Tuesday, August 28, 2007

All Gussied Up


We pretty much just hung out and relaxed with my gma and mom on Thursday and Friday. Went to Coldstone's and Babies R Us and out to lunch at Mimi's Cafe. Nothing too exciting as far as blogging, but it was nice to just lounge and allow them to really get some quality time in with Henry.

Saturday was wedding day. Holy Moly. It was at the Four Seasons Aviara in Carlsbad. Valet parking only kinda place. I told Henry as we walked through to get a good look because he would likely never see this place again. It was a gorgeous venue and amazing wedding. Lots of beautiful details, very well done. Henry, however, was the only child. The invitation didn't say anything about no kids, so I didn't think it would be an issue. It wasn't an issue...except that the wedding coordinator came up to me during the cocktail/appetizer time before the ceremony and said "Oh, I heard that he would be here. You should make sure to get an aisle seat in case you need to make a quick getaway." Okay, so none of that is rude in and of itself, but it was more of the way she said it. I mean, she didn't really say hi or anything to start with...she just kind of went into her "Look, I'm using a nice tone of voice, but your kid better not make any noise, got it?" Or, maybe I was just really sensitive to it. Who knows. So after that, I was totally stressed out about him crying. This was, after all, a very fancy shindig. When the ceremony began Henry was napping, but I knew that it was his feeding time, so he was likely to wake up at any moment. So, I decided to just go nurse him...and missed the whole thing.

As I sat in the restroom on a chair nursing my baby, I was shocked by the number of women who would come in and glare or give me a dirty look. I was covered up and sitting off in the corner...in the women's restroom. I was facing a mirror, so I was able to see their facial expressions even after they walked past me, and many shook their heads as they walked by...one lady even closed her eyes as she walked by me so as not to see? I wanted to cry. What on earth? I'm just trying to feed my baby. I'm being modest (unlike in the cry room at church!), I'm in the bathroom...what more can I do? I was pretty upset and one of the cleaning ladies came up to me and started cooing over Henry and then quickly apologized...as if she caught herself breaking company policy or something because she was talking to the hotel guests. I told her it was okay and then told her about my dirty looks. "Oh, that's their problem honey. They're just stuck up snobs, who cares?" I laughed. She was right.

Henry's wedding attire. Had to go with shorts, the pants were way too long!

Made it to the reception with it's FOUR courses (not counting the appetizers and open bar all night). Very yummy.



Henry was a total trooper and either slept or just hung out watching all the action. He never fussed or gave us any trouble and I was a lot less stressed because even if he did fuss the music would muffle it. I was pretty exhausted (Henry had a bad night the night before), but Andy had fun hanging out with all his college buddies.

Jon and Henry.

Ben and Henry. We are so lucky that all of Andy's friends just embrace our son!

Me and Hen. Boy, I look tired!

Napping during the festivities.

Us.

We were sat in the back corner table...the quintessential college buddy table...as we are at all weddings. It's funny, but hey, it's with good reason!

Andy, Ben, Trevor, Brian, and Jon and their self imposed wedding tradition: Boilermakers! (Beer with a shot of whiskey). Ick.

14 comments:

Serenity Now said...

YAY for the cleaning lady! I'd have to agree with her there... Honestly, what is UP with people? You would think a breastfeeding mom would get more support in the ladies room of all places - I'm appalled!

Brianna Heldt said...

You look so great! Whose wedding was it?? Andy's looking rather dashing as well. Henry's outfit's great!

Okay, people are so rude! It's like, excuuuuuuse you for FEEDING YOUR SON. And the wedding coordinator, I'm sorry, but she does this for a living and therefore should KNOW that having a baby at a wedding is STRESSFUL ENOUGH without being told that sort of thing, geez!!!! In all seriousness one of Satan's biggest holds on our society is our disdain for children. I'm so not kidding.

Unknown said...

No worries Jeannett--they are just jealous that their children are so hideous compared to Henry!!!

People can be so rude and hurtful at times :( I am sorry you had to experience that.

You all look great--can you send me the picture of the three of you please?

Also the one of mom and Henry--she would like a copy and so would we.

Peg

Jeannett said...

The wedding was for a college friend of Andy's.

And I totally agree about Satan and children. Seen but not heard! Ugh!

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Where does your sense of morality come from? This is a valid question to ask since you all tend to blame "Satan" for the evil in the world and "god" for the good. Does "god" give you your morals? The answer is absolutely no. If you looked to "god" for your morals, then you should accept and be perfectly comfortable with slavery and concubines, the persecution & beating of women, and genocide, among other apparently moral things listed in the bible.

So, lets take a look at what your glorious holy book has to say on the issue of children. Is it "Satan" that causes people to be mean to children? As you will quickly see here, it could just as easily be "god" that causes people to be mean to children, IF you really believe your sense of morality comes from an antiquated mythological book of fables.

This article is reprinted from http://atheism.about.com/od/bibleoldtestament/a/children.htm:

"Let’s turn our attention now to that group of any society which is perhaps its most defenseless: children. A society can often be judged by how it treats its children. Unfortunately, the laws supposedly handed down by this “god” to the ancient Hebrews were not always very “kid-friendly”.

Folly is bound up in the heart of a boy, but the rod of discipline drives it far away.
(Prov. 22:15)
Do not withhold discipline from your children; if you beat them with a rod, they will not die. If you beat them with the rod, you will save their lives from Sheol.
(Prov. 23:13-14)
Although corporal punishment was certainly the norm at the time, it is instructive to notice the claim you won’t kill your kids by beating them but will instead save them from “Sheol.”

