I love my son and he has brought so much joy to our lives, but toddlerhood has totally set in and he has a new trick. What is it you ask? Screaming. Screaming everytime he wants something. He can say please and does but after he screams. I never thought a child so little could scream with such force and pitch. He might have a future in horror films as a voice over screamer for some scared little girl. How long can I expect this to last? I might need to invest in some ear plugs…Only slightly joking.

On a brighter note–we have said good-bye to the bottle all together. He has been off of daytime bottles for quite a while, but he said good-bye to his bedtime bottle 3 nights ago. All on his own. He rejected in and I haven’t offered it since. He seems to be sleeping great at night. I am so happy, as I was not looking forward to taking that away from him. Well, he is about to wake up and I am going to take this chance to enjoy some absolute silence.

This t-shirt is for sale at Urban Outfitters. I am beyond offended. I implore you all to make your voice heard and complain. I sent an email. Please stand up for out children. You can send an email complaint here

Let me preface this post by saying that my thoughts are with those at Virgina Tech who have been directly affected by this horrible tragedy. I hope you all can find some normalcy in your lives sometimes soon and my sympathies go to those who lost loved ones in the horrible and until now unimaginable tragedy.

As a human I am troubled and frightened by the events that took place in Virginia on Monday. I have turned away from watching morning shows as they are consumed with the tragedy–as news is their business. I wouldn’t be so irritated by their coverage if there was some actual news they were reporting. What I can’t take is the hours of speculation as to why this happened? What more could the University have done? Why didn’t the warning signs seem clearer before the shooting? Why didn’t the police do more? and the biggest question the media doesn’t seem to be willing to answer–Who is to blame?

Well I can answer that last question. Cho Seung-Hui is to blame. He is the one who purchased the guns and took the lives of 32 innocent people and injured many others. Cho Seung-Hui is the one to blame. I feel bad for the University and its constant need to defend it’s actions or it’s perceived lack of action. Yes Cho made a few students feel creepy and made teachers uneasy. But is that a crime? Yes he wrote violent plays, but have you seen a Quentin Tarrantino Movie? There is a difference between writing about violence and being violent. The University investigated him, the cops did too. He was evaluated by a mental health facility and released. Why do we need to blame someone else. Isn’t blaming the shooter enough. He was an adult. He made a choice.

Violence is inherent in our society and within our human species. Look at our history books–as glossy as they are they are full of war and murder and rage. We cannot rid our world of violence. I know that is scary to say and admit but it is true. One has to ask how it is so easy to get a handgun? Could he have killed as many people if he was relegated to being able to buy a shotgun? Why do we have to have the right to buy automatic or semi-automatic weapons? Why are we so resistant to having gun restrictions? Most gun control advocates don’t want to take away all guns, but we do want to restrict the types of guns out there. Cho would never have been able to kill the people he killed if he was only able to buy a single or even a double barrel shot gun. But most importantly–place the blame where it lies–Cho Seung-Hui is the one who pulled the trigger.

God Bless…

The next day Minnow got to cheer on his Uncle Eff as he ran his second marathon–he finished in 3:30:50–he was very happy.

I have been going on far too long about my lovely son. Tonight I am moved to go on about our educational system. Sitting in my graduate class tonight a fellow student brought about the topic of invention and how it is no longer present in our modern day educational system–at least not at the high school level which is where my experience lies. We no longer teacher our children to invent their own thoughts. We focus on teaching them to analyze someone elses and to find out who said what about a topic they pretend that they are intersested in to satisfy an assignment that is arbitrarily given because as teachers we are expected to satisfy ambigious benchmarks that do not translate into skills the students will need in the real world–yes a generalization but when was the last time you read a book and summarized each chapter or drew pictures illustrating the main events? Exactly….

This brings me to my ephipany about why there is no longer invention in most of our public school–I say public because our private schools pride themselves on creating inventive people who will take their rightful place at the head of society while those of us who were taught to accept someone elses ideas get up in the morning, punch a clock and work for the aforementioned inventive people.

Our educational system is set up to educate two sets of people–the rich and everyone else. Public schools were designed to placate the middle classes and to give them a sense of supeiority over those below you. But lets be honest, public schools train workers not leaders. We train students to accept what others say as opposed to exploring their own opinions. As a teacher and now a mother, it is my job to demand we train inventors. I want my son to be an inventor. I want your sons/daughters to be inventors. Change must happen–one child at a time.