Hmm...

The following is an excerpt from a talk given by previous Pres. Ronald Regan....Enjoy

REAGAN: Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program.

There are many ways in which our government has invaded the precincts of private citizens, the method of earning a living. But at the moment I'd like to talk about another way because this trip is with us and at the moment is more imminent.

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can't afford it.

Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. We had an example of this. Under the Truman administration it was proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States, and, of course, the American people unhesitatingly rejected this.

So with the American people on record as not wanting socialized medicine, Congressman Ferrand said, if we can only break through and get our foot inside the door, they can we can expand the program after that. Well, let's see what the socialists themselves had to say about it. They say once the Ferrand bill is passed, this nation will be provided with a mechanism for socialized medicine capable of indefinite expansion in every direction until it includes the entire population. Well, we can't say we haven't been warned.

James Madison in 1788, speaking to the Virginia Convention said: “Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

Now in our country under our free enterprise system, we have seen medicine reach the greatest heights that it has in any country in the world. Today, the relationship between patient and doctor in this country is something to be envied any place. The privacy, the care that is given to a person, the right to chose a doctor, the right to go from one doctor to the other.

But let’s also look from the other side, at the freedom the doctor loses. A doctor would be reluctant to say this. Well, like you, I am only a patient, so I can say it in his behalf. The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it’s like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren’t equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.

This is a freedom that I wonder whether any of us have the right to take from any human being.

In this country of ours, took place the greatest revolution that has ever taken place in world’s history. The only true revolution. Every other revolution simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. But here for the first time in all the thousands of years of man’s relation to man, a little group of the men, the founding fathers for the first time – established the idea that you and I had within ourselves the God given right and ability to determine our own destiny.

This freedom was built into our government with safeguards. We talk democracy today. And strangely we let democracy begin to assume the aspect of majority rule is all that is needed. Well, majority rule is a fine aspect of democracy, provided there are guarantees written in to our government concerning the rights of the individual and of the minorities.

What can we do about this? Well, you and I can do a great deal. We can say right now that we want no further encroachment on these individual liberties and freedoms and that you demand the continuation of our traditional free enterprise system. You and I can do this. The only way we can do it is by writing to our congressmen, even if we believe that he's on our side to begin with, write to strengthen his hand. Write those letters now. Call your friends and tell them to write. If you don't, this program, I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. And behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country... until one day as Norman Thomas said, we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don't do this and if I don't do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free.

our missions

Jacob has this book from his mission that has various talks in it given to his mission president as they started their mission and I was reading a section that I thought could be for me as a parent....

"Without a doubt, during your missions you will be challenged as never before. Certainly this will be a season of sacrifice and toil. The work will require your all; your best efforts will be needed to rise to the occasion. At times, you may feel that the demands of this call are almost overwhelming. Again, I turn to Pres. Hinckley to provide some comforting, sustaining guidance. Though he was speaking to the entire Church at the time, his words have particular meaning to this group today:

This is a season to be strong. It is a time to move forward without hesitation, knowing well the meaning, the breadth, and the importance of our mission. It is a time to do what is right regardless of the consequences that might follow. It is a time to be found keeping the commandments. It is a season to reach out with kindness and love to those in distress and to those who are wandering in darkness and pain. It is a time to be considerate and good, decent and courteous toward one another in all of our relationships- in other words, to become more Christlike.

It is so easy with all my day to day task to forget the purpose of my life here. I am already in the midst of eternity, it is just that one day my location will change. Just the other day the girls were 'fighting' alot with one another and I sent them both to their room, when I went up I told them....'you know our sissies are supposed to be our best friends, they are the ones we will be with from now on' and for the most part they just love one another. Liliana calls Jane, "her best baby' and as Mattie gets older and can do more the two big girls enjoy playing with one another. I love that I have three little girls.

Thinking back to the quote up there, it reminds me of marriage as well. It also can be the thing that challenges us as never before, where we feel overwhelmed. I am thankful for my husband. I love how he loves all over his girls. Just this morning I loved seeing him carry around Jane in his new sling (that he requested we buy for him, so he could also carry her). I also love that he makes a point of showing his girls how much he loves his wife (thats me :))

His hours will start picking up here in a week and we will miss his terribly at times like bedtime and other such times where we are used to having him here but we know it wont be forever, it will just SEEM like it is sometimes....

