almost wordless Wednesday: healing comfort

I’m sick again. I will spare you my massive, amazing bed-head and bright, red nose. But I will share with you Daniel’s Curious George that he insisted I cuddle with while I lay on the couch sick and miserable.  It helps. It helps a lot.

Speaking of help, Anissa Mayhew, blogger extraordinaire, mother of three and first runner-up of Bewbfest ‘09, suffered a massive stroke yesterday and is currently in an ICU in critical condition. If I could, I would send her Curious George. I can’t because George would miss Daniel so. But I and everyone else can still pray and help.

taking the time to enjoy

I’m feeling a little better today. It’s a beautiful thing to move around without hurting all over or feeling like I might pass out, especially since I don’t believe there is anyone around here to catch me if I do fall. As sick as I have been, I still missed the opportunity to get out and run. I know that sounds strange but, well, that’s me. But following doctor’s orders…I know, me, following directions…I am going to take it easy today. If it weren’t so crazy windy outside I would maybe take a walk and enjoy the Fall colors and stop and smell the flowers. Instead I think I’ll just stay inside and enjoy this video of Hazey-Face enjoying and smelling the flowers.

I should be crying

There are some days as a parent where you wonder if all the good you try to teach your children is really sinking in. I mean, how many heavy sighs or eyerolls can one really take? Then you catch them being good, being kind and you can’t help but to marvel over it all. It’s an amazing feeling when you get to witness your child working so hard and giving her all for the good of someone else. You find yourself so proud, so happy, so ready to cry and so willing to forget that teen-aged snark you put up with earlier in the day. This was one of those moments.

I’m very proud of you Jodie!

Brava to my favorite Dance Stars!

Yes, I do believe that this messed with the wrong mom!

watching forever

I swear I could watch my Jodie dance forever and never get tired. She has so much energy, so much joy, so much grace, so much strength, so much emotion all in that size zero frame of hers. Tonight she and the rest of her competition team will be dancing as a surprise at a local breast cancer fundraiser. They are dancing in honor of one of a friend of the dance moms, who is battling breast cancer, to “A Woman’s Work”. While the choreography will be their own, I have no doubt their performance tonight will have an impact no less than this dance, choreographed by Tyce Diorio, had on last season’s So You Think You Can Dance.

Good luck to my Dance Star and all the other Dance Stars.

fit for princesses…and princes too!

I had a chance, thanks to MomCentral and Feld Entertainment, to treat four of my favorite princesses to Disney Princesses on Ice.

l. to r. Abby, Holly, Abby's friends Danielle and Taylor- all super fans of the Disney Princesses

And, what I’m just now getting around to telling you all about this great offer? But I have an excuse, no matter how lame it might seem. There was that jury duty gig that kept me busy and drained day after day and then Holly and Hazel moving out of the Big Top and then when I should have come straight home this past Wednesday night and blogged about I was distracted by the birth of my best friend’s very first grandchild.

You have to admit he is a delightful distraction. Sorry, but I just had to be there when he was born in the early hours of Thursday morning.

But I digress…What I’m supposed to be doing is sharing with you all a great offer to see the show yourself if you live in the Bay Area and it isn’t too late. The show continues at the Oracle Oakland Arena through October 18 and then will open in San Jose at the HP Pavillion October 21 through the 25th and then moves on to Sacramento’s Arco Arena October 28 through November 1. See? It’s not to late for you too to catch some Disney Princess Magic! And Lucky for you I have a coupon code to share. Purchase a 4-pack of tickets for only $44 by logging onto www.ticketmaster.com and entering the coupon code: MOM.** It is an amazing, delightful show featuring some of the Disney Princess favorites. Oh and the guys selling concessions in the stands are pretty friendly, cute and happen to work for the Disney Ice Show. I learned this thanks to my girls’ smiling and flirting with them.

Thanks again MomCentral, Feld Entertainment and, of course, the Disney Princesses for a great night of good, clean fun with my girls!

even educated fleas do it…

…and it would follow that if they do then moms must do it too. Well, wouldn’t it? I mean, where would we all be were it not for our moms doing it? Right?

I know, I know….I have now created a visual forever burned into your mind that compels you to now stare at the sun for several hours. I’m there with you staring at that sun. But we can’t escape the fact that, yes, moms do it….moms….OMG!….moms have sex! Thank goodness for you that your mom did have sex. And here is where I first apologize to my own children but then remind them that it is a very good thing for them that their own mom did too. After all, where would I be without my amazing circus act that I am partly responsible for creating?

Okay kids, go outside and stare at the sun. Mommy is so very sorry for traumatizing you this way. Someday, I promise, you will understand…or at least be able to distract yourself from this truth…mostlikely by having sex…when you are an adult!

