Baby blog!

There hasn't been an update on this pregnancy for awhile, so here it goes.

I am now 32 weeks and 1 day pregnant. We don't what the baby is, but we are pretty sure it's human. It moves vigorously and rolls around a lot. It's a lot like Aspen was in utero. I am getting Braxton Hicks with this baby, and didn't have them last time, so that's new.

Eric and I started birthing classes. He got scared about the whole situation, which is totally understandable, since this is all new to him. It scares me a little too, and I've done this before. He didn't know that there was so much to do at the birth. I think he thought that you pretty much lay in bed, push, and a baby falls out. He didn't know about all the walking, the birth ball, the showers, etc.

I am getting anxious. We haven't set up the bassinet yet or put the car seat together. We did get the bedding all taken care of and we have the car seat and bouncer. That part is done, thank goodness. Hopefully we will get the rest of the things we need at the baby shower (bathtub, play yard, stroller, onesies, sleepers, bottles, pacifiers, etc).

Otherwise, things are good here. It's getting hard for me to move around, get up and down, off the couch... but I'm dealing. Trying not to complain too much, I really do like being pregnant.

Virginia Tech

First let me say that I can't imagine a more horrific thing to happen on a college campus. Having spent years and years in college, I never once thought about what I would do if a gunman stormed my classroom and opened fire on my professor and my classmates, and I have a tendency to always think of the worst possible scenario in any circumstance. My condolences go out to the families of all of the 33 victims. That includes the shooter.

Speaking of the shooter, let me preface what I am about to say by saying that his actions were inexcusable, immoral, and disgusting. No one can ever justify what he did in anyway. But, I agree with his sentiments. Now, the students he killed, as individuals, had little to do with his message. But we've already been told by the families to completely ignore what he said in his manifesto and simply remember the innocent victims. While I agree that the victims should not be lost in this, I also believe that if we don't listen to what he had to say, things like this will continue to happen. It is the American way, after all, to punish the action and not work to prevent it in the first place.

His sentiments, if I interpret them correctly, are that he had been abused by society his entire life. He was made fun of, put down, ignored, neglected and treated like someone who was less than human. I do believe that he had some sort of underlying psychosis, but I can't imagine that having been shit on for his entire life could have made it any better. I'm not excusing his behavior, but lets use this as a lesson to teach our kids tolerance and embrace diversity. If we continue to spoil the shit out of our kids and keep teaching them that some people; "gooks", immigrants, poor people or people that are developmentally disabled are some how "less than" themselves, we can expect that this kind of action will continue. When parents are so displaced from their kids lives that they don't know the parents of the friends their kids are hanging out with or what their kids are into, or generally KNOWING them at all, this kind of thing will continue to happen. When kids are allowed to bully other kids for ANY reason, this will continue to happen.

Wake up, folks. This kid didn't just snap for no reason. There were many, many reasons for his actions, most of which will be ignored because he's "evil" or he's "bad" or he's "inhuman". Regardless of that, he had a point. The way he chose to express it was deplorable. No argument there. But lets think about how we can prevent it from happening again. Lets hear what he had to say. Where is the harm in that?