Conversations with Thea

One of Thea’s and my weekend traditions is to take a nap together (damn y’all, but I love me some nap time) and I generally read her anywhere from 3-5 bajillion books before we close our eyes.  This conversation took place while we were reading Ferdinand, and we were at the part where Ferdinand won’t fight in the bull fights in Madrid, and so he is in the cart being transported back home.

Thea: Is that guy tied up? (talking about the guy driving the cart)
Me: No, I don’t think so. He’s steering the horses.
Thea: Is he drinking milk?
Me: Um, no…
Thea: Is he drinking water?
Me: No, he’s taking Ferdinand back home in a cart.
Thea: … Oh.  He is very handsome.  But… I don’t want to marry him.
Me: Ok, I think that’s a good idea. You can wait until you’re big, like me, before you get married.
Thea: Yes, I will marry Daddy.
Me: Well, no, you will find your own person to marry. When you’re much much older.
Thea: What if I can’t find my person?
Me: You’ll find your person. I promise. I will help you.
Thea: Can you be my person?
Me: Yes, I will always be your person.
Thea: You’re my BEST friend.

After she finished talking she grinned at me, put her head down on my shoulder, and fell immediately asleep.  And then my heart grew two sizes and I ate her up.

Fitness & Being Healthy

Shit, you guys.  I’ve literally written this post in my head like a millions times, and just sat here and wrote out, then deleted 3 posts about it.  Writing about this is hard, and I’m struggling with how much to say, and how much background to give, and what’s the right way to talk about this.  This is all extremely personal, but I’m really proud of myself and I want to share my progress.  

I will say this: I have body-image issues.  I guess I’ll probably always have them.  I try not to talk about it much, and I try to watch what I say around my girls.  For a very long time I’ve worn clothes that hide my shape because my body and I, well, we have a complicated relationship.  It’s been very emotionally hard on me doing this whole weight loss thing.  My instinct is to just stop eating.  Period.  I’m fighting that instinct, but it’s something I struggle with every. single. day.  I don’t want my kids to think that starving yourself is healthy, or heaven forbid “normal.”

It’s hard to convey how far I’ve come without really getting into all the nitty-gritty details.  I get that.  But for me, this journey isn’t just about another mom who decided to get off her ass and work out.  For me, it’s much much deeper than that.  For me, this is about trying to change the way I feel about me, the way I think about me, the way I take care of me.

Around the end of September I forced myself to get off my ass and work on myself.  I sort of didn’t want to talk about it, because it’s a really hard thing for me to do.  Also, if I failed, I didn’t want anyone to know.  I also get really tired of hearing, “What? But you look great for having 4 kids!”  That’s like a knife in the guts.  I just want to look good, and frankly the number of kids I’ve had shouldn’t factor into it.  

I’ve lost about 15 pounds since I started this whole thing.  I went from 150lbs to 135lbs, and that was a shit-ton of work.  I don’t do diets, and I never will.  That’s not what this is about for me.  This is about making overall healthier choices.  This is about choosing to continue to eat while trying to lose weight.  For me, that’s fundamentally counter-intuitive.  My brain screams at me to stop putting food in my mouth, and I have to fight that feeling and sometimes it’s exhausting.

But look, I’ve come really far.  I have photos on Flickr (they’re marked private to friends and family because I don’t want the whole internet to see me in my underwear) so if you check out my Fitness set you’ll see my progress.  The last one I took was about 2 weeks ago, and I’m fine sharing that because it’s not too revealing.  Those are pants that I used to be able to wear, and then pushed to the back of my closet because they were too tight.  I took them out just to see if they would fit me now, and they’re loose.  Which absolutely shocked me.

I’m not done, I’m not 100% where I want to be, but I get that I’m a work in progress.  I’m starting to be a little bit more proud of the way I look.  I’m starting to wear clothes that are flattering, that don’t hide my shape.  I like showing off my baby arm-muscles, because I worked really hard to get them.  My new goal is to get some abs and get more muscular definition, whatever the number on the scale says.  I’m starting to care less about how much I weigh, and more about making myself stronger.  I would like to get my overall body fat percentage down, but I’m not going to say no to a piece of cake, and I’m sure as shit going to eat pizza if I feel like eating pizza.  So, we’ll see what happens.

