Mission Accomplished

That number "1" underneath her phys. ed. grade is the comment code for "displays positive attitude." 

Well, my friends, she did it.  She met her own goal.

Francie brought home Principal's Honors on her report card for the second quarter.  Her grade point average was exactly the same as the first quarter, but there was a big difference.

Can you see it up there?  Under "Physical Education?"

She turned that "S" into an "O."  Satisfactory to outstanding.  She spoke with her teacher, she adjusted her attitude, she set a new goal, and she went to work.

And I am more proud of that than anything else.

7 Quick Takes

One

I've discovered that the palm of Baby's hand is the most ticklish part of her body.  All my kids' palms have been ticklish, but Baby's the most ticklish, hands down. (Ba-dum-bum. Thanks, I'll be here all day.)  Whenever I want to hear her gurgly belly laugh, I tickle her palm.   If you have a baby at home, try tickling his or her palm.  Is it just my kids or is it funny to all babies?

Two

Speaking of Baby, she's been awfully busy with her milestones.

A couple of weeks ago, I had mentioned to her doctor that I was surprised she wasn't sitting up on her own yet.  She was 7 months at the time, and she showed no inclination to sit.

Usually I feel pretty laid back about the time frame for developmental milestones, but the sitting up gets me.  I think it's because it was one of the major developmental problems that we missed with Fiver.  He didn't sit up alone until he was 11 months old.   Baby wasn't that old, but it still made me kind of twitchy for some reason.

Well, all that twitching was for naught.  In the space of ten days, Baby decided to sit up, crawl, and start to pull up on furniture.   She is everywhere.

I'm telling you, it's feast or famine in all things over here.

Three

We are undergoing another great room swap with the girls, and it all makes me slightly twitchy until the dust settles.

We pair the girls up mostly according to sleep patterns as opposed to age.  Mopsy is the lightest sleeper on the face of the earth.  A feather can hit the floor and her eyes will pop open.  People who have slept in a room with her regularly report back that she wakes at all kinds of odd hours, talks to herself for a little while and then eventually drifts back to sleep.

Knowing that, we moved Sally in with Mopsy.  Sally could sleep through the apocalypse, which is handy when Mopsy wakes up at dawn and yells for her sister from her crib.

That leaves Francie and Baby as roommates.  I don't think Francie is all that excited about sharing with Baby, but it's what we've got.  On one hand, Baby can't get into Francie's stuff yet.  On the other hand, Baby goes to bed at 6:30 at night, effectively barring Francie from her room until she goes up to sleep.

Oh well, at least she gets the room to herself for a short time since Baby is staying with us until we get things switched around.  And knowing the glacial way things move around here, she may get her own room for a little longer than she anticipated.

The boys, God bless 'em, are going nowhere.  They are stuck with each other for the long haul, but their sleep patterns are perfectly suited to each other.

They did ask me to consider a new coat of paint for their room, and I will.  They also asked that I consider orange with green stripes for the new paint in their room, and I will absolutely not.

Four

For those of you with larger families, I put this question to you:  Does everyone in your home have a dresser or set of drawers of their own in their room?

We have to be fairly creative with clothing storage, which means people share dressers and closets.  And those shared dressers and closets are not necessarily in the room in which they sleep.  It's like an adventure, right?!

Besides, their clothes are small and we don't have the room (or cash money) for another dresser.  Sharing makes sense.  And it's GREEN! Don't forget the planet! (How could we?)

But my kids tend to be disbelieving when I tell them that tons of other people do this.  It bothers certain people more than others, but I have no sympathy since I don't have a dresser at all.

Five

I have joined Pinterest and I find it . . . interesting.

I won't say I've become completely addicted, I just don't think I have the time for that.  But I do like that I have one place to stash all the cool things I see on the internet but can never seem to find twice.

I also feel a real sense of kindred spirit-ness with people when I see that they like the same things I like or they have re-pinned something from one of my boards.   I am so weird, and it's nice to know that there are people out there who are similar in their weirdness.

