Baby Body

Heavy sigh. I've hit the plateau on the magic baby weight loss. Actually I hit it a few weeks ago. I'm not one of those women that loses it all in three months. Now marks the beginning of the frustrating hard work to reclaim my body. I was feeling particularly discouraged last night. But here's what I had to remind myself.

We have been blessed with four beautiful children. In all those pregnancies and deliveries I never had more than minor complications. This body hasn't failed me. Its done what it was supposed to do and now I need to be patient with it. I tend to be the kind of person that wants it NOW. I want to play basketball NOW. I want to run a triathlon NOW. I want to fit into my clothes NOW.

Unfortunately the old bod needs a little time to recover and get back in shape. I write this post that I can look back and remember to be patient, keep trying, and don't be so hard on myself.

I recently got rid of all of our VHS because our VCR broke and we've decided not to replace it. While You Were Sleeping was among the collection. I had a particularly bad today and Jer came home, took me out to dinner, and then we replaced a couple of my movies.

While You Were Sleeping is a classic romantic comedy. My favorite scene is when they're eating dinner and there's 4 conversations going on at once that get all tangled up and no one knows what they're talking about. I kid you not it is exactly what it was like trying to have Christmas Eve with my dad's family while growing up. Everyone participated in everyone else's conversation but no one knew what anyone else was talking about.

For awhile it seems like Hollywood came out with a series of great romantic comedies but the last few years, I feel like they've tanked. They've become like so many other movie genres, trashy and full of dirty humor that ruins the experience.

So tonight we're enjoying a classic...I'm enjoying a classic and Jeremy is being a good sport since I had to unclog the toilet today with a stick.

Arches

I flipped through my most recent issue of Arches, the alumni magazine from my Alma Mater the University of Puget Sound. I don't know if anyone else does this but I turn straight to the back where alumni can send in pictures and updates. I enjoy seeing who's gotten married or had a baby and, sadly, the older I get the fewer people I recognize.

The section that struck me today was the updates section where alumni can send in their most recent accomplishments, awards, promotions, etc. Secretly I've always wanted to send something in and impress my classmates with something amazing or unusual that I've done. But truth be told, I haven't been promoted, received any awards (even for PTA because I still refuse to join), traveled to Tibet to study Tibetan singing bowls, or done anything to better my community as a whole that would constitute a half inch blurb in my alumni magazine.

There's no where to send your blurb that states 'Stacey Nash '03 Got all her children cleaned, fed, in bed, and had a clean living room by 8 pm for the 3rd consecutive day. She has successfully exercised and practiced singing everyday in this same week.'

Now I look at that and think, Wooohoooo! That's all I'm trying to accomplish. There are probably thousands of alumni who do the same things I do each day AND get amazing awards, publish books, and run marathons. Good for them.

For now, I'm aiming for at least one meal today that doesn't include peanut butter. Arches isn't interested and that's ok. I know that I'm making a difference for three little nashlings. They aren't going to publish it anytime soon but its worth more than a half inch blurb.

Something Permanent

As I have admitted before, I am a sew-er. I used to be an anti-sew-er but now I follow several sewing blogs in the hope of getting inspiration. One of my favorites is Simple Simon & Co., on which a recent post made me think about why I have taken up sewing. As a stay-at-home mom, much of my time is spent doing things that are continuously started over.

Examples - dishes, laundry, cleaning. I find myself putting off mopping my floor because I know that at the next meal someone is going to spill their milk/cereal/ketchup on the floor or someone will come running in the back door and leave muddy/leafy footprints.

The post struck me because it suggested that a woman should do at least one thing each day that can't be undone.

Something permanent.

Sewing is one way that I have found to create something permanent...that is until I have to pull out the ole seam ripper. But every time one of the girls wears something I've made, I feel that I've made something that will last, hopefully, something pleasing to the eye and something useful.

I have other ways as well. I paint and I write, both of which allow me to creatively express myself in a, mostly, permanent way. On days that I sew a seam, put a stroke on paper, or write even one sentence I can look back and know for sure that I've moved forward on something. I may need to mop the floor again tomorrow but for now I made something that moves me forward to a completed project that can't be undone by anyone other than myself.

