Tuesday Toot on a Wednesday

Raising kids is difficult when you are in perfect health, but raising them with chronic pain and genetic diseases is even more difficult. Recently being diagnosed with fibromyalgia and already having scoliosis with a 42% curvature makes being a mama difficult at times. It’s a labor of love and of the heart. Every morning is a challenge to crawl or roll out of bed, every morning I would rather stay in bed and not move at all with swollen hands and aching joints. The only things that keep me going are the knowledge of my children’s needs and my privileged of being the one they look to for supporting their needs. I know they need me and I am honored that I am the one who they trust, despite my short comings, to fulfill those needs. This single piece of knowledge is what keeps me from rolling over and just giving up, it keeps me from letting the house slide into total squalor, it keeps me from letting the bills go, it keeps me from letting myself go. My children are my rock, my salvation and my very being. They are what make my world bearable and give me the abilities to push through the daily pain to achieve everything I should be as a mama and a person. I count my blessings (all 5 of them) every day and will for the rest of my life and theirs.

Life Tree Shoppe

My new WAHM adventure will begin soon as I continue to grow my online shop concept through web developing and graphics design. Here’s a sneak peek at what it looks like now, mind you the links to the right do not work yet, I am waiting on bites for retailing and offers from other WAHMs to retail their product through the Life Tree label.

The Concept of Life Tree Shoppe

Those who want to sell or become a WAHM but do not have the necessary web developing or graphics design abilities to make an online shop come to me under the Life Tree Shoppe label and provide the pictures of their product, the description and the retail price of that product that they want and I do all the work of putting it up in the LTS shop site and cart for a commission payment. I don’t get paid unless you sell something.

Basically what I am doing is taking the work out of it and making it easier for WAHM’s to sell their product with very little work to do it with. If a WAHM already has an established online shop, I’ll retail her products as well and she can pay a fee (based on 1 or 2 yr prices) for advertising. She can also choose to just advertise at LTS or only sell product for a commission base agreed upon between LTS and the WAHM.

This gives the opportunity to those who don’t know how to web program or develop graphics. There will also be a blog for all WAHM’s to post a promo of their products, gift certificates or specials as well when they come up.

So it’s pretty much a choice of advertise for a flat fee or sell the WAHM product under the Life Tree Shoppe label for commission to me, or both if they like. I do not require the label on the product, if the label is the WAHM’s shop product label this is perfectly exceptable. The invoice would have LTS’s logo and the WAHM’s logo on it.

There will also be an Affiliates & Sponsors section - you can sponsor LTS for a flat fee either in a monthly or yearly flat fee or you can become an affiliate where if someone clicks on the link and buys a product from the shop you make commission on the sale as well as myself and the WAHM they bought from.

www.lifetreeshop.com

MommyFest 2008!

Be there or be square! My WAHM Shop The Life Tree Shoppe plans on sponsoring the MommyFest Blog Party 2008! So come support other mama’s and meet moms from around the world! See you there everyone.

Tuesday Toot

Today’s toot brought to you by the tow trucking industry! Hubby is a hard working man, he has sacrificed so much in 9+, almost 10 years. Gave up his dream speakers to feed his family, sold himself out to the mini van devil and sold his dream car to do it (SHO). Puts in 12 plus hour shifts in the towing industry to put food on the table, roof over heads and clothes on backs. Without complaint, without so much as a peep of complaint. Every day out the door at 630 and sometimes 4 am\5 am to go drive all day, tow vehicles and move construction equipment and ocean containers.  In the summers, he puts in anywhere between 12 to 18 hours a day, comes home tired, dirty and sore to scoop up the kidlets and cuddle, play and do their bedtime routine with them then work on the little things in the home (painting, repairs, even mops the floors on hand and knee). What does he do while doing this? Never complains, simply smiles and asks what else is needed help wise. He has always been the type of father who self sacrifices for his family first and foremost. There’s a saying : Any man can be a father, but it takes a real man to be a daddy!

The New Place

Here are a few shots of the new place. When I have a little more time, I’ll post better pictures of the new place.

API - Attachment Parenting International

I’d like to bring to your attention a new website and organization called Attachment Parenting International.

http://www.attachmentparenting.org

Please take some time to mosey on down to their site and take a peek at API. Their Mission Statement is simple:

Our mission is to educate and support all parents in raising secure, joyful, and empathic children in order to strengthen families and create a more compassionate world.

Changes With A Big Move

I’ve been away lately because we’ve moved to a bigger home that can accommodate our family much better than where we were living. It was spur of the moment, short notice packing and moving. The new place is a wonderful 2 story, 4 bedroom with basement and three bathrooms. We’re renting it at the moment with the possibility to buy it in the next 2 to 3 years. Very nice backyard size, huge! I’ll be able to have my garden again and I can’t wait!

