PSA. No, scratch that, Public Service WARNING.

Hey you.  That's right, you.  Yeah, you, EVERY SINGLE PERSON I KNOW.  I have a favor, of sorts, to ask of you.  Or maybe it's a command.  Or maybe, we'll call it a fair warning.

Anyway, it's this:

STOP SAYING TO MY FACE THAT MY DAUGHTER IS SOOO INCREDIBLY LUCKY TO HAVE HER FATHER'S BODY TYPE.

I get it, okay?  I understand that he is skinny, and she is skinny, and that's just wonderful for the two of them.  But what you're essentially saying is that my daughter really dodged a bullet in that she DOESN'T have MY body.  And while I can't disagree with you on this point, we may be all be missing something here.  I HAVE MY BODY.  It's nice for my dear sweet girl that she doesn't have to go through life looking like ::shudder:: her mother, but unfortunately for yours truly, I DO have to look like me.  And I would really appreciate any help I can get in pretending that this is not such a horrible fate.

I'm pretty sure I've reached my limit on smiling in response to this statement and agreeing that yep, "she's just a little thing" and trying my hardest to live vicariously through my luckylucky daughter and ignore the way I'm being insulted to my face.  And anyway, BEST case scenario, that response just turns me into a crazed stage mother, and then all of a sudden my luckylucky daughter has a pretty serious cocaine habit.

So there it is.  And now that you've all been warned, you should also know that the next person who says this to me is risking a swift-but-intense punch to the face.  But in my defense, come on.  You were asking for it.


Oh right, this was a PSA:

The more you know....

OooOOooooh Love Hurts

Shane and I got married a little over 5 years ago.  Just like most people on their wedding days, I felt very much caught up in the wonder and blessing of that moment.  FINALLY.  Finally, we get to stand before our friends, before God, and commit every one of our tomorrows to each other.  Finally we get to be together, be each other's family, to start our own life.  Finally, we get to be together, in love, forever.

Forever.  Now that's a crock.

Amidst the beauty and wonder of that amazing day, amidst the promises of love and commitment to each other and to God, I distinctly remember staring into the eyes of the man I loved and thinking one very clear thought:  This is NOT going to end well.

Now, I should probably say here, that when Shane and I said till death do us part, we meant it.  For better or worse, for happy about it or kicking and screaming, till DEATH do us part.  And that, my friends, is the real problem here.  We're not going to get a divorce.  Ever.  It's simply not an option, I-absolutely-do-not-care-what-happens-along-the-way-you-are-stuck-with-me-so-suck-it-Shane.  (You know, we didn't come out and say it, but I think the "Suck it" was really implied in our vows.)  But that fact, unfortunately, does not exactly guarantee you a happily ever after.  Death still happens.  As a woman, I've got a greater than 50% chance of outliving my spouse.  I do not like those odds.

Oh, and having kids, that's even worse.  I have a daughter.  She's almost two, and she's absolutely adorable.  She spends most of her day playing and giggling and making statements like, "Oh, you funny", "I loooooove Mommy" and "I looooooove Daddy".  She is rock freakin awesome and she makes my life like, 1000 times better.  But I will lose her.  WILL.  Even if she survives to a ripe old age, long past the day when I pass on, I will lose her.  She'll move away.  She'll get married.  She's certain to stop talking to me entirely by the time she turns 14. She'll grow up, and find her own life and own way and own family.  One way or another, I have a 100% chance of losing my sparkly eyed baby girl.

So why?  Why do we care about others?  Why do we get married?  Why do we have kids?  Why do we rip our own hearts out, hand them to others and simply say "There ya go, now be careful with that!"

I guess the answer must be that it's somehow worth it.  God gives us love to give, and we only really get to experience it when we take that risk, when we give it away.  Someday, whether days or decades from now, life is going to hurt like freakin crazy.  And I know that, because I have chosen to love.  And when it does, I hope I can remember that every moment, up to and including that one was an undeserved blessing.  In fact, maybe it's time to start remembering that now.

Hope you all can count your own undeserved blessings today!

Parenting Fail: How, it seems, I've given my daughter a weight complex

Despite my strong resolve to NOT pass my own body image issues to my pure, innocent child, it seems I have failed.  And she's only 21 months old.

