the amazing charlie brown

Do you have any childhood "things" that you had held on to for one reason or another? 

I do.  Although...I don't really have a reason for keeping him other than the fact that I love him.

His name is Charlie Brown.

Charlie is a bear that I have had ever since I was maybe 8 or 9 years old.  I picked him out of a prize list for selling a certain amount of magazines during our grade school's yearly magazine sale. I didn't realize this until later, but I think most of those magazines that I sold (if not all?) were purchased by my parents. So thanks, Mom and Dad. Charlie was an amazing gift.

I have no idea why I loved...and love...this bear so much. But he was always there, waiting in my bedroom for me. Whether it was a good day, a bad day, a long day, a day that just went by way too quickly, a crazy day, a boring day...you name it, and he was there.

This is probably really lame, especially because now that we have Vincent we keep accumulating more and more "stuff"...but I just can't bring myself to ever get rid of him.  He's a little matted and not quite as fluffy as he once was, but he's freakin awesome and I love that bear!

And what does Vincent think?

Well...

I'm not so sure he's "sold" on Charlie yet. 

That's okay, though.  There's no rush.  Charlie is really good at sticking around.

ignorance

Just this week, a friend of mine posted on Facebook (don't you just love how technology keeps us in touch?), that while shopping with her baby, a complete stranger came up to her and told her that she should get a good nutritionist for her baby to help with his weight problem.

A baby with a weight problem?  I mean, I know there are unhealthy babies in the world.  There are seriously undernourished babies and seriously overfed babies.  But after a certain age, babies are just naturally chunky little humans.  Babies are supposed to have some "meat" on them.  You know?  So telling someone that their baby has a weight problem is just completely and ridiculously rude. 

It wasn't even my baby and I am so upset by this.

It just really got me thinking about how inflated people's egos are, how people believe that whatever they think is right, and how people feel the need to thrust their opinions on to other people without thinking first.  And what's worse is those people who use their opinions and words as spears and think that whoever disagrees with them is ignorant. 

Have you ever been in a conversation like that? When you give your opinion on something and the other person says you are ignorant merely for the fact that your opinion is different?  Last time I checked, the definition of ignorance is a lack of knowledge, wisdom, and information.  So if you call someone ignorant because their opinion is different than yours, then that, my friend, makes you the ignorant one.

But I digress.

I'm not really angry at all.  I'm mostly just frustrated that people are like this.  When someone disagrees with me I want to try to help them see my views.  Not necessarily with the goal to change their mind, but with the goal to help them understand why I think the way I do.  But the second the word "ignorant" comes into play, I just shut down because there is no use discussing something with someone who really has no idea what the word "ignorant" even means. 

Is there any hope that discussions will ever be free from ridicule?

here

We are not missing.

We are here.

It's just that, since Vincent turned 5 months old, we have pretty much not had many ounces of free time since then. So I have a million (okay...maybe 20) things I have wanted to blog about. But in the end, after the babe is asleep, bottles for the next day are made, and everything is done for the day...blogging has been far from my mind.

Sleep trumps everything lately.

But instead of hitting the sack right now like I normally would, I just wanted to pop in and say a quick hello.

Hi!

Life is really good. We have a roof over our heads, love in our hearts, and the sweetest baby in the universe in our arms.

Until next time, here's a recent photo of our little munchkin. Don't you just want to reach through the photo and squeeze his chins and love all over him?