I am a child of the 70′s. I am a child of a super feminist mother who was herself raised by a single parent in the 50′s & 60′s.  My mom’s generation had to fight against the idea that women should be silent supporters of their husbands who didn’t work, didn’t voice opinions, and didn’t really matter beyond their ability to have children.

I am a woman who was given a boy’s name, not allowed to wear pink, not allowed to shave my legs, not allowed to be “girly”.   My hair was cut short (I have school pictures where if it weren’t for my pink & blue giant glasses you would think I was a boy), I never learned about makeup, never really learned to be a “girl”.

It took me years to realize that I look pretty good in a dark pink and that it was OK to like the way I looked and to show off my curves.

My view of the whole Princess vs. Anti-Princess is pretty skewed, I admit it.

Here’s the deal though.  We, as parents, are responsible for it getting this way.  This place where there is toy segregation.  We are the ones who only take our girls down the one aisle or discourage our boys from playing with dolls.  We ultimately control who spends the money.

Maybe you’re like me, wanting to make sure your girl gets what you didn’t get.  Maybe you’re really in to those girly things yourself.  Maybe you just don’t have the energy to fight the marketing machine because you’re too busy trying to support your family and sleep through the night. However, we have no one to blame but oursevlves.

You see though, its not that hard.  In the new Lego sets, the ones aimed at girls, there is an Inventor’s Workshop.  Disney, those lovely people who brought you the helpless princess of the 30′s though well, Jasmine (because Tiana and Rapunzel sort of kick ass), also have Tinkerbell who is, wait for it, a tinker, and inventor.  They aren’t as easy to find, but thanks to Stan Lee, the Marvel Universe is full of strong female characters. (though I challenge their new owner Disney to do a better job of licensing those characters)  In the DC Universe, there is Wonder Woman.  You can find not remotely pink Wonder Woman merchandise in everything from baby onesies, to Little People, to Polly Pocket.  For Christmas, my six year old niece picked out Wonder Woman shirts for my 6 month old, my four year old, and for me.  Yes, they are pink, but they have Wonder Woman on them!

Its easy to blame Lego for marketing to what so many girls seem to want, but that doesn’t mean that you have to buy in to it.  Buy the Inventor’s Workshop and then buy the Cars set with Tow Mater & Holly Shiftwell and while you’re at it, get the Millennium Falcon set too because that has all the best characters including Leia.  They can have a party in the tree house.  I always wanted a tree house.

By the way, if you go to the “girl” section of the Lego site, the pink stuff is only a fraction of what is there.  Yes, there are no ninjas in the girl section, but there are pirates.  Girl everywhere know pirates are better than ninjas.  Also, I would have killed when I was a kid for some girl lego people.  This set sort of rocks my world.

In good news I actually managed to make a dress I was proud to have M wear on Serge.  I figured out some stretch stitches on my regular machine, figured out how to use the funky nylon thread, and put it all together in a cute pink dress.  Pictures forthcoming.  Early morning pictures don’t turn out nearly how you want them to of course, so I’m hoping this weekend is better.

The laundry is out of the living room, now I just need to find a place for the baby bath tub.  Everything else, not so much.  So, lets try that again, this time with more feeling!

• Meal plan & shop to make February the month of not eating out as much, hoping to start a trend.
• Keep the kitchen table clean.  (This one won’t ever go away I think)
• Learn how to make gathers/ruffles on Serge.
• Make a dress for H.
• TAKE THE STUFF TO THE DAMN DONATION PLACE.  Or call Hoarders.

I went through my photos of my nursing bra conversions and realized that I didn’t get the right ones.  Good news, I need new bras, so I’ll be fixing that soon.  I have this goal of being big on Pinterest just once in my life.  Especially since there seems to be a lack of plus size sewing stuff out there.  Its good to have goals, right?

