There comes a time when...

When you lose the baby, but gain the boy.....

So Mr. Chubbs has really long hair. Since the day he was born until yesterday he was a shaggy little man. People would coo at us about how cute our baby girl was, even though that "she" was dressed as a He and doesn't really look like a girl at all.
Yesterday,  We chopped it all off. I held him on my lap as the very nice hair dresser started using the buzz clippers to buzz off his long dirty blonde locks. I held in my remorse as i watched her take one swipe after the other, the sound of the clippers chewing away my son's hair. I knew this had to be done, but as more hit the floor, i felt the protective mama bear in me want to shout out "NO! No more! This is the hair he was born with! He's my baby!" I wrangled that mama bear, and the tears. Oh boy did i want to cry. It seems silly, i know. But that hair was the last resonance of his infancy. The last bit of him that made him my baby boy. Now, he's almost 18 months old.. No longer that newborn baby boy, He's his own man now. With interests and dislikes all his own. When i think about it, the fact that I will never have a newborn of my own again, that this boy child is my last... Seeing that hair fall to the floor pangs me. It's like a arrow through my heart.

He doesn't look like my baby boy anymore, instead, a big boy has replaced him. And I love this new big boy, just as much as i loved that baby boy.... I'm excited to see who this big boy turns out to be.. But i think, mostly because he is the last baby I will ever have, I will grieve for that baby for a little while.

My Mr. Chubbs looks adorable in his new hair cut, ready to take on the world i think. I love it And I'm sure glad we had it cut. Here are the before and after photos of my big boy.

Before:

 Aww my little Sweet Boy

After:

My Handsome Man!

Seeing Him grow makes life worth it for me.... So Goodbye My Sweet Baby Boy and Welcome To my new Little Man!

International Women's Day!

Did you know that today is International Woman's Day? It is! Now I wanted to write a post on this topic because as many of you know i am involved in Girl Guides of Canada as a leader for a combined Spark and Brownie Unit. I am particularly interested in showing them the world and everyone in it outside of their backyards. So last week we did Thinking Day, which is on Feb 22nd but my family and I were all very sick and so i cancelled the meeting. so we did it last week instead. I had the girls play musical chairs while each of them held a sticker that had one of nine things on them : Food, Shelter, Education, Freedom,Saying what you think, Protection from harm, People you love, Religion, Respect. so we'd play music and the girls would go around the chairs after one was taken away. If a girl was left without a chair to sit on we would read out her sticker and decided whether or not the sticker was something we could live with out. We played until we widdled the stickers down to Freedom and Education. Now this was a big one for the girls. they couldn't decide which was better, which was something you couldn't live with out. It took us 10 minutes of arguing, convincing, thinking it through to come up with the answer that EDUCATION was something no one could live with out. SO why is education something you can't live with out? well without an education you can't get a good job, which mean you can't provide food or shelter for yourself, which means you don't eat, which means you'd get sick and you wouldn't be able to afford a doctor to get better, which means you'd most likely die. All the other stickers were unimportant once the girls realized what an education can do for you.
And this was the point of the game.
Now with today being International Woman's Day.. I though I would share some stats on Women in the world.

Did you know that 7 out of 10 of the world's hungry are Women and Girls?
Did you know that 70% of the illiterate are Girls and Women?
Poverty is the number one killer of Women and Children in 3rd world countries. Because they live in poverty they don't get enough to eat, secure and warm shelter and drink filthy water... all because they can not afford to do better.
In many countries such as Ethiopia, girls and women work twice as hard as men and are paid next to nothing for their hard work, Either in actual money or in the fact that they do not have enough to eat to sustain them in hard labor they do each and every day. girls are also married off to much other men when they hit around the age of 11-15. They are expected to care for the home, the animals and the many children they will end up having as a result of an early marriage. The leading cause of death for girls between the ages of 15-18 in African Countries is.... Pregnancy and Childbirth.

There are many more stats out there showing the large equality gap between men and women in our world.  I feel it is our duty as women, as members of our world to combat this injustice.
Here are some links to help you learn more about  International Woman's Day and  how to help with this cause.
http://www.wagggsworld.org
http://www.freethechildren.com
http://www.girleffect.org

Now I'd like to share a video from The Girl Effect Website.... I hope you are inspired by it to make change in the world.

Because she loves you.

My 5 year old daughter, affectionately referred to as "Lala Bear" is whole heartedly, one of the most emotional people I've ever met. She is kind, loving and very empathetic towards others. So this morning she haS preschool. Then, after preschool she is going over to a friend's house for most of the day. This is a win/win for us actually. She gets to hang with her bestie and i get to have the house to myself, well except for Mr. Chubbs.
So This morning she woke up with a request. "Mama, i want to make a necklace for my friend." I thought that was a great idea and i asked her why she wanted to make her friend a necklace, and she said "Because i love her" I thought that was very sweet. So we made a necklace for her friend and then we made a bracelet for her friend's mom because "I love her too". So there was my sweet little girl, the one who seems to think about how to express herself in many different forms, working hard on her necklace and bracelet for her friends. She was still in her pj's too. Told me that she HAD to make them before she did anything else because she wanted to make sure she did them well.
So here she is, with a little help from Mr. Chubbs making her items.

Very happy with her work!

Here is the finished products!

I'm so glad i have girls... They are something special indeed!

Why is it?

Why is it when a parent leaves for an extended period of time... the rest of the house falls to pieces?
I mean really! My house has gone to ruins since Hubby left! well the parts where my kids live in the house at least. I could blame it on the fact that we've all been sick for the last 10 days or so... but I'd be lying. I mean yeah, being sick didn't help the situation.. but the house was turning into a episode of "Hoarders" for a few weeks before this illness hit.
I'm being honest. I am definitely not related to Suzy or anyone in the Homemaker family.. Well unless you include my Military Aunt... But that's the military rather than anything else. (I think.... maybe she is an orderly person anyways and the Air Force just kinda strengthened this in her)
I couldn't clean my way out of a paper bag. I hate cleaning, i hate picking up... I'd rather not do anything of the sort if i can avoid it.

So here I am, announcing to the world ... that My room (which doubles as a TV room) the area where our computer sits and the girls' room look like a tornado has torn through it on a daily basis.

I would totally clean it up and have attempted to do so on a daily basis.... but then.. i have children. Many of them (more than 2 is considered MANY! so there!) and they don't seem to understand the concept of "PUT IT AWAY"
So yeah I'm sitting here surrounded by everything we own in a total and complete state of perpetual untidiness..

ah yes... I love the smell of clutter in the morning...... *GAG*