This is me catching up.

Photos!!!

Some new stuff…

yes we randomly accumulate children while at the park.

I’m thinking that after getting cleaned

I’m thinking that after getting cleaned up a bit, Jules and I may head down to Centennial Park… maybe.

I picked up my prints for tonight from C

I picked up my prints for tonight from Costco a little bit ago, I’m actually pretty impressed!

OK, it’s time to get off of here and do

OK, it’s time to get off of here and do some grown up stuff. Laundry, dishes, living room and shower are in my future, then… PLAYDATES!

Oh heavens. Nashville Mommies…. we are

Oh heavens. Nashville Mommies…. we are heading out to Red Caboose, anyone want to join us? I’ll be there with the camera, come on by!

Ms. Julie

As if Mr. Evan wasn’t enough of a ham for you…. here comes Julie!

Mr. Evan is totally cool!

This is my buddy Evan.  He’s a ham

as if you couldn’t tell that already. 

I’ll be adding more as I get them edited.

Oddityness….

OK, so that’s not REALLY a word…

I just feel weird today, like something is out of place… only I can’t place it.

I’m just dissatisfied.

I want to take pictures of kids, families, people who care about one another.  I want to take pictures where they are in their lives, what they enjoy, but I’m just not sure how to get there.  I have contacted other Nashville photography studios to see about an internship or apprenticeship to get some more experience & I can’t even get in the door offer my services for free.  I’m not sure why this is… I don’t want any money, I want something much more valuable than that: time, experience, networking, and fellowship.  I’m not trying to infiltrate someone’s business and steal customers, I have the ability to get customers on my own.  I need to learn from someone who has more wisdom and experience than I do.   Through prayer and time, both my husband and I feel that this is what God has for me to do, but we’ve also come to the conclusion that I can, but shouldn’t do it alone.  Meaning I need a mentor, or 5. 

I would also really like to find a way to incorporate my Mary Kay business into the photography.  The natural progression would be to have the make-up service available for those that want or need it.  I would also like to have Mary Kay become more of an income source for us, I’ve had some really great suggestions on how to do this, but so far it hasn’t worked.  Every now and then I have people who come up beside me to help only to have a little life get in the way on one end or the other, sometimes both.  My friend, Lori has been a great encouragement, leader and above all friend to me & I love her for it, but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know how to help me.  More because I don’t know how to help me & if I don’t know what I need, how in the world is she supposed to know what I need?  What works for some doesn’t work for all, unfortunately.

I guess it comes down to having lots of options in mind, but no truly open doors to walk through.

Ugh,  I guess it’s just one of “those” days today.

I’m sorry, but this hacks me off…

I have tweeted quite a bit in the last several days about parents putting their children at risk unnecessarily.  Basic, common sense-based safety, is all you need to do to better protect your children.   I will admit that I have too been guilty of not watching my kids as closely as I should have been.  Eli got away from me at a park once, I thought he was playing right next to me and while I was distracted with Julie, he wandered off to the playground.  He wasn’t really in any danger, we were the only people there, but the fact remains that something COULD have happened.  I don’t know what I would have done if it had.  I learned my lesson, for 3 minutes I felt like my heart was flying out of my chest with panic, worry and prayer that he would be fine.

Now maybe I’m taking it too far the other direction, you be the judge and tell me.  I honestly don’t even allow our 9-year old to walk to the bathrooms by himself.  One of us escorts our kids to the bathroom, usually it’s Jason for the boys and me for Julie unless we are by ourselves with the kids.   Now, I don’t go into the stall with them, and if Dale is the child in question, I obviously don’t follow him into the men’s restroom.  (If Eli and I go to the store alone together and he has to use the facilities, I just have him go into the women’s restroom so I can keep a better eye on him.) That said, I have NO PROBLEM walking into the men’s restroom to check on Dale if I feel like he’s been in there a little too long.  When shopping, we usually have two carts if everyone comes along, one for Julie and Eli, and one for groceries.   Unless we are in the store for something small and specific, the kids are in the cart.

It’s not just what happened with Eli, but other instances where we have been made MORE than aware that evil does exist and that it’s closer to home than you think.  Don’t assume that it can’t happen to you. It can, it’s closer than you think and it’s often not a stranger in the sense that you have never laid eyes on that person before.  What is “it?”  “It” can range from abuse to abduction.  We are going to focus on abduction today, admittedly there is more to this than just a pet peeve, I’ll elaborate in a bit.

Listed below are some facts about child abduction that I got from Parent’s magazine:

