Things Happened

I get busy.  Busy with life and my expectations of what it should entail. But every once in a while I stop. I look at what we have done, how we have changed, and who we have become.  Sometimes that means feeling like I failed.  Most of the time however, I feel overwhelmed.  Overwhelmed at how well things have turned out. 9 years ago when what I call my "real" life challenges started I saw no relief or end in sight.  It looked and felt like eternal misery.  Like nothing would ever alleviate my suffering.
Don't get me wrong.  My life is still difficult and exhausting.  But I've done things.  In the midst of feeling like I was sinking, things happened. For me and for my family.  Some good, some awful and some amazing.
Moments where our choices paid off, moments where we were left confused and biter and moments where I thought "is this really my life?" (in a good way).  My family has weathered more storms then even my anxiety ridden mind could imagine.  Well, different storm then I imagined anyway. I will admit, I have not handled all, or even most, of those storms with dignity.  Most of the time  I end up being that person standing their screaming "YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!!" while everyone else is just dealing with it. In the end though, I got it done and sometimes pretty darn well I might add. Well, things worked out anyway.  Despite not knowing what I was doing or how to even start some tasks I managed to get it to some semblance of done.  I always thought my other life was on hold just waiting for me. Thankfully it wasn't. Things have turned out pretty darn well considering what we thought we were getting. Pretty well well indeed.

To Cheap To Buy New Clothes...Again

Last year I was trying to deal with the fact that I had put on 10 pounds I couldn't get rid of.  I fought and got really depressed but in the end decided that I shouldn't obsess over a number so I figured I should just bite the bullet and buy a size up.  All was well as I tried to get comfortable with a mushy me.
Then I got home from Christmas this year only to see that I had once again put on 7 pounds over that year as well.  VERY not cool.  I, being the super cheap person I am refused to buy yet another size up.  Plus I was gross.  Thus began my new calorie counting working out regime.  Part of me was hoping it wouldn't work.  That I really couldn't help it and there was nothing I could do.  Alas, it worked.  Well, so far.  I have lost 10.5 pounds and then stalled.  I am just pushing on in hopes that I keep losing but I do feel stronger.
It has me wondering though.  If I have to work this hard to get the weight off do I really want to live to maintain that? Not likely but we'll see. I am hoping once we get to a place where I can be more generally active it wont be so hard.

I Told A Little Lie

A week or so ago my sister asked if I had cut Emmeline's hair after seeing a picture of her on Facebook.  I said no because I am super slow and hadn't posted about it yet and for me it was a SUPER big deal.  Why such a big deal? Because Emmeline has never had a hair cut.  Well, other than the little bit behind her ear they clipped (and saved) for me after Emmeline's CI implantation.  See, she was born with a beautifully soft full head of black hair.  It was adorable.  Then, at 3 months old it fell out. In very traumatic clumps. I even took her into the doctor I was so worried about he rate of the loss.  He delivered the bad news.  Since Emmeline was basically starving for the first 8 weeks of her life her hair was now falling out due to malnutrition.  I scored some major great mom points that day I'll tell you.  One of many blows to my ego involving Emmeline.  Due this the trauma I just haven't been able to bring myself to cut her hair.  It didn't help that she was great about letting me fix it and had cute little blond tips.  That ended after she saw Isa get all her hair cut off before Christmas.  She wants to do whatever Isa does.  This led to crying and whining about "needing" a hair cut.  I finally worked myself up to it only to be getting ready to cut it and finding out that Josh wasn't ready, so we waited.  Then when Emmeline asked again I sent her to Josh.  He caved and the haircut was on.

Here she is full length

She really wanted a ponytail to see that had been cut off since Isa had one.

 Almost through

All done.  I know, I know.  It doesn't really look like I cut off much but I did!

Here is the pony tail.  It's actually about 5-6 inches long so quite a bit.  She loves it but was sad that I hadn't cut it short like Isa's.  I told her Mommy wasn't ready and she had to work up to it. She looks adorable and I made it through.  Win win.