Thanksgiving (and a gathering of Wootens)



Two years ago at our reception

 In our little family, we kicked off the Thanksgiving week by celebrating two years of being happily married and sealed for time and eternity.  It doesn't seem like it's been that long.  Among other events, Jason and I went out for sushi-  you got it, ladies and gents, I have officially converted Jason into a lover of sushi. 



Aunt Court love



Courtney and Mom were very awesome to babysit Ezra while Jason and I went out for our anniversary.  Court went ahead and made the rule that since she doesn't get to see Ezra very much that during the next few days, if she wanted him, she got him. 



Ezra loves the ladies



Courtney brought her pup, Johnny, came into town.  We had a great time taking Johnny and Ezra out to the beach and downtown for Andolini's pizza.



Transitioning



Clif was very good at getting Ezra to go down for naps.  We had some trouble transitioning from the rocking chair with Clif to the Pack & Play, but Clif did not seem to mind more Ezra snuggles. 



We all got to play a lot of Spades, a family favorite.  Jason taught us a new way of scoring that made it even more fun. 

Random Ezra Updates

Ezra has started reaching for things-  this is a video of him and his favorite toy which Jason and I have named The Happy Giraffe because it makes him happy where ever, whenever.

Ezra also had his official first food after Thanksgiving.  I had originally intended on waiting until he was six months, but I had heard that some babies take longer than other s to get the swallowing motion down with the rice cereal.  So, in other words, oh well.  His first food was bananas, and he loved it.  I have to admit, I loved it as well, so we pretty much split the container :)

 



Thoughts on Abstinence-Only Education

My disclaimer is that I know that my ideas are controversial.

I respectfully say this: Get. Over. It.  

Abstinence Only education is a big thing down here in the south.  The big argument I have heard is "How can you teach kids not to have sex while handing them a condom?"  I have also heard arguments that say schools don't have the time and funding to teach sex education.  Again, cut that garbage out.

Here is my stance:  I think family values are a great thing.  I support not having sex until you are married.  Yay being chaste.  However, family values are just that:  values within a particular family.  NOT society.  Not everyone has the ideal family where sex can be discussed safely.  My aunt is a school nurse, and the other day we had a laugh riot discussing the names given to different sex organs by parents of children.   

All joking aside, it is incredibly important for children starting at a young age to learn the proper names of their anatomy.  Child molestation is real, okay?  I understand you don't want your four-year-old to understand exactly how your marriage bed works, but she needs to be able to tell you exactly how she might have been innappropriately touched. 

I have heard the idea that "If my child needs to know it, I'll teach it."  Well, guess what.  Not all parents will.

In one article I read recently, four types of sex education were described:

1.  No mention of abstinence

2.  Including abstinence in a comprehensive education

3.  Promoting abstinence as the best option

4.  Abstinence until marriage as the only option

You may want to cover your eyes and put your fingers in your ears for what I have to say next.

People (teenagers included) who want to have sex are going to find a way to have sex unless they are taught different values at home.  That is a fact.  I think of sex education as harm reduction.  If you are unfamiliar with the idea of harm reduction, check it out here.

To deny teenagers sex education about how to prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancies is a lot like not teaching someone how to properly use an oven and then getting angry because they got burned. 

Education does not mean that teenagers must go have sex.  In my Organic Chemistry class I learned how to make some deadly compounds, but I haven't set up a lab in my kitchen. 

Often times the same people I hear ranting about not having a comprehensive sex education in schools are usually the same ones ranting about how they don't want to pay for other people's children with welfare.  My solution?  Give them a condom and teach them how to use it.  

Statistics very clearly show that Abstinence-Only education produces the highest percentage of unwanted teen pregnancies.  Wow.  Surprised? 

The lowest percentage of unwanted teen pregnancies are through the education that promotes abstinence as the best option, but not the only option.

I think the disconnect we face is that many people have no tolerance for others who believe differently from themselves.  We must accept that different families have different values.  Maybe chastity is one family's biggest belief.  Maybe not doing heroin is another family's biggest belief. 

Take home message:  Your children are not the only ones who need an education.  All children need a proper education of how their bodies work.  We need to make that available in public schools because we cannot assume it is being taught in private homes. 

Good Food Comes to Those Who Wait (Practicing with Rice Cereal)

This week, Ezra had his first rice cereal.  It was kind of messy and definitely not his favorite, but I explained to him that in order to eventually eat all of the amazing food life has to offer (like Chilean Sea Bass and fresh aparagus) that he has to learn to swallow using rice cereal.   After the meal, Ezra was a mess....  this is the first time we have really gotten full use of a bib.

In other news, I am determined to be a cool mom who has all kinds of seasonal, fun activities for the kids, so I jogged my memory of being a Brownie in Girl Scouts.  This oldie but goodie idea was a lot of fun.  Jason and I have a hard time setting up appointments with people we visit/home teach, especially during the holidays, so we took our tray full of candy turkeys and Turkey Bombed some houses :)  It was a fun activity, and hopefully, by the time Ezra is able to help, I will have some other projects up my sleeve as well. 

