"S" is for Sunflowers

As I mentioned, we've mostly been taking a hiatus from our letters during Lent, but I did decide to do letter "S" in conjunction with Spring/seeds, etc., since we were ready for "S" anyways.  So we've spent the past couple weeks doing various letter "S" activities.  One thing we ended up doing -- and it was one of those completely random, unplanned things that are sometimes the ones that turn out the best -- was "S" is for Sunflowers.  Gemma wanted to paint something, so I said, "how about some sunflowers since we're on letter 'S'," and showed her how and got her started.  At that point I remembered that I had checked out a copy of Camille and the Sunflowers -- a wonderful picture book that I would highly recommend about Vincent van Gogh -- so I ran and grabbed that and we read it (several times, Gemma really liked it) and it just ended up being a really cool activity that we both enjoyed.  My hubby has a reproduction of van Gogh's "Sunflowers" at his office that he got when he was in Vietnam, so that made it extra special since it was a painting with which Gemma was at least a little familiar.  This definitely made me excited to jump back in full-swing with our letters after Easter.

Gemma's drawings

I love her pictures.  She has gotten quite detailed recently, her latest additions being bodies, eyebrows and ears.  And sometimes toes.

Lenten update - what's working so far

I blogged before Lent about what I had planned for the kids and wanted to briefly update on how things are going.

• I like Welcome Risen Jesus a lot, but find it to be a bit above Gemma, even more so than Welcome Baby Jesus (Advent), which I thought was right at her level for the most part.  I have actually put this aside for now and opted for a daily reading from either Celebrating Lent or The Works of Mercy during morning prayers.  Gemma seems to identify with these quite well, especially the pictures.
• Along with our alms that we put in a jar for "the babies" (our local Catholic pro-life outreach), we've also been doing a spin-off of sorts on "Sacrifice Beans".  If I catch Gemma making a special sacrifice she gets to put a purple bead in the alms jar and "offers her sacrifice up" for the babies.  This is working fairly well, it is so hard to set parameters for something like this though, especially for a four-year-old to whom everything needs to be black and white...  She really does kind of get it though, definitely enough to keep up with it.  I've had to remind her she can't ask for a bead, but she does (frequently enough) find little things that are sacrificial for her to do, and "sacrifice" is becoming a more regular word in her vocabulary which I like.  Living and learning we are...
• The weekly charts are a good thing, I'd like to rework them a bit next year though so our prayer and fasting activities go with our daily readings.  Even on the charts though, some of the "fasting" things I came up with I just can't seem to follow through on if I get too much resistance.  Gemma just seems a bit young to really "get it" and I don't want to force the issue with her so much that she resents it.  And that's OK.  Just hard to know which battles to pick and which ones to let go.  Instead of coloring the squares on our charts, we're using the Lenten Calendar from Catholic Icing again.  A great visual for the path through Lent for all of us.
• Abstaining from meat on Fridays has been a great family activity this year.  Gemma really seems to get that.  And while it's not a huge sacrifice for her (she's used to eating what she is served at a meal), it's something we all do together and it's different than the usual fare.  She sees the fish on our Lenten Calendar and will proclaim "no meat today"!  It's nice to see a few things really sinking in.  
• Family prayer intention and one Station of the Cross after dinner are working out splendidly.  I may try to broaden on this a bit next year, Kansas Mom has some great ideas with her prayer garden.
• I found these coloring sheets for the Stations of the Cross, and we've been using watercolors or crayons on one or two a week.  I intend to put them together in a little book for Gemma to use on Good Friday, and maybe even attempting Stations at church that day.  Maybe.
• I found this beautiful book at our library.  The pictures are just wonderful. 
• I have several books from the library to read during Holy Week, and My First Pictures of Easter which I purchased recently. 

We've (mostly) taken a of a hiatus from our Letter of the Week activities so we can focus more on Lent, and that's been nice.  As things stand, I'm planning on jumping back in with our letters after Easter, and we should be able to finish the Alphabet well before baby arrives.  Goodness, time flies!  Just one more school year and my baby girl will be heading off to Kindergarten, wow.

Ready for Spring...and baseball

Even though we had a mild winter, we are still sooo ready for Spring around here, and quite pleased that the weather seems to be warming up (albeit a bit rainy currently).  One nice day in late February the kids had their first picnic lunch of the season on the deck.

Gemma's great-grandma picked up this sweatshirt for her at the thrift-shop at which she volunteers, and Kolbe is running around excitedly talking about "beesball"!  

Everyone was excited about new spring jammies (have I mentioned I have a thing for cute jammies?)!!

YAY Spring!!!

Bye-bye binkies

Oh binkies.  I like you and I hate you.  With both of my babes I've used a binkie after the first 4-6 weeks as a sort of sleep/comfort aid.  They haven't been miraculous or anything, but they seem to provide some amount of comfort in addition to nursing-on-demand for my children. But then they get attached to them.  And I've made a point to only have the binkies come out at sleepy time, but still.  They get attached.  Really.  Ask my four year old who still went to bed with one every night and nap.  Ugh.  So I have been ready to be done with binkies for quite some time now, but really have been at odds about how to go about ridding ourselves of the wretched things.  You see, I care, but not that much.  So I complained about the binkies, but never did anything proactive to get rid of them.  I was waiting for the binkie fairy to show up and make the blasted things disappear and that darn fairy pulled a no-show.  Stinker. 

