Over the weekend, we got one of those seats that attaches to the back of the bicycle,

I have a bike trailer for Daphne, but riding around town is really difficult because the bike paths are extremely narrow or nonexistent, plus, the cart itself weighs thirty pounds, and when I am out of shape, that is really, really hard to pull up a hill.

After a fair bit of assembly, I got it to the state that I can put the baby in it.

She loves it. I have been for more bike rides since then than I had the entire winter. I will ride around and a round, and as soon as I make a move to unbuckle the seat belt, she starts to scream. If she had it her way, she would spend the entire day strapped to the back of my bike.

It HAS gotten me out riding my bike more, and it is really enjoyable.

Something about moving around on wheels really fascinates her!

Daphne still sleeps with me. In late June, we are going to transfer her to her own bed at night to sleep so that Jared and I can move back into the master bed without a baby there.

I was reminded last night of the reason for this. Jared was trying to sleep in the same bed as us again, and it was looking very hard. I take up a lot of room with all my pillows and the baby takes up a lot of room because she doesn’t seem to care about the other people around her. This has left Jared trying to sleep in the same bed but having to hand body parts off the bed in order to fit.

He gave up and went to his own bed where he would have plenty of room.

This morning, I was acutely aware of the baby taking up the whole bed.

You see, the problem is that she has taken to sleeping sideways on the bed. She sleeps not head-to-toe, but side to side, so one of us gets a foot in the while while the other gets a hand in the face.

She does this all the time, I don’t get it. Every night she puts herself into this position.

And you know what, she may be getting that room to herself very soon.

I am a part of a very tight knit group around here. There are a lot of people who care a lot about each other who live in a very small space.

One of the biggest problems with my birth was that the gossip of it got out before I was able to tell the story myself. People came up to me after I had recovered to talk about various details that had gotten to them. Some of the details were mundane, but many of them were shocking.

I was on the other end of this recently. My friend recently had a baby, and there was a phone line chain going around with every detail up to the second of what was going on with her. In the end, I decided that I did not want to be a part of it, and I tried to remove myself from it unless my help was asked by the family involved.

All the gossip hubbub got me thinking if there were any ways to prevent this kind of a thing from happening at my own birth in the future.

And then it came to me. What if anyone that was invited to the birth was bonded for $50,000.

And I set out to write it into my next birth plan. You see, either people will not be able to talk about my birth at all or I will be one very rich lady.

Jared thinks I am crazy, but I think that I have come up with the perfect solution to what I consider to be a very real problem.

When Adam and Ever were in the Garden of Eden, God told them that they could do anything as long as they did not eat from the forbidden apple tree.

Satan appeared as a snake to Eve and convinced her to take a bite from the apple and then to get her husband to take a bite.

They were seen by God and were cast out of Paradise. They were banished from the Garden of Eden forever.

As a punishment to Eve for having done that forbidden act, God gave her the pains of childbirth.

And wasn’t that nice of him.

Religious teachings aside, this is what I was thinking about a lot this weekend. You know, when I was pregnant, I as in Italy studying Italian Renaissance Art. As the group I was with knew I was pregnant, every time we saw the Banishment, the Professor would turn to me and joke that I was going to have to bear the burden of Eve’s decision.

I was pretty optimistic about my birth for the entirety of my pregnancy thinking that it could be not as bad as they say it could be. I even read stories online of women whose babies literally fell out of them while they were doing their daily activities. I was sure that was going to be me.

It turns out, that the punishment given to women was a very real one, but it is also a very spiritual one. Any woman that has gone through something of a natural birth will tell you that there is something incredibly magical about giving birth to a baby, especially if you do it without drugs and in water.

I was hoping on that kind of an experience. However, after 48 hours of labor and a whole hell of a lot of pushing, it was clear that I was going to have to bear the burden further, and I was going to have to have a c-section.

I go back and forth on my c-section. Some days it does not bother me and other days it really does bother me. On a really optimistic day, I feel like it was a blessing. You see, if I had just had a perfect birth, I think I would have gone on with my life and I never would have gotten caught up in the sanctity of childbirth. Though this probably would have been fine, I am discovering that a lot of my passion and experience draws on the fact that I endured a trial, a very real and very tough trial.

The problem is that when other people I know have babies, it stirs it all up. When I know of someone having a natural birth, I feel jealous and I feel like a wimp. I wish I could erase the memory of anyone who was involved so that only I would have to remember what a short straw I drew.