So, I resolved last night to weigh in this morning, and then start fresh.  If only my scale could agree on what I weigh.  Stupid uneven bathroom floor.  I’m down anywhere from .3 pounds to 1.4 pounds.  I went with 1.4 seeing as I was bloated from yet again having Chinese the day before I weighed in (this time at least it was at home, with lots of veggies).  So, not a complete loss.  I enjoyed my weekend.  I had fun with my kids.  I lost a little weight.  All is good.  I just won’t be making a habit of how I ate last weekend.

So, this week, start fresh. I’m starting fresh with Goals too.  I got two things done.  I cleaned up the basement and I bought thread for my serger (so much thread, some of it very expensive…).  The rest, not so much.

• 1.  Learn how to do more than one stitch type on my serger.(Dudes! I can Serge! And I don’t even mean a burly Russian guy! More on that later)
• 2.  Donate the damn crap already.  Before the house looks like an episode of hoarders (more than it already does in some select unnamed places)
• 3.  Keep the kitchen table clean (clear failure there….)
• 4.  Get the laundry out of the living room.
• 5.  Get frames & put up the new pictures of the girls at home and work.  (I have such cute kids!)

I clearly do not feel like a mommy blogger anymore, so expect to see my crafty things around here.  I’m planning on detailing my adventures with Serge (just decided, I’m naming it) but is there anything else you’ve seen me tweet/blog about you want to see?  The “make a bra a nursing bra” tutorial is coming very soon.

I want snow.  I want snow for the moisture, I want snow because M begs me to make a snow man, and there is nothing I can do.  I want snow because I’m not ready to go out and run yet and 52 degrees makes me wish I could go out and run. The song makes me want to go run.

One pound, five pounds of pressure on each knee.  I weighed in this morning.  (benefit of doing this at home, I weigh in buck naked in my own bathroom)  I’ve taken 15 pounds off each knee.  Three pounds is good.  Fifteen pounds off of each knee sounds better. I think I need to take off about 150 to be comfortable starting running again.  If I lose everything I want to, that is over 500 pounds of pressure off of each knee.

The key now is to try not to get cocky about it.  Try not to take this success and sabotage myself.  That would be too easy.  I’m still a little freaked out about my milk supply, even though things seem good there.  It helps, I am sure, that H has decided that she will eat a mix of apples, oatmeal and breast milk with the voracity she normally reserves for nursing.  Perhaps she supports me in my goals to get healthier.

Onward I go.

• Goal 1: Get all of the Christmas garbage out of the house.  – DONE!
• Goal 2: Plan healthy meals Monday-Friday. – DONE! Ate out twice, both times planned.
• Goal 3: Hang up my backpack & coat every day when I get home from work.  Score! Did this one too.
• Goal 4: If it isn’t too icy out go for a walk outside at least two times. – OK, failed at this.  I did go out and walk today with the girls however, so it was a start.
• Goal 5: Take a car load of stuff to donate.  I may try to do a 365 items purged goal this year. – Fail.  Next week, I swear!

Alright, things for next week.  I’m going to try to carry over goals I don’t complete.

• Goal 1: Buy thread for my serger so I can try it out.  Time to get over my fear of that thing.
• Goal 2: Clean up the basement for gaming next weekend (this one must be done, we’re having guests)
• Goal 3: Keep the kitchen table clean.  It is a dumping ground for stuff.  The stuff gets moved to the stairs for dinner, then back to the table for keeping.  Stupid cycle needs to stop.
• Goal 4: Take a car load of stuff to donate.  Second time’s a charm.  I need to mail off some stuff to a friend who just had twins, so I must get this done.
• Goal 5: Exercise! The Wii totally counts if we don’t continue to get unseasonably warm weather.
• Goal 6: Bonus goal: Pack breakfasts as well as lunches.

Reward:  All I can think of is food rewards.  Damn.  Any suggestions?

Tonight for dinner we had green chili chicken white bean stew.  There are as many words in the name as there are in the dish itself.  If you don’t count spices.  I made it up based on my favorite soup from the deli by work.  It is more stew than their soup is, but that is the way A likes his soup.

