I am not old, I am vintage

In May of next year I am going to be 39.

I know I know, I only look to be about 25, but it is the truth!  I am going to be 39.  There are certain aspects of getting older that I am completely in love with. 

I love that I am completely comfortable in my skin.  I know that I am far from being a super model.  I am not even at my goal weight yet, though I am doing that to be healthy more than the superficial aspect of it.  Who am I kidding, I want to look hot in a swim suit.  I want to be the hot mom at my kid's school.  So yes, by all means, I want to look better than I do.  However, I am completely fine with the way I look now as well.  I have given birth to 4 wonderful kids, the last of which was a complete Haas, at 10.3 pounds!  I have earned these extra few pounds, and stretch marks!  I am not self conscious of the cleavage I sport in my V neck T shirt like I did when I was in high school and college.  I flaunt it!  "Check it out world!  I have amazing boobs!  Gaze upon their glory!"

I also love that I like who I am as a person.  It has taken me a very very long time to get to know this person whom I call 'myself', and now that I have gotten to know me, I think I am pretty fantastic. It was not always like that though.  There was a long long time that I didn't like myself, and instead of being myself, I would try to be more like those around me, because that seemed to be better than who I actually was.   I would be quiet and not voice my own opinions on things because I didn't want to offend anyone by disagreeing with them.  Now that I am older, WHO CARES what other people think if they don't' agree with me!  I am loud and not shy to say what I feel.  When attending my weight watcher meetings I sit right up front, and am not shy to add my input to the conversation.  I will talk to complete strangers.  I will sing loudly with the windows down in my car.

There is so much I just absolutely love about my 30's.  You could not pay me enough money to go back to being a teenager, or a twenty-something.  No way.  Thirty has completely ruled!  So all of you twenty-somethings out there about to be thirty, don't worry, it is amazing!  You will love it!

There are, however,  some things that have started to happen in the last couple of years though, that are just some gentle reminders that I am not quite as young as I once was.  Here is my top 10:

1. Sitting on the floor for long periods of time have dire consequences. 
My kids are little, so they spend a great deal of time on the floor.  I mean, they are close to it, so it makes sense right?  As a good mom, I spend a great deal of time with them, which goes without saying where I spend it.  On the floor.  If I spend too much time on the floor, getting up is a whole other event.  My back, my knees, my ankles all sing the songs of their people with pops, and cracks and ticks as I rise.  Wrapping Christmas presents last year resulted in me walking like Igor from Frankenstein for the rest of the day.

2. Eating certain foods that I love to eat too close to bedtime can be a dicey game. 
I love popcorn.  And we also watch a lot of movies at night after the kids go to bed.  And I love to eat popcorn while watching movies.  But if I eat that buttery salty goodness too close to my bedtime, I will be up all night with heartburn so bad, I could breathe fire and take out a small village.  This also goes for pizza, buffalo wings, and ice cream.  (tear....)

3. I tell great stories, probably more that once, to the same person
I have mommy brain.  At least that is what I like to blame it on.  But I can only fool myself for so long by blaming it on that.  I have told my husband the same stories so many times, he has stopped reminding me that he already knows it, and just acts like he has never heard it before.  That my friends, is true love.

4.  I am no longer all that cool.
And really for the most part, I don't care so much.  But there are times, like when I am watching the Today show or something, and there is a huge crowd of people outside to see a music artist, and I am like, "Who the hell  is that?  I have never seen that person before.  Wait, he has like three  #1 hits on the radio?  How have I never heard of them??  Oh yeah, that is because I am too busy listening to Nirvana on the OLDIES STATION!!!"  Also, to add to that coolness factor I have going, I also have a flip phone.  A FLIP PHONE.   Honestly it isn't because I can't afford to get a smart phone, I am stubborn.  I am on my sister's plan, and I only pay like $20 a month for talk and text, and the phone I have has been dropped, flushed, chewed on, drooled on, stepped on, thrown, sat on, and almost garbage disposaled, and still works PERFECTLY.  I have a hard time getting rid of something that works just fine, even it if is dinosaur technology.  I will say though,  my mom has a newer phone than I do, and she is 80 years old!

