Nagging Reconsiderations

Maybe we should change our age range.  I’ve read that half of abuse cases involve children three or younger, so if we dropped down to 12 months or even newborns, we’d probably see a lot more calls for placements.  However, I’ve also heard anecdotal evidence that those younger children are less likely to need non-relative placements.  Relatives are more likely to accept a younger child who has been placed in foster care, versus an older child or a teenager.  So maybe we wouldn’t see any more calls at all.  (Although at least we wouldn’t get fewer! Ha Ha!)

However, I’ve got to remind myself there’s a reason I said kids over 2 years: I’m lazy.  I’ve breastfed all my own kids, and I don’t think I could ever switch to bottle-feeding after I learned how effortless breastfeeding really is.  And trust me, we asked if I could breastfeed.  It’s cool, I understand why the state doesn’t want that, but I value my sleep and time waaaay more than that.

Incidentally, I just noticed breastfeed is a word, but bottlefeed is not, according to my browser’s spellcheck. It has to be hyphenated. That’s nice. Also I just learned spellcheck is not a word, but spell-check is.

Okay, stop the presses!! I checked two dictionaries in our home:

• Merriam-Webster Collegiate, 12 years old, has entries for ‘breast-feed’ (1903) and ‘bottle-feed’ (1865). VERY interesting that bottlefeed was known first, and both are hyphenated.
• Webster’s Lexicon, 20 years old, has NO entry for breastfeed at all, but does have ‘bottlefeed’ – NO HYPHEN! Curiouser and curiouser.