What is in a (Nick)name?

I read an article this week about a book (I am not going to put the name of the book or the author because I don't want the search traffic) in which the author discusses how the "princess obsession" that little girls go through is unhealthy. The article starts with "Is our daughters' obsession with all things ultra-girly unhealthy?" I came out of the article a little annoyed. Obviously, everyone is entitled to their opinion and this is her opinion, which I am NOT criticizing. I just don't agree. Also, I have not read the book, so I am only going by the article about the book. (I am going to see if the library has the book though-maybe I will have a different feeling towards it after I read the entire thing)

She says "Instead of staving off the pressure on girls to judge themselves by how they look, and to become too sexy too soon, I think it pushes them toward it." She also says "The Cinderella-Belle phase feeds into the Miley Cyrus-Hannah Montana juggernaut-then Miley goes from wearing a promise ring to wearing a bustier and dancing in a cage."

Here is my problem with this thinking. First off, my daughter will not sit down and watch a full 30 minute toddler show, so, she has not seen any of the "Princess" movies. She still likes to pick out her own clothes and likes to wear tutu's and pink and jewelry. If she has been influenced by someone to want to wear these things it would be MY influence, not the movies. I buy her clothes and I DO buy a lot of pink (and after four boys would you expect anything different, especially since I LOVE the color pink). She has a ballerina room, and has tutus all over it. I don't think that is pushing her to dress sexy. If it is pushing her to something it would probably be ballet!

Secondly, how does my daughter wanting to be ultra girly mean that she is going to turn in to a girl that is going to dress "too sexy too soon"? It is not the small child's imagination that leads to this. It IS partially what they see as they get older, but why are the parents allowing their daughter to dress like this? Miley Cyrus was at an age where her parents should have not allowed her to dress the way she did. Just because Miley Cyrus is allowed, doesn't mean that I have to allow my child to dress like that.

My son likes to act like he is a superhero. Does that mean he is going to grow up to be a Chip and Dale dancer? Is he going to dress in tights all of his life and give lap dances because I let him make believe that he is a superhero? He likes to shoot things, even if he doesn't have a gun in his hand. Does that mean he will be a murderer?

How about we put the blame where the blame should be. If parents are going to allow their children to dress too sexy for their age, then it is the PARENTS fault for their child dressing this way. Yes, it is hard when the media is constantly saying you should be stick thin and dress like this and look like that. And, yes kids will be kids and try to sneak out in what they want to wear, what their friends are wearing. Even if you don't allow certain pieces of clothing into your house (like the super short skirt or the low cut shirt) they can still get their hands on them when you are not around. This is not a new problem. What happened to parents teaching self-confidence and that you don't have to look a certain way. Why can't parents sit down with their children (male or female) and watch things with them and then discuss why it is important to be happy with who you are regardless of what you look like or what other people say about you.

Why can't we let our children's imaginations soar? We are so worried of what they MIGHT do when they are older. Teens being rebellious is nothing new. Kids are going to try to test their limits and see what they can get away with. They start that EARLY on! That is why my one year old will stare at me when she goes to do something she KNOWS she is not supposed to do! This is how they learn. I don't think that stifling their imagination is going to change who they become, as long as we, as parents, teach them the difference between real and make-belief. I don't recall Cinderella or Belle, or any of the other princesses that little girls look up to wearing inappropriate clothing or lingerie.

Yes, there are parents out there that go over the top. Like these pageant shows for little girls. Where they are wearing "flippers" (pieces they put over their spaced out teeth that make them have a perfect smile) and tons of makeup and wigs. Some of them even wear inappropriate costumes. THIS is where I see children growing up with pressure to judge themselves (and be judged) on how they look. They are also a completely different person on the outside during the pageants. Their looks are usually COMPLETELY transformed! Is this teaching them that they are not pretty enough the way they are naturally, so we have to make them look like a different person for the stage?

In my opinion it all comes down to how they are raised and what the parents let them learn, believe and get away with. I will allow my daughter to watch Princess movies if she wants to. I will let my daughter wear pink everyday if she chooses. She can wear her tutus and her jewelry and her dress-up clothes. She can carry her purse wherever she wants.

