My one monthaversary and my blessed crumb snatchers

So, it's been almost a month since my second wedding and things couldn't be better. We are crazy in love (mostly because we are both a little crazy) and still in the honeymoon phase of life. You seem confused. Let me explain. While this was my second wedding, it's still part of my first marriage. Two weddings, one marriage. Still confused?

Basically, we were married for the first time five years ago at a charming little bed and breakfast. We were married by the Justice of the Peace, who I'm pretty sure is a cast member on Swamp People now. Five years and two children later, it started to feel like something was missing. We were not married in the church, because back then it wasn't important to us. Over the years, it has become important. We decided to baptize our children and bless our marriage. I arrived at the church expecting the priest to say, "Join your hands. *insert short marriage prayer here*. Welcome to Jesus' house!" That is not what happened.


It was a complete marriage ceremony. Starting with "Dearly Beloved..." and everything. Standing on the alter with my already husband, my very pregnant sister, and my full-bearded brother-in-law, I began to laugh. This seemed utterly absurd to me. I was wearing a purple dress from Burlington Coat Factory and the guys had on blue jeans. I laughed because I was already married. It was ludicrous to believe that we would stand up in front of a handful of friends and family and this would be just as important as the wedding we had five years ago. And you know what, it wasn't. It was more.


When my husband began reciting his vows, with the "better or worse, richer or poorer", I suddenly became overwhelmed. Because, this was a man who had now seen me at my worse. This was a man who had stood at the kitchen counter with me, staring at an empty bank account and realized that we were poor. At our first wedding, we had no idea what was waiting for us. We had never lived together and we were in the processing of moving 200 miles away from everyone we had ever known. This time around, he knew what all these words would mean. He knew all about the late nights with sick babies and the early mornings with crappy jobs. He was fully aware of what our life would be, and before God and my grandmother, he firmly vowed to be mine, all over again. When it was my turn for vows, I went from laughing to almost crying. It was terribly unexpected and completely wonderful. There we were five years later, still agreeing to be part of each others lives. One kid pulling at my dress and one kid crying in the pew. We are a family..... I got all my sister with me! (Sorry, I couldn't help it. )


After we got re-married, we proceeded to bless our cranky children in one of the worlds most unorganized baptisms. Trying to bless two children who want nothing more than to go home is nearly impossible. One child crying and one trying to run away. We finally made it through and headed home with our new Christians in the backseat. Adelaide promptly changed into her Tinker Bell dress and we undressed Julien and put away his gown. It was the same gown that I was baptized in 27 years ago.


Our life is back to the same routine now. Messy house, crazy kids and fights over socks being left in the couch cushions. I never thought I would get married twice, but I did. And both times, the groom was smokin' hot. Lucky me!

Wanting a star and being a dork.

Hello humans. It's been a while. In short, I've had a baby (he's awesome BTW) and survived an epic day of paintball. Other than that, things are pretty much the same. Now that we are all caught up....

I'm a Weight Watcher. I am not ashamed of this. It is a fantastic program and it helped me lose a great deal of weight after my daughter was born. Now that Big Jules is here, I'm back on the plan and looking to get healthy for good. As a motivator, I've signed up to walk in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in Houston, TX in April. More on that in an other post.

Last night was my WW (that stands for Weight Watchers, keep up people) meeting. My weigh in went something like this:

Friendly Staff Member: Okay, I've got your weight. Are you staying for the meeting?

Me: (assuming she wanted me to stay for the meeting because I had skipped last week and gained some weight) Yes, I'm staying.

FSM: Great! Would you like your rewards now or in the meeting?

Me: I get rewards? Hell yeah I want them! And I want them in front of EVERYONE!

I sat through my meeting super excited. I peeked at my weight record after weigh-in and realized that I had hit the 10lbs down milestone! At the end of the meeting, my leader started handing out rewards and I was ready. She got to me and handed me a 5lbs star and everyone clapped it out for me. Apparently, you get a 5lbs star each time you lose 5 lbs. There is no 10lbs star.

This was not acceptable. At the end of the meeting, I went to the front of the room and had a talk with my leader. It went something like this:

Me: I'm sorry, but is there a 10lbs star?

L: No, you get a 5lbs star each time you lose 5lbs, until you hit 20lbs down.

Me: That's cool, but here's the thing. I wasn't here last week, so I kinda got shorted a star because I hit both milestones since the last time I was here.

L: So you didn't get your first star? Would you like one?

Me: Well, if you're offering... HELLS YEAH I WANT MY STAR!

She laughed and gave me another star. Because really, I'm working my butt off (seriously, this big ass HAS to go) to lose this weight and I feel like I've earned those freaking stars!