5.  I go to bed alarmingly early.
I remember when I was little, my mom would make dinner, clean up, then sit down and fall asleep to the news.  I always laughed because I was ready to party until late in the night.  Now, I fix dinner, clean up, get the little ones in bed, and then fall asleep on the couch.

6.  Things that are ridiculously mundane get me excited.
New appliances, WHOO HOO!!  New curtains?  YIPPEE!!  Kitchen gadgets isle at Target?  Let me at it!!!  I will spend an hour in there!  And don't' get me started with bedding and linens!  I used to abhor shopping for that junk with my mom.  Now it is my favorite.  My younger me is shaking her head at me sadly, saying, "what happened to you?"

7.  Large crowds are annoying

I was never one to shy away from large events. Black Friday, concerts, festivals, large parties....I loved going!  Now I will think about going to the fireworks downtown in our capital, and say, "well, the traffic will be bad, and i don't want to use a port o potty."  Or for black Friday, "Well, all of the good deals are so early in the morning, and I am so grumpy if I don't get a good night's sleep.  I will just pay full price. Or better yet, my sister is going, I will see if she can pick it up for me...."  Mostly it is because I have gotten to be so outspoken that I can't keep my mouth shut with pushy or annoying people.  I actually said to a woman who smacked her kid in the face, (a complete stranger!) and then yelled at her kid to quit crying, "Well, you see, when you hit a kid they usually cry about that."  I am afraid if I go into a big crowd I am going to get my ass kicked.

8.Thanks to my kids my I have no control over my bladder.
So I didn't realize that even if you do not have a V-back birth, you can still get incontinence.  Did you?  Well it was a shock to me as well!  But apparently, if you have 10 pound twins sitting on top of your bladder, and then another 10.3 pound baby sitting on top of your bladder less than a year after that, it puts tremendous pressure on your body, so after the babies are born, every time you sneeze too hard, or cough too much, or laugh too hard, your body will just go ahead and pee a little, even if you try really hard to hold it!  I know my friends who have had v-back births have the same issue, but I thought I was safe with a C-section for all 4 of my darlings.  And now both God and my doctor laugh....

9.  Awesome little surprises around every corner of my face
 I recently made the mistake of looking into my niece's magnifying mirror.  HOLY LORD!!  What the what is going on there???  I have peach fuzz all over, small dark hairs growing out of any and every nook and cranny, and wrinkles!  When did I get wrinkles??  I stay out of the sun, put SPF 1000 on my face, and basically act like a vampire for the most part of summer, but there is no denying it.  The wrinkles are there!  I had a girlfriend tell me that her child pointed out the other day, very loudly, in public "Mommy, you are getting a beard!"  Awesome......

10. I can no longer sleep all night without some kind of interruption
I remember back in the day being able to sleep all night long, blissfully unaware of what was going on in the world around me.  Now I am up at least once, if not more than once a night for various reasons.  Someone had a bad dream, someone is afraid of the storm, someone is sure there is a monster, ghost, boogeyman in their room and needs mommy to take care of it.  Unfortunately not all of them are due to the kids.  Getting up to go to the bathroom, waking up because I hear a noise (of which I was never aware of noises in the night until I had kids and HAD to be aware of noises in the night), getting up because I remembered something I forgot, waking up thinking about something I need to do, waking up due to heartburn, or just go ole insomnia because I had too much caffeine, or sugar or not enough down time, or too many problems to think about....whatever the case is, I can't make it a whole night without waking up. I don't know what my body would even do if I had a whole night's rest. 

I will say it again, I have loved my thirties.  I do not miss the drama of teens and twenties.  But if I could have the body (and sleep habits) of my teens and twenties, and the mind of my thirties....I could quite possibly take over the world....

