Scott Brown had a contest detailed here, asking participants to describe what Independence Day means to them in 250 words or less. I missed the deadline because I just found out about it, but thought I’d share what I would have entered:

Independence Day means sweat and sweetness. It means a day at the beach or park with the kids, while they run around like wild banshees. It’s 90 degrees out, but we don’t care. Popsicles melt down chins, and I go through an entire box of baby wipes in a vain attempt to wipe faces and hands.

It means breaking out glow-in-the-dark necklaces as the sun sets. We break the tubes inside, the delicious crackling releasing chemicals into the plastic rope that will glow for hours. The children become nothing more than flashes of neon as they run through the dark.

The men poke at the fire, each letting their inner pyro-maniac out to play. My husband always wins, of course, and the flames are soon ready for marshmallow toasting.

Marshmallow goo and melted chocolate and cookie crumbs cover little faces. And, um, mine too. I lament the empty baby wipes box, but a friend comes to the rescue and shares hers with our sticky family.

The fireworks come, and our toddler gleefully screams, “Mores!” after each boom. A massive explosion of color in the sky, and my husband kisses me while we hold our exhausted yet filled-to-the-brim-with-joy daughters.

We revel in America.

This country totally rocks.

My friend Lori recently stumbled upon an article about one woman’s decision not to breastfeed her baby because the process was disruptive to her fun bags.

Under the headline “I formula fed. So what?”, Kathryn Blundell says in this month’s Mother & Baby that she bottlefed her child from birth because “I wanted my body back. (And some wine)… I also wanted to give my boobs at least a chance to stay on my chest rather than dangling around my stomach.”

She goes on to say: “They’re part of my sexuality, too – not just breasts, but fun bags. And when you have that attitude (and I admit I made no attempt to change it), seeing your teeny, tiny, innocent baby latching on where only a lover has been before feels, well, a little creepy.”

She concedes that “there are all the studies that show [breastfeeding] reduces the risk of breast cancer for you, and stomach upsets and allergies for your baby. But even the convenience and supposed health benefits of breast milk couldn’t induce me to stick my nipple in a bawling baby’s mouth.”

I highly recommend reading Lori’s take on this, including the empowerment and feminity that she experienced during the two years she breastfed her daughter.

A mutual friend (and mommy like Lori and me) Kill Truck offered her opinion on the subject. She formula fed her two sons after much difficulty with latching (all moms know exactly what I’m talking about. If you’re not a mom and have made it this far-congratulations.).

I did one of each. When Thing 1 was born, I felt like I HAD to breastfeed her. Leif has severe allergies, and I had been led to believe by the La Leche crowd that formula might as well be arsenic, so the thought to formula feed never even crossed my mind.

Thing 1 came into the world sunny-side up, which if you don’t know, makes for a very painful labor once the epidural wears off. Or, as my 18 year old brother said at the time, “Not quite as painful as tearing your ACL.”

She came out 9lbs and 5oz. And she came out screaming. She screamed so much that the maternity nurses said, “Wow, that baby cries a lot.”

Anyway, back to the breastfeeding. It went really well in the hospital. She latched right away, and it was the only time she wasn’t crying. It was nice.

It wasn’t until we’d been doing it a few days that it started to hurt. Really hurt. Hurt like my nipples were going to fall off. Hurt like I wished my nipples would fall off. Every two hours (or less!), I would cuddle and feed my daughter as my toes curled into the carpet and tears streaked my cheeks. We tried to give her bottles of expressed milk, but she wouldn’t take them.

And believe me, we tried. At two months old, she went without eating for ten hours rather than take a sip from a bottle. We tried spooning the milk into her mouth, but she spit it out.

For the record, Thing 1 is still this stubborn. A couple of months ago, she gave up a trip to Disneyland because she didn’t want to eat half a cup of oatmeal. Yeah.

Around four months, the pain finally stopped. Lactation consultants chalked it up to a voracious appetite. She was correctly latched; she just sucked like a Dyson. I continued to breastfeed her until her first birthday, and I wept with relief that it was over.

I really wish I had enjoyed breastfeeding. I was worried that I was a terrible mom because I didn’t like it. I felt guilty every time I resented my sweet but colicky baby over the pain she was causing me both physically and emotionally.

I was also about 50 pounds overweight, and NOTHING I did could nudge the weight off of my ass. As a still somewhat recovering bulimic, this was not a good time in my life, to say the least. Once I quit breastfeeding, I shed 20 pounds in a month, without changing a single thing about my diet or exercise.

People often ask me why there’s a four and half year age gap between my kids. Because it took that long to recover from Thing 1’s infancy.

For the record, aside from her stubbornness, she is the most engaging, delightful, and simply joyful kid I’ve ever been around. Her teachers always make note of her enthusiasm for life, and this last year she was affectionately nick-named Sunshine.

Anyway, short story long, I did not enjoy the breastfeeding experience, and I felt like both a success as a woman for sticking it out, and a failure as a mother for not loving it.

Fast-forward a few years to Thing 2. Before getting pregnant, I promised Leif that I would try my best to breastfeed, but I was dreading it. It was really important to him though, and I love him, so I thought I’d give it a whirl again. Besides, I’d heard that the second kid is always much easier.

Plus, we decided that Leif would give her a nightly bottle from birth, and if she didn’t want it, she didn’t eat. After Thing 1, crying babies don’t exactly bother us much anymore.