My friend…and yes, I can call her a friend because we have sweated, did plank jacks and  lost weight together… thinks enough of me to GIVE me a t-shirt out of the goodness of her heart that celebrates this truth that moms like, actually love sex…Kristen Chase of Motherhood Uncensored and  the Shredheads has this amazing column where she offers up some practical sex advice for parents because, parents do have sex even after they have kids.

It’s okay boys and girls. It’s good…very good for mommy and daddy and (trust me) it is good for you too.  I think that is the point  of the Mominatrix. We are definitely moms  and we LOVE, LOVE, LOVE being moms. But in order to be healthy, happy people, women, moms we need sex in our lives too. Kristen’s sex column and now her book, The Mominatrix’s Guide to Sex, promises to help us moms “get back what’s rightfully yours. No harsh judgments, boring commentary, or embarrassing exercises. Just a frank, funny discussion about sex after kids for new moms and seasoned veterans. From the nitty gritty on pregnancy and post-partum sex to spicing things up when the flame starts to burn out, even a chapter that’s just for the dads, the Mominatrix takes on everything you need to know or want to ask.“

So when the Mominatrix gives you a super comfy, yet sexy t-shirt and tells you to put it on and take a picture you do and you find yourself just a little bit turned on because it was the Mominatrix who asked you to do it. Since my baby-making days are long gone, I am thinking that I am one of the “seasoned veterans” that she is talking about. Thanks, Kristen.

She’s coming…she’s coming January 18, 2010 but you can pre-order now.

I can’t wait!

on the cutting edge

It goes without saying that my girls are always on the cutting edge of what is hot be it what to wear, what to watch, what to play, what to listen to, what to…whatever. They just recently discovered this amazing band with a hot, fresh, new sound. It’s four guys who go by the name The Beatles. How hot are they, you might wonder? The Beatles are so hot, so amazing that they are now available on Rock Band. Of course Beatlemania has now descended upon the Big Top.

inspiring responsibility

Labor Day was a relaxing day here under the Big Top. Our boys spent the day fishing on the Delta with friends while the girls basically relaxed the day away at home. Normally I am working because I consider it to be kind of poetically perfect to be catching babies on Labor Day but I had the day/night off. Instead, I had a chance to do a little service to our community with Jodie, her dance coach and other members of her dance team.

Jodie got up at 4 in the morning to meet with her dance team and load up, unroll and set up over a hundred American Flags that lined up and down Center Street for the Flags Over Manteca project. I joined the group twelve hours later to roll up each flag, gather them all and stack them up for storage until the next scheduled display.

What fun it was! We shared laughs, waved to passing cars as they honked and waved at us and later enjoyed a well-earned treat at Yogofina….LOVE Yogofina!

For Jodie and her two team mates, it was a lot of fun and there is nothing wrong with that. It was also an opportunity for them to see that serving their community can be a lot of fun. Definitely nothing wrong with that!

I can’t begin to share how much I appreciate all that Jodie’s coach and teacher, Harmony and her fiance, Paul, do to inspire Jodie and the rest of the kids they work with.  Harmony and Paul are pretty much kids themselves, just in their twenties yet they model the kind of positive people any parent would be proud for their own children to become. They both are hard-working people who have built together a successful business. But they don’t stop there. They volunteer their talents and precious time with local charities and community groups that benefit under-privileged young people in the area like the Boys and Girls Club and Give Every Child A Chance as well as regular participants in the Flags Over Manteca Project. They are two young people who have chosen to give back and build up their hometown in such a way that more young people will hopefully be inspired to realize their own gifts, talents and dreams and hopefully give back to those around them. In a modern society that has evolved into a group of well-insulated individuals who can choose to have little interaction with one another and who often refuse to take responsibility for their community, their friends, their families,  and their own selves, the influence of these two is commendable. I am so grateful for their influence and inspiration. It models and supports what Bill and I try to teach all of our children. How fortunate we are to have them touch our lives the way that they do!

We all need to be inspired more like this. Our children need to be inspired more like this.

I just finished reading the text of President Obama’s Back to School Remarks directed to the school children of our nation. Of course much has been discussed, torn apart, dissected and predicted about this planned address. Even before the text was released to the over wrought public, I felt that most of us were expending so much useless energy over something pretty benign. Although our children did not have the opportunity to choose Mr. Obama as their President (and yes, he is their President too), why shouldn’t they enjoy the opportunity to hear him speak directly to them? Reading through the text a reasonably intelligent person can determine that this isn’t an evil Pied Piper ready to beguile and lead our children to a path of their own destruction. Far from it. This is a public figure challenging and encouraging school children to work hard, accept their own responsibility to do the best that they can in school. Would we object if someone like Tiger Woods or Eli Manning or Beyonce addressed the American young people in the same way? Would we wring our hands over the thought that they were being brainwashed? I doubt it.