A few weeks ago, when my daughter was going through a "hold me all the time I think the ground might be lava" phase, I may have, MAAAAY have told her that she was getting heavy.  I didn't call her fat (though she's heard me call myself fat, and repeated it, and there's a fat fish in a Dr. Seuss book that she likes to point out), I didn't call her chubby, or big, or anything I thought sounded offensive.  But now, every time I pick her up (only me, mind you, she doesn't say it with anyone else) she says in her most exaggerated tone: "Woooooaaaaaah Heeeaaaavy!" Come on Madelyn.  I wasn't THAT dramatic about it.  Cut me some slack!

When I was a child, my mom worked out some.  She had (like all women who have ever existed ever) put on some weight having my brother and I, and worked hard to try and get back in pre-parenting shape.

Now it's important that I say here, that I don't remember any of the following:
1) My mom complaining about her own weight
2) My mom seeming depressed about her weight
3) My mom calling herself fat
4) Anyone else calling my mom fat
5) And DEFINITELY, my mom calling me fat

What I do remember is a slightly shorter list:
1) That my mom occasionally exercised, mostly to videos on TV.
2) That she did some of this with me.
3) Sitting with her and doing stretches, when I had to have been no older than 4.
4) I remember that it hurt, and that I thus deduced that anything that caused me pain must be "healthy" for me.

Here's the point, though:  Somewhere in there, I became crazy.  I have memories of my 5, 6, 7 year old self, who was a little tall and knobby-kneed, thinking I was fat.  I was certainly a little taller and broader than a lot of my classmates, but that was my bones.  Not my fat.

I have no idea why I felt so insecure as a child, but I vowed to myself that I would do everything in my power to avoid that same fate for my child.  And what did I do? I went and called her heavy.  And she reminds me of that fact every freakin day.

Of course, as I am regularly reminded by friends and family, Madelyn is skinny.  Despite her sizeable cranium (that one's from me, thankyouverymuch) it seems quite obvious she has "her father's physique".  Seriously guys?  It's that obvious?  I'M A FRIGGIN SIZE 6, EVEN SIZE 4 ON A GOOD DAY!!!  I'm not a dang elephant or anything here, she... well, she could have my physique... Oh never mind.

Point being, she'll find plenty to complain about.  Every woman does.  I just really hope I didn't give her something to complain about before she hit the ripe old age of 2.

Goedemorgen!

I like Dutch words that sound exactly like English words if you tried to say them with a Faux-Dutch accent.

This summer, at least in theory, I have had a lot more time to do stuff like, keep posting to my blog on a relatively frequent basis.  However, (un)fortunately for my readers, and fortunately for my family, I have chosen to spend my time doing other things. But not this morning.  This morning I look like this:

Morning me, sans shower, wearing husband's oversized sweatshirt because it is amazingly, miraculously cool outside!  Oh, and of course, that's my cup of coffee, in my super-awesome Baby Mug!  Yep, that adorable little shy-faced baby is mine, back when she was only 6 months old.  Oooooh ooooooh, couldn't you just kiss that face??  I know I could!

Aww loves.  Also, it should be noted here that this picture kind of hurt to take.  That coffee was really hot, thus, that cup was really hot.  My lips still feel a little bit burned.  I will officially no longer be making kissy-faces at my hot beverages.

Any-whosit, one reason I have been neglecting my blogging is that I have decided to take more steps toward being an awesomer Mom and Wife.  So more time hanging out with my kid, days with the TV off, more home-cooked family dinners around the kitchen table (which no longer serves solely as the place where we keep the mail).  And even though my daughter would rather go watch Toy Story for the bazillionth time than play puzzle with me, and my husband would rather eat his dinner in front of the O'Reilly Factor, well, I'm still going to assume I'm doing a good thing.  Suck it, family.

Another reason that I've been writing HERE less, is that I'm writing somewhere ELSE more.  I shouldn't be telling you this (it's really top secret private information that is likely to make me feel embarrassed later), but I'm spitballing the idea of writing a book.  I'm about 4 pages in so far (impressed?  I thought so) and it's very much just in the zygote phase of book development, so we'll see if I'm able to carry it to term.  I'll give you more information if it survives its first trimester (as that's the phase in which most book ideas are miscarried).  I'm sorry, I've probably taken that too far somewhere, but I'm really loving this whole, book-writing/pregnancy analogy.  I think it's spectacular.  Maybe I'll write a book on that instead.

Not sure what else I'd write about though... do you have writing contractions?  Does that have to do with the editing process? ... I'll have to work this idea out some more.

TTFN, time to go read my daughter Hop on Pop for the Bazillionth time, (sufficient movie substitute), hope you don't find yourself sitting on cat, hat, or cactus plant!

