Stand UP.

Stop standing like that!

I heard that one day from my very favorite physiotherapist during our warm up at the gym.

I slouch.
All the time.

It's a terrible habit and I started to say, "I can't help it...", before she cut me off with, "Yes.  You can."
And she's right.

A lifetime of being a chubby girl has trained my body to have a permanent hunch.
I am trying to concentrate on proper posture and standing tall, but I have to think about it all the time because I've been slouching for 30+ years.

Why have I always rounded my shoulders?  I don't think I would be the first fat person who wanted to fold themselves in, trying to be smaller by bringing my sides closer together.
Stick my chest out?!  WTF?!?!  Do you see how big these things are while I'm slouching?!?!  If I pop them out, they're going to take out a swath of people!!
If I stand tall, I will take up more space.
And I do did not want to do that when I was a larger person.
I'm still learning to live in this body.
I don't recognize myself in pictures and I'm quite sure the vision I have in my head of myself is different from how I actually look.

I should have stood tall and proud then, but now that there are three little peoples' eyes watching me, I feel I need to be especially careful to have good posture - which exudes self confidence through body language.
(Fake it 'til 'ya make it, right?!)
How can I tell them to be proud of themselves, while my body seems to be curling in on itself, in an unnatural looking way?
I'm careful not to criticize my body, which strangely, I never did as a larger person, but now I have to stifle it.
When you gain 5 or 10 pounds, and you weigh 210, it's not really a huge deal and most certainly will go unnoticed.
Gain 5 on a 150lb body?  Your clothes will remind you that it's too much!  Ta-RUST me!

It's important, though.
It's important that I lead by example, and although my kids will only ever remember this version of me, this, size, of me, I lived in a very different meat suit for a much longer period of time than this current one, and it's important, that they know to be confident, at any size.

More importantly, I think they need to know that their body is nowhere near as important as their heart, and that the person they are on the inside is what people remember.  What counts.
So be kind, and hopefully I can teach them that their body is just something they live in.
In a world that tells us to be always conscious of our body, our beauty, I think it's so important to try and show them that without it ever being something they have to think about, they can be confident.

I myself struggle with trying not to think so much about my physical self.
I've been focused, laser-beam focused on changing my body, but I need to now just be, so that I can raise two girls, and a little boy, who are not body conscious, but just, conscious.

So, stand tall, just be confident, and you may have to do what I'm going to do.
Fake it 'til I make it.

On the Daily

So, sometimes when I'm cleaning up my children's dishes, I take the last swig of their drink.

Done it lots of times.
Only this time, my adventurous son had put several bits of his lunch into his milk.
Mmmmmmmm.  I'll just let you imagine that for a sec...
I won't be doing that again.  Lesson learned.

I was wrangling that sweet little cherub into a restless nap today, when I thought to myself, "I wonder if I can order a pumpkin spice latte when Blake and I go on our date tonight?  I need to know what all the hype is about pumpkin spice."

The crazy, hectic, stressful chaos that is daily life, has become so normal, that in the midst of my sons screaming, kicking fight to get to slumber, I can still be daydreaming about this evenings kid-free festivities.

Now, I'm not a type A Mom and I'm certainly not one to stress over the little stuff, but I do recall in the days that Audrey may have been portraying similar behavior in spite of her extreme exhaustion, that I may have just given in, and subsequently suffered the consequences for several more hours before she surrendered to sleep, in a closet.

I'm quite sure it's more the aging process than it is raising little people, but I seem to give fewer and fewer effs about the stresses of life in general.

I know what's important and I wholly engage in what I have prioritized, but I'm finding that I'm happier than I've ever been because I try not to invest energy into sh*t that doesn't matter to me.

Raising good kids.
That's pretty important to me.

Creating and putting the effort into my relationship with my husband.
That's really important to me.

"You treat me like garbage."
She spat at me, through clenched teeth.

We had just spent an hour and a half at the park.
We had brought a friend of hers, even.
And when we walked in the door, and she asked if her friend could stay for dinner, and I said no, and she said this to me.
"You treat me like garbage."

How do I emphasize the depth and pain of her words?
As I remember that I myself have used the word garbage to describe someone else's behavior at one time or another, and now it's being spewed back at me.

I asked her to repeat it.
She wouldn't.

I told her that was the indicator of how hurtful her words had been.
If it hurts to repeat the statement, then it was too mean to have been said in the first place.
I try very, very hard not to say things I will eventually have to apologize for.
I expect the same restraint from my loved ones.

Sometimes the plan is to go something like this:

Take kids to do something fun.
Come home.
Cook and eat dinner together (Eat.  As in, the one beautiful, healthy meal I've made).
Bath/brush teeth/book.
Bed.

Sometimes most times the plan is derailed because, well, life.

Some days are bad.
They start poorly, with a giant cup of coffee through the drive thru, when I'd asked politely for tea, and then they continue to spiral into a self-pity party and end triumphantly in someone vomiting on the floor.
There are no words to emphasize the difficulty that is raising little people into grown ups who are not as*holes.
There are no words to emphasize the struggle that can sometimes be marriage and family.

I've heard that nothing worth doing is easy, and I can only cling to the hope that because it is often so damn hard to be a wife and parent and also try to maintain the original me, that maybe, just maybe we're doing something right.

Note to self:  Must try harder to appreciate the days that are easy, and effortlessly enjoyable.