Three Things

Hey there!  Sorry, it's been so long.  March madness really takes up a lot of my time.

Well, that and the four kids under four.  And yes, I'm saying that as much as possible until it's not true anymore.

So, anyway!  Three things as of late...

1. The boys are three months old today!!!  WHAT!  To celebrate they slept from 8:30 until 7am!  I mean, c'mon.  That's incredible!  I was all engorged and leaky, and you could have wrung my bra out to fill a bottle, but I got seven hours of uninterrupted sleep.  THANK YOU BOYS.

Three months old today!  To celebrate they are in clothes for only the second time in their lives!  

I just love the convenience of pjs too much to dress them.  But man they're cute no matter what.

Luke did his first honest-to-goodness giggle at me yesterday! While I was working out.  So either the sight of me kickboxing is hilarious, or it was me screaming, "Not again!" as another set of jumping jacks led me to pee my pants for the tenth time that video.

This one stops my heart.  I just can't believe those kids.  

Luke having a hilarious nighttime laugh while Henry thinks about it some more.

And then Henry joined in on the workout laughter.  These boys are the best audience.

2. I swear to God, as I started typing this I completely forgot what the second thing was.  Argh baby brain!  This seriously makes me question my doctors who have children (men and women alike), like, how do you guys remember anything enough to be a competent doctor.  If it were me I'd be staring at a patient with chicken pox like, "Maybe don't let her draw on herself? Does she have a . . . what's that thing called that makes you hot?  Give her some more of that stuff in a bottle.  You know, you measure it?  It helps make the hurt not. . . hurt anymore?  Do you have anything to eat, I'm so hungry."

3.  So, I have been making some mistakes lately.  Which is normal.  A friend of mine recently wrote to me saying only good parents worry if they're doing a good job, bad parents don't even think about it.  And it pretty much saved my life that day.  And it is now my personal mantra.

(And she has a wonderful blog she just started, starring the cutest little boy evar!  mommymomma.tumblr.com)

But even still, some days are great and some days I find myself going, What The Hell Am I Doing To My Children?  And that sounds dramatic, but Jesus Cristo, raising kids is dramatic.  I mean, you're making them into people.  That go out into the world.  And affect/effect other people (SEE!  I have never been able to get it in my head which affect/effect is which.  Now my kids are going to be illiterate and they'll never be president because I cannot click onto that dang difference!)(I do however know that it's 'supposedly' and the correct way to use 'whomever' so maybe that cancels it out).  And that's a lot of responsibility.

So, anyway, the mistakes lately have been about my body.  I've said some stupid things about myself, things I don't even really believe, and I just sat down and was so mad at myself.  Our society is so obsessed with perfect bodies and perfect hair and perfect everything that we are pretty much ruining little girls from the get go.  (I know, dramatic - sorry.)  But here's an example: Even though my lover, the man I have children with, the man I share my life with, has told me that he honestly doesn't find Victoria Secret models attractive at all because they don't look like real women, I still can't help but find myself passing by a store and wishing I looked like them.  At comparing my thighs to their airbrushed ones.  At wanting my boobs to be huge and perky and tan.

But you know what?  My thighs will NEVER look like that.  My stomach will never not have a hundred stretch marks on them.  And my boobs will never be huge and perky.  For many reasons.  It's not genetically possible, I'm not a photograph, and oh yeah, I've had four kids!  My boobs are saggy because I'm 35 and I breastfed.  My stomach is not unblemished for the same reason.  And my thighs will always touch, because I'm a goddamn human being.

