The Great Breastfeeding Debate (and other stuff)

Now that I have let the cat out of the bag, and everyone knows that I have a bun in the oven, I can start ranting and venting about topics on my blog that I have been holding back on.

Let's just get right to the point.

Since finding out I was prego again back in January, I've been noticing on my Facebook that EVERYONE seems to be pregnant.

My sister in law and I are actually pregnant together and due around the exact same time (talk about timing!).

Maybe it's like when you buy a new car, it seems like everyone is driving YOUR car.

 There are also a lot of new mommies on my Facebook as well, and I am totally guilty of stalking each and every single one of their Facebook pages to scroll through the hundreds of photos that they post of their little ones.

I am obsessed with baby pics...OBSESSED!

Another thing I have been noticing is the amount of articles posted on my newsfeed from various mothers about the wonders of breastfeeding.

They irritate me like no other.

Read my article and see why.

(just click on the link above)

After reading it, you'll realize why they irritate me so much.

And no, I am NOT against breastfeeding, and I COMPLETELY and 100% agree that breast is best for your child...no questions.

:-)

Rant over. 

And just to end on a happy note...

My hubby and I had a much needed date night this past Saturday without the kiddo.

We were invited to a birthday party for one of the Navy guys that he works with..

We went to a Brazilian steakhouse called Fogo de Chao in Boston. 

If you've never been to a Brazilian steakhouse before, I HIGHLY recommend you try it.

It's pricey, but well worth it with the amount of steak and quality of steak that you get.

If you're on the Atkins diet or low carb diet, this is the place for you!

If you're a vegetarian or a vegan, you'll probably go hungry here. 

It's quite an experience as well.

When you first arrive, you are seated and treated to an all you can eat salad bar (and this is not your typical Sizzler steakhouse salad bar.)

The salad bar is stocked full of fresh salads, produce, toppings, smoked salmon, artichokes, cold cuts, etc., and it is ALL gourmet.

Afterwards, once you are seated to eat, you have a little disc at your place setting. 

One side is red and other side is green.

Once you turn the disc to green, the "gauchos" (aka meat servers) start coming to your plate one by one with skewers of fresh off of an open fire (traditional Brazilian way of cooking meat) meat.

They slice the meat (based on how you like it cooked) right onto your plate.

Once you turn your disc back to red, they stop coming and give you a chance to eat in peace.

We had everything from filet mignon, sirloins, ribeyes, backstrap, chicken, chicken wings, meat wrapped in bacon, meat dusted with fresh parmesan, pork, etc.

Basically, I think I sampled just about every single portion of the cow that is edible.

It was fabulous, and definitely one of those "once in a while" restaurants.

There's no way we could afford to eat there all the time!

Nonetheless, it was delicious, and I am looking forward to checking it out again in the future!

One our way to the dorms of Boston University to drop off our little munchkin with one of Nick's most trusted midshipmen!

Just the two of us! It's been so long since we've been out without D!

Spring Break 2013

WOO HOO!

It's party time!

Sun, fun, margs, bikinis, and vacation time!

I wish.

I don't think God believes in sun for New England until at least May.

Snow for spring break is not fun.

Thanks to the little bun in the oven, there will be no margaritas.

Again, thanks to the bun in the oven, there will DEFINITELY not be any bikinis. I would never subject anyone to that kind of torture of seeing me in a bikini in this body.

There's no vacation since my hubby is working.

Our Spring Break is looking more like this...

snow blowing

More snow blowing

I know lots people take ski and snowboarding trips during Spring Break.

It's that final time to hit the slopes before the snow starts to melt.

But those people take trips up to the mountains and to ski resorts to do that sort of thing.

This is the front of my house...in Natick, Massachusetts. 

"Ain't no one got time for that!"

Someone come save me.

The Quest to Find a Church

The quest to find a church to call home is OVER!

HALLELUJAH!

This post is a continuation of this blog post that I wrote last week.

This last Sunday, our family went to check out Connect Community Church.

Just a little refresher on how we found this church...

I found this church was after a night of insomnia.

Because of my body's unwillingness to slumber one evening, I decided to pray (something I had not been doing diligently for several months), and then I decided to Google churches again (something I had spent countless hours doing already when we moved out here).

CCC was the FIRST church that popped up on my Google search that evening. 

If you really want to WHOLE story, go back and read my extremely long blog post.

As I wrote previously, I felt like this church was "the one" even before I stepped foot in it, and last Sunday our whole family got out of the house and went on our journey to try yet another new church.

As soon as we stepped foot in this church last Sunday, I immediately knew that I had "hit the jackpot".

The atmosphere of the church, the people, the worship...

Everything just felt right, and for the first time since moving here, I felt the exact same feeling I felt every Sunday when our family went to church in California at PCC.

