News November 26, 2008

I can’t watch the news anymore. In the last two weeks I have heard about a father and his 2 young sons who drowned (they were fishing and the boys fell in and the father tried to save them), twin 21 month old boys who were found in the family pool (one died one is in critical condition), and a 4 year old girl who was swept away from her mother while swimming when a dam support broke. Her body was found 12 hours later.

I can’t stop thinking about the woman who lost her whole family in one swoop, the parents who two days ago had beautiful twin boys, and who are now hoping one of them will be strong enough to live while they mourn the other, and the mother who will probably never forget the feeling of not being able to hold on to her little girl tight enough.

When you hear these stories, but don’t have children, you know deep down how tragic it is, but when you have a child, or children, your heart just aches that much more because you can’t imagine your life without them. And you realise what these other parents are facing.

I still have times where if Nicklas naps longer than usual, or is “talking” and goes quiet, that I panic for a second, and check to make sure he’s ok and still breathing. I don’t know how you get past something like losing a child, or your whole family. I can’t imagine that you ever get over it, but I think you have to find a way to get past it and keep living your life, even though a huge part of you has died. But I don’t know how.

I’m Definitely Old November 23, 2008

I heard on the news the other morning that one in three Australian teens are having sex by the age of 14. FOURTEEN. 33% of 14 year olds in Australia are having sex. They had an “expert” on who attributed it to two things…the fact that the average age a child hits puberty has dropped from 15 to 10 over the last however many years. Also, kids and teens are exposed to sexual content every day via various media outlets.

A prime example was just on TV when Australian Idol had Mark whatever his name is sing “Sex on Fire” by the Kings of Leon. Who do you think Australian Idol’s main target audience is? I don’ t have facts or statistics, but if I had to take an educated guess it’d be 10-15 year old girls. That might not be their “target audience” per se, but I bet its the audience they get.

Neighbours, one of Australias longest running prime time soap shows, has a storyline about a teen pregnancy. Granted, the character is 17, but younger teens watch it.

I don’t believe in teaching abstinence, I think that is irresponsible and naiive. But I don’t think that means you just say, “oh well, they’re going to do it, nothing you can do to stop them.” Kids that are 14 have no idea what the consequences of having sex are. They don’t truly understand the ramifications of STDs or unwanted pregnancies.

I realise this might sound uptight or prudish or whatever. But I think kids are exposed to way too much heavy stuff at too young an age these days. And I think the media and shows like Australia Idol should show a bit more responsibility on the content they deliver to their audience.

I don’t want Nicklas to come home from first grade, 6 years old, and start asking questions about sex. Kids will always ask “Where do babies come from?” but I think you can difuse that situation, at least for a few years. And I certainly don’t want to be worrying about him having sex at 14. I’m sure there’s no 14 year old who would actually tell their parents they’re having sex, so what age do you arm them with information on safe sex and what happens if they don’t use a condom?

I feel really old. I don’t remember what it was like to be 14, but I know I wasn’t having sex. I wasn’t even interested in having sex. I think I’m suffering from Elvis Syndrome. Our parents parents didn’t like his gyrating hips on TV…well look at TV now! Can it get much worse than this, do you think? Where do we go from here, and how do we protect our kids from it without completely sheltering them?

I guess all we can do is educate them and trust that they’ll make the right decision/choice when faced with it.

Mobile Babies November 17, 2008

It seems my little boy is getting more and more mobile every day. I put him on the bed today, in the middle but towards the bottom, while I was printing off our itinerary for our trip to the States next year (more on that soon). And next thing I hear a thud. Since he has been rolling from his back to his tummy, one might assume he rolled off the side of the bed. But no, he managed to find his way off the end of the bed. Not only that, but he ended up on the floor on his tummy! I’d draw a diagram if I could, because it would be much easier to see what I mean. I have NO IDEA how he managed to do that, but it scared the crap out of me. And it shocked the hell out of him. He started screaming, naturally, but was ok after about 5 minutes. Doesn’t seem to be bumped or bruised, poor little guy. Guess next time I’ll just put him on the floor to start with…he can’t fall off that!!

QANTAS has a 3 day sale on airfares to the LA and London that ends at midnight tonight, so we bit the bullet and bought our tickets for our trip next year, at least as far as LA. Haven’t figured out the flights/logistics for sharing time between Detroit and Atlanta yet, but we have plenty of time to work on that, because we don’t leave until May 29th! If airfares drop dramatically between now and then, I’ll be pretty ticked off!

At this stage we will most likely be in Atlanta from May 29th to June 7th and then Detroit from June 8th to June 25th. Now I have 6 1/2 months to panic about flying again.

Global Financial Crisis November 13, 2008

We’ve had a global financial crisis every day in our bank account for the last year, so as far as I’m concerned, the rest of the world is just catching up. Granted, I am not working, and boy do I miss my monthly pay check. But even if I was working now, a good portion of our income would be going to childcare. It is more important for us to have one of us home with Nicklas for the first year, two years, whatever we think is sufficient time. Even with the cost of gas going down (it has dropped about 40 cents/litre over the last couple of months), things are still tough.

We have decided that starting January 1, we are going to get serious about tightening the spending and increasing the saving. It is just far too difficult around Christmas time to not spend money. And we seriously need to save money so we can pay cash for this 3 week trip to the US in 7 months. We already have enough credit card debt and school loan debt in the States, we don’t need to add another $6,000 to that.  I keep thinking “If only we hadn’t gone to Europe” or “If only we’d stayed in the US for one more year” but you can’t think about the past like that, you just have to look and move forward.

History November 5, 2008

The people of the United States created history today by electing the first ever African American president. Barack Hussein Obama will be the 44th president of the United States of America. I am excited to see what the next 4 years brings. And that is all I’m going to say on the topic. I’m glad the election is all over, and especially glad with the result.

The other news of the day is that we won’t be moving anywhere. At least not this time. That is a weight off the shoulders.

One More Sleep November 3, 2008

When we were kids, we used to talk in “sleeps” when waiting for a big day, like Christmas or Birthdays. So if there were 5 more days until Christmas we’d say “5 more sleeps”, meaning you went to sleep 5 more times before the event got here. Last Christmas I was walking along the beach, and one of the lifeguards had written on his beach board “3 more sleeps”. Well, now there is 1 more sleep until the US election. In some ways I think it may be the most important election of our lifetime, but in other ways I wonder if it really is. It is certainly one of, if not the, most historic. Black woman on one ticket, woman on the other…regardless of who wins, those are two huge steps for the US.

For us in Australia, it is one more sleep until the Melbourne Cup. It is Australia’s Kentucky Derby, but bigger! The entire state of Victoria, where the race is run, has a public holiday! There will be luncheons and funny hats all over the country tomorrow. I might even put $10 on the longshot.

Mike didn’t hear about another interview today, so it is potentially one more sleep until he hears something about that. Surprisingly the time has gone quite fast since the last interview.

Yesterday we had Nick’s naming ceremony and everything went well. The weather held out (barely) and everyone had a good time, I think. Emily did a wonderful job as unofficial officiant, and Nicklas almost lasted the entire afternoon without having a hissy fit. But we must have got it right, because even my grandmother really liked the “service” and thought it was better than the church ones!  I think its nice to acknowlege the new member of the family and our responsibility to him, but leave the whole religion thing up to him when he is older.

I was ready for sleep 30 minutes ago, I think I’m going to have to succumb to that.