Random thoughts on Starvation, Obesity, and Organic Food

http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/articles/food_crisis_in_kenya/

RT @injusticefacts: 28 percent of children in developing countries are severely underweight while 45% of American children are overweight. My friend Stacy Leigh, over at My Messy Manger, had this posted as her facebook status yesterday and I've been thinking about it a lot.

Then I read this article from Samaritan's Purse about the food crisis in the horn of Africa right now and what they are doing to help and I couldn't help but think about that above quote again, and feel guilty.

I'm not obese at all but I do sometimes go back and forth about spending so much money on groceries. You see, I love to buy organic because of all the toxins, pesticides, and chemicals in just about all of our food here in America. It costs more. A lot of the reason it costs more is because it supports sustainable pracitices and provides fair wages and good working conditions for those harvesting the crops so this makes me feel good. But it also means that money I could be using to send to Samaritan's Purse or other organizations is going towards our grocery bill. I believe buying organic is worthwhile because it helps others and I believe it is a great way to steward the body God gave me and to take care of my family. But I just have these random conflicting thoughts that sometimes cross my mind and I sometimes wonder if its "okay" to spend so much money on groceries when there are so many starving. So that's my struggle. Can anyone relate? Ideally, one day we hope to learn more about homesteading and grow most all of our own food or participate in CSAs, etc. This would help bring the cost down immensely.

And then there is the obesity problem in America. It saddens me when I look at pictures like this:

And then I look at pictures like this:

There is so much wrong with these two contrasting pictures and scenarios that I cannot even begin to put my thoughts into words. Our country is so greedy and gluttonous it is sickening. We are so materialistic and consumeristic and ravenous really. It saddens me that parents allow their children to get obese and overweight because of the hazard it is for their health. (genetics just means you have to work harder at keeping the weight off, it is not an excuse for obesity) It also maddens me when I am reminded of the fact that there are children all over the world and even in our own country that are starving. How can this be?! It is not right! Even though I am not obese I am still guilty of over eating and indulging in food and goods that I do not need, while children die from starvation daily all over the world.

What will we do to help the starving children in Kenya, Somalia, and other areas in the horn of Africa? Will we turn away and pretend like it doesn't exist as we continue to stuff our faces and our homes with stuff we don't need? I am asking myself these questions as well. I know that the needs are so overwhelming all over the world and I am just one person. You are just one person. But one person + one person + one person, etc. can make a big difference.

Let us pray that God would open our eyes to our gluttonous hearts and our gluttonous stomaches and show us how He would have us help starving children all over the world and in our own back yards.

First Birthday Party, Healthy but not so Green

Baby Girl enjoying her naturally sweetened 1st birthday cake. I wanted to make sure we didn't give her sugar on her birthday just because that was the thing to do, because we don't give her sugar any other time. Yes, I am a little bit of a health nut mama. The cake was really yummy though and you can find the recipe here. We did the sugar free applesauce and banana cake. And for icing we did cream cheese and 100% pure maple syrup.

Eating dinner! Turkey dogs, watermelon, and banana! Yum!

Some of the decorations. A 12 month photo frame, her giraffe (for our Safari theme) and some photo albums of her newborn session and her one year session. I took her one year session and they turned out great!

Some of the decor. I wish I would have been thinking more eco-friendly with the decor. Most of it was paper so I suppose that is good, but there was a good bit of plastic too. We did use all of it again a few weeks later and we saved it in case we want to use it for the next girl. Hopefully I can get in tune with my inner craftiness and make my own decorations next time! We got the decorations from First Wishes and it was a Pink Safari theme!

Our baby girl blowing out the candles on the adult cake from Whole Foods. That whole sheet cake was around $35! What a deal and oh so yummy with great ingredients!

Having fun playing with her cake!

Opening up gifts! We are trying to start a tradition of having people donate to a couple of different organizations instead of bringing gifts. This year we chose Life Choices of Memphis and Young Lives (youngLife ministry to teen moms), and a few people chose to donate. We still got a lot of toys that we are very thankful for as well. In the future I think asking people to bring tangible things to donate may go over better. I hope as she gets older she will want to continue doing this. We will do our best to encourage this! Her life is a gift from God and I hope she will desire to bless others with her life as we celebrate her birthday every year.