I texted my husband and my WW buddies to tell them the good news and I headed off to Rousse's to stock up on more fruits and veggies. I felt so good walking through the produce department. I made witty conversation with ladies near the apples. I smiled at the cute boy in the melon section. I felt like, even though these people had never met me before, they could see that I was 10lbs thinner and they were so proud of me! I even ran into a couple WW ladies from my meeting. We talked about fruits and new ways to prepare Kale (bake it like a chip, BEYOND DELICIOUS).

The girl inside of me is funny and smart and outgoing and for a long time I feel like the heavy girl I've become has suffocated her a little. With every pound lost, I feel more and more like the person I want to be. Because that person is pretty awesome. Just ask my husband!

Walking back to my car, I was giddy. I had my new fruit and my smaller figure. I jumped in my car, ready to head home. As I was putting on my seat belt, I noticed a giant white sticker on my left boob. It was my name tag from my meeting. My gigantic Weight Watchers name tag. I'll say it again, I'm not ashamed of the fact that I go to Weight Watchers. However, nothing makes you feel more like a dork than realizing that the cute boy in the melon section was probably smiling at me because he was amused by my name tag.

Oh well, I had two even cuter boys waiting for me at home.

Not ready for that one.

Conversation with the kid last night:

Me: Baby Julian is almost here. Are you ready to be a big sister and help mama with Julian?

AJ: Baby Julian in you belly. I got food in my belly, Nanny has two babies in her belly and you got Julie in you belly.

Me: That's right. Mama has baby Julian in her belly, but he's going to come out soon. And we are going to love him and play with him. You are going to teach him how lucky he is to have such great parents.

AJ: Mama, how baby Julie gonna come out you belly?

Me: Uuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmm. He's. Just. Gonna. Come. Out.

AJ: Yep, he just gonna come out. (Long pause) I want juice.

Me: Awesome, let's get juice.

So not ready for that conversation. I figure we can revisit the subject again in about 30 years. You know, she is ready for her first boyfriend.

I'm the best mom ever, or I have scarred my child for life...

Today was the first day of "big girl" school for the kid. As previously noted, Sally can't go to school. For a while it seemed like this would be the end of the world, especially when two Sally's became a night-time thing at our house. Being the laid back mother I am, I chose to simply ignore the issue and let it play out on it's own. (I know, I should totally write a parenting book!) We never told the kid that Sally couldn't go to school, we simply told her that school was so awesome that unicorns would rain from the sky and she would get to play all day long. In my head, I've been trying to find a way to cheat the system... I mean... make the transition easier for the kid and I came up with a brilliant idea.

I dismembered Sally.

Calm your freaking horses people. I didn't do it in front of the kid and this is Sally #5, so we've still got Sally's to spare. I came up with the idea of a "Sally Blanket" that she could bring to school. The rules, as I choose to understand them, are that they cannot have any stuffed animals that go back and forth on a daily basis due to germs and lice being carted around by such play things. I figured a small blanket with a little hippo patch does not fall into that category.

I give you, Sally Blanket!

Sally Blanket has all the hippo-ness of Sally Doll but without the stuffing, or the body, or the limbs, or the music box. Basically, it's just a flat Sally head sewn onto a beach towel. The kicker is the neck tie. Miss Adelaide wraps her little fingers around Sally's neck tie as she is falling asleep. It is my hope that this decapitated, flattened Sally will be comfort enough for her during nap time. Either that, or she'll flip her freaking lid and be forever traumatized by the floating hippo head that haunts her nap time. It dawned on me last night that perhaps I didn't think this through.

Nevertheless, she awoke this morning uber excited about going to school! She pretended like she wanted to stay in bed all day with her Pappa, but I know deep down inside she was overcome with the joy of play-school. Can't you tell?

I would like to note that she was showing off her "Stally Blanket" this morning. She had some minor issues getting dressed. I gave her the purple shoes, she wanted the pink shoes, and so on and so forth. Eventually, I got her dressed and in the car with all her school paraphernalia. Half way to school this happened:

AJ: Where my Tally Mama?

Me: She's at home baby. Sally can't go to school.

AJ: Her can't go school?

Me: Nope. Only big girls like Addie Jo and big boys like Adler get to go to school.

AJ: Yep, I go to school.

And that was it. I was clearly more worried about this whole "no Sally" policy than she seems to be. We got to school and grab her bag (which contained the awesomely awesome Sally Blanket) and she grabbed my hand as we walked inside the building. You should know that my daughter hates to hold my hand ANY where we go, so I began to get nervous.

We walked in and she saw all the elementary kids getting ready to walk to the BIG big kid school and she had a minor freak out. "Pick me up! Pick me up!" When we got into her classroom there were a few other children playing and this terrified the living out of her for a moment. Because what's scarier than toddlers playing with building blocks? She dug her head into my shoulders as I walked around doing the look-how-awesome-this-is-and-don't-you-want-to-play-with-it game. We stashed her items in her cubby and she was still clinging to me. After a couple more minutes she picked up her head and actually looked around.

