Snack less

Gather the horses, sharpen the swords, get all your man power together to guard the castle door.  Hold it strong and steady— I am starting to wage a war against the SUGAR MONSTERS and other offenders like the SALT SNATCHERS.

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I am a chocolate donut monster!

This mom is sugared out, chocolate out, and frosted out…the circuits in her brain are firing as fast as firecrackers… “marshmallows, oreos, sprinkles, cookies, treats…”

Its been bad, Ari has been talking in her sleep saying “I want chocolate,” and waking up saying M&M’s.  Gia wants a donut practically every time we leave the house, my closet is jam packed with junk, and my car is so crunchy with crackers, the bugs have been salivating at the idea of getting in!

Ok, that was gross. But seriously, I don’t know how it’s gotten to this.  I used to be the healthiest person.  I was a Health Science major in college, I taught spinning classes, and I used to annoy the hell out of friends and family by talking about food and nutrition.

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Sweets, sweets, sweets!

I think it started when I began going to play dates and I saw all of this junk food in people’s houses.  I remember this one mom who fed her daughter a chocolate frosted donut for breakfast.  Other moms had closets full of cookies and sugar cereals…their kids seemed fine, and I slowly slipped away from my strict dietary rules (I just had one child at the time as well). Month by month, I slacked more and more and found it easier to just say “yes” rather than deal with the howling.

Get out the violins…oh sorry story, poor Jill, swept under the sea of sugar and never battled the waves of whipped cream! So here we are, my kids are 4 and 2 and I need to fix this.  Snacky nanny 911 to the rescue!

One other embarrassing secret I need to admit.  I am struggling with the snacks as well…oh wait, that’s no secret! I write about this all of the time…I think I have eaten the past…um, really embarrassed about this, like twenty…thousand bags of goldfish and of course Cheez its.  I always buy them for the kids and end up on the couch with my wine, munching away!  I am such a cliché! Doesn’t every health and fitness magazine say, don’t eat on the couch, in the dark, mindlessly watching TV or when you’re tired and stressed.

Ok, so it’s me and the girls starting fresh, and trying to get better at eating better, like less snacks, more meals…I will be brainstorming ideas to get us on the path less traveled by Mr. Goldfish, Mrs. Donut, and Ms. Cookie. Stay tuned for my weekly report of snack less, smile more…and please no judgment people, I am a work in progress. Not striving for perfection here, like last week when I endured the MOST HELLISH trip to the pediatrician’s office with my little one who screamed and thrashed like a scene from my bloody Valentine…we got a donut after and I had a BIG GLASS(s) of wine.

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Sprinkles, sprinkles, sprinkles!

Maybe I’m a boring blogger

sad

 

 

 

Last night I cried. I sat on the couch, it was two A.M. I thought about my girls, mostly Gia, and how I neglected her a lot this week.  She wanted to play with me. I wanted to do blog stuff. I crawled into bed with her last night, cuddled up to a sleeping beauty, and whispered how much I loved her and promised to be more mommy.

Whenever I think about being a mom and how it felt to be a daughter, I always think about this one incident.  It was the saddest night- The man I thought was going to marry me, broke my heart, and the only thing I remember about that night was my Mom spoon feeding me oatmeal on the couch as I struggled to breathe.

That was years ago and obviously things have changed.  I have two girls, married an amazingly fun and kind man, who is an awesome father.  Things are good – I stay home. I’m lucky to be able to do this but sometimes I feel unfulfilled.  I started this blog in January for fun, to document some of the craziness, without any intentions of trying to make money, trying to be funny, or trying to do anything…I like to write and I thought it would be fun, and a way to keep me focused on the little adventures of everyday, instead of worrying what I’m doing wrong and what parent information don’t I know about.

Kind of like shopping in your neighborhood mom and pop shop of mommystuff rather than stepping foot into the enormous Mega Mom store a few towns away where moms have all the latest gadgets, know all the no no’s in infant eating, and have their kids enrolled in the latest trending must do activity like Yoga Brain Balance or something like that.  I just find it easier to bake my cookies and bang on pots!

If you have been reading my former posts, you can see I’m a bit all over the place, ideas, projects, plans, stopping them, changing them…running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Clearly, the blog hasn’t been my ticket out of the therapist’s chair.

Curiosity killed the cat

I started out with a few posts and shared them with my friends and it was nice and then a bout of insomnia hit and I started googling Mom blogs and funny Mom blogs, and there were thousands of them, 98, 900, 000 results on google to be exact- ones that had awards on them, featured on well-known sites, blogs with thousands of followers, blogs that were making a penny or two.