Her adorable safari outfit that her Mimi made her. That is a hat that goes with it too, but it was a cool overcast May day so we were inside most of the time. Isn't she cute?

Our family of three on baby girl's bday!

Happy Birthday baby girl! We had so much fun celebrating with you! Huge thanks to Papa John and Grammy for letting us use their house! And thanks to all the family and friends that came to help celebrate!

Little LadyBug Baby Clothes, and A GIVEAWAY!

My Baby Girl modeling her beautiful sundress from Little LadyBug Baby!

What doesn't Little LadyBug Baby sell? First of all, check out my baby girl modeling her adorable halter top sundress with matching bloomers and bow (headband too)! Too cute! I just love this fabric, don't you? You can buy it here if you want to! And you know you want to!

The lady behind Little LadyBug baby is a stay at home mom, or rather a work at home mom, who loves making cute stuff and sharing it with others. Her work is qaulity ya'll! And she is great about customizing orders too. You can go to Etsy to check our her page, but here are some of my favs!

 She does pajamas! All different prints!

 Totes, or diaper bags. They are one in the same when you are a mom!

 Love this fabric and these colors!

 This sundress is too cute!

 Love this pillowcase dress! The colors are great!

 A classic romper for all you classic type moms out there!

And something for the boys too!

She also has boppy covers, binky clips, hair bows, bloomer covers,and tons more girl clothes! She has tons of different fabric choices, and free shipping for orders over twenty dollars here in the US through the end of August.

So for the GIVEAWAY! My first ever I should have you know. Little LadyBug Baby is giving the lucky winner a twenty five dollar gift card to her Etsy store! I know, great huh!

Here is how you can enter...leave a seperate comment for each thing you do to be entered more than once.

1) Go click around in her Etsy store and leave me a comment telling me what your favorite item is.
2) Add her Etsy store to your favorites, or subscribe to the feed, and leave me a comment telling me you did it.
3) Add her store as a friend on facebook here, and let me know you did it.
4) Share about this giveaway on facebook, and let me know
5) Share about this giveaway on twitter, and let me know
6) Subsribe to Memphis Misfit Mama via RSS or email or google follower, and let me know

Remember to write a seperate comment for each of the six ways to enter! Also, be sure to subscribe to my blog, or follow me to be sure to see if you are the winner! Once the winner is announced you will have one week to get in touch with me. (You can also follow me on facebook here. )

Good luck and happy shopping at Little LadyBug Baby! Thanks Kelly for such a generous giveaway! Show her some love people!

My "Why I'm Not Babywise" Story, Ezzo Week 2011

This is a repost in honor of  Ezzo Week with Tulip Girl

Welcome to the  Why I'm Not Babywise Series

Before reading any further please read my introduction and disclaimer here. This is the second post in the series. Gary Ezzo wrote a book called On Becoming Babywise, and also material and curriculum called Growing Kids God's Way. I have only read On Becoming Babywise 1995 edition. 

You would think someone like me would be a perfect candidate for Babywise. I am very Type A (but being married to a type B has helped me calm down a bit), and I love planning. I hate to not know what my calendar holds or what my day is going to look like. I like to be in charge of my schedule and I love to be on time. I hate being late and I hate canceling appointments. I like predictability, and I am not prone to being flexible.  Oh, and I love sleep. I mean, who doesn't? (Being in the south has really challenged my personality in a lot of these areas. These folks are just overall more laid back).

So of course when I heard about the principles in Babywise when I was in college it sounded great. As a college student, I especially loved sleep. Getting a daily nap in was very important, right? You remember those carefree college days. So when I heard about getting your baby to sleep through the night at a very young age and getting them on a predictable schedule it sounded wonderful! I don't think I knew at the time that these principles came from a book called Babywise, but I am pretty sure they did.
Also in college I was learning more about reformed theology and human depravity. The Bible clearly teaches that we are sinful from conception and are born sinners. Babies are sinners. I remember using this illustration as an analogy several times when I was sharing about sin: "If you have ever been around a newborn baby it is clear to see that we are born sinful. They are so selfish and only want their own way. They cry all the time because they are selfish and sinful and want their needs met." (I now see that although we are all born sinful, a newborn baby's cry is not an expression of that sin. A newborn baby's cry is a reflex and a newborn baby cries to communicate, not to manipulate. )
Then as I graduated and many of my friends started having babies, I started hearing about the principles in Babywise a lot more. It still sounded great to me. One of my close friends was telling me about how her babies would start sleeping through the night around 8 weeks or so. This sounded simply heavenly to me. She also told me about "cry it out" and this sounded fine too. If this cry it out method was helping them sleep through the night at 8 weeks then it couldn't be all bad, could it?There was even another girl we went to college with that posted some stuff on facebook about "crying it out" being bad for babies and we talked about how crazy of an idea this was. How ironic that I go to this girl now for advice, and that people now probably talk about how crazy my ideas are. Hah! How the tables have turned, huh?