Here is a pic of jane and I last night after our shower (her first one with me)....

a balance act

So my hormones are trying to 'balance' themselves (i.e., just about anything can make me cry right now....) and now that the baby is born it is almost like I can process many of the changes of life that have just been happening to our family. Like moving to a new home (which I am trying to keep clean, partly for sanity and partly because it helps me to 'like' the home better), leaving behind or saying goodbye to wonderful and much needed friends, jacobs new job (and the hours that come along with it-as well as the stress that sometimes comes home from work), our finances are really different and I am trying to get used to a new budget, having to find new friends for my girls (and myself) and I don't know how many times I have gotten lost while driving around here....I think we came up here under such stress of trying to find a home quickly and then all my energy went into unpacking before the baby came that now that she is here I can deal with the changes and well, it is abit hard sometimes....

I am so thankful that Jane sleeps. I would be a walking zombie mess if she didn't. But we are blessed to finally have a baby that knows when it is night time and just sleeps, gently waking up just to eat and then goes back to bed till morning...what a blessing. We have also been fortunate to have Zarah here. This has meant naps for me and major help with the older girls. I will miss her help and am not sure if I am ready to fly solo again.

I realize now that Jane will grow up so quickly, so I am trying to treasure her littleness and all her squeaky noises. Liliana called mattie, mattiemouse (when an infant), and now calls Jane, janekitty because she thinks it is funny how little babies squeak.

Having three is alot more work then having two (obviously) but I am hopeful that at somepoint it will just be 'normal' to us. I am also hoping that when it starts to feel normal we wont do something silly and make it four kids....

Jacob has 2 more weeks of being home for bedtime routine, then I am on my own all day long as he wont be home till after bedtime 6 days week, so hopefully my hormones will be 'balanced' by then and I can balance everyone better on my own....

Our baby Jane!

Well I have been wanting to post about jane's birth and how things are going just having a hard time finding a chance to do it (hmm, I wonder why???)...
so i first want to say that we all just love our little jane. It seems like I have been pregnant with her for forever. I think that we have felt it has been so long because of life's circumstances surrounding this time frame. We got pregnant with Jane the weekend before my mother showed up unexpectedly at our home to stay. I spent my first trimester trying to discover what was 'wrong' with my mom, my second waiting around for a home to open up for my mother and trying to be patient and my third trimester, packing, looking for a home, moving to a new area, and jacob starting work. So needless to say it seems as if jane has been with us for along time already we just did not get to see her till now.
Once jacob and I realized the timing of when she would be born we felt very strongly that we needed her, our family, needed her to be born during this crazy time. We felt jane and her presence would help us as alittle family stay united during a crazy adjusting time. Jacob and I still very much depend on one another, even with our very limited time, to help each other out and having Jane just intensifies that need for one another.

Now I have shared some or part of Jane's birth story with a few people and I think most people I have spoken to have been surprised how horrendous I describe it. I have to frist start off by saying I have never, EVER, experienced that kind of pain for that duration of time and frankly I hope I never have to have that same experience again.
I am so thankful labor is over, so thankful Jane and I made it out alive and well(trying not to be dramatic here), so thankful I was able to push her out without intervention(s), so thankful my body is healing rapidly, so thankful that jane and I have become great nursing partners and she is able to get her needs met with my milk.........we just are so thankful for her!