I’ll post pictures of the new place as soon as I can for all of you cherished readers soon.

Tuesday’s Toot

Today’s toot is about breastfeeding. I failed miserably at the first 3 attempts and the 4th I never tried from psychological and emotional fear of failure (I regret not even thinking about trying to). Boober has been exclusively breast fed for 11 months now successfully. My first attempt was sabotaged by NICU, faulty information, lack of information and support and being a new mom without the knowledge or know how. I gave up at approximately 8 weeks (exclusively pumping). Second go around, I gave up in 6 weeks due to the same problems (except for the NICU part, Bri was full term). The third was the hardest and most emotionally deadening experience in my entire life. I so desperately want to be able to have a breastfeeding relationship. My own mother in law watched us struggle for three weeks and begged me to please just bottle feed because I was an emotional wreck, baby was desperately hungry all the time. We were both emotionally drained and distraught. My mother in law, sweet and caring woman that she was didn’t mean to sabotage us. She saw that I was not the same person and that it was killing me emotionally and spiritually to be failing once again at my attempts to breastfeed and have a breastfeeding relationship. She bought formula and bottles, whipped up a bottle and said please don’t emotionally and spiritually kill yourself, your dead inside and I don’t want to see you or your baby suffer like this. The moment that bottle nipple hit his lips he was a happy baby, wolfed 3 ounces in less that 10 minutes. When I had my fourth child I was terrified to try, even think of trying and never did. I regret this and have a sense of guilt for the 4 previous failures. Now, with boober, I was determined - furiously determined. With the help of a lady (a lactivist) who had the knowledge and the know how she showed me a new light. I’ll always be in a debt of gratitude to her for what she did for us. Despite being a 33 weeker, in the NICU (with NICU bottles and then switching to Adiri bottles) and having a few lasting ailments from being premature, boober is now 11 months strong into our exclusive breastfeeding relationship and doesn’t show signs of wanting anything less than this cuddly, warm and beautiful relationship. I had won, we had won and are still winning. My guilt over my previous failures will never leave my heart and I will carry that with me for all my days but the satisfaction and sense of achievement with boober being exclusively breastfed 11 months (and going) knocks that feeling of guilt and failure down a notch. I realize, I can do it - it’s hard but it can be achieved and is such a wonderful relationship to have between mother and child. I have found a new sense of pride in being divinely mama!

Autumn Harvest Online

I would like to toot about a good and very sweet friend of mine, Christina. She’s a single mama of two boys and works so very hard to give everything to her boys. She runs Autumn Harvest Online. She’s also the one who is designing and making my wedding jewelry for both my Matron of Honor, Bridesmaids and myself.

This woman is the most giving and awesome woman I’ve ever met. She’s brilliant with her jewelry. Absolutely brilliant! It’s almost like she reads your mind and knows exactly what you want without you needing to tell her. She’s prompt, fastidious and very skilled. Great communication and wonderful customer service. She is a cherished friend and a very cherished WAHM that I enjoy working with.

She not only does jewelry. She does natural soaps and soy candles as well. She has an eye for unique and does a lot of custom work with her soaps and candles as well. She’s very versatile. Without further ado I give you some of her work!

Some Random Thoughts

I missed Tuesday’s Toot this week. We were sick with the all famous gastroenteritis causing Rotavirus. It started with the little 2 yr old and worked it’s way through the whole house hold over the week. The kidlets missed a full week of school because of it. Tuesday’s Toot will be back next week.

Boober has his first little tooth! Another milestone met. It erupted sometime this week (probably in the last few days) and I just noticed it this morning while he was laughing and playing. Wow, already. This month is his birth month. He’s turning 1 year old this month, boy does time fly fast.

I’d like to bring to your attention, my fine readers, a site called Breast of Canada. It’s a site about women reclaiming their breasts as their own and making people realize that breasts are not just an erogenous zone. They are nourishment, sacred and not just “up for grabs”. In this day and age with the media touting it’s boobs, boobs, boobs mantra and sex sells everything it’s time for us women to reclaim what is rightfully ours - our breasts.

The Creatrix (or God, Mother Nature, come whatever it is you believe in) did not create our breasts to sell beer and clothing. She meant our breasts to be the nurturing and nourishing tools of a loving mother. She also meant them to be ours and not some profane tool to sell whatever it is the manufacturers think we need. It’s time to respect ourselves and our breasts. It’s time to reclaim who we are and that includes loving our breasts for what they are - a part of us that makes us who we are and in the end a whole person.

I am not some “set of jugs”, “bonzungas”, or “a pair of tas-tas”. I am a mother, a woman, a sister, a daughter, an aunt. I am breastiful (beautiful).