It also appears to have been the standard to punish children for the “iniquities” of the parents.

Observe:
Those born of an illicit union shall not be admitted to the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD.
(Deut. 23:2)
Thus a person who, through no fault of their own, was born of out of wedlock (or of a “forbidden marriage,” possibly indicating a half-breed - the original meaning is unclear) is denied admittance to the temple for religious services. Even worse, this prohibition is perpetuated through 10 generations, even if all those intervening children are born of legitimate unions. This is just an extreme example of the standard which was set in Numbers 14:18, where it is declared that this god would be “visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children to the third and the fourth generation.”

It is also an expression of the idea that physical abuse is actually a positive thing, as stated in Proverbs 20:30 “Blows that wound cleanse away evil; beatings make clean the innermost parts.” Such ideas would eventually make it easier for Christian theologians to support the physical abuse and torture of whichever heretics or rebels the political and religious leaders happened to dislike at the time.

One of the worst things any child could do, apparently, was be disobedient, as we see in this infamous passage:

If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of his town, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid.
(Deut. 21:18-21)
Disobedience is clearly labeled as a crime of “evil”, and something which must be purged from the tribal group for its own good. At the time, life was hard and tribal groups could be besieged on all sides by enemies. Obedience was certainly necessary to help promote survival. Yet this again is a human response to a human concern - what god worthy of any respect would command the death of rebellious children?"
----------------
Apparently god is cool with punishing rebelious kids with death by stoning. Maybe you should be ticked at "god" for all those people giving you the evil eye rather than "Satan."

Or maybe you should think about the ridiculousness of the bible, accept it for what it really is (a book of mythical fables that no one can deny is a rich piece of literary history....but it is no more than this), and realize that your sense of morality is completely derived from outside of religion.

Perhaps you'll say that the bible says a lot of good things too. Well then, how do you know what is "good" and what is "bad" if the bible tells you both? Again, it's because your morality has nothing to do with religion.

Anonymous said...

And "Satan" is just as mythical and unreal as your "god" or Zeus, Shiva, etc. I'm so not kidding.

andy gibson said...

Oh man.......

Jeannett said...

Okay, seriously, I'm over you truth. I'm sorry you are so bitter and I'm sorry you have so much time on your hands. But please either quit reading my blog or refrain from being so negative. There are plenty of blogs out there for the exclusive purpose of debating religion, etc. Check those out. I'm so not kidding.

Anonymous said...

This will be my last post ever on your blog.

I hope you someday realize how ridiculous your religion is, but even more importantly, I hope you do not taint the mind of your child. His mind is like a sponge and it is just as easy for him to take in garbage information as it is for him to be taught to intelligently question the world. I know I'm saying this in vain because you've been programmed by your parents and your friends to completely throw out anything that conflicts with your ridiculous religion at this point. Your rational operating system has been replaced by irrational.god.v1.0. You are so far gone that you cannot revert back to the rational operating system, it seems, at this point.

Your irrational.god.v1.0 operating system works like a simple filter surrounded by an infinite Do loop:


If (incoming information) <> irrational.god.beliefs, then
erase (incoming information)
else
continue to Sub.irrational.god.beliefs.
END

Brianna Heldt said...

sorry gibsons! :) (i'm wondering if this is the only blog truth comments on like this?)

andy gibson said...

No truth, you're wrong.

I was raised right, and I was raised to intelligently question the world. And you know what, I did, in college. I turned from and questioned God for about my first 2 and a half years at Poly.

I was not programmed by anybody, and I won't tolerate your crap telling me I am. In your line of thinking, I should still be a blue hippie liberal, as that is how I was raised...guess what, if you know me, you know I'm not close to that.

Anyways, guess what, after questioning the world I came back to the Lord. Why, because it is the only answer that made sense to me. Now, you think it is because I don't "understand" evolution and "science", but you can take that argument and shove it.

I'm done being nice.

So get the hell off of this blog truth. You can't even admit who you are and how I know you. How the hell am supposed to give any weight to ANYTHING you have to say, when you are too chicken to reveal yourself and why you think you have an opinion as to how I should raise my son.

Bite me, truth. Your condescending attitude sucks ass, and it's no wonder you have gobs of time to eat up my wifes blog, because if you treat everybody like this, you have ZERO freaking friends.

Jacquelyn said...

Wow! I just wanted to make a comment about how cute Henry looked in those shorts but had a lot of scrolling down to do! I got kicked out of a wedding last summer as a precaution. Eliannah didn't end up ever crying and I know that the bride (who loves children) wouldn't have minded... oh well. FYI according to the law it is perfectly legal to completely expose your entire breast while breastfeeding... not that I have ever felt the need to exercise that right!

Unknown said...

truth, you just need to go back into the quagmire from which you came--you are pathetic and very small. How dare you spread your filth over my great nephew's blog!!! No one here cares what you think--you are a wasted piece of air space--please keep your promise and disappear forever!

Jeannett--Henry is adorable and yes we all have our quirks--don't worry about your fears. OUR GOD--THE ONLY TRUE GOD--OF THE UNIVERSE WILL HOLD YOU IN HIS ARMS AND TAKE CARE OF YOU AND YOURS ALWAYS!

And yes my dear nephew--truth has really pushed me over my limits!what a pathetic condescending a_ _ he is!!

I love you all so very much :)