Boring

My life is pretty boring. At the moment I'm trying not to be burnt out with teaching. My classes are all progressing well, and I have ideas for all my final papers (which is more than I can say for this point in the past two semesters).

So I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving. I have a goal to write 5 pages of each paper over break, and then five pages on each in each of the weeks following. We'll see how THAT goes! :-) I have this tendency ever since I came here to procrastinate. I never did it at BYU...here, it's my lifestyle! Odd.

I've also been thinking about Christmas. There was a dusting of snow on the ground this morning...it gave me hope for Christmas! I love snow. (Well, at least until mid-February when I'm so sick of it that I want to fly to the Dominican Republic just for the sake of having sun!) I have good memories of snow at Christmas time, and I can't WAIT to see BeeBoo's reaction when she sees it, since she's old enough to "get it" now.

Last of all, I can finally feel the baby moving around. I think it's interesting that the only non-boring parts of my life are kid based...this should probably send me a message. :-) But it's cool...and for me with my obsessive personality, very reassuring. I like to know that baby's still doing what it's supposed to. We did the hang-your-ring-over-your-belly test to see if it was a boy or girl....my wedding ring says boy. That'll sure be exciting! I've been getting mixed vibes...I don't have any inclination so far. Any thoughts there would be appreciated... :-D

BumGenius

So I have to put a plug in on my blog for the cloth diapers we've been using for the last 7 months. The only complaint I've ever heard from reviewers on them is "They only lasted a year!" Now, anyone that knows anything about elastic will tell you that if you're washing it every other day, you'll be lucky for it to last a year!

I have LOVED these diapers...so much that I just bought another dozen despite the fact that it's a $200 investment. (Again, if you think about that one...on average, we bought a $22 box of diapers for BeeBoo every three weeks....more often as a baby...that means that in a matter of 25 weeks [about 6 months] they've paid for themselves....or at least you've not lost any money on them compared to disposables) They work just like a disposable, you just have to wash them and put them together. They have a cover that looks like a disposable, with a pocket in the back that you put a thick diaper pad in. So you take them apart to wash, wash, put them together, and you're good to go! No pins, no separate cover.

And these ones have never leaked. Well, maybe there's an exception to that statement. We're not great about changing Bee on a schedule, mostly because of shuffling her around. Ben will think I've changed her before I gave her to him, or vice versa...so she ends up in a diaper for a long stretch sometimes. But if there is a leak issue, it's because we've let it go too long. We use them over night, and they work really well. Also, she hasn't had diaper rash like she used to get from disposables.

So, if you're thinking about cloth diapers, these are a great bang for your buck, they're relatively easy to deal with (I mean, you have to wash them, but that's cloth diapers!), and they're easy enough to change that Dad doesn't have an excuse. The website I order them from is cottonbabies.com. Oh, also, an afterthought...they have a one-year warranty!

Worldview

These maps are really cool.

I just stayed up way too late spending time looking through them.

Ooooooo

Talk about sour.

My two-and-a-half-year-old just walked up to me with the little lemon-shaped container of lemon juice, popped open the top, and drank down a 30-second chug of it. And laughed when she came up for air.

I guess some things never change.

Hooray!

I have a tendency to believe that there's not a single politician in the world who actually does the things they base their campaign on. So who knows what is actually going to come of this "historic" election (even if this one is especially so, isn't every election historic in some sense?)

But. For the last eight years we've been existing under this artificial, continual "state of emergency" created by an administration that needs to justify its imperial leanings by using something....so they go to fear. That's the same currency that terrorism uses for itself. Hmmm...

Whatever happens in the next four years, at least we're (at least for now) working under a rhetoric that inspires hope instead of fear.

That's a change I can buy into.

Surprising?

I don't think that this should surprise anyone.

That's one reason why I won't have video games in my house. Ever.

I love that the researchers asked the Japanese children to rate themselves, and then relied on peer and teacher reports to evaluate the US kids...good methodology, that...kids lie. It's nuts!

I don't think that this one is a shocker either.

I love that the girl they quote who had her baby at 15 says she's sick of studies that blame everything but the parents...I'm sick of our culture that doesn't put any responsibility on the kids themselves!

A prop 8 question

So I googled Prop 8 because I don't want to start on the presentation I have to do in my theory class on Tuesday (which, by the way, I love....our discussion on Freud was the first one I've EVER had that didn't leave me SEETHING).

There's a site called mormonsfor8.com that lists, among other things, how much money LDS people have donated to supporting the campaign. One commenter on the site discussed the problem of the legalization of gay marriage resulting in lawsuits against churches that won't perform gay marriages.

He said this:

I see this line of argument as a transparent effort to frighten voters. It is as if you have no familiarity at all with the CA Supreme Court decision. Here’s a quote from the decision itself. Note, there is specific language in the decision that addresses your concern.

In re: Marriage Cases.

“Finally, affording same-sex couples the opportunity to obtain the designation of marriage will not impinge upon the religious freedom of any religious organization, official, or any other person; no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs. (Cal. Const., art. I, § 4.)72″

Does anybody know if this is true?

And, if it is true, what other reasons do we have for amending the CA constitution? I'm morally opposed to gay marriage (see my other post on this), but I wonder about the legality of it all....because I don't know enough about it.