Motherly Advice

This is a picture we took with Ethan's new camera. He likes to take pictures with our camera, so we decided to get him one of his own. He loves it! The toy he is posing with is Pablo from the Backyardigans. That is what Santa brought him. That is all he asked for this year. It has only been 5 days since Pablo has joined our family, but it seems like he's always been with us...Oh yeah, and he is already filthy!




It was a great day... We enjoyed a calm morning a long afternoon nap (we were all sick!) and then a lovely smoked turkey dinner at Aunt Emily's house. We exchanged family gifts at Em's house and had a great evening. The kids broke down around 7pm and we went home and put them to bed! The next day I found out Nora had an ear infection (so that explains all the hours of screaming) now she is on the mend and back to her normal self, thank goodness!

PS I wasn't expecting too much for Christmas, but I made out like a bandit! I got some all time coolest gifts for Christmas this year. Including, but not limited to, beautiful awesome cool paintings by a local artist, a talking globe, and (drum roll please) Karate Lessons!!!! Like I said, I lucked out!

Merry Christmas!

OK, so this story is kinda embarrassing. I was tired and grumpy and so were the kids...

Ethan hadn't been listening to me ALL morning. I was getting pretty miffed. In fact sometimes he was out right ignoring me! So when I was trying to get him dressed and he acted as though I wasn't there, steam started shooting out of my ears. I said, "You get over here RIGHT NOW, or I'm going to spank the crap out of your butt!" (I know, if you really think about it and take it literally, that in itself is pretty gross.)

Ethan looked at me pretty funny, and then started to laugh. I was really confused. I mean, I know I wasn't really going to do it, but I don't think it should be funny to him. Then he came over to me, put his arms around my neck and said, "Mah-um, you can't get the crack out of my butt!". Then I started to laugh too, we hugged and all was right with the world.

Ok, the bane of my existence for the past 2 years has been trying to potty train my little man. Well, about two weeks ago, he woke up dressed himself and put on underwear. There are two funny things about this, the first is that he put everything on backwards and the second is that he is quite a little stylist. The outfits he picks out are so cute and hilarious...
Example one:
Yes those are my socks. And later he changed out the Buzz shirt for a blue and red striped polo.

Example Two:
Note the tie, belt over the clothes, socks that are too small, and shorts and t-shirt (it was freezing outside!)

Oh yeah, he also started to do his own hair:I love it!

Potty training has now turned into potty trained, and though I still have to come in at the end to clean things up to avoid "skid marks", we have a new man at our house!

I've been trying to loose weight for some time now... But instead I've been gaining. I seem to have a problem with sabotaging my own diet and I have zero motivation to stop eating the things I love. Something else I was doing was having someone check up on me to make sure I wasn't cheating on the diet (which of course I was!). But the only problem was that it was only one person. A person I knew would love me no matter what (not that being fat is a reason not to love someone, it's just that I trusted her love completely.) Once again, not enough motivation.

So about 2 weeks ago I decided to try to diet differently. I'm not going to "diet" at all. Instead I'm going to focus on exercising. I stopped by my sister-in-law Kristy's house and there she was exercising to a workout DVD in the middle of the day of her own free will. She said, "we should start working out together." I was like, "Pshaw, there is no way, I'm too out of shape and I am NOT a self-starter." But I reluctantly said ok. So the next night she came over, we worked out, it felt GOOD! Then we did it again, I felt even better. She couldn't come for a couple of days, but I kept working out. So far we average 2 times a week together, but I've averaged 5 days a week!!! Each day I feel stronger, and in just 2 weeks my heart rate has gone down and my blood pressure has gone up (this is good, my pulse used to sit around 100 and my blood pressure was so low that a nurse once asked my if I was still alive). I have energy. It feels so good to have energy. At the park the other day I was actually playing with the kids, not just sitting on the bench, I was giving them under dogs for crying out loud!

I'm so excited about starting a new healthy life for myself. I want to be accountable for it too. I will give monthly updates on my progress and monthly pictures as well. The first month or two will not be a pretty picture, but I'm willing to live with that because the after pictures are going to be great!

As for my diet... I'll get there.

Here is the first before picture: