I remember my first philosophy class in college where the professor asked, what shape is this table?  My internal answer was rectangle, but then he asked us to go deeper, could my actual eye view the table the same as the kid at the other end of the room who saw the other angle. 

There is so much subjective in life.  Where does reality come in?  Life is the mixture of the subjective and the real, the memories and the history.  Where do feelings come in?  Does belief and believing hinder and drag us backward?

There is so much we can have knowledge about, there is even more we can speculate about.......but the most freeing statement I have heard lately is, "I don't have to have an opinion on everything."  It is ok to not comment, not know and not say something if you don't have enough evidence to make a decision, or if you don't want people to speculate about you. 

Why fight with the inevitable?  Why set yourself in the middle of the battle when you don't have a loyalty to either party.  Why join in, unless it makes sence to you?

Even if you do have a strong tie to one cause, why let it cause a rift?  Does everyone have to see the table the same as you do?

Let it be.  Let yourself be free.  Give everyone including yourself a vacation from judgement.

Breathe

Does a name make us what we are?
Has being a Liz shaped me into who I am?
Of course. 

Therefore, as we become parents and have the power to shape our little miracles it is with great thought we provide them their names.  I have shared how we named our first born Grey, and now for our second son.....

We know what we want to name him, but the reactions to those we have told been varied, so I don't mention the name often.  

I want to shape this little life right from the start, I want him to never settle with the conventional, to go past boundries, to find the new, the amazing, and the fresh.  I  wish to instill in him a love of life, humor, laughing, people, beauty and learning; especially the love of reading.  I want to give him a healthy respect of his heritage but the courage to always be true to himself, appreciating tradition while continuting to grow past the past.  

I hope he craves more than he can achieve, and strives to do more with less and explore past boundries without caution to others fears or perceptions of him.  I hope for him to have extreme integrity, and tested values because of his own experiences and insight.  I want the unknown, the challenging and the daunting to be comfortable for him, as if he should be doing something new inorder to feel he belongs in his own skin, and an unqwenchible need to achieve more than the last time.

An Independent Free Thinker.

Can a name do this?  Such lofty goals for just one word. 

So what name is that?  I think I know the name to do all of this and more.....however, it won't end with the naming of our miracle, that is just the start, then I have to figure out how to raise the child with these goals in mind, while raising his brother and living for myself and developing better relationships.  Can this all be done?  Of course, a day at a time.

What is the name? here is 3 hints: 1. two words; 2. It is two recycled names; 3. one sounds like an adjective and the other sounds like a place.

Oh the joy of being pregnant....What you didn't know would happen....

1. I didn't know I would become paranoid.
2. I didn't know I would puke every day for the past 7 weeks.
3. I didn't know I would feel the baby kick this early.
4. I didn't know I would get offended when someone called me Hormonal.
5. I didn't know I would be hormonal.
6. I don't know so much. 

3. I should feel the baby kick starting week 16, but I feel the lil'sweetie kick now in week 13.
1. I am scared constantly that the baby isn't growing right, or that I am not doing what I should.
2. I hear it is good to puke alot: a. the baby will be healthier if I am sicker; b. If you are sicker in one pregnancy than others it means a different gender, usually a girl; c. If you are sick during your pregnancy the baby will be better behaved. 
4 & 5. Hormonal, rapid mood swings, rapid forgetting, rapid flakyness, scatterbrained and angry.  I have hardly any patience, and I feel like I get rude easier.  People assure me i am not rude, but I worry. 
6. It won't get better, I will never know enough.  But I know I love this child inside me.  I can tell there is a strong personality growing and developing....even competing inside me. 

How is all of this possible?  What a whirl wind we enter when first we love and then we serve.   It all works out. It all works out. It all works out. It all works out.

What am I to be learning right now? I keep reflecting on how through my life I seem to have so many circular experiences of cause and effect. Logically I know there is no link between  them, but emotionally the coincidences are too big to mistake. 

It seems that I earn each beginning I have had, by sacrificing for an end of something bigger than I can handle.  It started much earlier than this but my first big sacrifice was giving up my grandma in order to start my marriage,  (she died June 10th and I was married June 27th).  In order to get my first born son, I lost my Naomi (Joel's mother, called me her Ruth, and she died Nov. 3 not long after we found out we were going to be blessed with our darling boy).  By finding my worth, my path in an organization, my talent and my hearts home in friends I treasure I lost what I though was my marriage and recently I lost my job and found I had started a new life inside me. 

With each death I feel I loose more than I can stand.  It's not true, of course, I still go on but not without drastic change.  I feel like a tree that gets hit by lightning, it still lives but grows with scars and irregularities, and I wonder how people can look at me and not know my sorrow, my pain, how my tortured soul cries even though I smile. 

