Beauty in the Balance....by Liimu

It's a delicate balance when you're raising daughters, setting a good example of how to eat healthy and exercise and take good care of yourself without modeling obsessiveness.

I've still got a good fifty pounds to lose from this last pregnancy and my son is six months old, so I'm feeling ready to come at it. I finally decided to go back to the personal trainer I used in 2008 who helped me to make this transformation.

I'm ready to make that transformation again. I decided when my son was born that would give myself six months to get myself together on my own and if I wasn't happy with how things were coming along, I would ask my old trainer for help. Believe it or not, Max is six months old next week. So, it is time.

What I'm slightly concerned about, however, is that I'm teaching my daughters to worry about their weight. I want to model for them taking good care of themselves, exercising and eating healthy.

When we were at the shore, we went one night to play mini golf and when we went to pay it turned out they only accepted cash. I realized I'd have to walk the half mile up to the Wawa to get money out, so I asked Devon if she wanted to take the walk with me. She said yes, which I was thrilled about, but on the way back she said she also wanted to do P90X with me because she thinks she needs to lose weight.

I stopped us in our tracks, turned her to me and said, "Look, I need to be very clear. I'm so supportive of you doing whatever exercise you want to do, but I really want you to do it to be healthy. You do NOT need to lose weight. You are beautiful. You have strong thighs, a tiny waist, beautiful skin, gorgeous arm, beautiful hair...do I need to go on? I wish people had told me what I'm telling you. It was only when I looked back at pictures of myself at your age and in middle school and high school that I realized I was beautiful then. I had such a negative self-impression. I want you to know you're beautiful TODAY."

She said, "But mommy, all the other girls are so skinny."

"Honey," I tried to explain, "you have a different body type from them. Just like you're tall and your sister is short. If she all of a sudden started talking badly about herself because of it and hanging from the doorway in an attempt to be taller, wouldn't you think that was weird? Wouldn't you worry? You have a different body type but it's equally beautiful. And you just wait. When you're in high school, your skinny little friends are going to be wishing they had your curves, I promise you."

I feel sort of hypocritical giving her what I know is good advice when I can't take it myself. Why can't I be just as accepting and loving of my own body since I had Max? My girls tell me all the time that they think I'm beautiful just the way I am. If I want her to believe me when I tell her she's beautiful, why won't I believe her? And by the same token, if I expect her to exhibit healthy habits, exercise often and enjoy treats only in moderation, why don't I hold myself equally accountable without being restrictive?

One thing I know I can do is to start loving and accepting myself now, just as I am, the same way I love and accept them. And I can start believing my daughters when they tell me they think I'm beautiful.

Week 16...Beauty and Brains - by Liimu

This week, I have a couple different topics forefront in my mind: Beauty and Brains. The first, beauty, is an interesting switch from last week’s discussion of pregnancy weight gain. Although I can’t deny that my weight gain is on the high end of the spectrum, I also can’t deny that this pregnancy is the first time I actually feel like I know what people are talking about when they talk about the pregnancy “glow.”

On Sunday, my sister in law was in town and she wanted to take photos of my children – she’s a photographer in NYC. She got me in a couple shots, make up free and all, and she just kept remarking on how beautiful I looked. I had to admit when I saw the pictures, they weren’t half bad. And often when I accidentally catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror as I pass by or as I’m washing my hands in the bathroom, I have to do a double take, because I really like what I see. Pregnancy agrees with me this time around. So, that’s an interesting shift in my perception – that regardless of the number on the scale, I can still look and feel beautiful during pregnancy and hopefully this is something I will carry on into my life well beyond my delivery date.

The second thing I have to talk about is Pregnancy Brain. I have had a lot of experience with the way in which pregnancy causes me to be completely scatter-brained. I can remember putting milk cartons into the kitchen cabinets instead of the refrigerator, and …. well, I’m sure there are other examples but I can’t think of them because I have Pregnancy Brain! Maybe it’s because I have three other children, maybe it’s because I’m working 70 hours a week, maybe it’s just because I’m getting old and there’s a little senility mixed in there with the rest of what’s going on, but this Pregnancy Brain is out of control. As an example, let’s talk about my 4-year old daughter’s birthday party. Granted, there are EIGHT birthdays in September in my family. No, I’m not exaggerating, there are eight: my sister, my two brothers-in-law, my sister-in-law, my two nephews and my two daughters. So, there are a lot of moving parts in September, but I’ve never really had a hard time managing it all before. Well, for my four-year old’s birthday, I decided to do a Little Gym party, which generally is pretty straightforward. You call them up, you make the reservation, they take the deposit, you send them the addresses, they mail the invitations, done.

Well, first of all, somehow they didn’t take the deposit, so I almost lost the reservation. Then, because most of the children I wanted to invite on my daughter’s behalf were in her class at day care, I decided I would take care of the invitations myself. So, I had a little help from my sitter – we put the invitations together, and then after forgetting day after day after day, I finally remembered to put the invitations into their little lockers at school. Then, I realized at 3 am one morning, that I had forgotten to include RSVP information on the invitations. So, I then very cleverly (I thought) made up notes with just the RSVP information. Of course, I didn’t have a guest list so I had to try to conjure up the names from memory. Then, I get a call from the Little Gym reminding me about my party, including the date and the TIME, which turned out to be an HOUR AND A HALF later than what I had included on the invitation. So, I created another “Oops” flier for all the locker (feeling not nearly as clever as I had before), and now could not even slightly pretend that I could remember who had been invited, and who had received the first Oops message. The best I could do was field the e-mails and phone calls that came in, including those from the Little Gym asking if I had my final guest count yet. It has been a mess. Fortunately, Sunday will come and the party will have gone off, one way or another. And people are very tolerant of the way in which the brain functions, or perhaps malfunctions, during pregnancy, due to all the extra attention it’s giving to the little project going on down below.

So, that’s what I have going on this week: Beauty and Brains. Maybe next week will be Brawn, if I can ever get my larger-but-cuter butt back to the gym. You’ll have to stay tuned to find out!