I’ve been making efforts to become healthier lately. I found a picture of myself right after my wedding and I was astonished I looked that way. I mean, I knew I was fat but I think until now I didn’t know I looked like a walking Biggest Loser billboard. I find it funny how many people are probably walking around right now thinking, ehhh I’m heavy but I’m not that bad, I’m still kind of sexy. Then they lose about 20 pounds and then they say OOOOO now I get it, I was only a few pounds away from getting milked and renamed Bessy! At the same time I can’t believe how many skinny girls are out there who think they are fat (LH I’m looking at you). I just want to shake them and say hey jackass I’ll trade you for your size 4’s any day, really here, you can go ahead and have my SIZE 14’S jackass.

Okay not the point. The point was, since having kids, and becoming sober (yeah probably cut out about 94520498759890 calories just in liquor alone, wait I did the math just now and I saved 2,478 calories a day just by cutting out amaretto ) I’ve been making a real actual effort to get healthy. Not just skinny healthy but HEALTHY. You know, like granola cruncher kinda healthy. I’ve been trying to eat 3 meals a day and 3 snacks a day. I try and make sure one snack is fruit. I make sure to eat fruit with every breakfast and to eat at least two different vegetables a day. I try and cook most of what I eat and I try not to eat at restaurants or fast food places. I won’t say never because if I have one fast food meal in 3 months that isn’t bad. I try and keep my chocolate consumption to 15 bars a day and 24 bars on the weekend. I cut out all soda, all flavored waters and basically anything that wasn’t healthy for me to drink. I’m only drinking water, coffee, milk, V-8, tea and orange juice in moderation. My husband informed me that a Venti Caramel Frapaccino in no way classifies as coffee, DAMMIT! Whatever, I’ll remember that when I’m preparing his beets for dinner (background, he agreed to eat a veggie a day if I gave up soda and flavored water.)

I’m really trying my hardest to take vitamins. Seriously I take flax seed oil, one a day, probiotics, calcium magnesium vitamin D, Vitamin C and an all vegetable organic fiber supplement daily.

I’m watching my calories and really trying to find a nice balance between weekdays and weekends. A huge part of what I’m doing is trying to make eating healthy feel normal rather then feel like something I’m doing as a quick fix to a weight issue. I want to make it so in 10 years I still think eating veggies and fruits every day is a normal thing, and at the same time so do my kids. In fact every night Brandon tastes a new vegetable. His most favorite of all is trees (broccoli) and carrots which makes me laugh so hard considering those are two of the hardest things to get kids to eat.

I try and read labels. I avoid as much hydromonsterated oils as possible, I don’t like a lot of sugar, I prefer my sodium to come out of my own salt dish, not prepackaged foods. I try and get in a yogurt a day and I like my cheese to be fresh not that rubber cheese they try and pass off as American cheese. The only thing American about it, is that it isn’t healthy which is the same for most Americans, we aren’t healthy.

I have switched to whole wheat pasta (My husband is somewhere glaring at me right now because he can tell I’m typing those words), I’ve mostly eliminated bacon from my cooking. I have tried to cut back on my rich sauces and cream bases and make more broth bases or things from pan juices. I have been baking my tortillas instead of frying them and adding more spices and fresh foods to my food rather then jarred and packaged unidentifiable mystery powders you buy at the store.

The point of this entire blog, is that lately I’ve started feeling like I was one whole grain away from turning into a Kashi commercial, so to be safe, I took precautions and ordered some back up. My order looks similar to this only bigger.

He he, not really, this is my real order, but still, definitely preventing a full Kashi, granola cruncher, hippie overload huh!

*Don’t forget to stop by the comment section on this blog and leave me your funniest, dirtiest, cutest, jokes, the winner gets a spot light on my blog.

My kid, Jens kid, same out fit, same day, same top snap undone. It’s just spooky I tell you.

(Codi)

(Coleton)

I decided to be easy today and post some pictures. However make sure to scroll down to this post and leave me your best joke. The winner gets a spotlight post on my blog. Currently Lindsey and Cristina are the two who made me laugh the most, so those are the ones you have to beat. I have have a dirty mind and can take a joke so let me hear your best one!

My son tries to use my breast pump.

First you plug it in

Then you attach it to your boo boos

If that doesn’t work put it in your mouth and hope to suck NILP back out of your stomach

Smile really big while attempting to make Nilp for Codi

Just for good measure do all of this with your pants on backwards!

Rob: What do a pizza delivery man and a gynecologist have in common?

Me: Uhh they can both deliver you in 30 minutes or less

Rob: No, they can both smell it but aren’t allowed to eat it.

Me: Ewww

Rob: He he

Thanks babe, I could not have gone on in life with out you sharing that little gem with me!

Do any of you know any good jokes? If so let me hear em! The winner of the funniest joke will get a spotlight post on my blog!

I should have just called in sick and laid in bed. Oh how many blogs start out that way daily around the world? I got zero sleep last night due to a nursing baby and a snoring husband. I woke up too early and knew the day wasn’t right. I had forgotten to make coffee the night before so I had to fumble around and do that. After arguing with Brandon all morning about brushing his teeth I finally had to basically hold him down to do it. I kept reminding myself that if I was a good mom my child wouldn’t fight me so much on this kind of thing. I got him dressed and went in search of shoes. I remembered my parents had just brought him a new pair of shoes. He got all excited over the new shoes with the flames when I discovered there were two right feet in the box. So then I had to put them back in the box thus making him cry and run and get more shoes. I was 3 minutes late at this point for work. We were about to leave when Brandon Tarzaned my curtains right off the rod. I was now 5 minutes late. I picked up Codi, turned to leave and launched my yogurt off the car seat and splattering onto my wall and floors. I was now 10 minutes late. I cleaned the mess, realized I had nothing else breakfasty, said fuck it and left.