A love letter to my friends struggling

I am not going to lie.  This is not going to be a funny post.  After much talk of suicide on the news, and then more tradgedy with friends from my past in the last few weeks, I felt the need to say some things that were on my heart.

  I have not always been a mom.  I really think that goes without saying.  But I haven't.  Some days it feels like I have always been a mom.  But then there are days, like today, that I remember what it was like to only be responsible for myself, and it makes me all nostalgic.

After college, I was trying to find myself.  I think that at some point we all do it.  Most people get over it at some point in college, that whole, "what do I want to be when I grow up" sort of thing.  I didn't even know what I wanted to major in for a long time, until I finally settled on music just because I had always done music, and it wasn't the worst subject to study in the world.  I liked to sing, and play my clarient, so it was kind of an organic sort of major choosing. But even then I didn't really 'find myself' in that.

It wasn't until I was living with my sister while the Admiral was off in the Navy doing his overseas WestPAC, that I found my occupational calling.  My sister was having twins, and needed a nanny.  This is where some of my humor comes from, because honestly, up until this time, I knew ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about babies.  I was the baby of the family, so I never had any experience with babies.  I babysat a lot in high school, but that was for a 5 year old, not a baby.  And so here I am with not only one infant, but two!  I got a crash course while my sister was on maternity leave in baby care.  How to hold them, how to change them, how to burp them just right.  And had I not had a sense of humor, I don't know that I would have made it.  Poop explosions, projectile vomiting, enough drool to fill a swiming pool...oh my goodness.  It was one gross thing after another.

One particular night after trying to be a regular twenty something, I had gone out with my friends, and was extremely hungover.  I got up at 6 am, and starting getting the little fellas ready for the day.  My sister had laid out their food for the day.  Lunch was the thing that caught my eye, green peas.   I was not looking forward to this.  They ate breakfast, and I choked down some Gatorade.  They played on the floor and in the bouncer.  Then the time was nigh.  Lunch.  I sat them in their seats, and just then my friend came up from the basement where my living space was.  She had spent the night.  We looked at each other and she said, "Oh no.  Peas.  That looks awful." I said, "Mmm hmm."  I opened the jar and put some on the baby spoon for my first nephew.  He took a mouthful, and promptly spit it out all down his chin.  The party from last night started to make a return visit, and I ran to the bathroom.  My friend said, "Imma gonna go now.  Have fun!"  and left.  (Now she did make a return visit, and left me with pringles and more Gatorade.  I think the guilt from ditching me came back to her.).  And when I came back, I finished feeding them.  I started laughing, because I just KNEW my sister probably laid that out for lunch knowing full well how gross that would be to feed them after a night out.  I laughed and laughed.  That is when I knew ,if I could handle the gross, the vile, the body fluids, and the yuck, and still be able to laugh about it, and find the humor in it.......  then this is my calling, and everything was going to be ok.

I immediately went back to school and changed my major to Early Childhood Development.  I got a job as a preschool teacher, and fell immediatly in LOVE with it.  It was crazy and chaotic, just like my mind.  I didn't have to sit still at a desk, or be too organized.  I could play with toys and be silly, and sing just because the mood struck me.  And guess what?  Little people think I am HILARIOUS!  It doesn't matter how bad the joke is, they laugh!

I taught for 6 years, before I got pregnant, and had my first baby.  He came 10 weeks early, and was so little, I just couldn't go back to work.  I stayed home and after he was a little bigger and stronger, I started my own daycare.  After about a year, the wheels all came off.   Admiral and I had hit after hit.  My husband lost his job, we lost our insurance with it.  We were broke.  We also had one of those balloon mortgages, and when we refinanced to try to pay off some of the debt so we could make ends meet, the mortgage broker screwed us.  We ended up owing thousands of dollars in back taxes because of her mistake.  Admiral was looking and looking for work, but just wasn't finding anything, much like the rest of the country at the time.  I was going to have to go find some work somewhere, with good insurance to help keep us afloat.  My sister (the same one, she really needs s super hero's cape, because she is amazing), got me a job at her ophthalmologist office that she works for.  I was going to be an optician. 