Six

Sally got to see the new dentist at the office for her cleaning and checkup, and when she was finished he came out to talk with me.  He was cute as a button and looked to be about 2.5 days out of dental school.  He very kindly and earnestly told me that Sally is a sweet kid, her teeth look great, but we need to really discourage her thumb-sucking because it's ruining her bite.

He said, "She's a great kid, I'm sure she'll do whatever you tell her to do."

Yep.  That'll be the day.

Then he said, "If she doesn't stop, then we'll look into some behavioral therapy for her."

Yep.  That'll be the day.

I tried so hard not to laugh, mostly because he was so sweet, but behavioral therapy?  No thanks.  Not everyone in this world needs some kind of therapy.

It was one of those times where I was acutely happy that Sally is not my first child and I am not a 23 year old mother anymore.  It's takes a lot for me to feel pushed around about my parenting style these days.  I'm not saying I've got it all figured out, but I have definitely realized that no one else does either!

Rob and I had a good chuckle over it, and we have now taken to offering each other behavioral therapy if deemed necessary.  Funny thing is, we are probably the ones who need it!

Seven

A certain almost-4 year old found the camera feature on my iPod.  He shot 145 pictures of himself.

This kid cracks me up so hard.

Happy weekend, my friends!

Late Middle and Little Little: The Sisters

"Sisters, Sisters,

There were never such devoted sisters . . ."

Mopsy:  Hey, Sissy, come sit with me.  No, no,  don't leave.  Let me hold on to your arm, just in case you get any bright ideas about making a break for it.

Baby:  Uh, Mom?  I am feeling extraordinarily uneasy about this situation.

Baby:  Still not feeling real great about this.  She's really holding on pretty tight.

Mopsy: Look, I'll let go a little bit.  See?  you are totally free to move around.
Baby:  Uh, okay . . .

Mopsy:  Hang on there, chick.  You ain't that free to move around.

Mopsy:  I'll give you FIVE little reasons to stay on this sofa with me.  Bam.
Baby:  Mom, are watching this?  Are you just going to take pictures or are you going to step in?

Mopsy:  There, see?  We've reached a happy medium.
Baby: Sure, fine, whatever.

Oh, my girls.  They crack me up.

And don't worry about Baby.  She more than holds her own against the very hands-on love of Mopsy.  She's got teeth, she loves to pull hair, and she is nearly the same size.  That evens the playing field quite a bit.

{p,h,f,r}: the purging edition

I am late to the {p,h,f,r} party, but it was still Thursday when I started this, so I think it's all good.

January always makes me want to purge the house and start fresh.  I think it has a lot to do with putting all the Christmas decorations away and trying to get more streamlined.  There's something about hauling a giant tree out of the middle of your living room that makes you feel like your house has doubled in size.

Of course that illusion is shattered about five minutes after the tree hits the curb and I realize that approximately 754 new toys need a home, but it's nice while it lasts.

A friend of mine, who is a professional organizer, started a 6 week clutter clean up challenge on Facebook.  Since I am practically wallowing in clutter, I joined up.  Space is at premium around here and I need to make sure I am using every bit wisely.

I admit that I haven't been able to keep up with each assignment as she has posted them, but I do manage to get to them eventually.

So, some very {real} before and after photos:

The closet in Mopsy and Sally's room.  Most of this stuff belongs to neither Mopsy or Sally, so what is it doing in their closet?  Plus, this is apparently where all the hangers in this house go to die.  

I had a very cute "helper."

Here is the finished product.  I was able to sort out three bags of clothes to be donated.   Neatness is so pretty.

This was the terrible state of my hall closet.  Its location in the house makes it ideal for housing the cleaning supplies and extra paper goods, but the disorganization negated all that convenience.