As I read the post, it was nice to know that I'm not the only one who'd like a few of my little marks on the world to be ones that can't be ruined by spilt milk.

On Turning Thirty

To be real honest, it hasn't bothered me to be turning thirty this year until about two weeks ago. I've been looking back at my twenties and, really, I've accomplished all the things I had planned on like graduating from college, getting a job, getting married, and having children.



But a couple of weeks ago, my voice teacher suggested that I enter a certain young artists competition. The day I looked at the information was the day the applications were due. I needed to have 5 songs, at least 2 languages, memorized and ready. This year it just wasn't going to happen. But, yes, you've guessed, next year I would be too old. I'll no longer be considered a 'young' artist.


Suddenly turning thirty became something inhibiting.


More than anything I think it made me realize I am leaving behind my twenties. I'm not the youngest one at the party. I'm not the new kid in town. I've been through childbirth 3 times, been through 4 Young Women presidencies, and two productions of The Savior of the World amongst other things.


And after a couple of rough days I came to the conclusion that it's ok. I'm ready. I hope I'm wiser and don't make quite as many mistakes but chances are there a some big ones coming. A few opportunities are gone but there are so many more ahead of me.

Bring it on Thirty.

You Know You're Getting Old When

You try to buy new clothes but when you're at the store looking at the racks you can't figure out how one would wear the clothing. In fact, I began to wonder if I was in the right section and IF these really WERE clothing items - where on the body does it go exactly?

Straps, buckles, folds, and tucks where's a simple t-shirt when you want one?

List - Our House

What I Love About Our House

1. Mt. Rainier outside my living room window
2. 4 bedrooms
3. Playroom
4. Linoleum in the dining room
5. Front yard
6. Back yard
7. Arched doorways
8. Food storage room
9. Wood Floors
10. Its not an apartment!

I'll post pictures soon.

List: Things that Could Happen to You Cause it Happened to Me

• Have to have your earring holes surgically removed
• Fall down brick stairs
• Get toothpaste in your eye while loading your toothbrush
• Walk into a street sign
• Get locked in a bathroom stall in a restaurant, unable to open the door (OK that didn't really happen to me but it did happen to my mom. I was there. Unfortunately I refused to get help because I was too embarrassed. Give me a break I was like 15.)
• Cut your OWN eye with construction paper while wearing glasses
• Kidney stone
• Have your daughter break her leg while sitting on your lap
• House burn down
• Watch a teenager get hit by a car in the Fred Meyer parking lot (they were being idiots) and then refuse to get help (the kid refused not me)

Be careful. It could happen to you.

Movies I Wished I'd Never Seen

• Red Planet
• Talladega Nights
• Land of the Lost (or whatever that movie was called with Will Farrell)
• The Land Before Time II or any of the sequels
• Return to Oz (like the first one wasn't scary enough)
• Miss Congeniality 2
• Where the Red Fern Grows (cried like a baby when we had to watch it in class in 3rd grade)
• Gremlins (I'm still scared of the dark)
• Barbie Swan Lake
• Dumb and Dumber

There are others but these stick out. You?

List of Last Week

Top Reasons I Haven't Blogged

• Fire
• My computer won't download pictures from my camera
• My computer is a pile
• My computer is a pile
• My computer is a pile
• My computer is a pile
• My computer is a pile
• My computer is a pile
• My computer is a pile
• My computer is a pile

'Nough said.

Trekkies Unite

For Mom

Reasons I Love Star Trek

1. I loved watching it with mom.
2. Spock
3. "Boy that sure looks uncomfortable."
4. Its fun to make up words to the theme song
5. Good always defeats evil
6. Humpback whales save the world
7. Smart, brave women
8. They talk science and even if its made up...I get it!
9. I always wanted to be an explorer
10. "I have been and always will be your friend."

You may have to be a trekkie to understand it all.

Mom posted her list to my comments and I wanted to share her Star Trek list too. Thanks Mom.