Let me just say, I do not like grown ups very much at all.  They can be real jerks.  The women I worked with, however, were amazing.  My manager, made me laugh so much, and the girls I worked with helped to make the days fly by.

One day I had a particularly irritating customer.  I was trying like heck to charm this person, because she was just so grumpy!  I can't even describe the level of grumpy this woman was.  It was actually quite amazing.  My goal was to make her smile at least once while she was there.  It did not happen.   She left without one single smile, or nice thing to say.  I went back into the optical office where my manager and the other opticians were, and said, (forgive me mom, please just bleep the next part.)  "I don't get it!  She didn't like me!  How can she not like me? Everyone likes me!  I am fucking delightful!!"  The whole room froze, and then burst out in peals of laughter.  My manager got red in the face laughing so hard, and was gasping, "oh my god, you said you were fucking delightful!!  Bahahahaha!!!!!"  I kind of pouted a little and said, "Well I am."  which made them laugh even harder.  We are still friends to this day, and this does come up in conversation quite often.

After my husband found another job, and things weren't quite so dire anymore, I was able to get out of survival mode, and really take a look at what I was doing.  I was not enjoying the patients as a whole.  I was living for Friday when it was pediatric day and the kids would come in.  So after 9 months of trying out something else, I had to go back to my love.  Little kids.

I am not going to get into the details about the other schools I worked for, it is all very long and drawn out and dramatic, but I will sum up.  Basically, the first school I ever worked for, before I had Your royal highness,  was the most fun, and best and most awesome.  Best staff, and most wonderful administrator I have ever in my life been with.  None of the other schools ever compared.  But I will say the only thing that trumps that, is what I am doing now.  I get paid, to stay at home in my yoga pants, play with my own children, plus two of the most adorable little kids ever, and teach them stuff!

 I know this isn't one of my funny posts, or even a rant, but it is true.  Now, don't get me wrong,  it is not perfect. There are days that seem to just drag on and on.  There are mornings that I don't want to get out of bed, and the baby is crying most of the day, and my kids are all fighting with each other, or I am incredibly lonely with only myself as an adult to talk to.  But even on the bad days, it is better than being with some grouchy old lady who doesn't appreciate how effing delightful I am!  The kids laugh at my jokes, they love me unconditionally, I get hugs all day!!  It is the best job in the world, and it is mine.  The pay may not be great, but the benefits are priceless.

Parents out there. you have a most amazing job.  And it is hard, and there are long days, and you are going to be stretched to your limits in patience and calm, and resilience.  The times are not always fun, and the kids are not always saying funny things.  You will not always be the picture perfect parent like you see on TV.  You will make mistakes.  You will see gross stuff you never thought you would see, and say things you never thought would ever come out of your mouth.  It is super hard to remember when you are in the thick of it, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in Romper room,  that there is an end to it down the road.  They will grow up, and you blink and they are in elementary school, and you blink again and they are in middle school.  I am afraid to blink again and they will be in high school and then off to college where they won't be home for me to rant about anymore.  Then the only one at home I will be able to rant about is the Admiral (Now, it goes with out saying that he is awesome, but I am sure there are plenty of things I will be able to rant about him as an empty nester.  Stay tuned). 

Hard times happen, but life moves on.  You will have ebbing and flowing of income, you will have tragic moments.  But in the middle of all of that is where life happens.  The hard times are what make you grow as a person.  Inside the struggle is what makes you who you are, and the way you handle the struggle is what shows your character, your places for growth, and your strength.

Be strong my friends, and know you are not alone.  No moment lasts forever. 

In suuuuummmer!!!!

I told you all in the last post that I really really suck at the whole blogging thing in the summer time.  I just can't seem to get my butt in gear to get it done!  Not that I am not thinking about it, or even because I am too busy.  No, it is because I am so off schedule and lazy.  How pathetic is that?  I am too lazy to sit at my computer and rant.

