Modesty? What's that?

Today marked a huge milestone in Jadyn's life. First of all let me say that my child is the most amazingly beautiful child on the face of the planet. (I assure you that this is a totally unbiased opinion) And she is accustomed to random people approaching her for no reason other than to tell her how beautiful she is.

Typically her reaction is to reward them with an adorably knowing smile and say "I know". This never fails to utterly delight the complimentary stranger and totally embarrass the woman (that would be me, her mother) responsible for instilling modesty and manners in the precocious child. For all the giggles that a conceited child induces in others, I know that I really need to break her of this habit because it is not quite as cute when a 16 year old responds to a compliment with "I know".

As a result of this responsibility to teach the child modesty and graciousness, it brought an unusual amount of pleasure to hear my child respond to a declaration of her beauty with a demure smile and "thank you".

I feel like the successful mother of a beauty queen!!


(Photo was taken by Hessie's Photography)

Low how the mighty has fallen

I was born into a family of thinkers. People that would generally prefer to stay awake well beyond midnight reading a book than get up in the morning to go to the beach or meet friends to play ball. That doesn't mean that we don't enjoy the competition of sports, merely that it isn't usually our first choice. As a child my sister was not known for being the most graceful person, she was, in fact, a total klutz. This malady resulted in her being dubbed with the sarcastic nickname Grace for a period of time.

As a direct result of this I grew up with a bit of a superiority complex concerning my ability to get from Point A to Point B without falling down or running in to something.

Over the course of the past year I have come the the humbling conclusion that I was not spared the curse of the klutz, merely afflicted a bit later in life.

I realized this after I noticed a pattern emerging in my daily life. If there is a set of stairs that I attempt to walk up or down, I am certain to trip going up or fall going down. If there is anything laying on the floor, no matter how far away from it my intended route is, I will trip over it or step on it. Walls? I can walk into them without even having the excuse of aiming for a doorway because there is rarely a doorway anywhere in the vicinity of the section of wall that I walk into. I can fall, with nothing around to trip me. If I try to hold more than one thing in each hand, I will drop one or all of them.

As embarrassing as this affliction is, I have finally come to terms with the fact that the harder I try to stay on my feet, the more likely it is that I will fail miserably. And as long as I am unable to stop myself from meeting the floor on a regular basis then I might as well laugh as myself.

After all, everyone around me is laughing like a pack of hyenas at how low the mighty has fallen.

Go forth and multiply.....

So lately I have noticed an abundance of people with large numbers of children. This in and of itself does not bother me. What bothers me is that when I have conversations with these people, (because I live in TN and thats what we do while we are waiting in line for various things), I discover that a vast majority of them have never finished high school and seem to possess intelligence levels that are well below average. (Let it be known that I have nothing against low intelligence life forms in general, merely the actions that display this lack of intelligence to the world.)
That being said I started thinking about this today and I recalled a conversation I had with my sister about this very subject. We both believe that individuals who are blessed enough to have a decent amount of working brain matter are under a serious obligation to reproduce in large quantities.
I take this philosophy very seriously because I believe that the human race is in serious danger of extinction if we continue to reproduce in such a way that puts intelligence at such a disadvantage.
For years people have said that quality matters more than quantity. I respectfully disagree. If we are to have any hope of our species surviving we must produce children of exceptional quality in massive quantities.
Therefore I am calling all of the Einstiens and Savants of the world, reproduce and repopulate to rebalance the odds of a bright future for Homo sapiens.
Thank you