Some people can see other's scars, but not all are visible.  Sometimes I wish mine were, that people could look at me and see that my heart has been broken, the gaping hole that I received with each sacrifice.  I wish that with the new vision, I could see what I have gained...I know about sacrifice intellectually, it is giving something up now that means a lot to you in order to get something better later, but not with that expectation, just with the hope.  However, I don't know sacrifice emotionally.  In the heat of the tragedy I never emotionally can see beyond the ache that is. 

Emotional intelligence is as important as any other form of intelligence, but often overlooked and under developed.  I know very few few leaders who have it, I know of no real way to teach it.  I just know how to recognize someone who has it. 

Emotional intelligence is hard fought, it is acquired by walking down the halls of hell.  Emotional intelligence is earned by sacrifice, hardship, empathy, compassion and pain.  One heart that has gone to the depths of extreme pain and back recognizes another, we respect each other.  How do I bottle that up so Grey doesn't have to go through what I have?  I can't, the divine way is for him to learn on his own.  Beauty is in the pain.  Opposition in all things is the way it must be.  Evil and Good, Black and White, All and Nothing. 

Why? 

So we can choose, so we can have knowledge, so we can Grow.  Growth is why we march down the halls of hell daily.  Because if it doesn't kill us, it makes us stronger.  Experience.  Learning.  Memories.  Hope.

What can help while we fight the horror of everyday reality? there is no secret answer, it is different for each of us. 

For me it is hope.  Hope in my angels, that I feel I have surrounding me.  Right now I need them.  I need my ladies, I feel they are the ladies I lost.  I need Lynda.....she was so dear to me and to Joel.  She was so strong.  She helped me to be a better me, and she knew how to help Joel.  I need that, for I feel his path is distinctly one that is his to figure out.  I can't go where he is going, or has been on...our paths are different now. I need my grandma to help me.  I know I am strong, but I can't find the strength I need within me. 

I know I will go on, but I need to feel that soul growth, that connection, that love that pulls me higher than I can get myself.  That hug.  That pure understanding and love.  That true friend, that stays through the hard times, that reaches out and tells me to suck it up and get back out there. 

I ache for what was, I ache for what will be.  I am tired with out the chance to sleep and need the unseekable.  I crave hope, even when everything around me is dark. 

But even now when things are bleak, I can not pray for the end of hard times, for I know they all feed my growth and my spirit to become better.  I do pray for comfort though. 

I have a wonderful niece who is adorable and 2 years old.  She is highly intelligent and often blunt as children are. 

When I was looking at baby stuff on-line she came and set next to me and said, "Baby Cribs are for Losers!"  It was a shock!  What a funny lil' girl!

She co-sleeps with her parents, which might influence her opinion on the matter.  Now my brother and his wife have a crib they picked out that they used for quite some time, but when the lil' angle could climb out of it, that was the end of that.  i don't think they taught her that baby cribs are for losers, I think that was her very own. 

Co-sleeping is a touchy subject, there is research out there that if parents co-sleep with their kids it increases the risk of SIDS, which is only partly true.  I think every family has to decide for themselves what to do for them and how it should work out, but for us there was really only one option once I held him.  Infant mortality due to co-sleeping is increased if one or both adults either smoke, do drugs or drink heavily before going to bed with the infant. 

Because I worked and nursed it was essential to sleep with Grey while he was still nursing.  We moved him out of our bed after he weaned but my husband brought him back in later.  Now he is officially sleeping on his own in his own bed. 

With all the changes that Grey has gone through as he grows, we have worked together to find solutions for all of us.  He adapts better when it is natural and he is a part of the process.

The next hurdle?  introducing a new little brother or sister to the family....stay tuned.  

I am pregnant.  I am 11 weeks pregnant.  It hasn't been easy, since the middle of Feb, I have puked a lot.  I am growing wider.  I often feel icky and down, but not this morning. 

I was in the bathroom doing my hair and Grey came in and said, "Moma that is my favorite dress!  You are beautiful!" 

I don't need anyone else to compliment me for anything else today because my son thinks I am beautiful.  I feel beautiful because I have him in my life.

