**taken from Kelly. 

I need to thank her for helping me (unintentionally) for giving me the idea for my first official post at my new home. 

Hi my name is Dawn.  I go by many names–but my faves are honey and ma ma (sadly this one only happens are accident).  My students call me Dawn or Finley and I answer to either as well as Teach (I am fond of this one too.).

I have been a wife for over 7 years and I Continue reading →

Minnow is fast approaching being a year and a half. I can hardly believe how fast the time has gone. When I knew I was going to be a stay at home mom, I joined a stay-at-home moms group. It has been a great group and I don’t know what I would have done without a group of women who were going through what I was going through. Our kids are various ages as are our reasons for staying home. We had our 2nd annual family picnic yesterday–where all the moms get to sit and chat, while our husbands watch and play with the kids. It was really nice and Minnow had a blast. I am so thankful that I have been able to stay home with Minnow.   This feeling causes me to question my decision to attempt to go back to work as our next little one will be joining us around May (i am guessing). I have to wonder if she doesn’t deserve the same attention and parental bonding that Minnow did. Is it fair to her? Is it fair the the children that will hopefully come after her? I just don’t know and boy how I wish I had all the answers.

And where does he get off creating a “law”? I have been a victim. It will happen to all of us parents. Your spouse aka “the reliever” will go out of town. You will while trying to make dinner, cut your finger so that it bleeds as though you have cut off said finger–when in all actuality you have only sliced it a little. While trying to stop said bleeding and administer first aid to yourself–as your toddler cannot help–said toddler will proceed to pull all of the toilet paper off and try and give it to you, since he watched you rip off a piece to use as a compress. Continue reading →

A short little story on our local news last night reinforced something I had always thought–if two buffalo are fighting one should not try to break up the fight. Sadly, a buffalo farmer tried to break up a fight between 2 of his buffalo when one got our of his own enclosure and entered that of the another buffalo. The farmer was gored. I don’t think he was critically injured, but who really thinks they can break up a fight between two 2,000lbs plus animals? I won’t even think of trying to break up a fight between 2 14-year-old girls much less buffalo.

Please let this be a lesson to you all.

Sadly, a 7-month old baby was left to die in a hot car yesterday.  The mom is a pediatrician and the dad a medical researcher.  This was not the result of neglect, but the result of multi-tasking and lack of communication.  My immediate reaction to the story was “How the hell can you forget that your child is in the car?”  Well the answer is clear–if you do not know that the child is in the car because you didn’t put the child in the car.  This tragedy could have easily been avoided.  But we have all done something that is seemingly as benign–forgetting to tell the other parent that we fed/didn’t feed the kids, etc.

This tragic story is a perfect example of just how busy we have become.  Is making it to a meeting on time really worth your child’s life.  I know the mom would say “NO” but at that moment she made the choice she didn’t know what the consequence would be.  I am not about placing blame here.  I will not do that now–as these parents have paid the ultimate price. 

I am writing about his now, as I hope to get us to think about what is really important to us as a society.  I see it all the time, not that I am never really in a hurry to get anywhere anymore.  We take risks constantly to keep up with our over scheduled lives–we speed, run red lights, weave in and out of traffic, eat fast food because we don’t have time to cook meals, etc.  When are we going to slow down and start to realize that there are more important things that are being overlooked.  We are over scheduled as adults and in turn we over schedule our kids and because of that we forget to sign a field trip form, to help with a science project, to drop our kids off at daycare. 

This tragedy becomes a little less of one, if we learn from it. Let’s look at what this family’s loss can teach us.