Reasons I love Star Trek:
1. James Tiberius Kirk
2. I remember how fun it was to watch with my mom.
3. Because it is so much fun now to watch with my daughter.
4. Because anything is possible in sci-fi.
5. Because I love to see the friendships between the characters.
6. The earth seems like a better place.
7. Spock and Data make me laugh-and remind me uncomfortably of myself.
8. Because I once wanted to be an astronaut.
9. Because I can remember reading my first science fiction book and dreaming I was there on Mars.
10. Because Trekkies understand each other.

List of Lists

This thing posted and I didn't know it. Now I'm finishing it.

My list for the week, is a list of the lists I want to write.

1. Reasons I love Star Trek.
2. Reasons I love Stargate SG-1
3. Why kids are better than having pets
4. Why (on occasion) pets are better than having kids
5. Driving styles
6. Best Movies
7. Best Authors
8. Best Children's Books
9. Movies I wished I'd never seen
10. Perks of having your apartment burn down

Lists

I like lists. So once a week I'm going to post a new list. This one's a little serious but I can guarantee that most won't be. Recently I read an article in the Ensign, a magazine for our church The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, about having an attitude of gratitude. I had just started having the girls tell me something they were grateful for each day and writing it in my journal. But now more than ever I am grateful (but not necessarily in this particular order).

I am Grateful for

1. my family. We've had some scary brushes with potentially deadly accidents in the last several months.
2. renter's insurance
3. extended family
4. in-law's (mine are awesome)
5. the beautiful green Northwest
6. music
7. running shoes
8. soft baby skin
9. Madilyn's made up songs
10. Emma's hugs

The last but in no way the least, the guidance of the Holy Ghost and our Savior Jesus Christ.

Environment v. Biology

When I was a (what I thought) wise college student there was a debate about how children's personalities developed. There were those who thought children were largely shaped by their environment or learned behaviors - Such as their parents likes/dislikes, discipline, participation of fathers/mothers in the home, culture, etc. The other train of thought was largely based on biology. The child was born with a predetermined personality or set of behaviors that their biological makeup determined. My friends and roommates would occasionally debate this issue. At the time we found ourselves leaning towards the environment side of the argument. Perhaps because we were taking the time to evaluate our own upbringings and its effects on us out in the 'real' world.

WRONG.

All that debate in the academic world and all they really had to do was ask a mother.

Children are not mini-me's. They come with their own personality the day they are born. I use my own children as examples. Madilyn has been, from the day she was born, a high intensity kid. She cried harder, longer, and louder than other babies. She isn't a problem child but she is extremely sensitive to sound, light, taste, texture, etc. I hate the people who put seams in socks. All of these things, when they get out of the parameters Madilyn deems normal, make her completely decompose into the crying tantrums we experienced when she was a baby.

My other two children do not have this problem.

Don't tell me environment has anything to do with the fact that my girls want to wear dresses everyday and that one HAS to have a puffy skirt and other CANNOT have a skirt that is too puffy or she breaks down into tears. (Ok maybe this has more to do with their ages 5 and 3 but come on every day!)

Now, having said all this I know the environment children are raised in makes a huge difference. There are certain behaviors that can be learned. I also now believe there are certain aspects of a child that cannot be changed. As parents we cannot make our children into miniature versions of ourselves, nor would I want to. As parents we get to try to figure out these little creatures with their own personalities and quarks and how we can best help mold them into little people that can function normally in society.

As with most things, the answer is somewhere in the middle between biology and environment. I just want to state that I believe anyone who thinks its entirely environment is wrong. A lot wrong. I'm talking a lot.

Gilmore Girls and other TV Attachments

I checked out the second season of Girlmore Girls from the library. I watch them whenever I can during the day because Jeremy hates GG. I can't blame him; they really are two self-absorbed arrogant women. Anyway, watching it I realized I don't like it as much as I did when I was first introduced back in my college days. It did made me think about my attachment to certain television shows. Not a lot of them but when I find one I like, it stays with me forever. For example,
X-Files - Creeps me out now but I still feel a loyalty because I loved it when it first came out. Plus it was a major social event in college.
Girlmore Girls - Still cracks me up, but my perspective has changed since I was really into it. Probably because I'm a mom of multiple children now and my own self-absorption level has been reduced...slightly. Plus it reminds me of my roommates and I miss them.
Stargate SG-1 - A fine substitute for Star Trek.
Buh Buh Buh the mother of all attachments STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION (and all Star Trek shows except Enterprise and not a huge fan of Deep Space Nine) - Every time I watch it, it seems like my mom isn't a 12 hour 800 mile trip away. When Leonard Nimoy walked out in the latest Trek movie I literally had to throw my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming in the theater and tears instantly popped into my eyes and I wished more than ever that I'd seen it with mom because she would have understood.


