Things I've been Fired Up About Recently

I'm just going there, and I know it's an unpopular view point among most of my small loyal readers, but here goes...Republicans playing the moral/religious card when it comes to policy making.  I consider myself a religious person.  I do.  But right now I care less about what any politicians religious leanings are and more about who will be a strong leader who can get the economy moving again.  I also care about healthcare reform, education reform, and wishing corporations could not pump money into someone's campaign coffers.  Also, all the fear mongering.  We are far from being communists or nazis.  And to me, socialism is not a four letter word and raising taxes does not get my blood pressure up if it means a better quality of life for all of us.  That's all.  I've been stewing about these things.  Now I can get back to the fascinating work of scrubbing dishes and folding laundry.  Election years, they really get me worked up.

Zumba!  I recently sampled some latin flavor ala Beto and his hip/shoulder/pelvis shimmying.  Ay, ay, ay I like it!  I admit a lot of moves are still rather perplexing to my WASPish hips (are hips supposed to move that way?  Oh my.  Shouldn't we be Irish toe dancing?)  I could do without Beto's Fedora.  Who exercises with a gentleman's hat on his head, like that?  Still, fun, fun, fun.

Mean girls in Kindergarten.  I know the advice is always to stay out of your kids social problems, especially if it's fleeting, but she's my baby and when someone is mean to her I want to ask the bully if their mother ever taught them any manners.  What makes you so much better than my baby as to deny her when she asks if she can play with you at recess?  Girls.  There was one funny incident.  Ava has a unique voice.  Not only does she struggle to pronounce certain sounds, but her voice is rather high and still little girlish.  She's told me a couple of classmates have told her her voice sounds "funny", and she said she just says, "yeah it is." and continues on.  I'll let her handle it in whatever way she is comfortable, but I let her know that her voice is her own and that there is nothing wrong with it.  Anyway, we were in a furniture store last week and a couple of little girls were there and started playing with Ava.  She told me a couple days later that one of the little girls told her her voice sounded like a hamster!  I had to contain the giggles bubbling up inside of me over that one.  I can only assume that they meant like a chipmunk?  I don't know.  She didn't seem too traumatized over it.  I told her that people told me I had a funny voice growing up too...due to my inability to pronounce my R's correctly.  It's still hard for me to say words like girl and well, hard.  Anything with an emphasized R in it.  One time a cute boy ask me if I had an accent, and this was well past third grade when I "graduated" from speech class.

People hurting people they love.  People hurting people, period, but especially parents hurting their kids.  I don't understand it.  It hurts my heart.  I try to tell myself that people are usually only as good as they know how to be.  Most abusive people have been abused themselves.  Not that this gives them a pass to continue the cycle, but I always try to search for answers in cases of the unconscionable.  I know parenthood can be frustrating, but it is never ever right to hurt your kids.

The guys on Sports Center still talking about Tebow.  My goodness, do we have to keep debating if he qualifies as a starting quarterback into spring training?  Shouldn't we be talking about basketball and baseball?  It's    so       old.  Stop it.

My husband losing weight without trying.  Could I just have your metabolism for a day?  I'm going to start sneaking Crisco into his food if he doesn't knock it off.  I'll talk about my weight loss journey tomorrow.  Oh joy.

New Swimsuits

We went shopping on Friday and you are looking at the master manipulator.  She definitely knows how to get the maximum amount of things bought for her when she comes with me shopping.  I had found Brielle's swimsuit the day before.  It was on clearance for $3!  Ava didn't care that it was a bargain, all she knew was that her sister had a new swimsuit and she did not.  Never mind that she has two hand me down swimsuits from her cousin that fit.  I'm such a sucker.

Ava thinks Brig's pull up bar is her personal high bar.  She pulls the chair over and says "Time for Winter Wipeout!"  Then she swings from the bar, hops down and jumps all over the furniture.  She really has so much energy all of the time. 

Our little home is perpetually a mess, and that's just the way it is.  With two bedrooms and no garage to store stuff in we have bikes and strollers and all sorts of stuff in odd rooms.  Never mind all the toys that are drug from room to room.  At times when I'm trying to pick up I remember the saying that Trying to clean while kids are awake is like shoveling snow while it's still snowing.  Something like that.  I know for my kids it's true.  Brielle often is pulling out the utensils in the dishwasher as fast as I load them.  And if she sees me put away a toy she comes over and gets it right back out.  It's frustrating, but what can I do?  She doesn't understand. 