(an exclusive from the Mady collection)


But, I will do my best to teach her to love herself for who she is. I will teach her that it is okay to have what others might see as flaws. I will try to give her what she needs to have a healthy self-esteem and self-confidence. I will tell her everyday that she is beautiful and loved. I will do my best to teach her to have a good attitude and to be friendly and forgiving. I will teach her that she is a daughter of the King (aka a Princess) and that she should portray that in how she acts and dresses. I will do my best to teach her to become a Godly woman, wife and mother.

Most of all, I will continue to call her my Princess. It is a term of endearment. That doesn't mean she will always get everything she wants. She will not always get her way. She will not grow up thinking she is "entitled" because we call her Princess. She will grow up with the same rules and expectations that her brothers will grow up with.

After all, nicknames don't make an attitude.

Rapunzel

I am enjoying watching the relationship blossom between Andrew and Mady. It is so neat to see them becoming such good friends and playmates.

Mady loves ALL of her brothers. When they leave in the morning she stands at the door with Andrew and they scream "huggy huggy, kissy kissy, have a great day, I love you" to each of them as they get on the bus. When she hears the bus in the afternoon she runs to the door squealing.

Mady and Andrew are together ALL the time though, so it is natural that they would either hate each other or love each other. I am happy to report that it is LOVE! I know this could all change, so I am going to enjoy it while I can. Andrew is a very loving child to begin with. He is constantly giving hugs and kisses to ANYONE! He doesn't care if he knows you or not. He is not biased, he believes EVERYONE should be loved! I LOVE that about him (Isaac is like that too)!

When they watch movies together, they sit side by side. He often annoys her with his constant need to hug her and hold her hand and have his arm around her. She squeals and screams until I make him move. A few minutes later though, she is moving to where he is.

He will bring out his pillow and blanket and they will lie on the floor together to watch a movie. If he is playing his handheld game and she wants it, he will gladly give it to her. Sometimes he will come and whine that Mady took his game. I will make her give it back, but as soon as her lip comes out he gives her a hug and tells her she can play with it! She is the ONLY person other than him that can play with his Toy Story toys!

It makes him very mad if someone calls her a "bad girl". One of the older boys was in the kitchen doing homework the other day and Mady tried to take his homework from him. He said "No, Mady! Bad girl! Give me my homework." Andrew was in the living room. As soon as he heard "bad girl" he came RUNNING to the kitchen yelling "She is NOT a bad girl! She is MY girl!" Then he gave her a hug and took her hand and led her back to the living room, while telling her she was a good girl AND a "very pretty girl."

I was getting on to her in the car because she likes to pull her earrings out of her ears when she is in her carseat. I did not even say she was a bad girl. I said "it is bad to pull your earrings out, it will hurt your ears" trying to explain to a one year old (I know....WHY?) why we should not pull on our earrings. Andrew, in a very exasperated voice says "SHE. IS. NOT. A. BAD. GIRL!! Don't call MY girl bad." Between laughs I tried to explain to the three year old (again...WHY am I trying to explain things to them?) that I was not saying SHE was bad!

Earlier today Andrew and Mady were playing together in Andrew's room. Andrew came out and stayed out, but I never saw Mady and she was being quiet. I asked Andrew where she was. "I don't know where she is." So, I went to investigate.

The kids door knobs are turned backwards because a certain little boy kept locking the doors with noone in the room to unlock them. When I got to his door and noticed it was locked I KNEW he had locked her in. I opened the door. She was lying in his bed (happily).

He had followed me to his room, so I turned and asked why he locked her in his room.

"Because, I was going to come back and play with her later!"

I told him she was not Rapunzel and we can not lock her up and hide her away (especially since her hair is so short still). Then, since he didn't know who Rapunzel was (guess he needs to go to the movies), I asked how the toys in Toy Story 3 felt when they got locked up by the mean toys. He said it made them very sad and they missed Andy. I told him that she was not a toy and he was not Buzz, so he could not lock her up. He said he WAS Buzz (my mistake) but, he seemed to understood that and said he still wanted to play with her later.

