Update: my niece Angel

My brother Cody, isn't very good about learning lessons. He had a baby, my nephew Chaise, in 2008 with a woman that he no longer has much contact with. It has been a very difficult journey with her and as of right now, we don't have any contact with Chaise :-(

You would think that most people would learn from this, and either abstain from sexual relations or at the very least protect themselves well so that when they next chose to bring a baby into this world, it would be in the best of circumstances. Not my bro...I found out in September of 2010 that my brother was likely having another baby with another girl that he no longer has contact with...paternity tests has since confirmed that yes, my brother now has two children that he has to pay child support for and has no relationship with either of them.  That statement alone could lead into an entire blog, but I don't feel like dissecting his lack of parenting interest beyond siring children.

What this blog is actually about, is that up until a few weeks ago, baby #2, a girl named Angel was pretty much unknown to me. I knew that her mom's name was Dodi, but I didn't have a last name or any contact info. I am pretty sure she was born sometime in September, making her about 7 months old now. It's been a challenging topic in my family (apparently we are all pretending she doesn't exist?) so I haven't really ventured into finding out more. Luckily for me, Angel's maternal grandma is pretty assertive, and she tracked me down on facebook to ask if me or anyone in my family was interested in building a relationship with her. I said that yes I was interested, but that I was a little leery due to being burned before (by Chaise's mom). Long story short, I am now facebook friends with Vicky (the grandma) as well as Dodi (the mom) and have made arrangements to meet Angel & Dodi in one week, next Saturday.  Dodi lives in Peace River and I'll be going there next weekend.

*Side note: I am going to Grimshaw/Peace River next weekend because my friend Allison's niece has lymphoma and they are holding a fundraiser for her there. Here niece is only 6 years old :-(  She was diagnosis at the beginning of March and is at the Stollery in Edmonton. Last update I got, things weren't looking too good, as she had no white blood cells.

Alright, so my question for y'all, is that if you were in my situation, what questions would you try to get answered before next Saturday? How would you try to get to know your niece baby momma before then so that it wasn't too awkward?

Here's a picture I took from Dodi's facebook

Leduc Mommy Mingle

I don't know if I've specifically blogged about my Mommy Group, but it's called Leduc Mommy Mingle and I found it on a website called http://www.meetup.com/.  I went to my first "meet up"/playdate in September of last year and it's been a great way to meet other people and stay busy. I've been even busier lately because I signed up to be a co-organizer of the group along with 2 other moms: Shannon & Joanna. We've been the official organizers for about a month now and it's been going really well.

There are perks to being hosted online, all the events get posted on a calendar, they can be set up with attendee limits and people just sign up when they want to go. On average I go to 2-3 playdates a week, when we've been sick it was down to zero, but on crazy weeks we have like five!

As an organizer, our duties include managing & collecting the membership fees ($10/year/member), posting event requests as they come in as well as creating our own, coming up with new ideas, paying the annual fees to the website, moderating discussions, managing sponsers, and other miscellanous admin duties. The three of us will meet monthly to go over our short term & long term goals. For April, we wanted to get everyone up to date on their fees (there was 32/56 people unpaid or late), get people interested in hostsing their own play dates (so that it wasn't the same old same old), and were hoping to plan a Spring Fling for early May. The Spring Fling was a little over ambitious so we'll have to re-evaluate a date for that.

Anyway, I love doing it, as I am not "personally invested" in it in terms of money so I don't have to feel a ton of pressure to make it profitable, instead I just get to bring my creative ideas and make friends. Also, since I am a co-organizer (Joanna is the "head orgainzer"), our workload is spread out and I am hoping to avoid getting burnt out.  It's keeping me busy, utilizing my creativity & business skills without being too much of a committment.

Maybe Baby?

It is now April, about 6 months from my post where I said I thought I'd be ready to start trying for baby #2 in "about 6 months". Guess what? I was right, I believe I am as ready as you can be. Dexter is at a really great age right now where he is a bit self-sufficient and plays independently. Despite some health issues, he is doing really well behavior wise and I am pretty happy with where we are at, Parenting-wise. Tyler, on the other hand, is still taking some convincing. LOL

Around November/December I was having some breast pains and my GP decided that I should try a different birth control pill. The change in pill seemed to effect me hormonally (more mood swings, very sensitive, cried easily), so after a few months, I switched to another brand. I still seemed to be suffering from the same side effects so I thought perhaps I should just stop taking them in general. I brought up the topic with Tyler and he seemed fine with it....though, to be honest, we haven't been "baby dancing" much anyway. It may be TMI, but our sex life has definitely had it's ups & downs over the years. Since I've gone off the pill, I have found a HUGE increase in my desire to "get busy". I'm not sure if it's my body's way of trying to get knocked up or if I am just one of the lucky ones who loses their desire when on birth control.

Our challenge last time, which looks like it'll be affecting us this time, is timing. Last time Tyler was working out of town, sometimes 2 weeks at a time, so it took us a full year of trying. Though that time around Tyler really wanted me to let nature take it's course whenever the universe decided it was time. This time, I am embracing my inner Type A personality and keeping track of my supposed fertility times. Hopefully it won't take us 12 months to conceive this time! I'm hoping for the sooner the better, but I'd still be happy if it was with 6 months (as that would give us a due date of January - June). Tyler is working nights so our opportunity to "baby dance" is limited to when he gets home (5am), a few hours in the afternoon if it's feasible (not likely), and weekends. Thus, it may take some time to get things going.