• Every 40 seconds in the United States, a child becomes missing or is abducted.
• In 2001, 840,279 people (adults and children) were reported missing to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC). The FBI estimates that 85 to 90 percent of those (roughly 750,000 people or 2,000 per day) reported missing were children. The vast majority of these cases are resolved within hours.
• Based on the identity of the perpetrator, there are three distinct types of kidnapping: kidnapping by a relative of the victim or “family kidnapping” (49 percent), kidnapping by an acquaintance of the victim or “acquaintance kidnapping” (27 percent), and kidnapping by a stranger to the victim or “stranger kidnapping” (24 percent).
• Family kidnapping is committed primarily by parents, involves a larger percentage of female perpetrators (43 percent) than other types of kidnapping offenses, occurs more frequently to children under 6, equally victimizes juveniles of both sexes, and most often originates in the home.
• Acquaintance kidnapping involves a comparatively high percentage of juvenile perpetrators, has the largest percentage of female and teenage victims, is more often associated with other crimes (especially sexual and physical assault), occurs at homes and residences, and has the highest percentage of injured victims.
• Stranger kidnapping victimizes more females than males, occurs primarily at outdoor locations, victimizes both teenagers and school-age children, is associated with sexual assaults in the case of girl victims and robberies in the case of boy victims (although not exclusively so), and is the type of kidnapping most likely to involve the use of a firearm.
• Only about one child out of each 10,000 missing children reported to the local police is not found alive. However, about 20 percent of the children reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in nonfamily abductions are not found alive.
• In 80 percent of abductions by strangers, the first contact between the child and the abductor occurs within a quarter mile of the child’s home.
• Most potential abductors grab their victims on the street or try to lure them into their vehicles.
• About 74 percent of the victims of nonfamily child abduction are girls.
• Acting quickly is critical. Seventy-four percent of abducted children who are ultimately murdered are dead within three hours of the abduction.
• One in five children 10 to 17 years old receive unwanted sexual solicitations online.
• In a 1998 study of parents’ worries by pediatricians at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, nearly three-quarters of parents said they feared their children might be abducted. One-third of parents said this was a frequent worry — a degree of fear greater than that held for any other concern, including car accidents, sports injuries, or drug addiction.

(Sources: Federal Bureau of Investigation; National Crime Information Center; U.S. Justice Dept.; Vanished Children’s Alliance; Redbook, February 1998; State of Washington’s Office of the Attorney General; United States Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Juvenile Justice Bulletin, June 2000, Parents.com)

Now, all of that stated, just because it is rare overall, does not, I repeat, DOES NOT mean that it can’t happen to you.    There are some really basic things that you can do to help prevent child abduction, specifically YOUR child’s abduction.

Teach your children your phone number, address and full first and last names.   Make sure they know what to do/who to talk to if the two of you get separated in a public place.  Get them some basic self-defense training.  I’m not saying to get ninja training going, but something so that they know at least two ways to attempt to free themselves if taken.   In a date in time where nearly everyone has a cell phone with a camera, I encourage you to take a picture of each of your children before you leave the house for the day.  I do this with my own kids, one because I think they are adorable & two because should the unthinkable happen, I have a current picture to give the authorities with the outfit they have on, right down to their shoes.   I’m all for teaching independence in children from an early age, but allowing your child some freedom doesn’t mean you lose your mind as a parent.

Freedom doesn’t mean you allow your child (I honestly don’t think it is unreasonable to escort your children up to age 13, but that’s a personal preference thing) to walk to the front of the store to go to the restroom alone, you don’t send your child into the store while you wait in the car, you don’t allow your kids to play in the neighborhood without several parents teaming up to look out for them.  You don’t have to constantly follow your child around, but be aware.  Know who they are going to be around, know the parents and anyone else who is going to be near your child.  Just use some common sense.

Yesterday I had a little boy (maybe 2 or 3) come up to me and asked me to help him find his mommy.  We found his mom, she was two sections away, completely unaware that he had wandered off.  She just smiled and said thank you like it was no big deal that he had walked away.   I told her (nicely) that she really should make him ride in the cart if she can’t get him to stay with her.  She was more offended that I dared to tell her to put her kid in the cart to keep him safe than she was that he had walked away and was searching for her.  I then said that if I were a different person, I could have had her kid out of that store, without fuss, in less than 60 seconds.  All I would have had to say was “Oh honey, I think I saw your Mommy going to the parking lot. Let’s go check there first.”   He would have gone with me without any trouble at all.  I honestly wonder how long it would have taken her to realize he was gone.

I also know that what I said to her fell on very deaf ears, before I left the store (less than 10 minutes later) I saw that same little boy wandering away from his mother again, she was paying no attention to him at all.

I have to say, it pisses me off.  It really does.  I know that if that little boy had been taken, that mother would have been beside herself… “how did this happen?!?!?”  I’ll tell you how!  YOU AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION TO YOUR KID, YOU COULD PUT A SHIRT ON HIM THAT SAYS “PLEASE ABDUCT ME” AND IT WOULD BE  MORE SUBTLE THAN WHAT YOU ARE DOING NOW!!!!!  OK, yelling over.  (Sorry)

This hits even closer to home when I hear about kids that have lost their battle to diseases, like @LaylaGrace, who lost her battle with neuroblastoma this morning.  She and her family FOUGHT HARD to give her every single chance at life.  Then I go to the store and see parents like the woman from yesterday.  Seething, isn’t even close.   Furious, doesn’t touch it either.

Are we SO comfortable in our lives that we think everyone around us has the best of intentions towards our children? Pardon my frankness here, but are we as a society, this damn stupid?  (Brandi W., if you see this, please forgive me for using a couple of the “off-limits” words.  At least I used them in the correct context!)

I never got to meet Layla, didn’t need to, but we prayed for her daily, nightly and lots in-between.  We (usually Julie and I) also pray for all kid facing cancer, some of our other “buddies” are @LiftUpEllie & @prayforKate. We’d love for you to pray with us!

So what do you think?  Are we comfortable in our lives that we just think it won’t happen?  I’m I just way too paranoid?