Over the weekend, one of my friends had a baby. She ended up having a c-section after a very long trial of labor. On one hand, if she had has such a long trial of labor and managed to have the baby naturally, I was going to feel horrible, like a crazy little wimp because I had to have my baby cut out of me. On the other hand, I did not want to wish a c-section on anyone. In the end, I think my friend is happy with where she ended up with the birth, but I feel for her that she had to endure the pain of being cut into to get the baby out rather than having the baby naturally.

And that brings up the subject of birth warriors. I think there are a lot of birth warriors out there. It is not just the mamas that make it through a trial of labor undrugged (as I didnt’). I think it includes the mamas that have extremely long labors or the mamas that even try giving natural labor a try. My friend this weekend was definitely a birth warrior, and I think that I am to. It is not so much the method of birth in the end, it is the bravery endured by a mama in a very scary situation.

I am looking now at birth plans for the future, and the possibilities are endless. I only hope that I can prove to be as much of a birth warrior as some of the women I have come to know.

Daphne is starting to become more independent in her walking, and she is not always happy to just be carried around.

During a recent trip to WalMart, she was being fussy about being held, so I put her down in the parking lot to walk. Jared held one hand and I held the other. She walked from the car to the store as the most independent little baby I had ever seen. She has insisted on doing it every time that way when both Jared and I are at the store.

As a bonus, we counted to three and then lifted her up off her feet. She really liked to be held up like that and it provided some extra entertainment in her independent walking.

Daphne usually sleeps through the night on her own. I weaned her in the night about 3 weeks ago so that I would be able to get more sleep and she could sleep without relying on me to stay asleep.

Occasionally, Daphne wakes up and tries to convince me that I need to nurse her back to sleep. She was having a rough night last night, and she woke up completely. As she was crying trying to convince me to nurse her, I rolled over and ignored her by pretending to be asleep.

She crawled to the edge of the bed, picked up a pillow and walked it over to me. When I still continued to ignore her, she smashed the pillow in my face so that she made sure that I got the idea that she wanted me to nurse her.

I did manage to get her back to sleep, but I really love that she is so willing to communicate to me.

I mentioned in a post earlier that Daphne is really interested in going outside. It is getting extreme. She almost would rather live outside.

Every morning, I must put on shoes, socks and a coat so that she can get to playing outside.

A fit is thrown when I try to take her inside no matter the circumstances.

The other day, I was out building the rabbit hutch, and it was pouring down rain. My efforts to go inside were met with a very grumpy baby who wanted to stay outside and get wet.

I sure am glad that summer is coming. We will be spending a lot of time outside, that is for sure.

I heard that Bill Clinton was coming in to town on Saturday to campaign for his wife. I had a lot of doubts about going, but Jared and I decided to try to make it happen.

I do NOT support the Hillary campaign. If anything, I was there spying to see what they were saying at the rallies. I am not much of a political person, but being as this was a former President of the United Sates coming, I decided it was a once-in-a-lifetime deal.

I decided I was going to take Daphne and Jared and we were going to go and see this former President.

It was supposed to start at 1:45, and we showed up to a massively long line. It at least wrapped around the block. We were sure that there was no way all those people would fit into the high school gym, but they did!

They managed to fit every single one of us in. Unfortunately, the President was running almost 2 hours late, so by 3:30, he still had not shown up.

We were thinking of leaving, but we decided to stay and just hear a little bit.

As soon as the President showed up and started talking, I was out of there. There was no reason that I wanted to stay. I did not agree with the campaign or with voting for his wife for President.

I can’t believe that she has hired someone to campaign for her that was a President that was almost impeached for adultery and lying under oath. All the more reasons for me to vote for Obama.

Let it be official, I do not like the Obama campaign much, but I feel that my vote in the primaries should go toward making sure that Hillary does not get the Democratic nomination.

Jared and I have changed our political party to Democrat and we will be voting, not for Obama, but against Hillary.

As of Monday, I have hit 1000 posts on this blog.

Congratulations to me!

Since we have had our debt, we have been shuffling it around to keep it at low interest. We have done a very good job keeping it on a 0% credit card for some time, and we have, in fact, not paid a lick of interest on it since we decided to put it on a credit card.

In order to maintain the debt, we have been shuffling it from one balance transfer offer to another over and over again being diligent to transfer it as the previous offer expired.

We have had the great luxury of keeping it on the same card for a year now, but if we do not transfer it by the end of the month, we will have a high-interest debt on our hands.

And so, the money wars have started. With the financial crisis that is going on in this country, we are having a harder and harder time being able to transfer the debt this time.

We still have not found something that will even remotely work for us.

Jared and I are both motivated to get out of debt, and in fact, yesterday, we were joking that everything in the house was for sale. I wonder how much money we could make to pay off the debt if we sold everything we own.