A New, Revolutionary Diet

For many, with a new year come new resolutions. Personally, the only resolution I have made in MANY years was 2009. I made a resolution to lose a substantial amount of weight by the end of April. I accomplished that New Year's resolution on April 19th, when Madeleine was born. I KNEW it was a resolution I could keep!

One of the most popular resolutions we hear is to lose weight. Was that YOUR resolution?

If so, I can help! It is a revolutionary new diet that works so well I have lost weight and have not even been trying (FOR REAL)! For a minimal fee, YOU TOO can experience this life-changing experience!

It is a simple diet with a not-so-easy-to-follow plan.

All you have to do is borrow my Madeleleine for a while. If you as much as glance in the general direction of the kitchen she will be in it. She will whine and whine until you give her food. The best part, and this is why the diet works so well, is that if you actually have the audacity to eat without feeding her what you have....well let's just say you don't want to hear or see what happens!

You are probably thinking "well, I can just feed her BEFORE I attempt to eat, so the diet won't really work!" That is what is so great about this diet. She doesn't care if she has been eating non-stop all day. Somehow, she finds somewhere to store more food. I have fed her her entire dinner before I sat down to eat. I had her cleaned up and playing when I sat down and she still climbed into her high chair next to me. She will literally take the food right out of your mouth if you are not careful! She has no problem stealing the food off the fork on the way to your mouth. And the food on your plate....it is NEVER safe!



Some common side-effects include, but are not limited to: closet eating, gray hair, exhaustion, frustration, love, smiles, laughter and joy!

Now, I need to get busy figuring out a diet for this little diet of mine!

Christmas 2010

Christmas Eve...making cookies to leave for Santa:












We had another wonderful Christmas with the kids. I LOVE seeing the excitement in their eyes when they are opening their presents! Makes all the hard work more than worth it.

Santa came and enjoyed the milk and cookies the kids decorated. The kids all loved their gifts from him. Caleb and Isaac got a new computer. They were so excited when they came out and saw it. Their old one was OLD OLD and VERY slow. They can actually do their school projects on this one!

Bryce got a DSi from Santa. He had things on his list like an MP3 player, a camera, games, etc on his list and he got ALL of those in one system. He has enjoyed everything the DSi has to offer more than the games he can play on them (don't get me wrong, he likes playing the games too). It has a recorder on that you can speed up or slow down when you playback. He has had so much fun recording things and playing them back goofy sounding. He even takes the music we put on it for him and plays with it.

Andrew got the iXL game system. It is made for little kids and you can put games, music, pictures, etc on it and you can also color and listen to stories on it. Of course he got Toy Story for it (and Handy Manny, but all he cares about is Toy Story). We added the Toy Story soundtrack to it, along with a bunch of other songs. He basically listens to "Woody's Roundup" and "You've Got a Friend In Me" over and over. He likes to to take pictures of all of his siblings and "color" them by scribbling all over their face. He finds if very amusing!

Madeleine got a pink kitchen. She has played with that constantly (so have her brothers - ALL of them)! We constantly have play dishes and food scattered around the house. I put some of it up because I was tired of picking it all up. Her kitchen is right by my kitchen. It worked out just as I hoped, she spends more time playing with HER kitchen while I am in mine and less time pulling things out and whining about food!

They got more toys and stuff from us, but the Santa stuff is always the big stuff and what they spend most of their time playing with.















Caleb got a tent for Christmas and wanted to try it out the day after Christmas (even though our low was 20 that night). So, he set up the tent and helped Isaac and Bryce get their stuff out in it (YES, he actually invited them to join him). Dad felt sorry for them because it was so cold, so he went and made a firepit for them to use. While he was doing that, I ran to the store to pick up some warm hats and gloves, and of course all of the supplies you would need for SMORES!! This time they were REAL smores, not the city smores we have done in the past!

