Sun Motivation

I can't stand to waste a beautiful day.  The minute I see the sunlight cast on my wall when I open my eyes I get motivated.  The anticipation of a bright sunny morning makes me want to jump out of bed, get dressed and get things accomplished.  I get happy. I want to clean my entire room in 15 minutes, cook a three course breakfast, do my half-hour workout DVD, take my kids to the park and enjoy their cute little smiles and enchanting laughter then take a relaxing walk back home to make them whatever their little hearts desire for lunch.  So I slide my feet to the edge of the bed, stand up, walk to my bedroom door and as I open it and start to walk down the hall my silver-lined cloudy vision begins to clear as I her Mia crying to get out of the crib, and Leila whining, "Not you, Mommy.  I want Daddy!"

The record playing the happy symphony in my mind comes to a screeching halt and the sunlight suddenly becomes significantly darker.  I turn around, head straight back to my side of the bed and in one swift motion I lift both feet into the bed and swing them around to kick my husband out.

"Just gimme 15 more minutes," I tell him without even glancing up to see the look on his face, which I'm sure is saying "What the hell?" and I pull the covers back over my head and close my eyes.

To Eat or Not to Eat

I am a follower of the 5-second rule.  For some, it's the 3-second rule, but I feel that 3 seconds is not enough time to realize you dropped the food and pick it up.  My mother, however,  believes that if it falls on the floor it is null and void and should immediately be thrown out.  If I followed this rule, my kids would starve to death, being that about half of the food I give them ends up somewhere other than their mouths.

Now, the 5-second rule does not apply to "wet" foods like, let's say, banana slices, because the moisture makes any hair or dust particle stick like glue, and that's gross.  But for "dry" foods like crackers or cereal which can be blown clean, the rule applies.  Except for at my mother's house. 

Being that nobody walks on my mother's floor with shoes on since they are required to take them off at the door, I consider her floors to be cleaner than most, so when I gave Mia a bowl of Cheese Nips and she flipped them all on the floor I just put them back in the bowl.  My mother did NOT approve of this, and proceeded to tell me all the reasons why floors harbor all sorts of germs and dirt as she dumped the Cheese Nips in the garbage and refilled Mia's bowl with "clean" ones.  And I let her, because deep down I know she's right, but if I worried about every cracker that touched the floor before it went into my kid's mouth, my hair would be white by now.  So, when my kids are home, they have 5 seconds.  When they're at Grandma's they'd better pick it up and shove it in their mouths before Grandma sees them, or say "bye-bye" to the crackers.

Ten Items or Less

It was a cold, rainy day today.  Nonetheless, I had to carry on my activities as usual, which included a schlep to the library for an arts and crafts class and a trip to Kohls and WalMart.  Despite the miserable weather, the girls and I made it through the first half of our outing without getting soaked to the bone and everything went smoothly.  Until we tried to check out at WalMart. 

To be honest, I usually try to avoid a trip to Wally World because it's always packed, there's never any parking and the customers get rude and vicious when it's time for rollbacks.  But if I know I can't get what I'm getting at a better price anywhere else, I suck it up and head to the home of the yellow bouncing smiley face.

Anyway, so I'm standing there with my three items in the "express" line.  There is a lady in front of me with her son/boyfriend/don'tknowdon'tcare in one of those motorized sit-down shopping carts. They are about 6 feet from the register, and she is busy staring at a wall of Entenmann's baked goods, so I politely ask, "Are you guys in line?"

"Yeah, we're in line!" she says, as if she was already putting her stuff on the belt when I asked her.  Then I look more closely and notice that she has, not 10 (remember, we're in the "express" line), not 20, but like, 30 items in the cart.  And half of them were Entenmann's boxes.  The guy ahead of them was just finishing up and she was still 5 feet from the register, oblivious to the fact that the guy was already half way out of the store and it was now her turn because she was too busy reading the nutrition information on the side of a box of powdered doughnuts.  Like it really mattered what the hell was in them, because she already had a whole cart full of them in the 10 items or less lane.  Not that I'm a stickler, but you have to draw the line somewhere, and my line is definitely drawn after 30.  I had THREE things, for goodness sake.

By now my kids are getting restless and Mia is trying to wriggle her way out of the cart. Then out of nowhere, a lady comes down the line, passes me and Mr. and Mrs. Entenmann and goes straight to the register.  I look at her like "what the hell are you doing?" and she makes a gesture that indicates that she was up there earlier and had to go get something.  Well, it turns out that something was a check.  A friggin check.  In the damn express lane.  I mean, really?  And of course, now the cashier has to wait for a manager to come sign for the check, and of course there is no manager in sight.

Now Mia is trying to open the bag of candy corn in my cart and I am at my wit's end.  Thirty-item lady is done taking inventory of the Entenmann's wall and is now trying to talk to Mia.  Mia is ignoring her.  I laugh inside.

Finally I decide to just go to another line instead of waiting for Manager Molasses to appear at Register 2.  I get stuck behind a man with a full month's worth of groceries and WalMart's entire stock of vitamin water, and I still made it out before the couple with the motorized shopping cart.  Sometimes it's the little things that make my day.