Then I got married and a year later conceived a baby. I began researching pregnancy and childbirth options and decided on homebirth.  For that story click here. After entering into the world of homebirth I began to be exposed to a more natural approach to parenting and started hearing terms like "attachment parenting". I was leery of attachment parenting because of common myths I had heard about it. I didn't want to raise a spoiled bratty baby after all.  Towards the beginning of my pregnancy I was convinced that I would read and implement Babywise. I bought this book at a local bookstore early in my pregnancy but didn't read it right away. Instead I began reading birth books that leaned in the more natural direction since I was planning a homebirth. I also took a birthing class and a breastfeeding class along with my husband that leaned towards more of a natural style of parenting. We read a couple of articles on "attachment" but the teaching didn't directly advocate attachment parenting. Still,  I started thinking that there might be a different way then just Babywise.

Then, a friend loaned me a book that changed the course of my parenting.  When she loaned it to me she said that a friend of hers that didn't like Babywise gave it to her. At this point I was still kinda thinking, "Why wouldn't someone like Babywise?" I took it and decided I would read it just to get a different perspective. Why not, right?
After finishing up all my birth books, I picked up this book... The Complete Book of Christian Parenting & Child Care by Dr. Sears. I loved it right away.  What?! A Christian that teaches something other than fear based parenting and crying it out methods? This book totally changed my perspective on babies and parenting. Dr. Sears coined the phrase "attachment parenting", although mothers and fathers have been practicing the principles of attachment parenting for centuries. Needless to say, this started me down the path of thinking that maybe Babywise wasn't the wisest way to parent a baby. At least not as a cut and dry method, or a one size fits all program for every baby.

I decided I still wanted to read Babywise so I could see what all the hype was about and understand where my friends were coming from and what they were being taught by this Gary Ezzo guy. I read it from cover to cover. I will admit there are some worthwhile things to learn about in this book, but several other more helpful baby friendly books talk about routine and breastfeeding much more thoroughly and sensitively. Most of this book, and the general attitude of Gary Ezzo, rubbed me the wrong way. There are several things in this book that I disagree with that I will address in later posts.

After reading Babywise I was even more convinced that I did not want to do things this way. I wanted to follow my God-given mothering insticts and I wanted to depend on the Spirit to parent my baby, not rules and methods laid out by a man. I wanted to model the servant-leadership of Christ to my baby. I wanted to seek to put her first as Philippians 2 teaches. If I want my baby to see Christ through me and to see what kind of Father God is I have to model that to her. I found many of the principles in Babywise to be unbiblical. I also found that many issues that are non-biblical Ezzo turned into commands and musts that God never intended or laid out in His word.

I am so glad that I came across this different way of parenting, this natural, instinctive way of parenting, this attached, bonded style of parenting, this family-centered style of parenting, this gentle, baby sensitive style of parenting.

I am so glad that the Lord showed me that He is the only One who can show us how to raise kids God's way. He is the ultimate authority on parenting, and it is on He that I depend on every day to lead me and guide me as I parent my baby girl. He created each baby in his/her mother's womb with different temperaments and unique needs, and He is the expert on parenting each baby. It is on Him that we should lean on.

For more on my views of parenting you can check out this post.

Please stay with me as I go through specific methods and principles that Gary Ezzo teaches that I believe to be medically and biblically inaccurate, and most of all why they didn't/wouldn't have worked for us. The rest of the posts I hope to keep much shorter. I know I 'm long winded. Thanks for reading to the end!
Please remember as you post comments not to attack one another as mothers but to critique the principles of Babywise, not those that implement various principles he teaches. Please give one another grace as we all seek to parent our babies the best way we know how. 