A few weeks into, I knew I couldn’t go a year. Thing 2 nursed for almost two months, and then nursed at night only for another month after that. At three months, she was completely formula fed.

Leif was not on board with the decision. But being a loving (and incredibly smart) husband, he reluctantly supported me.

Until one night when he got his fun bags back.

Then he was a happy man.

As for me? I’m happy I made the decision to formula feed. I snuggled close to my little girl while I fed her a bottle, able to gaze into her pure blue eyes rather than watch the clock on the wall, wondering how much longer.  I actually felt closer to her once we started bottle-feeding than I had when we had been breastfeeding.

But my decision was not based on feeling weirded out by an innocent baby touching my breasts.  In fact, that’s the part I loved about it – that God designed us women to be, as Lori says, “Life-giving nurturers.” For that reason, I wish it had worked out for us. It just didn’t.

And that’s fine. All moms needs to make their own decision, and to make someone else feel weird or inferior for their decisions is just plain rude.

Ms. Fun-Bags and her still-perky-because-they-weren’t-stretched-out-by-breastfeeding-breasts can suck it.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

From Houston News:

The teenage son of a Harris County deputy constable shot a burglar this afternoon who tried to break into their home, authorities said.

The boy, 15, and his sister, 12, were alone about 2:45 p.m. when someone tried to kick open the front door then soon after the back door of their home in the 2600 block of Royal Place Court, officials said.

Their father was at work at the time, said officials with the Harris County Precinct 1 Constable’s Office.

When one of the suspected burglars kicked open a window, the boy grabbed a rifle and fired. Both burglars then fled, officials said.

Soon after the shooting, a man showed up at Tomball Methodist Hospital with a gunshot wound. He is being questioned by investigators. There was no information about the second suspect, who remains at large, officials said.

The children were not injured during the ordeal, officials said.

Investigators with the Harris County Sheriff’s Department have launched an investigation.

I love every part of this story. I love the fifteen year old knowing gun safety and how to use a firearm. I love him protecting him home, and more importantly, his little sister. I love the intruder getting shot. I love Texas. The whole thing is just plain awesome.

Remember my friend Pamela Gorman? She’s running for Congress to replace the retiring John Shadegg. I interviewed her and wrote about her.

This week her campaign came up with this gem. I love it.

Go contribute to her campaign. We need more chicks with guts in DC. Every dollar helps!

The Supreme Court upheld the Second Amendment right of all Americans to bear arms for the first time on Monday, while reviewing a restrictive handgun law in Chicago. The 5-4 ruling does not affect gun control measures outside of firearm bans.

Which means that there are four justices on the bench that would have Americans abandon the most valuable tool they possess in defending their liberty. The Second Amendment ensures that we keep all of the other amendments we’ve grown so fond of — like the freedom of speech or the right to a fair and timely trial.

After all, those in power won’t dare take away our God given, Constitution-protected rights so long as We the People have the ability to resist. What happens if the government takes away our right to vote, or our right to practice our own religions, if the law-abiding citizens have no guns? We can call the lawyers, but is anyone really afraid of lawyers?

Do you really want to have to trust the government that much? Or wouldn’t it be better to know that if a group of power-hungry people were to get in control, we’d have the ultimate ability to resist them if need be? As Americans, we get to make one last stand against tyranny, rather than submit or be killed.

Read More

That’s what every headline would read this morning if the late Senator had been a Republican.

The longest serving member of Congress, Robert Byrd (D-WV) once said:

“I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side… Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.” – Robert Byrd in letter to Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo in 1944.

While I hope that he received absolution from his maker, I’m not sad to see him go. As my friend Justin said:

Look, I know it’s not nice to piss on someone’s grave. But, then again, burning a cross on someone’s lawn wasn’t very nice, either.

And that’s about all I have to say about that this morning.

I believe that government programs are money pits. Like old, rickety houses, they demand more and more of your hard-earned cash in order to stand upright and resemble something somewhat pleasing to live with.

In an old home, the furnace will blow, the pipes will burst, the roof will leak, and just as you’ve sunk another chunk of your nest egg into a repair, something else will go wrong. Government programs are much the same way in that the need for constant influxes of cash never goes away.

Government is a necessary evil. We need roads. We need elected officials. We need cops and firemen. What we don’t need aregovernment programs. They are unsustainable and riddled with fraud and abuse. Take Medicare and Medicaid for example. Even the Government Accountability Office admits that it’s a high-risk program. It’s estimated that 20 percent of Medicare and Medicaid payments are fraudulent. That’s a lot of my money in someone else’s pockets.

Read More

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wants to read your email. Apparently the “right to privacy” only exists between a woman and her abortion provider. Although it’s probably unfair to say that Ms. Napolitano personally wants to read your email.

It’s much more likely that she wants to set up a few new governmentagencies, hire thousands of people on the taxpayers’ dime (don’t forget about those bloated government pensions!), and have themread your email. So it might be a moot point anyway, since we all know how effective government agencies are — been to the DMV lately?

Why does Ms. Napolitano want to read your email? To fightterrorism, of course! How silly to even ask. It turns out that terrorists like to communicate with one another via Internet communications. The panty-bomber, the Fort Hood shooter, and Jihad Jane are all big fans of Internet communications.

Read More

Rebecca Grunewald joins me for Conservative Chick Chat, plus Mike G. has cocktail recipes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download