May the sun shine always on my face
May the wind blow always at my back
May my son always see me as beautiful
May the day be full of beauty and amazement
May the hurt of the world diminish with life, growth and love

Joel and I were so proud of our little Einstein when he was in the tub playing with his floaty letters and spelled out his name, G R E Y. Grey loves his name and says it often; in fact I tease him often by calling him different names just to hear him say, "No, I Grey Morrison!" I needed to hear him spell it again, so with the magnetic letters on the fridge I asked him to spell his name and this time he said, "G R 1." I asked him to try again and got the same response, "G R 1." Being dismayed I said no, your name is Grey Michael Morrison and he said no, "I Grey One Morrison." I had to just stop in the moment and ponder the profound nature of this child of Heaven I have been blessed with raising for this time in the eternities. His innate programming is so perfect, so deep, and so pure that he is indeed the Grey One Morrison, despite the name that was given to me for him. What a divine world we live in, where my 3 year old teaches me daily of the divine he is closer to than I know, I have so much to learn and strive to be and most of that is to be worthy of the love he gives me. The world can be black and white but the most beautiful parts are the Greys. The in-betweens and the depth of the full picture with blacks and whites and many, many shades of Grey. My son was named Grey because his father and I could only agree on one name. However, the closer it came to his birth the more I realized the perfection in our choice. Grey was conceived during one of the hardest times of our lives, Joel's mother's death. Lynda Morrison was one of the most influential women in my life. She was my Naomi and she called me her Ruth. She was a teacher, a mentor, an elect lady full of talent, love and life. She had flaws, of course, but she raised the man I married so she is a saint to me. Her name and memory are sacred in our home. She along with her son are my favorite artists. We honor her with the name Grey for our son, for the life that will carry on her legacy and remind us of what she is. Michael was for all the Michaels and Mikes I know, that name seems to carry with it a fantastic sense of humor that I wanted to instill in him. And he does indeed have that trait in common with all the others. Also, my mother picked out the name for me before I was born and she had to find a second choice, being I was a girl. I also hope with this name he realizes his responsibility that not everything is as simple as right and wrong, but to look for the deeper, the more, the new perspectives and causes. I hope his name later reminds him of what I expect from him as he becomes a man. I expect him to grow in true wisdom and experience, and in a gentleness that lies within all true Men. I wish for him to achieve the greatness of what he was born to become. In every moment he is perfection. He is One with all, he is perfectly alone, he is big mind, big heart, he is One. Grey One Morrison, or in short GR1.

Grey has been watching Disney's Mulan quite often lately but I wasn't sure what he was getting out of it until tonight.  I requested that he throw his banana peel in the trash and he replied, "You'll never bring your family honor!" 

Up to now his usual response to something we asked of him that he didn't like was, " Your not coming to my birthday!"  Which I was okay with because when he turns 4, I will be not only invited but planning his birthday. 

I always crack up at his little qwerks however, it does raise the question, how can I bring my family honor?  I think by teaching him right, I will find the ultimate honor - a strong healthy smart man as my son, who always invites his mom to his birthday or at least takes my calls. 

What a grand adventure we take on when we have children, full of awe, wonder, puke, imagination, qwerky sayings, interesting views, complete unconditional love and utter devotion...if we do it right anyway. 

Yesterday we were driving around doing errands and Grey shreaks from the backseat, "The Sun bugging me!"  So Joel says, "Do you want me to climb up there and turn it off?" to which Grey replied, "With sticky stuff?"  I think this has to do with his recent obsession with super heros and specifically SpiderMan.  Then we went shopping.

After nap, Grey started putting his hands in my pajama bottom pants, he has never done this before, so I ask "What are you doing?" and he answers "Looking for Stickey Stuff" "I don't have sticky stuff in my pockets, why would you need sticky stuff?"  "For Dad, to climb up to the sun"  Oh the memory of a 3 year old! 

After Grey and I woke up this morning, he noticed it was bright outside so he thought of the Sun then he started to look in my pajamas for more sticky stuff...He said, "Sticky Stuff climb up to Sun." All matter of fact as if he KNOWS that is the way. 

What power we have as parents to guide and direct the thoughts of our little ones, the power to help create a person's reality.  But some of the best part is helping create the imagination and the impossibles that are possible when you are small, that your Dad could use the sticky stuff found in mom's pajama pockets to be like Spiderman and climb up to the Sun and turn it off for him. 

Grey: What are you listening to?
Dad: I am listening to science
Mom: Do you want to grow up and listen to science? And be a scientist?
Grey: No. Costume
Mom: You want to grow up and wear a costume? Like Superman?
Grey: No. An animal.
Joel: What like a raccoon or something?
Grey: No. A Tiger.
Mom: You want to grow up and be a Tiger in a Superman costume?
Grey: Yes, Momma too?
Mom: Yes!
Grey: Do It Momma!

Grey: Momma, you Princess Pretty?
Mom: You Prince  Handsome?
Grey: Yes, I Andsome.

Grey: I want a tookie.
Mom: You want a cookie?
Grey: Yes.

Grey: Mom, you making a pake?
Mom: A pake, no, I am making a cake.
Grey: Yes, a pake.
(I think this comes from patty cake, patty cake)

Mom: Grey you are being sneaky
Grey: I neeky?
Mom: Yes.
Grey: Pip-Ray! Pip-Ray!
Mom: Hip Hip Horray?
Grey: Yes, Pip-Ray! Pip-Ray!