I went monday morning to get my membranes stripped (I had never had that done before) and that was way more painful than I thought it would be. I spent the rest of the day pretty miserable but not in labor, just contracting enough to be non-functional but not enough to be in full blown labor. Then I went back in Tuesday morning (this time, jacob took the day off) and was checked (4cm) and re-stripped. Jacob and I decided to 'walk' the baby out, so we went out to breakfast, then off to walk. We went to a park near the hospital first (i was very optimisitc that we could just walk around there for abit then be right near the hospital to go have the baby). We spent that walk narrowing down our favorite names. We decided on the names, Jane, Anne, or Kathryn as a first name and various combos of that as a middle name. So then we went off to Bangor City Forest and walked a few trails and the Orono Bog. The wind was great so no bugs bothered us the whole walk. Then we went off to a trail near our home in Old Town. After that it was time to pick up the girls and off we went to the Farmers market. We hung out there for an hour and by the end of that hour the pressure from standing and contractions was such that I needed to go sit in the van. We went home, made dinner, put the girls to bed and then as I was getting myself ready for bed I had that first, 'oh, my goodness, this is the real thing' contraction. I was actually trying to ignore what was happening because I had walked all day and now wanted to sleep, not have labor. So around 9pm i menioned to jacob that he should just get regular clothes on and not his jammies as those contractions were 5 min apart and painful. We made our various calls and were out the door by 9:30pm and at the hospital by 10pm.
I advise anyone to pre-registar with whereever you will be having the baby as it killed me to have to go through painful contractions while filling out paperwork and answering questions.
When we arrived up in the room the nurse wanted to check me (I was a 5)...I was expecting to have Jane as quickly as Mattie or just under a few hours. It seems like things were heading that way but then I looked at the clock and realized an hour had already gone by and I knew this time would be different. I then had jacob take the clock off the hospital wall, as it was depressing me and causing me to 'wonder' what was 'wrong', why this was taking longer.
You see, normally ones level of pain and type and closeness of contractions indicates how close one is too seeing their baby. but this time it did not work like that for me. My pain was at 7cm was the same it was at birth for mattie and I still had a few hours to go. One interesting thing about this birth, if anyone but jacob was in the room, my contractions would stop or be lighter for the duration of the time they were in the room and the minute they left they would return back to normal speed and duration. I felt so 'watched', so like everyone was waiting for me to push the baby out and my mind was racing. I kept thinking about how things could go downhill if the baby just never kept coming. Even after breaking my water I just stopped having contractions for like 30 minutes. it was so odd to me to be in full blown transitional labor and just have it stop but all it took was everyone leaving the room and they came back full force again.
Towards the end I started feeling that 'urge' to push, which I honestly had never felt before, both of the girls just slid out when I was dialated enough, so once again I realized, "oh, I need to push and this baby wont move an inch till I start pushing". So i started (on my hands and knees, knealing in my bed), that part took about 20 minutes and was sooooooooo very painful. I knew pushing like that was going to cause me to tear but at that point I was willing to deal with that if it meant having her out.
She came out and the midwife asked if I wanted to grab her or catch her. I said no. I was still trying to catch my breathe honestly and couldnt even turn over at that point.
I was so happy to finally see her, she looked so beautiful and perfect and was alert and happy. She showed signs of wanting to eat around 15 mins after birth or so and only after a minute she figured out how to nurse and has been a stellar nursemate since.

I am taking things one day at a time right now. I think that is best. I am thankful jacob had a few days off (he goes back tomorrow) and that my sister-in-law could come for 2 weeks. It is nice having 3 adults for 3 kids...

I know I am leaving out alot from her birth story. My love for Jane is so great that I would go through that again for her, even though at the end of it I literally wanted someone to shoot me to stop the pain. But I am so grateful I made it to the otherside of that pain. I would have never thought that I could have done that.
We love our Jane and our love for Mattie and Liliana has just grown because our family has been added to.

More pictures of Jane

Those who would like to see more pictures of Jane, you can go to bellababyphotography.com and click on "view my photos" and enter janekathryn0805 as the password.

Jane Kathryn is Here!!

Jane Kathryn was born this morning (8/5) at 2am. She weighs 7lbs 5oz and is about 21 inches long. Mother and baby are doing quite well! We're all exhausted, but well.

update

I was just rocking with Mattie. Right before mattie was born (a few days leading up to it) everytime I interacted with Liliana I got abit sad. The same is happening now with Mattie. I am realizing that she will no longer be my 'baby' or my youngest. I mean all my children will always be my babies but not 'the baby'.

The girls are both so excited for her arrival and cant wait to 'help' and have another sister. I am also happy that we will have three beautiful little girls and hope to update this blog soon with pics of her arrival and maybe even a name (still working on that part)....