It's Momma Day!

Mother's day is here, and although my own child is completely unaware of this event, (yep, she has a tendency to be a little selfish like that), I've been thinking some about the day.  Honestly, I kind of think celebrating motherhood on a day like this is a little weird.  It's like, take every positive emotion you've ever experienced for the women in your life and channel it into beautiful poetry, cheesy hallmark products, and, of course, corsages.  Because nothing says "thanks for wiping my bottom all those years" like a flower pinned to your clothes.

Generally speaking, I wouldn't consider myself a terribly sentimental person.  (Go ahead, be shocked here.)  Of course I have my moments, a lot of the blame here goes to my kid, as she is most certainly responsible for quadrupling the frequency of these.  But truthfully, things like those flowery framed statements "Always kiss me goodnight" or "Home is where your heart bursts out in feeling with mushy perfect beautiful family lovey-loveiness that would make the Brady Bunch feel like the Manson family", well, let's just say there's a lot of eye rolling and dry-heaving involved there.  Oh, and those Facebook status things, "repost this if you are or love or know or met once at a party a '24/7' mom", oye.  I think I'm getting a migraine.

The truth is, as an aspect of my lack of sentimentality, I also have a tendency to not view many things through rose colored glasses.  There's no perfect person, so there's perfect family, perfect relationship, and despite what all the marketing leads you to believe ::Gasp:: no perfect mom.

Now, I love my mom.  I think she did a pretty great job.  We have a strong relationship, we've gone through things, we've learned, we've both done good, and we've both made some mistakes.  And I LOVE being a mom.  And just like my own mom, I think I'm doing okay, I'm learning, I do some things well, and I make mistakes.  Contrary to those viral facebook posts and every Mother's Day card I've ever seen (oh GOSH you have no idea how I hate those cards and there blatant and pathetic attempts at tear-jerking) I've never met a perfect mom, and I'm not going to be a perfect mom. I'm going to do my very best, and then I'll pay the therapy bill to clean up whatever messes I make.  But the point is, I'm going to be humble enough to accept that I will (and have) made those messes.  I'm going to work hard to be a good mom, but I'm not going to assume that motherhood is somehow magical or miraculous and use it to elevate myself to some sort of glowing sainthood.

Of course, that's not to say I'm going to turn down a little extra attention and pampering from the hubs.  I've cleaned up enough poop out of places where poop was never meant to be already.  There's just no way I'd deny an excuse to take a day off.

Happy Motherhood y'all!

Kicking the butt of lazy-me

The scale hasn't been moving much these days, but it's not that disheartening.  Mostly because I know exactly why.  My diet is haphazard and my exercise has become a rarity.  The difference between a stagnant scale today and a stagnant scale 8 months ago is that I KNOW why the scale won't move today.  Also, there were 40 some odd more pounds on the scale then, so that makes a bit of a difference too.

Lately I've been battling with illness, other priorities, joint pain, disappointment, disturbing levels of exhaustion, and plain old laziness.  I've got my excuses, of course.  Like today:  I've got my daughter.  My husband doesn't get home until 7 at the earliest on Thursdays.  I've got other work today.  On and on and on and blahblahblah.  But I needed a reality check.  13.1 mile race.  2 weeks and 2 days from TOday.  This is not the time to quit.  I wanted to see myself hit 145 by Easter.  How am I going to do it if I don't keep working?!  So I ran today... in a manner of speaking.  Wii fit, jogging around the living room for 30 minutes.  No, it's not the most intense running experience, but it was getting up, and it was making my body move again, and I must say, it felt awesome.  My whole body feels cleansed and energized and just plain ol' awesome.

I must say I did have a little help, in a little package today.  Madelyn (who refuses to nap today) thought my running in place looked hilariously fun.  So she got down next to me and ran in place calling out "run!" and "fast!"  She ran circles around me and around the room, scrunching her shoulders up to her ears and pulling her knees up more than waist high. (Yes, her form could use a little work, we'll address that later.)  My tiny friend chased me around the room till she collapsed against the couch, pretending to breathe hard.  I love that I get to share things with her.  I'm amazed by how much she watches us and imitates us.  I know that the first things she cares about will be the things I show her I care about.

Just another little reminder that my health isn't just for me.  I may not raise my kids to be star athletes, but I can teach them to be healthy, and active, and to like it.  So go!  Run fast!!  Your babies are watching!

Why isn't it bed time yet?