Well, what about you? What is your story in Why You're Not Babywise, or Why You are Babywise?

My Story. Part 1: Life before I met Christ

Childhood:
I am from Southern IL near Saint Louis and grew up with my parents and two little brothers, along with a really tight-knit extended family. My grandparents were and still are devout Catholics but my family just went occasionally. I grew up believing in God and enjoying going to church but I had no concept of what it meant to follow Jesus and live for Him. I never heard the gospel growing up. I thought if I was good and didn’t do anything awful like murder someone I would go to heaven.  For the most part I was a goody goody and really wanted to please my parents, make good grades, etc. I spent most of my time doing ballet and reading and doing school work. I thought a lot about God and heaven when one of my great uncles died and then my dog the year later, but I still had no concept of being a Christian.
Junior High/High School:
I still thought about God every so often and went to mass occasionally but I more cared about extra-curriculars and being popular. I was finally part of the popular crowd in 8th grade and didn’t care as much about being a goody goody. My freshman year I got drunk once just spending the night at a friends house and it was awful and I never had any desire to do so again. My girl friends and I hung out with the cool high school guys and dated guys that liked to party and be rebellious and we thought it was pretty cool. I started putting so much significance in guys and what they thought of me, and I always wanted to make sure I had a boyfriend. I was desperately searching for significance and purpose. I went through some very low times where I wondered what the point of living was. I just didn't have any inner joy. My happiness was based on my circumstances. During this same time I was in choir and making friends there. There were several Christians in there that were befriending me and inviting me to church so I went occasionally to youth group with them. For a few months I was really interested in learning more about God, but when summer came along I was busy with the dance team and hung out with those girls and their boyfriends. For the first half of my sophomore year I didn’t really go to youth group and went through a time where I just decided I needed to be good and spiritual on my own so I tried to figure that out. I tried to be moral and good on my own. I even bought a "true love waits" ring and a "what would Jesus do" bracelet. I was trying to slowly become a Christian externally, but it was not working. My friends kept inviting me to youth events and invited me to Disciple Now and I agreed to go. Leading up to that weekend I remember thinking that I really needed Jesus but I just didn’t know how to go about becoming a Christian. The first night of the retreat I heard the gospel preached very clearly and I knew I need to become a Christian. God was very clearly drawing me to Himself my whole entire life and His grace was irresistible to me at this point, and He gave me the faith to trust in Him.

So What About Growing Kids God's Way?

I talk a lot about Babywise because that is the only Ezzo book I've read, so what about the rest of their material?

Here is a GREAT post by tulip girl with links to TONS of other resources!

What about GKGW?

Ezzo Week with Tulip Girl

In honor of the 8th Annual Ezzo Week hosted by fellow blogger, Tulip Girl, I will be reposting a few of my favorite Babywise posts. 


But go ahead and click around on all of them that interest you, and please do check out Tulip Girl's blog. Tons of valuable info and resources to be found indeed!



Welcome to the Why I'm Not Babywise Series. The author of On Becoming Babywise, Garry Ezzo, also wrote curriculum geared towards Christians called Growing Kids God's Way. I have only read the 1995 edition of On Becoming Babywise. I have never read GKGW or Toddlerwise or any other Gary Ezzo "wise" books. So it is only to Babywise that I can speak. I have heard of principles he lays out in GKGW so that may come through a bit in my writing, but I never read it myself. Welcome to the my first blogging series!
 An Intro Please read this disclaimer and intro before reading any of the other posts or you won't understand the context of any other posts)

 My Story
The Author's Character Counts  
My Prayer as a New Parent
From mainstream mama to "crazy" mama. One mom's story 
I'm "that mom" in Chapter One, except I'm not PART ONE
I'm "that mom" PART TWO 
Wisdom from a Veteran Mom of 4
Are babies born to BE SERVANTS or to BE SERVED?
Babywise is NOT the Bible: Parenting by the Law or by the Spirit?
My best friend's Babywise story, and why it worked for her... 
One of my best friend's parenting story and her thoughts on Babywise 
Scheduling, Boobs, and Bottle, part one 


Here is some researching you can do:Information on the author of Babywise, Gary Ezzo
Babywise Series by Sorta Crunchy
On Becoming Ezzowise
Ezzo Week by Tulip Girl
Confessions of a failed Babywiser
Ezzo Parenting