When Kolbe was a baby I bought two two-packs of binkies for him and we've still been using the same ones.  Until about a month ago, when he bit through two in as many weeks' time.  And then within the next two weeks he bit through the other two.  So when the last one was done for, I just up and told him, "binkie broke broke," and then proceeded with bedtime as if it were the most normal thing in the world.  And he totally fell for it.  Went to sleep without a complaint.  When he came into our bed during the night, he asked for his baby, and his blankie, and then, in his half-asleep stupor, he proceeded to say, "deedee (binkie) boke boke".  Wow.  That was easy.  So the next morning, I casually mentioned to Gemma that Kolbe wasn't using a binkie anymore and maybe it was time to say "sayonara" to hers as well.  We discussed what the best thing to do with it was and she decided she would like to save it for our new baby (oh yay).  So we got a box and decked it out with a bunch of soft flannel on the inside, and then she decorated the top and wrote "BABY" on it and tied some pretty ribbons on it and we said, "bye bye binkie".  And that was that.  I took her out to buy a special treat that day (a new VeggieTales DVD that I actually ended up getting for free, but that's a long story in and of itself) and her "binkie box" now sits proudly on her dresser, awaiting the arrival of a new brother or sister.  We'll see how that all pans out here in less than 4 months.  Her binkie is one big pile of grunge, not too excited about giving it to my newborn, but that's neither here nor there.  For now.  She hasn't asked for it once though; and Kolbe now runs around proclaiming "deedee, boke boke" to random strangers.

For once in my life as a parent, the "easy" button actually worked!!

How does she do it?

Seriously, he won't do this for me at real bedtime, yet he will lay on the floor without moving a muscle for really quite amazing amounts of time under Gemma's command when they "play bedtime".  I wish she'd let me in on her secret!!  Maybe I should just have her start putting him to bed at night...

Say "NO" to PepsiCo

Did you know that PepsiCo partners with the company Senomyx to produce flavor enhancers for their products using human embryonic kidney cells from an aborted baby (HEK-293) as part of their research?  This is positively atrocious and hard to believe, but sadly it is very true.  Please read the press release below (or click this link) and consider boycotting Pepsi (which also includes companies such as Tropicana, Quaker and Gatorade as well) along with us.  Also, it is important to let PepsicCo and Senomyx know why you have chosen to boycott their products.

For Immediate Release: March 5, 2012
Contact: Children of God for Life
debi@cogforlife.org Phone: 727 483-9251
Obama agency rules PepsiCo cannibalizing aborted fetus is “ordinary business”
Shareholders will not be informed or allowed to vote on resolution

(Largo, FL) In a shocking decision delivered Feb 28th, President Obama’s Security and Exchange Commission ruled that PepsiCo’s use of aborted fetal remains in their research and development agreement with Senomyx to produce flavor enhancers falls under “ordinary business operations”.

The letter signed by Attorney Brian Pitko of the SEC Office of Chief Counsel was sent in response to a 36-page document submitted by PepsiCo attorneys in January, 2012. In that filing, PepsiCo pleaded with the SEC to reject the Shareholder’s Resolution filed in October 2011 that the company “adopt a corporate policy that recognizes human rights and employs ethical standards which do not involve using the remains of aborted human beings in both private and collaborative research and development agreements.”

PepsiCo lead attorney George A. Schieren noted that the resolution should be excluded because it “deals with matters related to the company’s ordinary business operations” and that “certain tasks are so fundamental to run a company on a day-to-day basis that they could not be subject to stockholder oversight.”

Debi Vinnedge, Executive Director of Children of God for Life, the organization that exposed the PepsiCo- Senomyx collaboration last year (see here) was appalled by the apathy and insensitivity of both PepsiCo executives and the Obama administration.

“We’re not talking about what kind of pencils PepsiCo wants to use – we are talking about exploiting the remains of an aborted child for profit”, she said. “Using human embryonic kidney (HEK-293) to produce flavor enhancers for their beverages is a far cry from routine operations!”

PepsiCo also requested the resolution be excluded because it “probed too deeply into matters of a complex nature upon which shareholders cannot make an informed judgment.”

“In other words, PepsiCo thinks its stockholders are too stupid to understand what they are doing with the remains of aborted children”, Vinnedge stated. “Well they are about to find out just how smart the public really is when they turn up the heat on the world-wide boycott!”

Vinnedge is warning consumers to be on guard for the roll-out of PepsiCo’s newest beverage that claims to cut sugar and calories by 50%. The product is called Pepsi Next and is anticipated to hit the market in the coming weeks.

PepsiCo stated that their goal with Senomyx is to produce new beverages with reduced sugars and calories. So is Pepsi Next the new Senomyx-PepsiCo creation?

While fetal components are currently not in the final product, there is growing concern among consumers that it could happen in the near future. With the explosion of health foods on the market, there is nothing to stop companies from using fetal remains as protein ingredients.

Impossible, you say? Actually because of GRAS rules (Generally Recognized as Safe) it might not even trigger FDA oversight. And that has consumers plenty worried about just what might be “next” from the industry!

It also makes Oklahoma Senator Ralph Shortey’s SB1418 banning the sale of products that are developed with or contain aborted fetal remains, critically important for consumer protection. See here.

“We commend the Senator for his courageous move,” noted Vinnedge. “The public is already saying no thanks to all Pepsi beverages and Pepsi Next is just that – the “next” product to avoid!”

To date, the world-wide boycott has expanded to include Canada, Germany, Poland, UK, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, Australia and New Zealand.

For information click HERE.  

You can also click here for a document from the National Academy of Sciences and then you can "find on page" HEK-293 for further proof.

Professional pics - January 2012

Better late than never, right?  This is what I get for doing up a post and then forgetting about it in my drafts!!