I started reading these blogs, some were unbelievable with their crafts and creations, some were useful, and some were funny.  A large part of the so called “hilarious blogs,” were shocking …“fucking disgusting, smelly farts, vagina, kids are A-holes, I want to punch you in the face, but cracks….” You get the gist.

I get it, this sort of train wreck writing sells, and people flock to these sites to see the crazy.  I have been playing around with the description of my blog and threw in the word crack…last night I changed that.  I am not one of those balls out there kind of blogs – Fuck –is a word only used in extreme situations- SORRY DAD! And I’m not going to call my children little A-holes, like a popular blogger out there does. (I may think it…haven’t we all? But I won’t write it).

So I am going to stop snooping around and trying to figure out what sells (as much as I want to post some sexy shots of me in a bikini – hahahaha – Just kidding – Never. People would be sending me diet and fitness books after that for sure!

I’m no Martha Stewart (the extent of my creativity is chocolate covered oreos with googly eyes) and I’m not Mother Theresa with a potty mouth, so from now on, it’s just me sipping my wine, chugging my coffee, munching on Cheez its, hanging with the girls, and making creations like this!

dog sandwich

 

And I might tell you that Gia said that my naked boobs “looked like hanging down low penises.”

 

 

Sick …thoughts about green chocolate covered Oreos

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“Wow , that’s a lot of chocolate covered Oreos to eat,” G’s teacher wrote back when I wrote that G wasn’t coming to school today because she was sick (for those readers who were looking forward to a real ‘sick story’ sorry- go search a gross web site!) and would be stuck in the house with dozens of sweet, chocolaty treats in our house. Oh no, I hadn’t even thought about that yet! I was too distracted by the sheer disappointment that G wasn’t going to be able to wear her cute, new, green St. Patty’s day shirt that I suffered to get…and by suffer I mean carting around two kids shouting, “I want a treat, I want a treat,” with the Frozen soundtrack blaring from the IPhone, while they simultaneously tried to jump out of the cart.

I don’t know about you but I always have in the back of my head what’s available for munching and secretly getting into…take right now, for example, I am well aware that half of a chocolate Reese’s peanut butter cup pie is wrapped up five times tight, in Tupperware, beckoning me from the depths of the freezer, on the left hand side to take him out.  He because members of the opposite sex sometimes just cause you problems, they can be alluring and then you’re stuck with them like the empty calories you just consumed.

All day long I was thinking about the teacher’s comment.  Did she think I was going to eat all of these cookies? Is Ms. A picturing me lounging on the couch and popping cookies into my mouth?

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I COULD NOT FIND AN IMAGE OF A WOMAN!!! What does that tell you?

Such a classic stereo type, isn’t it? The stay at home mom popping the bon bons, watching her soaps, while the kids…hmm, I never thought about what the kids were doing? How does this stereotype exist? I don’t know any moms, myself included who ever get the chance to put their feet up… the most relaxing time I have had in the past four years was when I was lying in a hospital bed, post epidural (yea- tried natural with the first and will never do that again!) and waiting for contractions to begin….it was awesome, I read magazines, my parents were watching my firstborn, and I had no guilt that I should be cleaning something, running an errand, researching something, or checking on a child…the nurses were checking on me every 15 minutes or so, I got table service (ice chips a la mode), and there was even a TV for my husband!

That reminds me, a couple of weeks ago, I burst on the scene of preschool pick up bragging about the best hour I just had- “Ladies, Ari feel asleep in the car and I got a coffee and I just sat there.”

A friend laughs and says to me, “Pretty sad that this is the extent of our excitement.”

Yup- pure excitement, like getting your kids to eat a vegetable.  I actually felt like getting a medal the other night when they both ate a real meal, and not just the sweet potato fries.

So, back to the thought of me kickin back, reading the latest InTouch, and poppin those sweet delights in my mouth, sounds like a dream…

I wonder if any moms are out there are spending their days doing this? If I see a giddy looking mom on the checkout line at Target or Walmart, with a cart full of movies, chocolate covered almonds and caramel popcorn, and a big ole bottle of Benadryl, I know what she’s up to…

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Hmmm, what shall I eat first?

Not a bad idea. (Kidding, people, I would never drug my children – oh wait, didn’t I write in a previous post called Letting Go, that I was letting go of rules!

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