Not quite Beyonce

Came across this is another blogger group.  I think I am in love.  Check out more of her videos on youtube : Nineteenpercent

My hubby and I were out the other day discussing some of  the online mo-fem groups I am in.  Since I frequently talk about the controversy I find in them with him, he asked, "What do you get out of them?" 

First off, I become aware of gold like this video.  Secondly, I have been more inspired to keep up with my feminist ideas.   I also feel not so trapped in a super conservative Mormon box.

It's not all bad, it's not all good.  But that's life.

Baby it's cold outside (or maybe not quite)

Baby, I wish it were cold outside.  The weather cannot seem to make up its mind.  We have used both the heat (it got down to 60 degrees inside our house) and the a/c (it reached 80) this week.  Gah, that has got to stop.  Ezra does not understand.

This past week while doing baby laundry, we had no clean, warm clothes for Ezra, so we pretended it was Halloween again and put on one of his warm costumes.  A good lesson in making hay while the sun is shining....  Wash baby clothes while the sun is making it 80 degrees, so that when it's 60, the baby isn't cold.

Ezra has started playing with toys that don't hang above his head, so Jason and I decided to get a few.  You can see him doing a little light reading in this picture.

We had both sets of missionaries over for dinner this week.  It was a real treat because the new Mission President has limited missionary dinners to once a month per family.  I may not be amazing at making dinner for six, but I am darn good at ordering Dominos.  I think theywere happy because they slickly left this little gift in our picture of the Columbia Temple.  I found it the next day :)

This is from tonight when there is absolutely no air flowing through our house.  I am trying desperately to not turn on the A/C in November, but I am roasting.  I didn't even bother putting clothes on the baby.  We're all sweating. 

And that's really it for this week.  We're getting excited for Ezra's first Thanksgiving.  With the exception of Courtney's fiance, Gary, my entire side of the family will be in town.  Yay!

Blogic relief in the form of more Target Women

More current Sarah Haskins.

Because I love Sarah Haskins. 

And I need some posts that are a little less serious...and broody.

My favorite line?

"Milk will also bring sunshine to a land devastated by your period tears."

"Because diamonds are forever..just like roaches."

Blogic relief complete.

As Promised (Gobble Gobble)

Thanksgiving pajamas :)  I realize that so many of the pictures I put up are of Ezra in  his swing, but it's so hard to get him at a good angle anywhere else. 

 

A Bell Hooks Approach to Feminist Parenting

My son is four months old, but since that won't last forever, I have been researching how to raise a feminist child.  Some people will tell you that raising a feminist boy is different from raising a feminist girl.  I haven't made up my mind on the subject just yet.  This is the first of many posts that I will write giving varied perspectives of feminist parenting.  I do not necessarily hold the same opinions.  I am simply sharing what I find. 

One thing that did jump out at me in my reading for the evening was a piece on feminist parenting by Bell Hooks, a personal hero of mine.  She was describing how the physical discipline of children can influence their ideas of battered women.  This may seem like a stretch-  it seemed that way to me at first.  In her book Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, Bell Hooks writes,

I often tell the story of being at a fancy dinner party where a woman is describing the way she disciplines her young son by pinching him hard, clamping down on his little flesh for as long as it takes to control him.  And how everyone applauded her willingness to be a disciplinarian.  I shared the awareness that her behavior was abusive, that she was potentially planting the seed for this male child to grow up and be abusive to women.  Significantly, I told the audience of listeners that if we had heard a man telling us how he just clamps down on a woman's flesh, pinching her hard to control her behavior it would have been immediately acknowledge as abusive.  Yet when a child is being hurt this form of negative domination is condoned.  

 She goes on to say that children have no civil liberties and are often viewed as property of the parent.  This physical power that a parent can exert over a child translates into a person who can physically dominate another will/should do so to maintain control.  Honestly, the two were apples and oranges to me until reading this book, and perhaps they still are.  It's an interesting perspective.

Hubby and I were discussing this in the car.  He's my skeptic on all things that go against cultural inertia, so I like to get his opinion on such things.  He said he understood what Bell Hooks was saying, but it is a parent's job to teach a child how to behave whereas that is not the case of a spouse.

I would have to say my current thoughts are that discipline is a not multiple choice where all answers are mutually exclusive, but rather a continuum where generally the parent knows the child best.  I was a recipient of the occassional spanking and I will absolutely, 100% not stand for violence against women. 

But then I look again, and maybe there is something to what Bell Hooks has to offer....

How does this sit with you?

**On a side note, this is not to say that either of us agree with the idea of using physical punishment to correct behavior but rather for argument's sake.  We have yet to get to a place in our parenting where discipline plays a role at all, but we had discussed the need for a pop on the bum to get a clear understanding to a child who isn't listening and the consequence could be dangerous (such as touching a hot stove).  However, I will not assume a position on that or presume anyone else has it right or wrong until I have hit that place in my parenting. **



Four Month Update (And other random tirades)

After almost two years of marriage, I am proud to announce that we are finally falling into a rhythm-  I blame the delay on Jason's crazy rotating shift work.  Jason is officially on day staff, which means he holds normal people hours, which means we have regular dinners and weekends, which furthur means solid routines in our home.  Yay! 

