Suicide Awareness for College Students
A good friend of mine works with an organization called “Active Minds” and they have submitted an entry to the Pepsi Refresh Project to get funding for their work in bringing awareness of mental health issues and suicide to local college campuses. Please take a minute to click on this link and vote for them: http://www.refresheverything.com/sendsilencepacking
Overview:
Active Minds’ Send Silence Packing is a traveling display of 1,100 donated backpacks representing the 1,100 college student lives lost to suicide each year. This interactive event ends the silence around student suicide by bringing attention to the 1 in 10 students who contemplate suicide. We foster a dialogue about the 1,100 who commit suicide and ways to get that number to 0. The display manages to put a human face on the numbers of this tragedy. We have the capacity to continue this dialogue on campuses through our chapters long after the display is broken down, but we need your help to build it up. Active Minds can pair the display with speakers on the subject and the resources to start or maintain a chapter of Active Minds on a campus that hosts the display to ensure that the dialogue is not dropped and instead is continued at that school for years to come.
Soothing Your Baby
I can probably count on 2 hands the number of times my oldest daughter has not slept through the night since she was born – and she’s almost 4! My younger daughter though? She’s 1 and is constantly waking up crying. What can we do?
Last night, she started crying around 9 or 9:30 pm (she had been in bed since 7:30). We rocked her, we gave her baby Motrin (in case she’s teething and in pain), we gave her a second bottle… Nothing worked. She cried until after 11pm, when I finally gave her a 3rd bottle for the night and she FINALLY fell asleep.
I’m tired and I’m desperate. Does anyone have any ideas? What can we do when she starts these crying fits? Have you found any tricks that work? Please share it with me!
“The Situation 2010″ in Franklin, TN
We had a massive snow storm this weekend. Well, massive for Nashville, anyway. Many are referring to it as “The Situation 2010″ (if you knew Nashville weather forecasters you’d know why). At the mere mention of snow, the city shuts down and all the schools are closed. Most of the time we barely get a dusting.
Nashvillest has published some pretty funny posts on the topic. As for the Gentry family, we recorded the “situation” for posterity. For the record, we enjoyed the snow!
(The first part may be a little boring…but it gets good at the end so keep watching!)
Do you have Momnesia too?
Last night, I was commenting on a great post from my friend Stu at The Marry Blogger. Right as I started typing, the word I was looking for escaped my brain. Poof! It was gone…another mommy-brain moment. How many times a day does that happen to you?
I like to joke about having “momnesia” – but did you know that momnesia, or mommy-brain, is a real, medical thing? (“thing” is the medical term, by the way)
When a woman gets pregnant, the hormones your body produces affects the memory portion of your brain: “the brain is being marinated in a huge amount of [the pregnancy hormone] oxytocin during pregnancy,” says Brizendine. And oxytocin has been shown to have amnesia-like effects during pregnancy.
This continues for a year or more after the baby is born. But as far as I can tell, once I got pregnant with my first child, I was never the same! I have momnesia moments all the time. What about you?
Some may disagree; in fact, some think that being a mommy makes you smarter. There’s even a book by Katherine Ellison called The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter
For the record, I have mommy-brain moments all the time. BUT – I still think being a mommy rocks my socks off and we all deserve the title, “Super Mom”. Because in our own individual ways, we all have super powers. I know our children think so…
What do you think? Please share a momnesia moment in the comments below. Let’s have a little fun together!
Merry Christmas (late)!
So of course, I wanted to post a “Merry Christmas” message BEFORE Christmas, but my in-laws don’t have wireless internet at their home and I was without access for a very long weekend. My husband tried to convince me I could live without it, and of course I did, but boy did I miss my computer and ready online access!
As I said, we spent Christmas in Memphis with my in-laws this year. Somehow, we got to talking one day about our annual trip to Opryland hotel in Nashville to take family Christmas pictures (they went with us last year). Opryland hotel at Christmas is BEAUTIFUL and that’s where Drew and I had our engagement photos taken, so it became family tradition to go back every year to take pictures for our Christmas card.
Anyway, my mother-in-law was recalling what a nightmare it was; spending 4-5 hours at the hotel, walking around, taking pictures, trying to get small children to cooperate… Yes, it is a nightmare and I don’t know why I put myself through it every year. This year was no different, except we didn’t have any family members with us to take the pictures. So we had to rely on kind strangers to help (which added to the anxiety of it all). So I thought it would be funny to post one of the outtakes from our 2009 adventure at Opryland.
Chris Brogan posted a challenge this weekend to post your Christmas pics/video online and then return to his blog and comment with a link. I think I got some pretty good video, so I’m going to post that in the next day or two. And If YOU post any fun pictures or video of your family’s Christmas, please leave a comment here with a link to your site. I’d love to see it!
MERRY (late) CHRISTMAS !!!
Less Under the Tree…
This year, our family has made the decision to have less under our tree so that we may help others enjoy a Christmas filled with joy and the peace that only God’s love can provide. He who has the most toys DOES NOT win.
