A New Year! A Fresh Start

It's a new year and I'm already exhausted. My husband had such an awful work schedule. They have all the lower end employees take a few hours each on each holiday. Well all the holidays fell on my husband's normal days off, so he worked for almost 2 weeks straight. I was so lonely. Sometimes I miss him so much it hurts to breath.

Living life this way is just exhausting. As bed time rolls around I don't even know where to find the strength to put everyone to bed. They're all dressed in their pj's and everything. For some reason that last and final step of placing them in bed and tucking them in seems so daunting to do by myself.

I get really tired of being frustrated. Yes, I get frustrated with getting frustrated. Every time I start to get frustrated with something I try to tell myself, "Just stop! We're not going there remember?"

Well my New Years resolution is to work on being a better mom. Boy I love babies so much! I really do! It just brings me so much joy to watch them grow, to see their smiles and hear their laughs. I wish I was a more patient mother so that I felt like it was a good idea to have more kids because I really do enjoy them! I have a lot of great mother's in my life who's example I can try to follow. They all have traits I'd love to incorporate, so that is definitely something I want to work on.

And another resolution is to get back on the diet. The whole month of December was a bust. I simply must get back on track. I'm also hoping I can start an exercise plan as well.

Happy New Years Everyone! Here's to a new year of struggles, triumphs, joys, losses, love, laughter and much more.

Brilliant!

I had a great idea today. I wanted to make brownies but I knew if I did I would addictive-ly eat the batter and probably feel all guilty and tell myself, "Well I just won't eat a brownie when dessert time rolls around." But then when dessert times does roll around I know I'm going to reach for that delicious brownie. What's a girl to do?

That's when I got my brilliant idea. I'll pop a bag of my reduced fat kettle corn to snack on while I make the brownies. That way I won't be as tempted to snack on the brownie batter. I have to say it worked beautifully. Better than I thought it would. Of course, I did still snick a lick of batter here and there, but I definitely had good self control. I was rather happy with myself.

In the spirit of being a good woman I will include the brownie recipe. It's posted on my new blog.

Dieting and Diapers

These two things don't really go together, but I wanted to post about both.

Dieting

I've been doing rather good on the diet lately. I've lost almost 20 pounds now. The road has been a little bumpy though. I went to the Doctors office for my six week check up and I had to weigh in, of course. Well my weight was about where I thought is was. Then I went into WIC and I had to weigh in there too. I found I had gained a pound or so since the doctors visit. This did not make me too happy. I had been starving myself for weeks. How could this be? That sent me into a bit of a relapse. I told myself, "Stupid diet! I'm so done with you. I'm just going to eat whatever I want because I'm not loosing weight anyway."

Shortly after that I got myself back on track. And after the Kidney infection passed the weight started to come off really well. Then my birthday hit. You know how when you start a diet its really really hard to eat less then you're used to, but after a couple of weeks your body adjusts and it becomes less hard? Well I feel like I'm at the beginning of my diet again. It has just been so hard to resist my delicious birthday cake that is sitting on the table staring at me. And I keep drinking diet soda after diet soda trying to resist my sweet cravings. I've kind of blown it this week. I tell myself, "I'm just taking a break for a week," or "I'm celebrating that the stress of the baby blessing is over and the fact that the baby is doing better." But when I get on the scale and see that I have gained three pounds I don't feel much like celebrating. I really need to try hard to get back on track.

Diapers

Well with the new baby cloth diapering has been a bit more of a challenge. I do still enjoy it for the most part. What I don't enjoy however? Cloth diapering a baby. I just can not get it to work. We stuff and we stuff and they still leak all over. And the poor baby's bottom starts to resemble that of an insect. It just does not look cute in any form. I can handle the twins diapers because for the most part they don't look any funnier then a regular diaper- in some ways I think they look cuter. But the baby's cloth diapered bum just does not look cute. Maybe it's a little petty, but with the stress a baby brings I like to enjoy the things I can, and one of the things I enjoy is looking at how cute they are in their clothes. He does not look cute in his clothes, however, when he has on a cloth diaper. I feel guilty that I don't try harder to make them work, and I feel bad spending money on diapers for him, but I think I'll wait until he's just a little older to start the cloth diapering game.

If there are any tips out there for cloth diapering a baby, as opposed to a toddler, please let me know.

P.S. I tried sham wow's in the diapers, but I have say I wasn't impresses. I'd put them in with a regular Gerber Diapers, and I was never overly amazed with their absorbency. Plus it seemed that they were giving the boys bad bum rashes- though I haven't had much luck in that area recently either and we stopped using sham wow's a while ago.

Call Me Vain

This post may seem a little vain, but I'm striving for some motivation. I was looking at some pictures of myself before I had children and boy was it an eye opener. So here I am displaying my vanity.

This is my husband and I while we were still dating.



Engagement



This is our lovely wedding day.



Us on our honeymoon.



The short period of marriage we had before kids.




Here we are the fall after we got married. I'm at the beginning of pregnancy with the twins.



I looked so much better in photos back then. Why didn't I appreciate that more?

Nowadays for me to feel good about a photo I have to spend an hour or two on hair and makeup, and even then I feel like it's slim pickings.

Me in this years Halloween costume



I understand that being a mother means your body takes on a whole different kind of beauty and I can appreciate that. I'm not saying I want to wear a bikini by next summer I just want to feel better about myself. I realize that stability in my self image shouldn't be tide up into my weight, but in someways it is.

When I look in the mirror I don't really look. I mostly just check to make sure there isn't a spot on my shirt or food in my teeth. I make sure my outfit looks good and that I don't have any embarrassing wardrobe mishaps, but I don't really look at myself because I don't want to feel the disappointment. That little bit of disappointment that I feel when I realize I'm not the young cute skinny thing I was. Yes beauty may take a different form, but it's still a little hard to accept myself as I am right now.

It's not all about looks either. It's about the health issue. I love the fast paced life me and my husband live, but I can feel it taking it's toll. I can see the tiredness in my eyes, and I can feel the aches in my body.

I'm sure we've all heard the story about how on an airplane the adult first puts on their breathing mask and then assists the child, and we're told to relate this to parenting. We see all the mothers on makeover shows that have neglected to care for themselves because they've been taking care of their family's needs first. We all know that sometimes mother's need to step back and say, "What about me?" It can't become a totally self involved thing, but every once in a while we need to take care of ourselves so we can continue to take care of our families.

So I'm taking care of me. I'm going to loose the weight this time. I'm going to be happy with how I look and feel. I want to see the woman my husband see's when I look in the mirror, so I'm going to diet and exercise.

So bare with me, as I share my journey on this blog. I've been dieting for almost 2 weeks. And it's been excruciatingly hard. I know food shouldn't be my stress release, but it is. I've been really trying to not cheat on my diet when the going gets tough. So far I've lost about 7 pounds, and I am about to where I was before baby 3. The real struggle, however, will be to get to where I was before the twins. I'm 20 pounds from that goal.

My favorite diet plan was weight watchers. Since I lack the money to join I sort of follow my own little system. A great snack to have are my made up burritos. You get two tortillas, black beans, sour cream, salsa, cheese and a lot of lettuce. I find it totally delicious, very filling and it doesn't take up a lot of points- referring to the weight watchers system.

So it may be vain, I may have poor self image and perhaps I shouldn't care because my husband can still look at me and call me beautiful, but I can't help it. I need to do this for me and, in the long run, for my family. Because we all know "If mom ain't happy ain't nobody happy!"