The way I see it is there can’t be too many heroes in our children’s lives and there can’t be too many times where our children and we are challenged to do our very best and to take responsibility for ourselves, our community, our nation, our planet.

Mr. Obama is not the acceptable hero for your child in your opinion? Fine. Instead of regarding this as something to fear and to shield your child from look at it as a teachable moment. READ the speech. Go over it with your child and discuss it with them. Share your point of view, your beliefs and your values about your child’s education. Take this opportunity to continue to teach and inspire your child to be an informed individual who can study the issues and make their own logical, moral choices.

but I am THAT mom

No, I am not that mom who will put up with her children screaming or running amuck in public places where good behavior is expected…anymore! But I am the mom who will gladly, proudly celebrate that which makes me an awesome, phenomenal woman and joining Lotus of Sarcastic Mom and other equally phenomenal, awesome women and mothers in the Bewbfest ‘09.  It was all good, clean fun as we celebrated all the glorious shapes and sizes that we are. It was all the more fun because I am the second runner-up in this year’s Bewbfest. I have to thank everyone who voted for me…repeatedly including my darling hubs (nice to know he still appreciates the girls) and my older kids. It’s nice to know that the average sized, over forty, mother of five, grandmother of one rack can stack up to the 20 and 30-something mom bloggers out there. Thank you!

Of course right about now I am imagining my mother and her fellow “bra burners”  are cringing over what might appear to be blatant objectifying of my physical self. Perhaps it is a little objectifying but I see it more as celebrating and reclaiming a little bit of our physical selves. It seems that much is measured  in our physical selves as women, particularly our breasts: what is considered to be the ideal size and shape, our sexuality, our ability and decision to nourish the children we give birth to and how well we “hold up” as we age. No wonder so many of us complain about and dislike our own bodies, including our breasts. To me, The Bewbfest and The Boob Emancipation do a little celebrating and reclaiming the right to celebrate part of our own physical womanliness. There’s nothing dirty or tasteless in that. It’s just boobs, our boobs and we are pretty damn proud of them. I don’t see that as setting us back but rather liberating us even further. Being the mother of four daughters and grandmother of the most amazing grand daughter it is a big deal that I model confidence and a little self-love in the body that God has given me for my girls.

I have to say that I owe my size and shape not only partly to great genes (thanks Mom and Dad), a pretty great bra but also to my joining that cult that is the Shredheads. Remember when I posted my pre-shredding picture at over 180 lbs? Yeah, I’d like to forget it too. But I’m glad I did post it and share the beginning of my shredding experience. I am even more grateful for the accountability, support and beginning friendships that the Shredheads has offered. Most of us have moved past Jillian’s 30 Day Shred and Bob’s Yoga finding running, weights and other forms of exercise equally challenging in our quest for fitness. The results among my fellow Shredheads has been amazing and inspiring.  For mepersonally I have seen a significant amount of weight and inches lost and currently I am just 10 lbs shy of my personal goal. I’m not going to make the mid-July, family vacation date I set for myself to achieve that goal but I have to say that I am going to be very close. I couldn’t be prouder of that achievement too. Even better, the added bonus of all of this shredding and now jogging/walking/weights/yoga is my darling hubs is now heading to the gym working with a trainer and it is beginning to show.

Looking good in jeans,that little black dress, a swimsuit, and when I am brave enough, a bikini is pretty cool. Looking great for a forty-seven year old woiman and being told so, especially by my husband and kids is wonderful. Feeling good physically and mentally, feeling strong and feeling incredibly energetic so that I can do the juggling that I do is the best of all. Yes, I am THAT kind of mom. I am doing this for me, my hubs, my kids and my grandkid. I can’t think of a better reason.

very beautiful, very cold and you’re not allowed to touch anything

Just a little more than a mile’s walk from my hotel was The Art Institute of Chicago. After the last session of the conference, I desperately needed to clear my head so I walked on over. I had to. I mean here I was in Chicago  where Ferris Bueller, Cameron and Sloane played. How could I not check it out and see first hand what they saw?

I could have taken more pictures. Perhaps I should have taken more pictures. But I am glad that I didn’t. Instead I walked slowly for a couple of hours through this amazing place just drinking in all the artistry and genius around me.

I know that there will be much to do at BlogHer ‘09 but those who are attending I strongly suggest you take an hour’s break from all the sessions and crazy-assed parties and swag for this treat. You will be glad you did.