It was an absolutey beautiful day in the northeast! Until I realized I had an appointment for a mamogram today. Nothing to take the wind out of your sails like realizing you have to spend an hour with your boob in a vice. Other than that it was a pretty good day.
We decided to play a little hookey from school and take a walk to the donut shop. My 12yod and I loaded up baby and had a nice walk, until the way home, when the little one decided she wanted a sip of coffee and would not take no for an answer.
She proceeded to scream all the way home, kicking and screaming in her stroller as if someone were cutting off her arm. So much for the walk. the only exercise I had was in patience. Out of four children, I have never had one quite like her. I should have named her Independence.
So since I inserted the code but I was a day late, I am adding my Wordless Wednesday today. I know, I'm a rule breaker.
Yeah I know. It has been a long time. Sometimes you just need to give your brain a rest. Although my children will tell you that mine is on a permanent vacation.
My little monkey has been growing so big on my sabbatical. I'm sure by tomorrow I will be looking up at her! Don't you wish you could just stop time?
I think all the yellow on this template is making me nauseous.
Do you believe that a man and his children can be abused by a wife and mother? Many people, including the judicial system do not.
I do. I have witnessed first hand the ongoing abuse of a friend and his children for close to twenty years. Just this past year, he finally filed for divorce. Don't ask me why it has taken so long, believe me I have asked, and not just once, but for many times.
He is a good man, kind, hard working, devoted to his children, patient, very humorous, and a man that gives everyone the benefit of the doubt, including his wife. In fact, in all my life I have rarely met a man that is so kind.
I have personally witnessed years of violence, alcoholism, severe verbal abuse, and neglect take its toll on this family. Now there has been allegations from the children that the mother was forcing the girls, ages 9 & 11 to shower with her, as well as a other incidents of potential sexual abuse. The mother for a very long time has been having relations with another couple, and is very open about her preferences. I guess things had been even worse than I had imagined, for a very long time.
After many years of trying to keep his family together, this man, who I will call Bob, finally realized that there was no hope. I asked him why he waited so long, his partial answer, was that he wanted to keep his children and he did not believe that he would get them. After what I have seen from the judicial system in CT, I now know he was right.
Since filing for divorce, things really heated up. The mom was caught on two seperate occasions, intoxicated with the children. Once, after not coming home at night, Bob was very worried about the kids. He called the police and she was eventually located in a hotel room, extremely intoxicated with the children. She was arrested and that was as far as it went.
The second time, she once again failed to come home and he called the police. While the police were standing in his driveway talking to Bob, she called him on her cell phone from down the street. It was apparent she was drunk. She told him where she was and he quickly sent the police down to a parking lot to wait for her to drive by. As the police tried to stop her in the car, she took off, driving over a curb, and raced the police to her home. She proceeded to try and resist arrest, while screaming obscenities and her little ones standing by watching. They put her in shackles and brought her to jail, where she stayed the night.
She was temporarily removed from the home, charged with Risk of Injury, which is a felony, and a protective order was put in place, but eventually she was let back in the home, the felony charge was dropped and the nightmare began again.
In past years there have been two other charges of neglect and abuse that have been substantiated, with the CT Dept. of Child and Family Services. But yet, no action was ever taken. The mother would sleep in the basement and drink until all hours of the morning. On many occasions drinking with her 17yos and his friends. The children would beg her to turn down the music and I cannot repeat here what she would tell them. Eventually, she threw the girls out of their room, put the dog in one bed and herself in the other and made them sleep on the couch.
If you by now are wondering why the husband had allowed it to go this far, he had been stopped in his tracks by the state of CT. and the attys. who had told him, he could not do anything or he would be arrested. So on my advice, he put a small tape recorder in the basement, in the ceiling, to record what was going on for the safety of his children. She found the tape recorder and had him arrested for evesdropping, which is a felony. We are hoping that the judge will have mercy, but it is not likely because the mother wrote to the District Atty. and told him, that Bob beats her and she is in fear of her life.
When Bob witnessed the mother trying to force the girls to shower with her, he immediately called the children's atty. and asked her what he should do. She told him to call DCF and file a complaint. When he did, he received a new case worker who accused him of not acting and blamed the entire situation on him. (The former caseworker filed reports that the mother should not have custody of these children.)He told her he only did what the attys. told him he could do. The worker then spoke with the children's atty. and they decided to force Bob out of the saftey of the bedroom, which he barracades at night for fear she will attack him, which has already happened. She was convicted, but never sentenced. The worker said she would "talk" to the mother about the showering with the girls. Yeah I know, what is wrong with these people?