Much better now; I can feel myself starting to breathe again!  I'm not sure if the picture above this one conveys how messy this closet was, but consider this: when I sent Fiver to get a roll of paper towels after I cleaned the closet, he came back saying he couldn't find any.  Knowing that we had some, I said, "Really?  You didn't see any on the shelf?"  He said, "Oh, I didn't know they went on the shelf!  I was only looking on the floor."  Sheesh.

Messy boys' room closet.

After!  I even managed to empty that dresser out for Baby's clothes.   Around here we like to play a game called "Guess which room your clothes are in!,"  since not everyone gets their own dresser in their own room.

This was just a start, but I feel better already knowing that these closets are finished.  It gives me a little confidence before I consider tackling the storage room.  Shudder.

Back to Reality

My birthday and Rob's birthday are five days apart.  This year, having some extra vacation to burn, Rob took those five intervening days off from work.

You know what happens when Rob takes some "ordinary time" off from work?  Not a whole heckuva lot, that's what.

Don't get me wrong, I love having him home in the middle of the week.  It makes things like the morning school rush and the after school activities so much easier since I don't have to bundle any babies into the car.  (I dread the bundling.  We all do.)

It also makes my daily schedule implode.  

When Rob is home during the week, we go to the mall in the middle of the day and get ourselves some fancy new phones for our birthdays and we both take the kids to library story time.

I stay in my pajamas and drink coffee for far too long in the morning.  I send every baby with a dirty diaper to him, I don't make lunch, and I surely don't wipe the table.  I eat cake.  Way too much cake.

I also end up forsaking the vacuuming and the bathrooms and the kitchen floor to sit around with him and watch episodes of Downton Abbey on the computer when the babies are asleep.

Luckily, Catholics have a term for this.  It's called "strengthening the domestic church."

In many ways, this almost felt like Christmas vacation to me, since our Christmas plans were scuttled by illness, and it was a lot of fun.  But now our days of playing hooky are over, and it's back to the daily grind.

Let's go, Giants!

Tonight I'm Gonna Party Like It's 1999. Or Maybe Just Watch a Movie.

Thanks for all of your encouragement on my last post, my friends.  I really do appreciate it.  And I also feel compelled to dispel the myth of my superhuman will power.  I just don't have it and I regularly feel like eating a bag of cookies.   Not just one or two, the whole stinkin' bag, people.  It's why I can't buy anything tasty for the house anymore.  Just wanted to put that out there.

Today is my birthday, and I have been having a lovely day, but as we all know, the beat goes on whether it's your birthday or not.  So that means school for the big kids, library time for the little kids, after school study groups for Francie, dance class for Sally, and on and on.

The really nice thing about today, though, is that Rob took the day off.  All the regular hubbub of a busy day is made so much nicer when you can spend it with your best friend.  Plus, he bought me flowers and an iPhone, which is completely fun.  (And he also got one for his birthday, which is on Monday.)

When I was a little girl, I wanted everyone to know it was my birthday.  I didn't necessarily want stuff,  but I wanted people to recognize that it was My Day.  (Well, mine and a million other people's, but whatever.)   

Then I got older and I went through a phase where I didn't want anyone to know it was my birthday.  I was too cool for that.  Who cares if it's my birthday?

Now I've reached a happy medium.  I don't expect adulation, but I don't mind when people find out either.  Which is good, because I think my children have told just about everyone they've encountered today.  And they've each come to me separately and wished me a happy birthday multiple times.

I think that's the gift I've liked the best of all.  So far, 36 looks really good to me.

Progress

2012 seems to be hitting the ground running around here.  My people seem to be over most of the illnesses that have plagued us for the entire Christmas vacation.  Or we are at least on hiatus from them, since everyone knows that the kids just pass around the same runny nose and hacky cough from November until May.

Since we've started a new year, it seems like the perfect time to talk about the steps I've made toward regaining my health and living better.  It feels a little strange to broach the topic, but you were all so supportive and lovely.  I don't want you to think that I up and quit before I really got started.

A number of people joked with me that I was nuts to start a "clean" living plan right before Christmas, with all its treats and excesses.  Didn't I know that's what the new year was for?  