I loved having all of my family home for two and a half weeks! It was nice to just spend our days chilling and playing and not having to rush off anywhere. Now, we have to get back into the daily grind of life!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year.

Scariest Experience of my Life

My "death phobia" is dying from some form of suffocation. I have never felt like I was suffocating or truly having a hard time breathing, so I don't know why in my mind this is the worst way to go, but that is what I have always thought.

I have been sick for three weeks. I had cold/flu-like symptoms earlier in December for about a week. I didn't go to the dr because a) I don't typically go to the dr unless I am really sick (which I don't usually get sick very often...this is only the second time since we moved to LA that I have been sick) and b) they don't normally do a whole lot with those symptoms unless they are caught early on. After about a week I seemed to get better except for the lingering cough, which always takes a little longer to get over.

Last week, for about five days, Mads was sick. She was having fevers, snotty nose and coughing. After two days of fever and a night of us being up ALL night, we took her to her dr. She had a virus, nothing we could do but wait it out. Wednesday I started feeling bad again. This time it felt more like allergies....runny nose, runny eyes and the cough got a lot worse.

Yesterday morning I decided to go to the dr and see what they could do. It was an After-hours clinic with HORRIBLE service, but I was diagnosed with acute bronchitis and acute sinusitis. I was given a (very rudely done) shot of cortizone and a prescription for a cough syrup with codeine and an antibiotic. Although I am supposed to take the cough syrup 4 times a day, I can only take it at night because I will pass out from it.

Last night I had been sitting in bed talking on the phone. I got up when I was done and walked to the refrigerator. All of a sudden my airway completely closed up. I could not breath AT. ALL. I am trying to gasp for air and coughing and begin to panic. Paul comes running in when he realized it was more than a coughing spell, but I could not speak to tell him what was wrong. He was saying "I don't know what to do for you" I finally got out "INHALER" and he ran and got Bryce's quick acting inhaler. I could barely take a puff of it, but I got enough that it opened my airway to where I could get a couple of breaths of air, then it would close up again. I ended up taking four puffs of the inhaler (which is probably more than I should have take, but I felt like it was LITERALLY a matter of life or death).

Poor Paul was trying everything to help his freaked out wife! When I got to where I was able to gasp for breaths he gave me my cough syrup and was trying to get me to calm down and take short breaths. He was telling me to breath through my nose....which was not functioning! I was shaking and my leg had some uncontrollable restless leg syndrome (which was probably from all the inhaler I took which causes jitteriness). I was burning up and feeling like I was going to pass out. I got some frozen peas on my forehead which seemed to help.

I finally got some what calmed down, but it took over an hour to get my breathing back to how it should be and I could barely talk. Paul had looked up online what to do and one of the things it said was breathing in steam. He boiled some water and brought it to me, but it made it worse. Our pharmacist is a good friend of mine and he called her to make sure we were doing everything correctly because there was some medicine mixing going on! Basically, she said he had done everything right and if I had anymore issues I needed to see my physician.

In the end, my head was killing me, as was my chest and stomach. Once I started calming down I got better a lot quicker. It was hard watching my husband feel helpless, yet trying everything he could think to do to help me. The hardest part, though, was that the kids saw a lot, especially at the beginning when it first happened. Mady was glued to me, just staring in deep concern, but never crying. She kept coming up and patting my back and leg and saying "Mommy". Andrew came in and asked if I was sick and if I was going to be okay. The older boys were all asking if I was going to be okay. I was trying to tell them I was okay, but when I am gasping in the middle of short words, I don't know how believable I was. Paul got them all to their rooms as soon as I was able to breath a little and after I had calmed down I made rounds to everyone to let them know I was okay. Andrew woke up this morning asking a LOT of questions!

I was expecting to take my cough meds and be out early on New Years Eve, but the inhaler seemed to null out the codeine and I was just wide awake and shaky. I slept sitting up all night and I am very sore this morning, but I am thankful that I am here for the New Year (and at home). This was the scariest experience of my life and I hope to NEVER relive it. On the upside, I now have an inkling of what my son would go through when he would have his asthma attacks!