Beauty is Relative

When I look at old pictures of myself I realize that I was not as fat as I thought I was.  I remember once being so self-conscious at an event in high school because my dress was satin, which is very unforgiving, and I swore my rolls were being highlighted by the shiny blue fabric.  I actually uncovered that dress this weekend while going through the garage and as I held it up, I wondered how I even fit into the dress, which would probably not even go over one of my thighs today.  But oddly enough, I feel more confident now than I ever did as a size 4.  I'm pretty sure it has to do with being older, and now that I have kids there are certain things that just don't matter anymore.

I have come to terms with the fact that I will most likely never wear a bikini again in my life.  I am confident now, but not that confident.  I know what people think but don't say out loud, and I'm not going there.  Besides, they make really cute tankinis now, and those look just fine on me.

I no longer need to own every hot new pair of four-inch heels that come out.  People who get dressed in mini skirts and heels to go grocery shopping with their kids look ridiculous.  I will save the evening wear for the evenings out which, quite frankly, are not that often.  I just look at it as money saved.

I have accepted that my boobs, without surgery, will never be tight and round again.  They have not sagged to my elbows, but after breastfeeding two babies, they have been broken in.  It's not reversible.

I have reluctantly retired my belly ring.  The piercing is still there, but I have no desire to show off my post-children belly to anyone therefore, why adorn it?

My wardrobe has been cut in half, my shoe collection has been cut in half, and my body size has doubled, but none of that is as important to me as raising my daughters to be more confident than I ever was.  I want them to know that they are beautiful, smart, and capable of doing anything that they set their minds to, and to do this I must lead by example.  To start: no more bitching about not fitting in any of my 37 pairs of size 6 jeans... even though it does suck.

Mommy: "Leila, put your plate and cup in the sink, please." 
Leila (walking back into the kitchen): "Mind your business, Mommy."  
Mommy: "WHAT did you say?!"
Leila:  "I forgot." 

Apple Adventure

"Yay! Apple picking!" is the first thing Leila screamed when she came into our bedroom Sunday morning.  I had told her the night before that if she hurried up and went to sleep we could go apple picking when she woke up, and of course, she didn't forget.  I have to admit, I was a little excited myself. The last time I had gone apple picking was with my friend Cammie's family when I was still in grade school and me, trying to be the iconic mother, decided a trip to the orchard would be good ol' family fun.  I invited my mother to come with us and she was just excited as we were, since she had never been apple picking at all.

The plan was to "beat the crowd." The orchard was in Connecticut, so I woke up at the butt crack of dawn to get my tribe bathed, dressed and fed before we hit the road.  I packed snacks, drinks and extra clothes and we were off.  We made a pit stop at my mom's and then it was Blue Jay Orchards or bust.  On the way up, Mia had fallen asleep which was perfect, I thought, because then she wouldn't want to take a nap halfway through the our gathering.

We reached our destination and then the real fun began.  The minute my mom parked her car, I remembered that Mia's stroller was still safely tucked away in the trunk of my car.  Which was safely parked at my mom's house. Which was safely 35 minutes from where we were.

Then my darling angel awoke from her nap and began to whine. For no reason. Ad nauseum.  Poor Leila was trying hard to ignore her sister because she was so pumped to pick apples all by herself like a big girl.  She even waited patiently as I sweated (I didn't think to check the weather and assumed it would be cold like it was all week when it turned out to be, like, 80 degrees out and we all had long sleeves and jeans) trying to change Mia's diaper in the front seat of the car which, for those who don't know, is next to impossible due to the fact that Mia squirms like a beached fish at changing time.

Mia threw herself on the ground a few times as we walked to the booth to buy our apple bag, refused to take pictures on the John Deere tractor, and insisted on stepping in every mud pile/rotted apple mush she came across.  We finally get to the picking area, which consisted of one main row with parallel rows of trees branching out on both sides. We turned down the first row and were greeted by a lone woman in a sari cutting slices off an apple with a pocket knife like she was Johnny Appleseed.  And when I say "greeted" I mean stared at from the corner of the woman's eye.  Needless to say we backed out of that row and went to the next.

Leila did such a good job picking apples from the low branches and putting them in the bag, and even Mia picked two or three apples when she stopped to breathe in between fits, but after about 20 minutes, Leila had enough.  I stared down into my huge $35 bag which was only 1/4 full and realized I was going to have to fill it by myself.  My mom had no interest in actually picking the apples, saying that she was content with just watching me pick them. (This is also the woman who made me call the orchard first thing in the morning to make sure the fields weren't too muddy to walk through, since it had rained the day before.) Thanks, Mom.

So my mother fed the girls goldfish crackers while I tried to find trees that hadn't been ravaged bare by the crowds of zealot apple pickers that all decided to come out on the same day I did.  Then we alternated carrying a crying Mia and a 50-pound bag of apples back to the car and then decided that since we had driven so far, we just couldn't leave without visiting the general store.  Bad idea.  The store was more packed than the orchard and the aisles were thisclose together.  Add a bellowing 1-year-old and you have a recipe for disaster.  After a failed attempt to look around in peace I grabbed a few jugs of apple cider and a box of apple cider doughnuts, beelined for the register, and didn't say a word as Leila and Mia rearranged the rock candy display while we waited to be checked out.  I had survived another outing with my daughters and despite everything, we all had a good time.  Mission accomplished.