Compassion International

I lost a child yesterday. Thank God it was not a loss due to death and it was not a biological child. My first Compassion child that I started sponsoring in 2004 will no longer be a part of Compassion International. Carlos Jose will be moving to the United States from his home country of the Dominican Republic. I know I should be happy that he moving to our country where opportunities (and food) abound. But his letter left me in tears. I didn't think I was so attached. I was not going to let the sadness last for long. I pulled up the Compassion website and with my family's help we chose a new child to sponsor. I knew that I wanted a girl this time and my heart was with the children who had been waiting longer than 6 months for a sponsor. Our search ended with little 4 year old Selina. She lives in Tunisia. I now have her picture on my desktop and every time I see her I say a prayer. I look forward to many years of letters with Selina.

If you are not already sponsoring a child with Compassion, please pray about it. It is only $32 a month. Even when we were so poor we couldn't feed ourselves, we remained faithful. God blessed us through those times.

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Car Seats

There are a few things that really get me going. One of them is car seat safety.

I didn't gain this passion until my pregnancy with Paisley. It's one of those things that I don't think of all the time but when it comes up, I swear I break out in a sweat. Just the thought of a child dieing because of parent ignorance or just plain stupidity (the first being because they simply don't know and the other being they do and choose to use the brilliant statement "the chances of that happening are slim" or "my other children have made it through just fine".)

I will admit I'm a little in the stupidity category. Haley is 6 years old and 43lbs. She should be in a 5-pt harness still. I made the mistake of rushing into a carseat purchase 5 months ago w/o researching the best choice. I bought her a multi-use seat that harnesses to 40lbs. I now know that I should have purchased either a Britax Regent or a Graco Nautilus 3-in-1. The Britax harnesses to 80lbs and the Graco to 65lbs.

With my husband's blessing I will be buying the kids Graco seats very soon.

As for Paisley, she is still rear facing at 25lbs. She will remain rear facing at the very least until 2. She is in an Evenflo Triumph. Most parents can't wait to turn their babies front facing. I was one of those parents. But I thank the Lord for the education I have received.

I pray I am never in an accident but if I am I want to know that I have done all I could to protect my children.

Here are some powerful videos in case I sound like an over reactive fanatic.

Importance of Five Point Harness:


Importance of Rear Facing:

Do You Squidoo?

I have a headache trying to figure out all this social networking stuff. I would have never even learned about that term if it wasn't for my internet marketing guru of a husband. Now I Stumble, Del.icio.us, Twitter, and now Squidoo. It's madness I tell ya. But I see the benefits when I look at how much my blog has grown in the very short time it has been alive around.

So back to Squidoo. It's this insanely complicated, hard-to-wrap-your-mind around lense thingy. I have officially become the poster child for "fake it till ya make it" on this one. Basically, you connect with other... oh heck I can't even give you a basically.

If you learn a simple answer for me please let me know. And in the meantime, check out my Squidoo page :) . Ratings are preferred (5 stars of course) but you have to register to do that :( If you use Stumble or any other bookmarking sites PLEASE bookmark it. It's all about getting it out there so it will be promoted so it will be read so readers will like what they see so they will go to my blog so they will buy my guide...lol!

It's madness I tell ya!

www.squidoo.com/allaboutclothdiapers

Do a Little Dance, Make a Little Noise!!

Today is such a great day!

1) It feels so good outside! Just like when you go camping and wake up to a cool, breezy morning. There's a little moisture in the air but not in a crazy humid way.

2) Although I did not win a contest I entered on a blog (www.Terry Dean.org), atleast I did something no one expected of me.

3) THE MOST FANTASTIC NEWS: MY CLOTH DIAPER BLOG HAD 228 VISITS YESTERDAY!!! Isn't that awesome!

4) I am blessed. My kids are gorgeous, sweet, smart, lovable little munchkins. And now I am going to go spend some time with them.

Thanks for letting me share my excitement.

My Little Director/Producer/Actress

The last few days I have literally written dozens of blog posts...in my head. For some reason I never quite make it over here to share my prolific thoughts with you. But today I made it part of my to-do list.

I considered carefully what to write about: my cloth diaper blog, my sister in law (holding little hands) and our fantastic conversation on parenting that we had on Wednesday, my failures and successes of parenting a strong-willed boy or the uncanny resemblance my little Paisley has to her daddy. All of them good reads for sure but it was Haley who rose to the top.

Michael bought me an AWESOME digital camera the other day so I generously passed down my caveman digital camera to Haley. Today she has been busy making movies. What kind of movies does a 6 year old 100% daddy's girl make?? Ones that make her mommy proud. You see Haley has been by my side as I have worked tirelessly on my cloth diaper guide (a 78 page guide called the Ultimate Guide to Cloth Diapers ): writing, taking pictures, blogging, videoing, buying for "research", all of it. You never know how much your kids want to be like you until they do something like this.

Enjoy. Oh, one more thing, she did this while I was in the bathroom doing my hair (I know shocking! It happens once a week). She set the camera up by herself, wrote the script, everything! Uncle Chris will be proud too!