For those who have never attended church, it's hard to explain the feeling of going to "your church".

Every other church our family tried going to out here, we felt like we were in someone else's home...a stranger's home.

The minute we walked into CCC, we felt at home....FINALLY!

I honestly feel that if this church failed the meet our needs, I probably would have lost all hope or would have REALLY REALLY been discouraged, and I think God knew this.

In the end, our family FINALLY found a home of worship!

Now that I think back at our last few months here, I really learned a lesson in patience and trusting God.

Please pray that our family gets plugged into a small group soon and involved more with ministry!

We're super duper excited!

Just some pics from the last week...

We all know about D's lack of hair growth. She was born completely bald, and her hair has grown in at a snail's pace (as both her mommy and daddy's hair did when they were kids). I finally decided she needed a little trim because her hair was growing all awkward and uneven everywhere, so the two of made a trip to the beauty salon to get our "hair did".

She is such a girly girl! She was SO excited to be getting all "done up".

 

TADA! Not much changed, but it's definitely a lot more "cleaned up".

 

I have been waiting for the day when I got out of the Marine Corps so that I could change my hair and do something completely out of Marine Corps hair regulations. So, here's my new do! I decided to put a few bright chunks of highlights at the top of my head! I love it!

Getting ready to go to church for the first time in MONTHS!

Just some holy inspiration from church. Another thing that has stuck in my head from the sermon was that the "church would be the world's last hope". I really felt that this message was powerful. With the way the world looks right now and the state of our country, the one thing that is constant is God's love, and I really hope that when things get REALLY BAD, people start finding hope in church again.

One the best preschools here in Natick is Natick Preschool. There is such a high demand to get into that school that they do a lottery to get in. Dannika's name got chosen to start in September! Before anything, she had to go to a screening and take a test to make sure she was where she needed to be developmentally. Can I just say, SHE KILLED IT! They were SO impressed that a 3 year old knew what a trapezoid was, could spell and write her own name, knew every single one of her upper and lower case letters, and had such polite manners (thank God for Southern parenting...yes ma'am, no ma'am, yes sir, and no sir!). 

Here she is getting ready to check out her new school and test!

So the preschool is attached to a wing of the high school. This school is freaking AMAZING! Every single high school kid gets issued a Macbook (paid for by taxes), and the preschoolers get Ipads...SERIOUSLY!

I think Nick and I were more nervous about her testing than she was...lol.

I think it was just pregnancy hormones, but I had a nervous breakdown yesterday about our washing machine. Our family spent a good chunk of cash on a state of the art front loading washing machine a few years ago. Everyone told us not to get them because they have severe mold and mildew issues, but I ignored everyone and got one anyways. I AM REGRETTING THIS DECISION NOW! After my nervous break down, my patient and loving husband came home from work early to take apart the washing machine, remove the moldy and mildewy rubber seal, remove the drum, and clean out ALL THE GROSSNESS (IT WAS REALLLY REALLY GROSS!). I love you, dear husband.

Our house has two living rooms, so we decided to convert one of them into a dining room and converted the dining room into a new playroom for D (and the new baby).  I love this arrangement because I can watch her while I cook in the kitchen, and I can see her from the living room. Her playroom that was upstairs will now be the new baby's room. No worries folks, we still have an extra bedroom in the basement if you come to visit!

Hope everyone is having a blessed week!

I've Got a Secret to Tell...

I guess it's not a secret anymore!

SURPRISE!

We're due with Baby #2!

And my big blabber mouth has kept it a secret from social media since NEW YEARS!

It wasn't easy...

Lord knows I post my day to day life, rantings, and point of view on social media on a daily basis.

It was nice to have a little secret though within my family and close knit circle of friends.

I HAD to let a few close friends know just to get it off my chest, and some of them figured it out on their own (I guess that's why they're my friends).

So, here we go...on our journey in a new city, new coast, and new baby on the way!

I guess I should change the name of my blog since we'll no longer be a "Romer Family of 3".

Finding our Soul Mate

Our family has been together in Massachusetts for 3 months now.

That is roughly 12 Sundays.

Twelve Sundays without a church to call home. 

It's been frustrating, stressful, and discouraging.

I never knew that finding a church to call "home" would feel like the search for my soul mate.

I moved out here with such high expectations for a church because my church in Orange County was so amazingly awesome, and I was also saved there.

Maybe God made it super easy for me to find a church when I was in Cali, because I was much more of a "broken soul" back there, and my soul needed to be in a church ASAP.

I've lived up and down Southern California (from San Diego to Oceanside to Orange County), and I have NEVER had a problem finding a church.

I didn't think much of it when we moved out here to the east coast. 