Brielle got my squinty eyed smile.  These two girls really do love each other so much.  When Ava goes to school Brielle cries.  It's sad, but cute.  She loves being with Ava and most of the time Ava loves being with her.  I hope it's always that way for the two of them. 

Dress Up

Ava's big into playing dress up.  So naturally Brielle gets pulled into the madness as well.  Ava's always trying to get me to put on Brielle's Sunday dresses to play princess with her. 

The instigator.

The willing participant...most of the time.

Side note, Ava lost her two front teeth this past week.  She lost one at school and thought it was the coolest thing.  All the kids wanted to see. 

Pictures I Forgot About

Weight loss wednesday

I get confused.  On Sundays I email my dad about how much I've lost over the past week, but on Wednesdays I post here, so sometimes I have to try to keep straight what my weight was the week before.  Bah.  I'm easily confused. 

This week I didn't lose any weight according to my Sunday weigh in.  But today it said I had lost one pound.  So there you go.  I'll take it.  I have been having a serious motivation problem. A crisis of faith in myself, maybe.   I've been feeling really tired lately and that makes me not want to work out.  Although I know if I did it would probably help to boost my energy levels.  I do stay up too late.  Usually midnight.  And that's because I need to be alone, without the kids and without Brig.  Just an hour, maybe two is all I get.  People with more children than I do probably don't even get one hour. 

I won't circle back to that topic because I talked about that last time.  The kids are good.  Life is pretty uneventful.  I read a book called Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly.  It's young adult fiction.  She also writes historical romance but they have naughty bits in them so I'm not sure I can fully recommend them.  Anyway, Revolution is about a Brooklyn teen dealing with a tragedy in her family.  Her Dad makes her come with him to Paris for a project he is doing on some genetic coding over winter break of her senior year of high school.  There she finds a diary of a young girl dating back to the French Revolution.  My point, and I do have one, is that in the diary the girl, Alexandrine notes how war excites people because it gives them something to talk about.  It gives them something to escape their ho hum lives through.  There's been times in my life that I've wished for something to happen, good or bad, as long as it gave me something to focus on besides laundry and dishes and diapers.  Not that I want a war.  Although the way things are going we may have more boots in the ground in the middle east soon. 

Being a stay at home mom is very isolating.  I definitely think it contributes to my depression.  I'm rambling.  I'm going to go now before you start charging me for the therapy session.  Hoping you all have a happy, healthy week!

Valentines Day...what is it good for...Absolutely Nothing!

Say it again, Y'all.  No?  No one?  Didn't you have Mr. Hernandez for Geography in 9th grade?  Pity, you missed a lot of musical exposure and memorization tricks for remembering countries like I rock, I ran, to Afghanistan to buy some Turkey.  Anyway, back to the topic at hand...Valentines. 

I'm going to express my opinion and it may not be a popular one, I don't know.  I resent Valentines Day trying to tell me which day to celebrate romance and love.  Just because you expect me to...now I won't.  That's my stubborn side shining through.  It is more of a kid holiday to me...or more for people in a relationship but not yet married.  I'm all for spicing up your married life and going out on a date, but do I have to do it on the one night of the year where it's like mandatory to take your significant other out?  That's all.  I am the Scrooge of Valentines Day.  I'd rather stay in and watch t.v. or a chick flick at the very most.  Speaking of which, has anyone been watching Downton Abbey on PBS Masterpiece theater?  Awesome.  I'm loving it.  It's like a soap opera for the turn of the twentieth century English nobles.  Give me a nice British accent and some knee breeches for an hour and I'm completely satisfied. 

This girl on the other hand...she is no Valentines Scrooge.  She's all about the holiday.  She got a card in the mail yesterday from Grandma and Grandpa and a cute glow bear from me and Brig. 

Cutegirlhairstyles on YouTube has taught be everything I know about braiding.  I varied a bit from the original hairystyle and did a second heart in the big heart.  I kind of like it without it.  If I were to do it again I'd just do the one big heart. 