AJ: (in a very low voice) I see dinosaurs.

Me: Yeah, they have LOTS of dinosaurs! (I was unaware that dinosaurs would be the thing to perk her up.)

AJ: MAMA! HER HAS BABIES!!!!

ME: Heck yeah she has babies! Which are basically the coolest little toys since sliced bread!

AJ: I get down. I go play!

That was it. No fussing. No crying. A few minutes of hesitation and then she was off. I told her I was leaving and she gave me a hug and kiss and went back to her playing. Neither one of us cried.

However, that was hours before nap time so I'm not sure how the Sally Blanket went over when put to the test. Last I heard she was playing outside and loving life. Which makes me miss my tiny baby just a little. Which makes me want to eat strawberries and ice cream a whole lot.

UPDATE: Aaaaaaaannnnnnnnnndddddd, because I'm a mom, I called to check on her and she had a GREAT day. Although, her teacher did note that she spent most of nap time rubbing the patch on her blanket.

Guess I'm kind of a genius after all.

Wordless Wednesday- A step in wrong direction

Sally- we have a problem.

It's Thursday. Be thankful humans!

Time for our weekly round-up of Thankfulness! This week I am extremely grateful for the following:

-Words with Friends. It gives me something to do while sitting at the doctor's office waiting out the hour long "do you have diabetes while you're pregnant" test. Now I'm just hoping I don't fail again, cause the three hour test is a bitch.

-Calendars and day planners. If you know me, you know that these help make me slightly less forgetful than normal.

-Frozen grapes! It's like a little Popsicle in your mouth. Try it, you'll thank me later.

-The little fan behind my desk that was graciously loaned out to me by a co-worker. Big Mama is melting in this heat and that little fan keeps me from sweating all day.

-The little old lady who has kept the kid since we moved home. Miss Adelaide starts big girl school in less than two weeks and I'm going to miss the way she smells when I pick her up in the afternoon. It's a mix between rice and gravy and rose perfume.

-The Vampire Diaries. Don't judge me. The guys are hot and it's fun to escape for an hour at a time. Seriously, they are really really hot. No, really, molten lava hot.

-Uncle Bill. He gives my husband work on his days off.

-Pop-up Post-It note dispenses.

That's all people. Hope you are all having a great week!

Beware of the sun...screen

At some point in the last few months, my husband stumbled across a documentary about the dangers of sunscreen. Apparently, it's killing coral reefs, increasing cancer rates and shrinking men's penises all over the world. I googled it and just in case you're interested here is the page that tells you just how horrible sunscreen is. Apparently, it also has a "gender bending" effect. (Well, the same could be said about Liza but she isn't banned from our house. Yet.)

The hubs is of the "olive toned" humans while I am of the "burn like a shrimp on a grill toned" humans. For example, before we got married we went on a cruise with 22 other couples. I applied SPF 70 (it was the highest at the time) four times a day AND wore an obnoxiously large hat and still got a sunburn so severe that my skin whelped up and formed large nasty blisters. I spent the second half of the cruise stuck under deck bitching about the lack of towel animals we received in our room.

Luckily, our daughter has taken his skin tone, along with all his other physical traits (seriously, sometimes I wonder who her mother is) and she has had very little issues with sunlight exposure. Never the less, I still slather her up with SPF 50 each time we take her swimming. My darling husband feels this is unnecessary.

Hubs: Hey babe. You girls went swimming today?

Me: Yep. We had lots of fun frolicking in the water. I used SPF 100, reapplied twice and still got sunburned. I only put SPF 50 on the kid this morning before we left and she got a shade or two darker? It's so not fair that she has better skin than me. I guess I'm glad she doesn't have my...

Hubs: WHAT?! YOU COATED MY CHILD WITH THAT POISONOUS SLIME? DIDN'T I TELL YOU ABOUT THAT SHOW I WATCHED?!

*** did I mention we have a pension for over-reaction at my house***

Me: Good lard! I'm not going to leave her with no sun protection just because you watched some ridiculous show about the awfulness that is sunscreen.

Hubs: AND YOU PUT ON SPF 100?!?! That probably soaked into your skin and is shrinking our unborn son's penis RIGHT NOW!

Me: Well, the last thing this world needs is more giant penises!

Since my husband is not a scientist, I will continue to slather my child and self with the highest level sun protection available on the market. Maybe it is dangerous (if you drink it in large volumes), but as long as the real scientist tell me to use it, I'm going to use it. And if by some chance my testicles shrink, then so be it.