But I’m getting better and better every day, and I’m sticking with it.  I’m giving myself a big hug right now, because frankly I deserve it.

Happy Birthday Charlie!

Today Charlie is seven.  I totally can’t believe it.  WHERE DOES THE TIME GO, I ask you?

We’re celebrating on Friday, but I did stay up way too late last night making cupcakes for her class for today.  Can I just say I love that they can bring in cupcakes to school?  That used to be one of my favorite things when I was little, to have a mini-party with treats in class. At their old school they didn’t allow baked goods (everything had to be prepackaged) so I’m glad we get to do stuff like this.  

I did the same thing I did for Phoebe’s birthday, with the cupcake wrappers and flag topper thingies.  It takes awhile to print and cut everything on the Silhouette, but it worked out nicely while the cupcakes were baking.

I made this frosting (no cinnamon!), and piped it on with this frosting tip.  And added sprinkles, at Charlie’s request.  On the way to school a lady stopped Bryan in the street to tell him how nice the cupcakes looked.  Score!

I did a fancy braid for Charlie’s birthday hair, and used some of the leftover glitter hairspray from Halloween.  Phoebe got in on that action, too.  I’m glad Thea was asleep for this part.

We have a few small treats for Charlie to open later today, and she asked for a “big girl bike” that we’ll take her to pick out on Friday.  Along with her birthday dinner (ham, of course).  

On Miss Charlie’s birthday request list were: crayons, coloring books, stickers, and socks.  Socks!  ZOMG she cracks me up.  Of course, she got everything she asked for.

She’s a little firecracker, this one.  Very laid back and easy going, with an incredible sense of humor and quite a strong sense of justice (she hates even the inkling of being treated unfairly).  She’s very generous with her affection and makes friends really easily.  We love her so very much, this Super Charlie of ours.

Thea turned Three

Did I forget to mention that?  She had her birthday the day of the storm, so I made her cake a day in advance just in case.  Turns out it was the right call.  Black magic cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting, if you’re interested.  It was delicious.

Every year the girls get to pick their birthday dinner, and it’s usually a pretty big affair.  Ham, tacos, bacon, green bean casserole, meatloaf, etc.  I make them stick to maybe 3 big things, though, so we don’t get *super* cray.  Thea picked macaroni and cheese (yawn) and we ended up giving her the box kind since that’s all we could make once the power went out.  She didn’t care.

She’s been playing with play-doh a lot lot lot, and most of the stuff we have left is dried out and crusty, so we bought her a bunch to stock up, and she got some cool play-doh from AdriAunt & Tom, too.  She’s played with it just about every single day.

She also wanted red shoes for her birthday, which I thought was the cutest damn thing in the world.  I bought her these from Zappos.  Yes, I know, they cost a majillion dollars, but I plan to save them for her forever and ever.  Also, she’s worn them everywhere, even around the house.  Good purchase, I think.

I couldn’t figure out why she wanted red shoes in particular, until it was pointed out to me that I, in fact, own red shoes.  ERMAHGERD.  Now we’re twinsies.

She’s very into reading, so Bryan and I picked out a few more books we thought she would like.  The Neil Gaiman is a little bit old for her (her attention span is very low) but she loved Blueberries for Sal.  Anything with pictures to capture her interest works well.

I can’t believe how big she is now, what with her red shoes and super curly hair.  She cracks jokes with us, she likes to help us cook, and doesn’t bat an eyelash at helping clean up her room.  She gets annoyed if you call her baby, though, even affectionately.  She insists, “I. Am. A. Toddler!” so watch out.  She is certainly growing up.

Winning

On Monday night Shaun (our assistant manager) and I attended the Stevie Awards event.  It was a pretty incredible evening, and you can read more about it here.  

We took one or nine pictures to commemorate the happs.

Also? Dressing up like this makes me feel silly.  So the husband made this adorbs little animated GIF to represent how seriously I’m taking my outfit.  Cute, right?

w00t!