We weren't home from picking Ava up from school with all her Valentines loot fifteen minutes, before I look over and see this.

On sugar laden holidays (which is every holiday, isn't it?) I have the attitude of just letting them go hog wild instead of prolonging the agony.  Go on, eat every last one of your pieces of candy, at least you won't be begging me for it tomorrow or the next day or a month from now.  Sure you may have the shakes for a few hours and lay in bed tossing and turning as the sugar courses through your veins, but at least Mama doesn't have to listen to you whine.  Judge me if you will, I'm not going to ration out candy for the next two months.  I'd rather not have it around.

Ava took the opportunity today to profess her love for Mattheo on her Lisa Frank Valentines card.  I Love You! she scrawled at the top of his card giggling all the while.  Girls. 

What do you do on a Saturday?

Brig works Saturdays which means it's just me and the kids, wracking our brains as to what to do all day long.  Before the holidays, I had bought some half price admissions to Discovery Gateway to use at a later date.  Well Saturday turned out to be that later date.  All of Salt Lake Valley decided it was their later date as well.  Oh the horror!

 Brielle is like, "Save me!" 

I'll sum up the trip for you: Ava whined that she had no one to play with and that someone else was playing with/on what she wanted to play with.  Brielle kept running away from me and laughing like it was funny, until I strapped her into her stroller and made like the Indy 500 until she fell asleep.  Kids were everywhere, parents were everywhere, and all I kept thinking about was all the germs everywhere.  I'm not usually obsessive about germs but it was really grossing me out thinking about all the hands touching everything that my babies were touching and in Brielle's case, licking and biting.  We exit through the gift shop and Ava wants a wind up butterfly really, really bad.  It's five bucks which I thought was a bit high for a small wind up toy.  I bought it anyway and seriously two seconds out of the gift shop it's wings broke off resulting in Ava bawling like Finding Bigfoot had just been cancelled.  I'm not sure half price was even worth it. 

Quidditch

The Young Men in our ward hosted a Quidditch game last week.  The Elders were invited to attend, but the guy on the left (the Elders Quorum President) forget to mention it to the rest of the brethren, resulting in Brig and Marty being the only two informed Elders who attended.  Brig and Marty are like bread and butter.  They go rock climbing together, attend midnight showings of nerdy comic book character movies, and talk International Scouts together.  I'd complain about the time Brig spends out of the house with this guy, but I have no reason to.  He's a great guy and a good friend to Brig.  If my good friends were living in the same neighborhood as me I'd be spending a few nights out as well.  But they're in Cache Valley.  Le Sigh. 

Most guys had regular brooms, but Brig having a big Harry Potter fan for a wife bit off more than he could chew.  I insisted it resemble the broomsticks in the movies and books.  He put his foot down when I was trying to figure out a way to attach some stirrups to the broom. 

The rules were fairly complicated, especially owing to the fact that none of these wizards can actually fly.  The guy in yellow was the golden snitch.  It was fun to watch for a while, until Brielle wanted to run out into the melee continuously.  Her and I went home and watched some Modern Family while Brig and Ava stayed.  Good times.

Weight Loss Wednesday

Oh Wednesdays, how you creep up on me so quickly.  This week I barely lost two pounds.  I say barely because Tuesday night I was not optimistic about my morning weigh-in.  I had made French Bread Pizza for dinner that night, which has the trifecta of dieters cardinal sins involved...light and airy melt in your mouth bread, salty hot mozzarella, and spicy greasy pepperoni.  I did work my butt off working out though.  So maybe it offset my transgression.

I added P90X's Core Synergistics to my regimen and let me tell you...it bludgeoned my motherly ab muscles to death.  I am still sore from Monday.  I'm still dancing and powering up these bench hills around here.  Hopefully we'll get some warmer weather soon and I might...I repeat might begin to ease into some jogging.  Jogging, how I loathe thee.

Last Friday I took the girls swimming at our local indoor pool.  In the locker room I discovered I forgot my cover-up bottoms.  What to do?  Expose everyone to a heaping helping of cottage cheese thigh and a nasty scar from my most recent dog bite from a few years back or try to stay on the sidelines with Brielle while Ava swam?  Well, I set my pride aside and put on my granny swimsuit and marched my thick thighs out for the world to see...er the ten or so people in the pool.

