Thing to make your blood boil.

Rixa posted a link to this article. It tells the tale of a Peruvian couple who were brought up on child pornography charges, and whose children were taken from them by CPS, simply on the issue of a photo of the mother breastfeeding her son. It's absolutely ridiculous that the couple are being forced to call something so beautiful and natural "wrong". Dude, I have nude pictures of breastfeeding the Infanta; they're not something that I choose to share with just anyone, but neither was this photo.

Harrumph. Time to go poke at the fire and nurse the Infanta, maybe help my blood pressure calm down.

20. Inauguration day

If you know me at all, you know I'm not a huge Obama fan (I voted for Clinton in the primary), but I am glad he won the election rather than the other guy.

However, on reading my morning email, I found this little gem. And I finally watched this video that my brother sent me:



That man, that song, that location... even my politics-hating and rather conservative husband might well tear up with patriotism.

Tomorrow we will return to our regularly scheduled Infanta.

9. Save Handmade part 2

The law affecting handmade children's items has been altered to exclude those made by the WAHM industry; read a bit about it here: http://www.kval.com/news/37241774.html On the other hand it still prohibits the resale (or even giving away!) of used clothing and toys. There's a petition about it here. I understand why they put the law into place at all, but they needed to have been more careful about how they phrased it! Sign the petition, please; leave a comment if you do so, and I'll pull a name out of a hat and give you something nifty. If you're a knitter or you sew, it'll be something stash-like; if you don't, maybe a book. It'll depend on whose name I pull.

eta - Contest will end this Sunday, Jan 11, at midnight.

Save Handmade!

A few of my readers may have heard about the law going into effect this February that will basically make it impossible for anyone but big manufacturers to sell items that come in contact with children. It seems reasonable in theory - protecting kids from lead - but it basically requires everything that goes into any item that's going to be used with or for children to be tested for lead. Every part of every item. This will absolutely kill the WAHM (work at home mom, for those not internet-acronym-savvy) industry, as well as many others, including all small craftspeople that make kid's toys.

This particularly hits home for me, since I was hoping to soon start a small sideline in things like soakers, just to have a little coming into the family budget from me.

At any rate, I've put a button in the sidebar that will take you to a site with more information, including details on the Act and contact information and sample letters to nag your politicos with. I strongly encourage you to do this!!!

Getting political for a moment...

Hey look, a cute baby! If you don't want to hear about politics, look no further.

You all know I tend not to get mouthy about my political beliefs; I believe what I believe, and there's not much that's going to persuade me otherwise. I tend to assume that other people are pretty much the same way, so I don't bring them up unless I'm pretty sure that the people I'm talking with are people I'm comfortable with. I might discuss minutiae with my brother or my mom or a close friend, but that's pretty much it.

I'm not a huge fan of Obama, but I'll be voting for him; Bethany has a pretty good argument for why. But the real reason I'm posting about this today is something I read on another blog. The author is a midwife and a pretty religious (Christian of some stripe) woman, just for a teeny bit for y'all to know where she's coming from, and here she talks about why Sarah Palin is baaaad news.