You turned 16 months yesterday little lady! You continue to keep us in awe of everything you do and how fast you learn. You LOVE singing songs now, and will sing "All of the rain drops", "Twinkle Twinkle" and "Jingle Bells" with me. You also love to say "Chug Chug" in Little Red Caboose and "Pop" in Pop Goes the Wehsal. Your new favorite again is the ABC's (or AB's as you refer to them) and it is so fun to listen to you say "oh oh oh P" and "Now [jibberish] AB's" at the end! You really like all songs though right now and will often say and sign "more, more" every time we sing. You can say some numbers, the ones you say most often are "two", "eight", and "thirteen" (don't ask me why).
You still love to play with your babies (you really like the gingerbread men a.k.a. ginger babies that I brought out for Christmas). You also love your Sesame Street dolls Abby, Elmo, and most recently Ernie. You just got a tea set as well that you love playing with.
Your molars are finally all the way through but now your canine teeth are coming! These have been much less painful than the molars but you still have your hands in your mouth almost constantly, yesterday you had both hands in there! Sometimes I wonder if it effects how you eat as well but for the most part you eat good, you love your veggies and fruits. Peas, carrots, corn, avocados, oranges, apples, bananas, pineapples, beans, and tomatoes are probably your favorites.
I could go on an on but it's now playtime :)
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
At the finish line
UGH, for only the second time in my life (at least at this job) I was 15 minutes late to work this morning. 15 minutes late was the best I could do. That drives me crazy! I am trying as hard as I can to balance it all and still feel like I'm coming up short pretty much all the time. And this is why I'm getting done work. Sure, there is the fact that simply being away from baby girl for so many hours a week is torture, but maybe I could handle it better if I felt like I was succeeding in something once in a while. Instead I just feel like I'm failing at everything. I honestly don't know how people do it! I really don't. For me it isn't working. I have had stress hives and stress migraines from trying to do it all! I'm tired of feeling like an awful employee because I miss so much work, I want a surplus of time to be with my child (and future children) so that I can do all the things that I have always pictured myself doing as a mom. I think I do a fair job as a mom now, but I want to be able to do more!
I thought that my last week of work would be less stressful knowing how close I was to the end. It's like I'm at the end of a marathon. I should be making a victory lap thinking about how damn amazing it is I managed to get through it at all. Instead I feel like I just tripped and now I'm stumbling into the finish line.
I thought that my last week of work would be less stressful knowing how close I was to the end. It's like I'm at the end of a marathon. I should be making a victory lap thinking about how damn amazing it is I managed to get through it at all. Instead I feel like I just tripped and now I'm stumbling into the finish line.
Monday, December 1, 2014
Non-Toy Gift Ideas
http://www.raisingmemories.com/2013/12/ultimate-list-100-non-toy-gift-ideas.html?m=1
This is a great resource for creative gift ideas. I need to remember some of these for the future!
Raising a Daughter With a Healthy Body Image.
Can we talk for a minute about how scared I am already that baby girl will grow up hating her body. It seems like that is a prerequisite for women in American culture. I have heard so much self-hating talk about weight, loosing weight, eating habits, and dieting over the years: "I'm so wide" "I shouldn't have ate that" "she actually confessed she made herself puke" "I ate so much the other day" "I hate my love-handles". I hear these comments from pretty much anyone I know who is female; my friends, my family members, even myself. Then there are the code words, "I'm doing it for health reasons" "I don't want to loose weight, just tone up". Honey, I'm female too, I know what that means.
And you know what, I think it's normal and perfectly fine to want to look good. We are all human and we are all going to want to look attractive sometimes. What worries me is that we never seem to be able to look good enough. We are never pretty enough, or skinny enough, or perfect enough. It really concerns me when we start feeling bad about ourselves on a daily basis. We care more about if what we eat will result in fat accumulation than about how it will fuel and energize our bodies. We care more about time spent at the gym will make us slimmer and not that it can potentially make us healthier and stronger (combating the risk of hip fractures later down the road-something that medical documents show us we should probably worry about). Please know that I am not above this petty vanity either! For a lot of us, we know it's such a waste to obsess over our weight but can't really help it, so it's shrugged off as an annoying part of being female. Yet it keeps sneaking up on us, once in a while each month, week, day!? How much are we going to stand before we become mad about this!
Actually, it was only when I took a course on nutrition in college that I stopped viewing certain foods as "bad" or "off limits". Sounds funny doesn't it? Yet, it makes perfect sense if you think about it. Nutritionists advocate common sense, realistic, gradual lifestyle changes like a balanced diet, moderate exercise, and healthy body image because they aren't trying to sell a specific product. It's almost as though the fitness/beauty industry has it's own form of the American Dream--rather than "you can be anything you want to be", it's "you can look anyway you want to look". We just don't want to accept that we can't, healthfully, achieve perfection-- and why would we when there are plenty of magazines, famous trainers, diet pills, etc. telling us that we can, so long as we buy their product.