Christmas isn’t about how many gifts are under the tree. It’s about family. And most importantly, it’s about celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, our Savior.
This has been tough for my mom to grasp. Not in a bad way; she’s wonderfully generous. But in past years, opening gifts has been an all-day affair for our family. There are a ton of gifts, but we alsoreally take our time. So as we’ve discussed our revised Christmas plan, she’s been concerned about how we’ll spend the day. For me, this is a great opportunity for our family to create some new traditions that don’t revolve around presents.
This year, how are YOU going to celebrate the season?
Marriage, Family & Finance Blogs
WOW! There are some fantastic blogs out there! Check out my blog roll for some pretty awesome resources on marriage, family and finance. I’d like to thank Stu at The Marry Blogger for his list of marriage blogs (see his Top 10 List) and Top Mommy Blogs! for another great list of family/mommy blogs.
My personal top 2 faves in each category are:
Marriage: The Marry Blogger and Engaged Marriage
Family: Extraordinary Mommy and Vanderbilt Wife
Finance: Enemy of Debt and Faithful Provisions
New Christmas Memories from Days Past
The other day I read Extraordinary Mommy’s blog post “Holiday Moments, Memories and Magic” and two things struck me. First, my similar desire to spend less and give more this Christmas and second, how much her Christmas memories remind me of my own.
Tonight, I found myself sharing one of my favorite Christmas memories from my childhood with my daughters and they didn’t even know it. When I was little, I had a FAVORITE Christmas tape (this was the early 80’s) called “Disney Presents A Family Christmas“. I had a little hand-held tape recorder (this was even before boom boxes!) that I would carry around with me and listen to it over and over again. My favorite song was the 12 Days of Christmas with all the different characters singing.
I’m really not a big fan of Christmas music. But almost 10 years ago, I set out to locate this album on CD. I couldn’t remember the name of the tape, so I found two really old Disney Christmas CDs on Amazon and bought both of them. I had no clue if either were the right one. Luckily, one of them was indeed the right CD!
Fast forward to this afternoon. Me and the girls returned home from the Franklin Christmas Parade and I was in the Christmas spirit! So I popped in my Disney Christmas CD and we danced and sang along with Mickey, Donald, Goofy and even Chip and Dale. And I remembered me as a little girl, doing the same. And I prayed that one day, when my daughters are enjoying a similar moment with their kids, they remember…
Under Construction
Welcome to the *New and Improved* MyDoodleBop.com website! I have copied over all of the blog posts but am still working on the rest of the pages (and graphics and sidebar gadgets). I appreciate your patience during this transition!
This site is going to take on a more “Nashville” bent ~ I plan to focus more on my local community (Middle TN) and the families that make this city so great! More to come…
In the meantime, please be sure to check out my new website, www.MyHandsAreClean.com. Thanks!
Give Thanks in all Circumstances
This will probably be my only post this week ~ between my “day job,”my new business and the holidays, this week is pretty packed. But I’ll do my best to stay in touch!
As we near Thanksgiving, we all begin thinking about what we are thankful for…our family, our friends, our jobs, our warm homes filled with love… But what about the other things that have happened this year that weren’t so warm and fuzzy? Have you ever stopped to think about 2009’s trials and tribulations and give thanks for those?
C.S. Lewis said, “We ought to give thanks for all fortune; if it is “good” because it is good, if “bad” because it works in us patience, humility, and the contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country.”
I had a ROUGH year this year. I was laid off from my job in January (3 months after giving birth to my second child) and fell into a deep depression. My marriage struggled (and that’s an understatement), my children suffered, and I finally sought both marriage counseling and psychiatric help. Nothing really worked.
So finally, I turned to God for help. The passage we discussed at the first church service I attended was this: “Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thess 5:16-18) It was like the pastor was speaking directly to me; that God was telling me to have faith. And so I did.
I rallied. We put our kids back in daycare so I could focus on finding a job. I learned new things and “marketed” myself to potential employers with intensity. “Let’s not get tired of doing what is good, for at the right time we will reap a harvest – if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6:9) And in God’s faithfulness, I landed a job in a month’s time.
If it weren’t for 6 months of complete hell, I wouldn’t have found my way back to God. And so I am THANKFUL for God’s faithfulness and love, even when I wasn’t faithful or obedient. I wasn’t sure I would get out alive; and now here I am, much happier than I was at this time last year. Because now I understand that when God takes something from your grasp, He is not punishing you, but merely opening your hands to receive something better.
And yet, I have some “warm and fuzzy” things to be thankful for too:
- A stronger, happier marriage (see “A Total Money Makeover Saved My Marriage”)
- Two beautiful daughters, growing strong in God’s grace
- A new personal goal to be generous with my time, talent and treasure
- A new business (I’m a “mompreneur”!) which will help me attain my goal ~ 10% of all sales will go to different charities throughout the year (November = Operation Shower)
But most of all, I am thankful for the struggle I endured during the first 6-7 months of 2009. Without it, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
May God bless you this holiday season!
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