I arrived at work realizing I forgot my coffee on the counter, my lunch in the fridge and my vitamins and pills in their pill container. So, if you are wondering why I just ate bread, appetizers, salad and desert from Macaroni Grill, there you have it!

Today was one of those days where I feel like a bad parent. Every little thing Brandon did today registered in my brain like Finger nails on a chalk board. By noon it was better but this morning left me feeling like less of a mom. I don’t talk about God on here a lot, mostly because I’m still learning, and then some because I don’t want this blog to turn into some sappy, mommy, non comical type blog. I would hate for you all to leave me because I put on my serious hat for a day. However. In the last few years I’ve toyed with praying. I’ve prayed for friends, for family, for animals, and for my kids. But mostly, I pray that today I can just be a good mom. I find the majority of the time I call on God, it is to ask him, to please, let me be calm and peaceful with Brandon. Let me be the best mom I can be. To just let me be, the mom I know I could be if I didn’t have a mental illness weighing me down. I look around to other moms, moms who don’t yell, have no need for discipline, whose kids are always the model of perfection and I ask myself where I went wrong.

I can already see Codi is going to be different from Brandon. And rather then feeling joy knowing that this child will be easier, I feel weight on my heart knowing other people will always compare Brandon to the good child. That Brandon will become the burden, or the bad child. The child that everyone says, “Oh you just did a better job with Codi because you learned.” But thats not true. I just have two very different children. One who will be quiet and cautious and well behaved and one who just wants to howl at the moon, similar to his mother. I pray every day that I will never be one of those people who compares the two negatively and who always realizes that Brandon isn’t a bad child he is just an amazingly free spirited child with energy I wish I could have for only a day.

I keep wondering when I will come out of the hole I’ve been in for a long time now. This one is lasting longer then they have in ages. I know most of what is causing it. A lot of it is money woes, a lot of it is the snow and dreary weather, a lot of it is the want to ride my bike but having a flat fucking tire, a lot of it is worrying about my kids, a lot of it is worrying that I’ll never measure up as a mom. A girl was killed recently in my town. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, she was sleeping on a couch and some one came in, got her and killed her. They found her just a few blocks from my house. I am now terrified of ever letting my kids out of my sight. I’m terrified of pre school or regular school. Of letting them go to the movies, of letting Brandon play out back. I’m terrified. Everyday it seems I find a new reason to feel like an asshole for even bringing kids into this world. Like the other day when my mom told me that allowing you to see my kids on my blog and being open about who I am and where I am is opening up for some fucker to come steal my kids and hurt us all. Great, now I feel like mother of the year for potentially opening my kids up for that kind of terror.

I want to get out of this slump. I need the weather to pick up so I can go riding. Last summer when I was riding daily I know I was a lot happier, I could ride away the crazy rather then be burdened with it in my head. It is so hard, people say, just run, go on a treadmill, do anything, but they don’t get, something about riding triggers my brain. It’s the equivalent to Prozac or Lexipro for me.

Back to praying. Like I said, I really try to pray. I try to ask to be the best I can. But then there are some days when I just can’t do it. I wake up feeling silly and trivial for wanting to believe in God. I feel like those around me judge me for trying to believe. Even those who believe look at me like a poser. Like I’m not doing it right, or it’s a joke or something. And maybe in the end it will get me no where, but I think that just asking for help makes me feel like a better mom already. I really hope that someday i can figure this all out, and I can be the mom that my kids brag about. I want to be that kind of mom, the kind of mom that other little girls say I want to grow up and be like her some day. I want my kids to have nothing of fond memories of me, and I want them to remember more then just my stellar cooking!

This weekend my dad finished installing my zoning system. What’s a zoning system you ask? That means that for each zone in my house (ie, living room, boys room, master room) there is a separate thermostat. So, what that means is when we are lounging in the living room we can have the heat on in there with out un-necessarily heating our bedroom. Or at night we can make our bedroom toasty with out wasting energy heating the living room. Or we can have our room at 65 but the boys room can be at 70 so they are extra toasty.

The point of all this is that this is extra helpful with Rob and I being polar opposites. Seriously in the summer he’ll be burning hot and want the A/C on and I’ll be just right and want it off. In the winter he will be perfect and I will be colder then a popcicle in Antarctica. A large portion of our relationship is spent with me sneaking over to the thermostat and turning it up 74 and then him sneaking behind me and turning it off. We can do this for hours and never tire of it. Some times at night I’ll wake up and crank up the heater while he is sleeping and he will wake up all confused and sweating.

Back to the point. Today I was sitting in the living room and I was FUUUREEEZING! Rob was in the bedroom. I got up and wanted to turn on the thermostat but I knew Rob would get mad because he would be hot. I sat down and pouted and then I remembered my zoning system. I hopped right up and cranked that sucker to 71. I sat her on my couch all toasty and warm while Rob sat in the igloo bedroom all cool and comfy. I felt so sneaky and powerful having control of my very own thermostat. Seriously, it was how I imagine it would feel if Rob ever let me have the remote control.

To see how I made this amazing fried egg sammich for my husband this morning, head over here. Then run to the store and buy everything to make your own sammich for Sunday morning!