But I've got to tell you, I think it's the smartest thing I've done in a while.  I actually enjoyed reading about everyone else's resolutions without feeling guilty that I wasn't being resolute enough for the new year.  I had already made my big step, my big commitment to my health.

I'll start with the bottom (ha!) line first:  I have lost 9 pounds in three weeks.  Considering I hadn't lost a pound in three months, even with scrupulous calorie counting and daily exercise, I am pretty excited by this change.

And I lost those 9 pounds without changing my exercise routine at all.  In fact, I've even throttled back on the intensity of my exercising.

So what's the deal, you ask?   The deal has been a pretty complete overhaul of not just what I eat, but the way I eat.

Quite simply, I haven't been eating enough.  Crazy, right?  Actually, not so much.  I had been unwittingly sending my body the message: "Hang on to your fat cells, girl, because you ain't gonna eat for a very long time after this."

I used to think that the "starvation mode" theory was a bunch of bunk.  I thought snacking was a thing I could never do.  I ate breakfast, I ate lunch, and I ate dinner.  The end.  If I ate sparingly, I would lose weight.

Surprisingly, that plan did not produce the expected results.  (I am only speaking to my experiences and for my specific body type here.  I know plenty of people who can reduce their calories and lose weight no problem.  My husband is one of them.  I am not.)

Instead, the reverse happened.  I kept cutting calories, but lost no weight.  I increased the exercise, but lost no weight.  I quickly became discouraged, especially since the prevailing attitude for weight loss seems to be "eat less, move more."  I was already doing that!

Essentially, the "eat less, move more" philosophy is true, but not in the classic sense for me.  Certainly exercise is always good, and I don't care what anyone says, you cannot have lasting weight loss and increased health without moving.  Your body is a wonderful machine and it is meant to be used that way, with all the parts working in cooperation.

But the "eat less" part was what tripped me up.  I need to eat less of certain foods, not less times a day.

After lots of reading, internet researching, and working with people who know more about nutrition than I do, I think I've arrived at a plan that can work to help me both lose weight and recapture my lost vitality.

What that plan looks like for me is heavy on the lean protein, heavy on the green veggies, moderate on most fruits, moderate on complex carbs, and very light on just about everything else.   I need to go for the whole foods and strictly avoid the processed.

Here's what I've learned about myself thus far:

• It is a myth that you can eat whatever you want as long as you do enough exercise to burn it off.  At least it's a myth for me.  I cannot, and will not ever be able to, eat three giant soft pretzels and then hit the treadmill or Zumba for an hour and a half.   Those pretzels will negate everything I do in the gym.  Times three.
• I was seriously undercutting my portions of protein.  Since I had done weight loss programs in the past, I thought I was pretty savvy about estimating portion sizes.  Then I started weighing my food and I saw that I had been underestimating my portions of protein by at least half.  Not good for my body type.
• I really had (and still have) an unhealthy attachment to certain kinds of food.  I would tell myself that I had a hard day and I deserved those three little cookies.  After all, I had run three miles on the treadmill, and three cookies was the serving size listed on the package.   But you know what?  No one deserves a cookie.  Food is just food.  It's not a measure of how good a person I am. 
• Even eating this way for only a week, I started feeling better.  I had more energy and less mood swings.  I think my blood sugar was more unstable than I thought. 
• I can't lie, the change has been hard.  There really has been an element of addiction for me - especially to simple carbs and sugar - and breaking that has been like a withdrawal of sorts.   It speaks to how awful I felt that I have been willing to leave behind my beloved mini pretzels.  And it speaks to how addicted I am to simple carbs that I call pretzels "beloved."
• At Christmas, all bets were off and I ate a lot of junk.  I'm okay with that.

I'm figuring out more and more as I go along, but what I've learned so far has been pretty profound for me.   I still have a long way to go, and there are still some hormonal issues I need to address, but I'm on my way.  

Stick with me, my friends?