Category — Show and Tell

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

A soapbox-y Show and Tell?

Last Friday, Lindsay came over with produce from the organic market and we made cubes and cubes of homemade baby food. I said it was to help her and because I am the one with the neater freezer, but it was really for me. There, I admitted it. I loved making baby food for the twins and it was nice to have a reason to take down the 30 ice cube trays. Making baby food was a really important parenting step for me because it took back all the feelings I had on my inability to breastfeed that came on the heels of my inability to create a baby without assistance and then my inability to carry to term.

Baby food making bears a striking resemblance to breast feeding–it is a pain-in-the-hands if not a pain-in-the-nipple. It takes up a lot of time, requires the same amount of clean-up as using a pump, and is considered “healthier” (quotation marks because healthier is a relative term). It was less expensive, tailored to the twins, and required a huge commitment. The place where it differed was that baby food making didn’t require my body to produce certain hormones in certain levels. Oh, and that Josh could participate too. You know, that whole lack of prolactin thing sort of screws him too in the breastfeeding department.

As we cooked, Lindsay told me the story about someone whose handle was Lactivist who started harassing her online about not breastfeeding, not knowing Lindsay’s story at all except that she was using formula. It’s interesting because I think that there are two main types of activism–one that is meant to forward information and understanding and the other which is used to berate.

I’m all for lactivists who want to take back the boob–make it also a body part that is used for feeding rather than a sexual object. Ensure that women can nurse in public, that women who wish to breastfeed have the support they need, and that funding goes towards breast milk research. What I’m not for are lactivists who tell others what they should or shouldn’t do. The fact remains that there are many reasons why it would be better to not breastfeed or impossible to breastfeed, and that a person refraining from breastfeeding isn’t a statement on another person’s choice to breastfeed.

Breastfeeding, like so many aspects of life, is not one-size-fits-all. It can be the best option or it could be the second best option when weighed against other information. And no one should be disregarding their mental and physical health nor the mental and physical health of their child in the quest to fulfill a vision of nutritional perfection. I am pro-breastfeeding when breastfeeding is possible and desired. And I will be your biggest cheerleader if you want to try it. And I am incredibly impressed when people work through obstacles because they want to work through obstacles (not because they feel guilty if they don’t) and find their breastfeeding groove. But I’m also pro-baby food making if you can’t or don’t want to breastfeed. Or pro-finding-whatever-works-for-you.

Stepping down from the soapbox because I was upset to hear what was said to her in the name of immunological health.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

A while back, we heard about a life-sized dollhouse on the Shepherd University campus in West Virginia. According to this Shepherdstown website, “This magnified dollhouse was built as part of a student project in 1929. The two-story house has 10 rooms that measure 10 by nine and a half feet. The little house was built so that Shepherd teachers could observe children playing in a controlled, laboratory environment.”

I can’t find the picture I took of Josh standing next to the house to give you perspective, but he is tall enough to look into those top windows if he strains and with his feet firmly planted on the ground, his head comes up past the start of the roof.

You would think that it would stick out a bit in the neighbourhood, wouldn’t you. Except the first time we drove around the campus, we couldn’t find it. And the next time we went to Shepherdstown, we couldn’t find it and it’s not a large campus. Then we forgot about it. On our last trip to the town, we were walking down the street, talking about how much I wanted an eggroll, and I looked up and there it was.

Looking in the windows made me wish I were Alice and could squeeze myself inside.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

I was trying to make all of my pictures from the past week count as my Show and Tell, but since the post and stories were getting too damn long, I took them out to serve as their own post (don’t you want to know how I came to strip down in a kosher restaurant?) and made this tiny vignette my item instead.

This week, we were at the beach when these boys came out of the water, a shovel held proudly in front of them as if they were coming back from battle with a head on a stick. They deposited their find on the sand and drew a circle around it. One jelly fish.

It oozed across the sand and made me incredibly sad. Not that I’m a fan of jellyfish nor would they extend much care to me if I were swimming by, but it seemed wrong to go into their home–the ocean–and remove them for the sole purpose of showing that you can do it.

I brought the twins over to see the jellyfish for two reasons. Being able to examine it up close seemed like the only silver lining in the event and I wanted to explain to them why we don’t remove animals from their home. We talked about how we would feel if someone came into our house, removed us from our home, and did it just for their own amusement.

We all felt sad for the jellyfish.

The ChickieNob offered up this shell instead for Show and Tell.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

So, it’s the eve of my blogoversary. The night before. Three years ago tomorrow, I started this blog because Josh told me it would be a good idea to talk to other people about my feelings instead of just telling him about my anxiety starting at 11 p.m. every night. I knew I wanted to write a book and that the story needed to be more than my own. So I turned to the Web and created the space I wanted to have when I was first diagnosed with infertility. With a categorized blogroll so I could find new stories as my information changed (from dumb-ass ovaries to dumb-ass ovaries and clotting disorders) and a peer counselor email list and support and support and support.

And once I built it, others said, “hey, I wanted this too” and look–we’re all hanging out in my virtual living room. Kicking back with some high fat ice cream (since, you know, milk fat can overcome even having no fallopian tubes or sperm. It is the panacea for infertility). And the little blog has grown.

I love this place. And I love all of you. I am filled with love and gratitude today.

To celebrate the milestone, MLO did the coding on this new badge I made myself (and she can do it for you too). It contains the top community projects that we use daily or weekly. There were others I wanted to include, but they were harder to link to–Creme de la Creme has a new link each year and Operation Heads Up is more sidebar than individual post.

If you move your mouse over the image, you’ll see that it links to the main post for all these projects. Isn’t that cool?

If you would like this badge, you can get the code here. Feel free to take it for your own blog if you want quick access to the main projects. I am so proud of all the stuff we’ve accomplished as a community.

Tomorrow is not only my blogoversary, but also Resolve’s Advocacy Day. And I will be there, speaking at the offices of senators and representatives, asking them to support Resolve’s efforts with health care reform and the adoption tax credit. As technology will allow, I’ll be Twittering all day (click over if you want to follow) and then blogging it afterward. I’ll have my camera and such. Trotting around as much technology as my little back can carry.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (hint: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name). The list is open from now until late Tuesday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

Warning, a NICU picture below…

I am still pouring drinks at the Virtual Lushary, but now it’s time for a little showing and telling.

My big project this summer is making scrapbooks for the twins. I have things written down in a multitude of places and thousands of pictures, but I’ve never taken the time to put it all together in a book and I want them to have the stories and milestone dates from the first five years of their life. My goal is to complete them before their 5th birthday. I have one book for stories and pictures of the two of them together and then the ChickieNob and Wolvog both have their own.

Please indulge some photos/memories this summer as I find them.

I had forgotten about this picture until I found it on an old disc. I am stroking the ChickieNob’s head. I think she was under the bili lights, hence the eerie lighting. Josh took the picture. I look so young, so concerned, so unsure.

In my journal I wrote about their early birth, “It would be like planning a wedding for August and then being thrust into the experience in July. It’s not that you wouldn’t be happy to be married (and being married is obviously the point of the wedding), but you’d feel cheated out of the end of the wedding planning experience. I still had a lot of dreaming to do before they arrived, and I was really sad that I wouldn’t get to feel them inside me anymore even if I was also excited to see them.”

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (hint: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name). The list is open from now until late Tuesday night and a new one is posted every week.