I figured I'd do a Google search (the way I found every single church I've ever attended in my adult life), and our family would just slide right into a church family....

WRONG!

I went through pages and pages of Google looking and browsing through different church websites, and I was disappointed 80% of the time.

While I won't go into great detail, a lot of the churches out here are extremely liberal and have skewed their biblical views to make mainstream society happy.

In fact, one of the churches I looked at (that stated on their website that they were Christians) had gone so far off the path of the bible, that they were studying other religions and other books as well!

Their view was something along the lines of how "all religions can come together and be in harmony"....I didn't get it either, and if you're a Christian reading this, it makes no sense.

It was just disappointment after disappointment.

I did find two churches that looked promising, and we decided to check them out.

So, here's one of our experiences...

**prepare to do some reading**

The first Sunday we went to a church out here, my stomach was in knots and I felt like the new kid going to a new school...totally like a fish out of water, and to be honest, I was kind of dreading it.

As our family entered the building, everyone was so friendly and welcoming (actually, I've never been to a church where people aren't friendly and welcoming).

I started asking around about their Sunday school program for Dannika, and I was informed that the children participate in the worship service with the adults first and then they are dismissed to their respective Sunday schools.

That was a little different than what we were used to, but I went with the flow and our family sat down towards the back (in case we needed to make an escape...lol).

When the worship service started, it started just like any other church we had been to.

Everyone stood up and began singing while the words to the songs were put on a big screen behind the church band.

Dannika had never been in an adult worship service with us, so I think she was in awe (or maybe shock).

Several songs (and a couple prayers) into the worship, things just got strange.

People started taking their shoes off and doing some sort of interpretive dance moves around the church, people were screaming at the top of their lungs, and lots of crying was happening.

(This is the part that freaked Dannika out.)

I picked up my program to see the schedule of worship, because Dannika was starting to get restless.

I realized that the worship service at this church was an hour long, the actual sermon was an hour and a half long, and Sunday school was 30 minutes longer than the adult sermon!

That's a three hour long church service!

I tried really hard to be respectful, but I felt like I was in some sort of Christian circus, and by the look on Nick's face, he looked like he was going to burst out in laughter at any moment. 

I couldn't hold my laughter in any longer when I looked up front, and I saw a man waving a big blue (or maybe it was purplse?) flag back and forth with his eyes closed (and still singing).

WHERE THE HECK DID THAT GIANT FLAG COME FROM?!?

Then he started running around the room with it like he was doing a lap with the torch at the Olympics.

I looked over at Nick, and we both gave each other "the nod".

I think we high tailed it out of there faster than the length of a knife fight in a phone booth.

We laughed hysterically all the way to the parking lot, and ended up taking Dannika to go see "Wreck It Ralph" at the movie theater instead. 

I honestly believe that the church meant well, and it just had a different style of worship and praise than what our family was expecting.

It was just so hard for us to focus, and truly get the experience that we wanted out of a church.

Like I said, I'm a strong believer that if you can not feel comfortable at a church, it'll stunt your growth in your relationship with God.

I always have felt that a church should feel like a second home and a sanctuary, and that church did not make me feel that way.

I think Nick and I were so traumatized by our experience at this first church, it made us even more discouraged about finding a home church.

We tried out another church the following Sunday, and they did not have a very well established Sunday school program for Dannika.

That was a deal breaker for me, on top of the fact that I felt their worship service a little "old fashioned", and I felt like I was 6 years old sitting at my grandpa's church in South Louisiana.

Our family gave up, and I even contemplated just listening to podcasts every Sunday from my old church.

The cruddy weather didn't really motivate us to "get out there" and check out some more churches either.

I had horrible insomnia last night, and I stayed up browsing Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram on my IPhone.

I put my phone down to try and get some sleep, and said a little prayer to God asking that our family get out of this rut and for help to find a church.

Of course, I still couldn't fall asleep, so I picked up my phone and decided I would Google some churches in the surrounding areas (I've become a little more familiar with the area I live in).

And there it was!

The VERY FIRST church that popped up on my Google search.
How could I have missed this church in my million other Google searches?!
I really feel that God had a purpose for my lack of sleep last night, and he answered my prayers (along with my family and my church family back in California who have been praying for us).

It's the first church I've looked at online since moving out here that I have been genuinely excited about going to.

I woke up Nick up in the middle of the night to share my excitement (he wasn't too happy to be woken up and he was incoherent).

I know we haven't actually physically gone to this church yet, but something inside of me tells me that this is the one!

It almost feels like the way I did when I first met Nick.

I knew he was the one before I even fell in love with him!

Lots of prayers for us please!

I'm really excited to share our experience this Sunday, and hopefully this feeling I have is right!