Little man peeking through his playmat

Ezra update:  We had his four month appointment a couple weeks ago.  Our Little Man is actually our big Little Man weighing in at eighteen pounds and almost twenty-seven inches.  He's still over the 95th percentile, with which I am just fine-  I love a chunky baby!  We were told by the nurse that we should go ahead and start him on rice cereal, but we honestly weren't thinking about food until six months.  When I expressed this sentiment, our nurse asserted that, no, this was indeed the time to begin rice cereal.  I spoke to the doctor who said that it was absolutely fine to wait until six months to begin real food.  I love our doctor;  she really supports our parenting style, which many in our American culture find too soft.  However, if it's one thing I have learned from studying sociology, it's that normalcy in one culture is completely odd in another.  Therefore, I am not hugely worried about what people in this culture find weird because if we end up happy, who cares?



Our adventure at the fair-  Ezra has started
loving stuffed animals- this one in particular. 



On another note, Ezra loves music.  Before he was born, Jason and I went back and forth between what was more important:  music or sports.  Now, if I know most of my readers of this blog, I can assume you're thinking music, but hear my case out.  Sports promote hand-eye coordination (especially useful in a home free of video games), teamwork, social skills, problemsolving, commitment, etc.  Team sports also have a positive corelation with school work. 

All that being said, I think that is one discussion Jason will win, at least until we have another little one, because Ezra is a music baby.  Singing (especially showtunes), any instrument, and most recently Pandora.com get him calm.  In church, Ezra sits very sweetly through the music and then WAILS when it stops.  Grr.  Looks like I'll have to persuade another child to be a sports kid...  unless Ezra can do both....  or be brainwashed.  Kidding...kind of.  We'll see. 

Ezra has become a pro at rolling from his back to his tummy, but not so much from his tummy to his back.  That's exciting.  Another random, yet exciting thing is that since Halloween is over, it is officially Thanksgiving season, which can only mean one thing.  That's right, you guessed it, Thanksgiving pajamas.  When I was growing up, my mom always got us new pajamas for special times like vacation and holidays.  I have decided that is a tradition I would like to carry on.  It can be my thing.  I don't have a picture of Ezra in his Thanksgiving pajamas yet, but be on the look out.  It's coming. 

Doubt versus Questions: What is okay?

Contributions also made by my love <3

Recently, I have introduced myself into some circles of feminist Latter-day Saints through blogs, facebook groups, etc.  This is my attempt at finding others like me.  Often times I find my feminist ideologies are met with uncomfortable expressions and resistant minds, so I took to the internet-  Even if a small 10-30 percent of Mormons consider themselves moderate to liberal, that's a whole lot of people who have un-Mormon-mainstreamed ideas that could be somewhat similar to mine.  I found a few blog circles that I really enjoyed.  I loved the ones that did not allow destructive comments-  different points of view are always welcome, but the comments that were nasty, angry, and downright mean were deleted. 
However, I was surprised by some of the material I found in other circles.  Often the subject matter included criticism of the prophets and apostles and the way conference talks were given.  Many topics were thrown into the arena that made me quite uncomfortable.  I thought my feminism was cause for discomfort in some  more conservative members, but the comments and ideas of some of the feminist circles were almost anti-doctrinal. 
One particular example I can think of is the Visiting Teaching message for October about the Stripling Warriors.  The idea behind the lesson (October 2011 Visiting Teaching message) is building a strong testimony of the gospel and not doubting our faith or the Lord.  This caused a lot of ruckus in many of the feminist circles because simply believing what one is told goes against feminist intuition.  The reviews of the message I have been reading in the feminist blogosphere are very unsettling to me due to the intensity of open criticism for our church leaders.  I fear that when we turn to criticizing Church Leaders, we are leaving the gospel behind. 
I began to think about how many times I have said to myself that some piece of doctrine does not make sense to me and then investigated the topic either in scripture, through others in my church community, and most often, my Bishop.  I am a feminist who is FULL of questions.  From there, I began to differentiate between having questions and doubting.  In my opinion, doubting is unbelief, whereas questions involve trying to fill in gaps of knowledge.  (I would love to hear other opinions on this!)
Doubting is discouraged by Christ in John 20 when Thomas does not believe the other ten apostles when they tell him that they have seen the resurrected Savior.  Thomas states that he will not believe unless he sees for himself.  The Savior later tells Thomas to be not faithless but believing. 
Questions in and of themselves are great and testimony building.  In Alma 32, Alma teaches that faith is not having a perfect knowledge, and that one must exercise a particle of faith to be able to give place to some of the words he preaches.  In Moroni 10, it is encouraged for each individual to ask of the Father if the gospel (and pieces thereof) are true.  Questions seem to me to be a staple in building a strong testimony.  Questioning with a "sincere heart" is promised to be met with answers, not disciplinary action. 
I think that we could all benefit from seeking more answers rather than discarding truths due to misinterpretations or a distaste for their presentation.