The funny thing is with most of these shows, if I started to watch them for the first time today I probably wouldn't get that into them. I enjoy them because when they were on they were and fun and made me think and laugh and cry. And now, even if they can't do that, they're still fun to watch for the times when they did.

I'm No Fashionista

I'm no fashionista. In fact, I'm not even sure I'm using the word correctly but I went to do some birthday shopping for myself tonight. I had some time to people watch while I nursed Garrett and you know what? What is going on with fashion?

Who am I to criticize you say? True I was wearing my $8 jeans with my Stargate SG-1 10th Anniversary t-shirt (see post Geektastic) with no make up and pigtails, so its not like I'm the height of fashion or even the mid-point for that matter. But come on.

First, skinny jeans. SKINNY jeans. Meaning someone skinny should be wearing them (or someone needing skinny pants to fit in their awesome boots, i.e. Heather).

Second, Uggs. Oh my goodness can we get over these now. Nanook misses his boots.

Third, Leggings. I don't have a problem with leggings. I think they're cute with the right outfit. You know those cute "dresses" that look like long t-shirts, yeah leggings can be cute. However, when worn with Uggs AND a t-shirt that does not cover the behind, not attractive.

May we all wear the height of fashion that does not make us look like a muffin or beached sea mammal.

Geektastic: Tales from the Nerd Herd

I picked this book up at the library because with a title like that I thought it had to be funny. There were a couple of funny parts, like the comic strip that talks about useful Klingon phrases, but mostly I was disappointed because I had to skip a lot, ok I only read one entire chapter and stopped even trying after three, because of language and/or content. Who knew geeks were such potty mouths?

I was a little anxious to read this one. I wondered how much of myself I would find in it, because, yes, I am a geek and/or nerd. As Jess, my friend from college, once told me I'm the good kind of nerd. I don't have a replica bridge of the Enterprise constructed in my garage...I don't have a garage for that matter, I don't dress like a Jedi on the weekends, I don't know the names of every Star Trek character and the actor that played them...oh, wait I do know that. My point is sometimes I feel I need to hide my nerdiness. When Stargate SG-1 came out with a recut of an episode I've seen a dozen times I wanted it but I pretended not to see it at Costco. Jeremy did though and he "talked" me into getting it. He couldn't tell what changes they'd made to the episode but I could. I could not contain my inner geek and watched it several days in a row.

Why does liking science and science fiction make one a geek? Everyone geeks out about something. All those people who can tell you the starting line up for the Chicago Bears in 1975 or how many home runs Ty Cobb hit his last year are sports geeks, but they don't catch as much flack. What it comes down to is that everyone has an inner geek. They have something that they love and know far too much about or simply can't resist. Whether its reloading, horses, sports, kitchen gadgets, weight lifting, or science fiction people like what they like and some like it a whole lot.

I try not to hide it but I can't help but feel judged when someone finds out I like Star Trek or any other show with the word Star in it. But today I'm embracing my inner geek. I like sci fi and secretly I try to go workout at the gym when the SyFy station has one of my shows on since we no longer get that channel. Whatever it is you geek out about, geek out with pride. I am.

Live Long and Prosper.

You Might be a Gamer if...

You strap your baby to you in a front pack so you can play Shaun White's snowboarding game on the balance board so he won't cry.

I'm just saying if...

Parents Beware

As many of you know, last year Emma broke her leg riding on my lap going down a slide at the park. She had a spiral type fracture (I don't remember the medical term) from her knee to her ankle. You can imagine the guilt I felt. Well my mom sent me an article that, while not alleviating my guilt, made me feel that this wasn't something that is uncommon.

Here's the article if anyone is interested.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32880360/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/from/ET

Moral of the story, no moms on the slide.