but I also believe that until we know what or why we should protect our children from what we know we can.

This is why I believe in Vaccination’s and will continue to vaccinate my child, and my future children.

http://children.webmd.com/vaccines/news/20081226/alternative-vaccine-schedule-stirs-debate
http://geriatricmama.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/our-alternative-vaccination-schedule/
http://children.webmd.com/vaccines/features/child-vaccines-some-parents-ill-at-ease
http://children.webmd.com/vaccines/immunization-charts-for-children-and-adultshttp://www2a.cdc.gov/HAN/ArchiveSys/ViewMsgV.asp?AlertNum=00273

There is Always Something....

A blog is a great place to vent. To get it out of your mind or off your chest and just get it out there. I know I always feel better when I am not holding on to things.

Well, a blog sucks when you want to vent about work! And you work in Human resources!!! It isn't like I can really talk about things going on at work because of the area I work in and the fact that other employees can read it...so let it be known...that stuff is going on at work. Enough said.

But there is always something...

Lately I have been more stressed then usual. I think in general I usually have some type of stress going on, but it feels as though now things are just a worse. A good deal of it I have decided I must bring on myself. Much of it is completely out of my control, but it is still beyond frustrating. I think that the economy, my house, work, a 2 year old, husband overseas, illness, sickness, death, family, friends, lack of friends, my drama, your drama, people I knows drama, life shifts, blown out tiers, staples in scalps of two year olds, strep again (that is 4 times in 3 months), shin splints, busy gyms, death and lose of cell phones, death of ipod, computer issues, leaking ceilings, broken dishwashers, dead batteries, pending transfers, money, bills, and 2 dogs is just a lot to think about all at once.

That being said I think I have decided that I will just stop thinking about it. I will take some of the advice that i am always telling other people I know, and going to use it for myself. Easier said then done I am sure. I guess lets just hope that my advice to others "don't stress it will all work out in the end" is correct. Either way most of the things I am worried about, there isn't a whole lot I can do to control them. I seriously doubt anyone is going to ask me what my views are on how to fix this economy, or that the housing market will turn around by this May so I can sell my house, or that my superman son will stop jumping/running/or attempting to fly any time soon.

The more I worry the more stuff that happens, so I am done!

(Smile plastered on face while sneezing, noise watering and throat KILLING me)

Well maybe not completely done with the worrying/stressing...but I will try to focus more on the things that I can control over the things that I can't...Like would anyone like to adopt a 3 year old beagle and/or a 2 year old Maltese? Very cute and lovable and house broken???

Just Kidding...but at least now I feel better (except for the fact that I have strep again).