And yet, this morning I mentioned something to Josh about not liking the way I looked.  In front of my daughters.  And I feel so guilty about that.  And lately anytime someone says to me, "Oh you look so good!", my natural response is to say, "Oh gosh, you should see me naked, it's not pretty."  Or, "No, it's just all sucked in super tight right now."  Why is my instinct to deny their compliment and want to let them know I think I'm less-than?  I don't know why this is, there's probably been a million studies done on the way women talk to each other, and I'm sure it's learned from a super early age that that is what you do.  I mean, in my case it is.  I have been lucky to have genetics that have left me tall and slender my entire life, yet I have never just been ok with it.  Partly because of being teased a huge portion of my childhood, and partially because that's how we (women) talk.  I complain about clothes never fitting right, I complain about never having boobs, and I complained about men not wanting to date me because I was too tall.  And these just aren't complaints, they're lifelong worries and obsessions and slight traumas.  I still occasionally get uncomfortable around men who are shorter than me because I don't want to feel oafish.  I get self conscious in a bathing suit because there's nothing to fill out the top.  And so on and so forth.

Most of the time this is not always the case.  I am a work in progress, I recognize these things as I am thinking them and brush them off and stand tall, and exhale and confidently conduct myself around people.  Most of the time. Most of the time I can be happy with my height, thrilled I don't have a back ache because of my chest, proud of my personality and the way I treat other people more than the way I look.

And it pisses me off when I don't.

And it pisses me off even more to think one day my girls might think horrible things about themselves.  It pisses me off and makes me horribly sad.  My beautiful, perfect, fantastic, hilarious, smart, generous, caring, thoughtful, quirky little girls.  They should never doubt themselves because of their bodies.

Never.  Ever.  Ever.

Shame on me for putting negative stuff out there in the world, especially about myself.  How unfair to me and my children, and my lover for that matter.  I would hate it if he walked around talking about how he hated his body all the time, because I'd start to hate it too.  Negativity breeds negativity, and all that.  This isn't a seminar, you know what I'm saying!

And so I am pledging that I will not say bad things about myself, because they learn from me.  They mimic me constantly.  And there's enough in the world for them to worry about other than the way their legs look in jeans.  I mean really, they're women.  All women look beautiful if they're smiling, because what makes women (and people in general) beautiful is what's coming from them.  What sort of attitude they're exuding, how they are to other people, their kindness, their heart, their life.

Obviously I'm not saying unhealthy is fine as long as you smile about it.  I want my children to be healthy and happy.  I don't want them to be obsessed with how much they weigh,  I just want them to eat right most of the time and exercise a little and have that be enough.

And I want to, no - I need to be that example.  Because who else are they going to learn it from?* Really, who else so close to them will set a good example?  I am the closest woman in their lives forever.  Who else do they look up to everyday and want to be like their whole lives, even if they say they don't want to, even if they grow up and say the dreaded words, "Oh my god I'm turning into my mother!"  I hope that's not such a terrible thing.  I hope it's slightly embarrassing, but I hope it has absolutely nothing to do with the way I view and value myself.

I don't need to feel bad about my body, I just had twins three months ago.  My body is fucking beautiful.  It does amazing things.  And more than that, my body does not define me.  My words do.  My actions do.  My heart does.

And tears are streaming down my face as I type this, mainly because I'm hormonal and super tired, but also because how hard it is to type the words, "My body is fucking beautiful" and mean it.  To really, truly embrace it, and love it, and mean it, and be so thrilled with everything this body has led me to and let me do in life.  But more importantly, to let go of it.  To have it not be a thing.  Because I don't need it to be a thing.  I have a lot more going on than my stomach, or my chest or my legs, or the way my hair looks, or how my makeup is.  Yes, I want to feel pretty, but I want a million more things too.  I want to feel smart, and funny, and engaging, and kind, and nice, and thoughtful, and all the things that make up a good person.  Because maybe, just maybe if I feel all those things, my girls will never let go of that feeling either.

Because they never should doubt how wonderful they are in every single way.  The are amazing.

And so am I.

**(I just had to put in a disclaimer here to say that my Mom never talked bad about herself that I can remember. She used to call her thighs her "donuts" because "that's where her donuts went", but other than that she never said anything bad about her body, always wore heels despite already being 6'2" and married my dad who was only 5'8" but thought she was gorgeous. She always told my sister and I we were beautiful, even with crippling acne, flood-water length pants, braces AND head-gear, and hair that made me resemble a brunette Carrot Top. And yet I still had a bunch of insecurities.  Growing up a girl is hard.)