We stayed in for two hours and had a blast!  Ava and I took turns pretending to be sharks and chased each other.  Brielle initially grumbled about her constrictive life vest, but settled into clinging to my side while drifting in and out of sleep.  She had missed her nap.  I guess all the bob, bob, bobbing along made her drowsy.  May I just interject one thing here...is locker room nudity fully acceptable now?  Back in the day we changed in the bathrooms or figured out a sneaky way to put on our underwear beneath our t-shirts.  Every lady that walked into the locker room stripped down with nary an embarrassed glance my way.  I tried not to look, but good grief where do I put my eyes when they are changing less than three feet away from me?  That is all.  I'm sure I must have an old-fashioned sense of propriety.  That or public nudity freaks me out.  Ava said to me later, "There was a lot of naked ladies in there, Mom."  Yeah, tell me about it.

While we're on the subject of clothing, or lack thereof I have noticed an alarming trend.  We were into Nordstrom Rack today browsing the bow-ties for my husband.  I know, right?  Bow-ties.  I've got to hand it to him though, that man looks good in anything.  If I do say so myself.  Anyway I spied two well dressed women leisurely perusing the the racks of clothing in vests that looked like they had been made from some very groovy shag carpet from the sixties.  They reminded me of Chewbacca.  I panicked a bit thinking that some psychotic Silence of the Lambs character had found a nest of Wookiees somewhere in the Amazon and had sliced them and diced them all in the name of these incredibly ugly vests.  We women devote our lives to being nearly hair free, and here these women are pairing their cute Tommy Hilfiger button ups with a nasty layering of highland cattle sheared vests.  What gives?  Do you want to know what it feels like to be Robin Williams in his birthday suit?  Are you eager for people to wonder how many long haired animals you keep indoors?  That vest looks like a family of Orangutans have taken up permanent residence on your sofa and you sat down for a couple of hours to watch television and when you got up your vest was completely covered in their many months of Orangutan sheddings.  I don't know.  I don't get it.  But then again I have confessed my love for a particular electric blue shoe known for their abhorrent ugliness.  So what do I know?  Still, no thank you 2012...you can keep your hairy vests to yourself.

More Pringles!  More Golden Girls!  We're never leaving this sofa!!!

Well, that's what I've been thinking about lately.  The state of the apparently free-wheeling locker room and the hairy vests walking around town.  Chewbacca called, he wants his mom back.

Lady!  Yes, you.  The one in the Wookiee vest.  That's my mom you're wearing!

With Valentines Day nearly upon us I need all of your to pray for my sweet tooth.  Gosh-dang you, Conversation Hearts, gosh-dang you all to heck!

Testing, testing.

Weight Loss Wednesday

I didn't lose any weight this week.  I've had a bit of a rough week.  I won't go into detail, just the general ups and downs of life.

One very positive experience I had on Monday was that we were playing Just Dance and I had on a pair of yoga pants I had bought from Old Navy after I had Brielle because I couldn't fit into my jeans at the time.  So I started dancing and my pants kept falling down!  Mind you they were tight on my tummy as recently as a couple of months ago.  Ava kept laughing and I had to eventually pause the game and put on some tighter pants that would stay up. 

I went for a long walk by myself this morning.  Brig has Wednesdays off so he stayed with the girls.  Both girls cried when I left, and Ava begged me to take her with me.  I held my ground, but it was difficult.  I needed that time to walk at my own pace and listen to some music and enjoy the old houses and their perfectly landscaped yards, tiny though they may be. 

Alone time is important for me, but try telling that to your kids.  Ava reacts by proclaiming that I don't love her.  It's frustrating, because I feel as if I'm hard enough on myself as it is when it comes to motherhood.  Brielle is super attached to me, which I usually don't have a problem with, except when I just want to go out and watch a movie by myself or peruse TJ Maxx without my little screamer in the cart. 

Anyway, rambling.  I know I am fortunate to have my girls and to be their mother.  Even when they manipulate me and guilt trip me when I want to work out without them.  Back in the saddle the next week.  Who's with me?!