But it isn't just the blogging that goes off kilter.  I seriously am glad to be back to work because the lives of my children and any semblance of a schedule was completely gone.  Our usual schedule is a beautiful one.  With lots of time for the kids to play, and be creative, mixed with things they need to do. Here is my day during the school year:

6:00 I wakes up, make coffee, troll facebook, and get my wits about me
6:30 Kids wake up, and pull ups are changed, breakfast is started (usually eggs and toast, or something hearty)
6:45 Kids that I sit for arrive and all sit down to eat breakfast
7:30  Your Royal Highness is off to school, we head to playroom for morning free time/ I sit and finish coffee and watch the news
9:00 Snack time
9:30 Play outside
10:00 story time/ learning activity/ crafts
11:00 lunch
12:00 Nap begins/lunch for me then clean the house
2:30 Kids wake up/snacktime
3:00 Play outside/Your Royal Highness returns from school and does homework
4:00 Head to playroom to clean up from the day
4:30 kids that I watch are picked up/I start making dinner
5:30 Dinner
6:00 Admiral takes kids while I clean up dinner mess
6:30 Play outside
7:00 Snack
8:00 Story/brush teeth/ kisses good night
8:30 attempt to watch TV while subsequently yelling at kids to go back to bed (aka whack a mole)
9:00 Whack a mole is over, and send Your royal highness up to read
9:30 kiss Your royal highness good night
10:30-11 Admiral and I off to bed


Now of course there are minor variations, but for heavens sake, that is a pretty awesome schedule,

wouldn't you say?  I have all of the ducks aligned, and the stars in a row.

Here is my schedule we had for the summer:

7:00ish I wake up because a child is awake and so I should get up so that they don't destroy the house
8:00 Admiral asks if I have made coffee yet
8:30 Make breakfast, usually just cereal or something that can go in the microwave
9:00  I realize I should probably get the kids out of their pajamas at some point.
9:30 Decide that today will just have to be pajama day until we have to go somewhere.
10:00 Snack for littles, and breakfast for your royal highness because he just got out of bed
10:30 The fighting is getting on my nerves, decided we need to get out of the house.  Get kids dressed, Your royal highness whines because he just woke up and doesn't want to go anywhere.
12:00 Decide to go to the pool
1:00 At the pool remember we haven't eaten lunch.  Order crap from the snack bar.
1:30 Head home for nap
2:00 Take a nap with the kids.  Wake up after 5 minutes in a panic because the house looks awful and we have friends coming for a playdate tomorrow.
2:05 Start cleaning like a madwoman
3:00 Wake up the kids because if they sleep any later they will not go to bed at night. As a result, very crabby kids
4:00 Take kids outside to play, force your royal highness to go outside.  He goes out and sits on the porch with his Ipod.  Decide that this is ok, because at least he is outside
5:00 Start dinner

6:00 Eat dinner/ Admiral takes kids outside/ I clean up dishes and take my time because I really don't want to go back out there with them.  I have just about had enough of them for the day.
7:00 snack.  Yes it is only an hour after dinner, but the kids did not eat their dinner anyway, so they are hungry.
7:30 pajamas/story/teeth brushed/bedtime
8:00 Try to watch TV while playing whack a mole
9:00 still playing whack a mole
9:45 Take one of the girls into our room because they are just refusing to sleep, which is my fault for nap being so late.  This results in a huge tantrum
10:00 Tantrum is over, girl back in bed, both now asleep.  Send up Your royal highness to read, to which he replies he is so tired and he will read double tomorrow (yeah right).
10:30 Admiral looks at me and says, " I am so tired. I am going to bed. You coming?" I then wake up from my nap on the couch and say "Sure".  I barely brush my teeth and fall immediately to sleep.

For my sake and the sake of others around me, I am very happy we are back to normal.