I often wonder why this seems to be more a problem that women deal with than men. Don't get me wrong, I know that boys and men can be body conscious, but I don't believe it affects them to the same degree. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that men seem to draw their self worth from multiple sources, while women on the other hand, especially young women, have all too often tied their self worth to how they look. It doesn't matter what other accomplishments we have made; landing our dream job, achieving a degree of higher education, becoming a mother. If we don't like the way we look, we aren't satisfied. This is probably because female beauty does get A LOT of attention in our society. I won't ever forget that a professor of mine told us how she lost a significant amount of weight around the same time as she earned her Ph.D., and more of her friends and family commented on her looks than on her educational/professional achievements. How do we combat this? Do we refuse to tell our children they are beautiful for fear that that's all they will aspire too? Or do we always tell them they are beautiful so they will never question it and be free focus on other things. Of course there are no real answers. Personally, I will try to have ongoing conversations with my daughter about inner beauty and show her that there are a variety of things that make her special and valuable besides her looks --while at the same time crossing my fingers that those messages will be stronger than all the negative messages she may come across "in the real world".
And you know what, I think it's normal and perfectly fine to want to look good. We are all human and we are all going to want to look attractive sometimes. What worries me is that we never seem to be able to look good enough. We are never pretty enough, or skinny enough, or perfect enough. It really concerns me when we start feeling bad about ourselves on a daily basis. We care more about if what we eat will result in fat accumulation than about how it will fuel and energize our bodies. We care more about time spent at the gym will make us slimmer and not that it can potentially make us healthier and stronger (combating the risk of hip fractures later down the road-something that medical documents show us we should probably worry about). Please know that I am not above this petty vanity either! For a lot of us, we know it's such a waste to obsess over our weight but can't really help it, so it's shrugged off as an annoying part of being female. Yet it keeps sneaking up on us, once in a while each month, week, day!? How much are we going to stand before we become mad about this!
"One minute debating whether to have a bagel and be "bad" or a protein shake and be "good"; two minutes chastising yourself for choosing the bagel: two minutes contemplating how fattening the cream cheese was. Three minutes poking your face in the mirror, feeling bad about that dark circles under your eyes. Four minutes reading that Lindsay Lohan lost a bunch of weight; another minute chastising ourself for being so vulnerable to the media; five minutes thinking about how crazy it is that women as smart as you spend so much of their days obsessing about food and fitness..."
-Courtney Martin Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters
Actually, it was only when I took a course on nutrition in college that I stopped viewing certain foods as "bad" or "off limits". Sounds funny doesn't it? Yet, it makes perfect sense if you think about it. Nutritionists advocate common sense, realistic, gradual lifestyle changes like a balanced diet, moderate exercise, and healthy body image because they aren't trying to sell a specific product. It's almost as though the fitness/beauty industry has it's own form of the American Dream--rather than "you can be anything you want to be", it's "you can look anyway you want to look". We just don't want to accept that we can't, healthfully, achieve perfection-- and why would we when there are plenty of magazines, famous trainers, diet pills, etc. telling us that we can, so long as we buy their product.
"But I think the first real change in women's body image came when J-Lo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boom—Beyoncé brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired. And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful. Ah ha ha. No. I’m totally messing with you. All Beyoncé and J-Lo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes. The rest of us are struggling.”
-Tina Fey, Bossypants
I often wonder why this seems to be more a problem that women deal with than men. Don't get me wrong, I know that boys and men can be body conscious, but I don't believe it affects them to the same degree. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that men seem to draw their self worth from multiple sources, while women on the other hand, especially young women, have all too often tied their self worth to how they look. It doesn't matter what other accomplishments we have made; landing our dream job, achieving a degree of higher education, becoming a mother. If we don't like the way we look, we aren't satisfied. This is probably because female beauty does get A LOT of attention in our society. I won't ever forget that a professor of mine told us how she lost a significant amount of weight around the same time as she earned her Ph.D., and more of her friends and family commented on her looks than on her educational/professional achievements. How do we combat this? Do we refuse to tell our children they are beautiful for fear that that's all they will aspire too? Or do we always tell them they are beautiful so they will never question it and be free focus on other things. Of course there are no real answers. Personally, I will try to have ongoing conversations with my daughter about inner beauty and show her that there are a variety of things that make her special and valuable besides her looks --while at the same time crossing my fingers that those messages will be stronger than all the negative messages she may come across "in the real world".
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