Sooooo, all of this is on the down low.  Since it took so long last time, I don't really want to deal with everyone asking me if it's happened yet for another painful year. Plus, Tyler deals with things better if they are more subtle LOL As far as he's concerned, we aren't really trying, but if it happens it happens and I'm just going to be attempting to seduce him more.  I debated even blogging about it as I'd kind of like to keep it a secret & not jinx it but I thought I'd take the chance anyway.

As a favor, I ask that all of you don't talk about it to others outside our blogging world or especially on facebook, and to also please not ask me if it's happened yet. When it does, I will definitely be letting most of you know as you are on my "first contact" list.

Past Lives Hypno Regression

I discovered that we have a neat little store in Leduc called "Everyday Miracles". They have spa services, reiki, tarot readings and every Wednesday a Meditation Night.  Mary (my mother-in-law) & I decided to check it out a few weeks ago. We found out that sometimes the Meditation Nights are actually talks by different professionals in the field. The night we went, a gentleman named Chris Lee was doing a talk on past life regression via hypnosis.  Here's some of what he shared with us:

-He orginally started with "regular" hynotheraphy but only had a 20% success rate (for issues such as weight loss, smoking cessessation, fears, etc) . He believed in past lives, so if you have baggage from a previous life and you are only addressing issues in this life, it could account for the smaller success rate. When he integrated the past lives hypno, his success rate went up to 95%.

-He calls it the "unanswered sound" problem. An analogy: if you wake up in the middle of the night and hear an unknown sound, it freaks you out.  Say the next morning you notice your neighbors new metal trash cans fell over and that accounts for the sound. If you hear the sound the next night, it doesn't affect you the same way. Issues from past lives have the same pattern, once you identify why you feel a certain way, it doesn't effect you anymore.

-He is NOT a psychic, so it is not Chris telling you about your lives. It is him coaching you, to remember your own. It feels like you are making it up, but the information comes so quickly, detailed and with emotion that most of us aren't really capable of that kind of creativity!

There are a lot more details I could get into but it doesn't entirely impact my story...anyway you don't have to really BELIEVE in past lives, if you simply let it happen & it get results, then who cares the real reason why? Personally I do believe in past lives as part of my spirtual philosophy (which I'll get into some other time).

So Mary & I both decided to try a session. It was an hour & a half long. I should mention that I have done two bouts of hypnotherapy sessions before with other hypnotists. While I had little success with it in terms of my issues, I did learn the hypnosis process very well, thus I "go under" easier than first timers and get "deeper".

I did the therapy for three issues:

-neck pain,

-mood swings,

-weight.

Neck Pain: I have been having chronic headaches and neck pain since January. I have seen the chiropractor 8-9 times since then and had short term success with it. During my hypnosis, Chris told me to go to the life that my neck pain originates from. I found myself with a rope around my neck, waiting to be hung during the witch trials. I could totally feel the material & weight of the rope very vividly. I didn't feel immediate pain relief, but after about 1 day the neck pain went away. I haven't felt it since, despite doing the activities that normally re-agitated it (playing with my iPhone, the laptop, etc).

Mood Swings: Since I was a teenager, I (& those around me) have suffered from my mood swings. I can be totally fine and then super emotional. It's often like an out of body experience where my logical mind is watching myself and is like "what are we doing?" For this issue, I went back to the civil war time where my husband was fighting in the war. I so desperately wanted him to come home, and he did but things were not the same. Some days would be fine almost normal, but then other days were forlorn and depressing. It's only been a few weeks, but I haven't had the swing down since & I've found that my patience with Dexter has grown.

Weight: I went to a life where I was a 6 year old boy in Ireland, during famine times. It was my job to find food in other people's garbage, gardens, etc since I was small enough to go unnoticed or at the least, unpunished. We were poor and definitely starving. My little sister, 2 years old, died from starvation/disease.  I felt responsible for her death and deeply saddened (in fact, during my regression I had a strong reaction to this and actually cried!). My baggage from this life caused me to hoard food, eat food when I wasn't hungry, and constantly bring food with me because I was worried to go without. Since then, I can honestly say that I don't feel those unnatural urges anymore, my appetitie has gone down, and I've been satisfied with eating less.  However, it must be said that I still struggle with choosing nutrious foods over junk foods.  I checked my weight a few days ago & I have lost a few pounds :-) I feel that some issues (like my weight), can be an accumulation of many issues and this helped one of them. 

I'd love to do the hypnosis regression again and uncover a few more things in my life.  All in all, it was a positive experience.  One more neat thing I'd like to share, is that in one of my lives, I had a very vivid impage of a bridge where I was parked on the river bank. I knew I was in Detroit in the 50s/60s.  After my session, I googed "bridges detroit" and on the first page found a picture of that exact bridge, and found that it was there at that time. Very neat!  As far as I know, it's not that famous of a bridge & I don't recall having any knowledge of it prior.