I'm done with work today, but not done FOR the day.  Time to head off to Choir and Praise Team practice, and I just spent the last two hours yawning through an IEP meeting. OH MY GLORIOUS MONKEY BRAINS I'M TIRED.  Is this allergies, or just plain ol' it's almost spring break fever?  There's a pretty good chance I'll be taking advantage of the Keurig in the church library tonight, and the fact that Husband has a key.  See, some of the perks that come with working at a church can't be measured in dollars, cents, or medical insurance.  Some can only be measured in instant individualized cups of coffee-product.

Wow, just watching extreme couponing, I don't care how cheap it is, what the heck does anyone need with seven pounds of cheese?

Anyway, the net effect of my exhaustion:  Sorry Madelyn, I just ate most of your potty training reward candies.  I think it's fair though, since I already know how to go pee pee in the big girl toilet.  Yay me!!

From the mouthes of babes

While putting my daughter to bed to tonight, I said the little prayer with her that has become our custom. "Dear Jesus, I love you, Amen."  Sometimes she'll repeat the words, typically she folds her hands, squints her eyes, and watches me say the words.  Pretty commonly, she'll at least repeat "Maymen!" with enthusiasm, while she tears her hands apart and shoots her eyes open.  Tonight, as I said Amen, she refolded her hands, and asked to "Paaay" again.  So I did.  And then again.  And at the third request, I'm figuring it's a stalling technique, but one that I'm really pretty okay with.  So I say a longer prayer.  "Dear Jesus, I love you.  Thank you so much for this day, and for my mommy and daddy, and that I get to learn about you.  Amen."  When Madelyn asked to pray again after this, I said no, but let her know she could pray.  So she closed her eyes and folded her hands tight and said, "Tay-tew... dadda-y... May-men!"

This was her first independent prayer, and after my initial mushy-gushy heart warming mommy moment, it kind of got me thinking about prayer and faith again.  When Madelyn was born, Shane and I discussed what we'd do about prayer.  Should we teach the baby to pray, in order to guide her in the path we hope her to accept later in life?  Or should we avoid it, letting her know that this is something that only the children of God  get to experience, and she has to make that choice first?  This may sound to many of you like a stupid discussion to have, but in our marriage, well, it's par for the course.  But if it helps, this is the argument:  Madelyn has a sin nature.  Madelyn does NOT have a relationship with the Lord.  Prayer MEANS something, but it doesn't really mean anything to her yet.  We didn't want this to become simply a nightly ritual, something that comes after our bath and brushing our teeth.

In the end, we decided pro-prayer.  Very "as for me and my house" of us, I know.  But personally, I was a child that, at the tender age of 3, decided that Jesus was someone with whom I needed a relationship.  God has his own plan for each of us, I know, but I also know that my parents, who chose to teach me all they could about the Lord, who filled my mind with stories of a Jesus who loved me more than even they did, well, I know they certainly have credit for introducing me to this God I have come to love so much.

I can be pretty sure at this point that Madelyn doesn't have a strong theology at 18 months old.  I can also be pretty sure that this "Jesus" I keep her praying to and singing about doesn't mean much to her either.  But I'm also sure that I'm training her.  I'm training her that we have nothing that does not come from the Lord.  I'm training her to think of something else as greater than herself.  As my child, I'm teaching her love, obedience, justice, and grace.  And maybe more than that, I'm training myself.  I'm guiding myself to become the mother, the teacher, the guide, and the Christian that I hope to be.  Maybe Madelyn doesn't understand what "Thank you Daddy, Amen" means, but I do.  And it means, I think, that we're on a pretty good road.

Backsides and other suchiness

I haven't posted much about Madelyn yet, and that's been deliberate.  Mostly, I am very well aware of how easily it would be for me to devolve into a pile of mommy-mush and spend the rest of this blog gushing over the awesomeness of my daughter until I have neither readers nor friends left over.  But then, everything in moderation, my kid's gettin' talked about now.

A couple weeks ago Madelyn started patting herself in the crotch during diaper changes and insistently, and repeatedly, saying "Dada".  Shane and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.  Shane, you are SOOO going to jail!  It took me a couple of days to figure out that our incriminating child was really telling us about her diaper.  Madelyn's at the stage where most words consist of repeated consonant-vowel combos, so diaper sounds exactly the same as daddy.  Problem solver?  I taught her to call that her "bottom" (Bah, bah).   Amusing consequence?  She patted me on the butt the other day and said it.  Yes, that's mommy's bottom, Sweetie.  Next lesson is in personal space.