I could go on and on. I would tell you that I was attacked by this woman twice. I forgave her and moved on and would take the girls to church because they needed hope and some stability. Bob is at his wits end. There are days where he feels so hopeless. He is not a Christian, but I know he is seeking. I would just ask anyone who is reading this, to please pray for Bob and his children. The next court date is March 2nd. He has offered her everything but custody and she won't take it. She wants the child support and alimony, which she can only get if she has custody.
It just makes you question what is wrong with people who would allow this to go on. These people need to be held accountable for their crimes against these children and a total failure to act.
You poor neglected blog... I will be back soon, I promise.
Very tired today. Isabelle is having sleep issues. All my other children were fairly good sleepers and the one who wasn't, we realized, ( through the Dr. Ferber sleep book) that she had become used to being rocked to sleep. So after a week of crying it out, she was 100% cured and I never had another probelm.
With Isabella, who is 7 1/2 mos. old, I have tried just about everything to get her to sleep and she will not hear of it! I nursed on demand, for the first several months, to rigid scheduling, sleeping with her, sleeping without her. Oh and did I forget to mention, she does not take naps. Well, little ones, two to be exact. Fifteen minutes each. Yes, just enough time to rest her voice box! She now pretty much rules the roost with her up and down schedule and her fiesty attitude. She'll probably grow up to be the dictator of a small Latin American Country.
What gets me is the up and down behavior. For a couple of weeks she only woke once at 3:30 and then at 6:30. I thought I had died and gone to heaven! Well Heaven was short lived. She now wakes at around 1:30 and nurses off and on for the rest of the night. Well maybe someday. So until then I being the horrible mother that I am, will on occasion give her a dose of Benadryl, per the doc., just to get a straight 4 hours. Yes, she does not even sleep well drugged!
Well, time to go catch a few winks before the rooster crows!
As I stood blowdrying my thinning hair this morning, I found myself pondering the joys and woes of motherhood. Now don't misunderstand, I love being a mother. It is the best job in the world. The part I am having trouble with, is the short end of the stick we seem to have in this whole thing.
First, 10 long months ( whoever said it was 9 months couldn't count ) of pregnancy. Vomitting, fluid retention, leg cramps, Varicose veins, weight gain, aching muscles, constipation, shortness of breath, Sciatica, frequent urination, fatigue, hemorrhoids and my personal favorite, heartburn. Did I forget anything? To then have our bodies ripped apart by the labor process. Which can last anywhere from fifteen minutes, (usually saved for those fortunate enough to have previously birthed a whole herd, ) or for the less fortunate, such as myself, which lasted for just a few hours short of eternity.
Then after all that joy, comes the sleepless nights, engorgement, left over baby weight, dirty diapers, colic, more back pain, permanently stained clothing, etc, etc, etc. And just when you think your out of the woods, then the hair starts falling out! Not just a few strands, here and there, but fistfulls! Yes, thats right fistfulls. Whatever happened to a womans hair is her glory? Well, my glory keeps getting stuck in the bottom of my vacuum cleaner. And now ( as if I don't have enough to do ) I can add one more job to my list, dehairring the vacuum.
In Genesis it says that we would be cursed with childbearing. I did not however realize, it meant that my body would turn into one very large hairless toothache. Come on, enough already. Makes you wish you could have a word or two with Eve!
Now, because of Adam's sin, men would be cursed with hard labor, yes I said hard labor. I know, stop snickering. The spelling word for today is MACHINERY. And I think I'll just stop right there. As far as I'm concerned, there is no harder job than motherhood. Anywhere. However, I do realize there are many men out there, who are very helpful in every part of their families lives, but believe me, there are just as many who are not.
After all this whining, do I really think we got the short end of the stick? Absolutely not! Only a foolish woman would trade one precious moment of this.
Can you say teething?
Well, time to go re-shingle the roof!
Wow, am I glad that today is coming to a close. I worked last night until 12:30, before finally going to bed. Isabelle woke at two thirty this morning and decided she would serenade mommy for awhile. After several attempts at putting her back to sleep, she decided firmly against it. I was quite sure of that, when I cracked my eyelids and took a peek. I could see her little hand moving back and forth, like she was waving to an audience, from a float in a parade.
After only receiving two plus hours of sleep, I was far from my peppy self. I carried along a massive headache all day and felt as though I would eventually collapse in a heap. The bags under my eyes grew large enough to carry two weeks worth of groceries! I made it through dinner and finally brought our orders to the post office. I came home and found that I had been walking around with my slippers on the wrong feet!
Well, I'm too tired to write anymore tonight. Goodnight and sleeptight.