• Saute until soft 1 Onion
• Add 1 pound (or a 20 oz package) of diced up raw chicken breasts (as small of dice as you need for your tastes) Cook until no longer raw on the outside
• Add 2-3 Cups Lower Sodium Chicken Stock
• Add 2 Large Cans of Diced Green Chilis
• Add 2 Cans of Navy Beans (or similar white bean)
• Add seasonings to taste (I used about 1/2 t of ground cumin & some pepper)
• Reduce heat to low, cook for at least 45 minutes

Stores & reheats awesome.  We had it for dinner tonight with cheese quesadillas and fresh avocados.  I plugged it in the WW (I’m trying again, very cautiously, to do WW) and it works out to be 11 points per serving.  I counted it as having four.  It sounds like a lot, but you could easily up the veggie content with more chilis, green peppers, etc and make it go farther.  It packs a wallop for protein and fiber, which I need to feel full and feed the milk supply.

Off to clean up the basement.  After I have a nice zero points cup of herbal tea.

I will one day see you as an adult, not the child you once were. I will treat you like you are a grown woman, capable of accomplishing anything.

There is this post that I’ve had brewing for months.  When I walk down the street, I write posts in my head.  I know now that this doesn’t mean I’m nuts, just that maybe I have the heart of a writer AND I’m nuts.  Anyway.  That promise up there is what it boils down to.  It is the reason for #12 on my list.

People make all kinds of promises to their kids.  Promises that they can’t always keep.  I’d like think this is one I can keep.  I think I need to keep it if my life is going to turn out the way I want it to.

I don’t know when it happens, that thing where we can’t see our kids as the adults that they become.  Does it start when they are young, when they are babies and you hang on to them as they reach each milestone, never wanting them to keep progressing?  Does it happen when they become surly teenagers and we long for the compliance of their younger years?  Something that will never happen for me since M has never been compliant.  I can look at my mom, look at my mother-in-law, and realize that they can’t see what some (or perhaps all) of their children have become, but I can’t tell where it started for them.

I talked with my dad when I was really wrestling with this the most.  This is the core of my issues with my mom.  It is more complicated of course.  She doesn’t see me as an adult, because no one ever saw her as one.  She questions my parenting because she was barely parented herself.  She can’t treat me as a friend, because how to be a friend is something she struggles with still.  Whatever the cause is, she struggles to see me, really know me, as the adult I am.  My dad, does.  He accepts me for who I am.  We don’t always agree.  We don’t always see the world in the same way.  Regardless of all of that, he sees me as adult.  He told me when I was in my late teens, when we had entered in to a business deal together, that from that point forward, I was his peer.  It hasn’t been without issues, but thanks to therapy and time… it works.  Well.

So, back to #12.  For all of the mommy issues with this one, it is something that the dads I know haven’t had nearly the same struggle with.  The dads I know, A included, are all excited about what comes next.  Babies are cute and all, but wait they have personalities.  Wait until they have specific interests.  Wait until you can buy them ever piece of the Dinosaur Train because they really like dinosaurs and you did too as a kid.  So with M, I’m trying to step back.  I’m trying to find the time to not get caught up in being the one who disciplines.  The one who talks to the teachers about the problems.  The one who worries about how her behavior reflects on me at the in-laws Christmas Eve.  I’m trying to find the time to really get to know her.  Without her dad around, without her sister to distract me, just the two of us.  I don’t ever want to lose sight of the young woman she is going to grow up to be.

• Goal 1: Get all of the Christmas garbage out of the house.  This means all of the packaging that Santa left in the basement, the incriminating pink corduroy fabric, etc, cleaned up.
• Goal 2: Plan healthy meals Monday-Friday. Oh yes, and actually go and buy the ingredients.
• Goal 3: Hang up my backpack & coat every day when I get home from work.  (What? Shut-up)
• Goal 4: If it isn’t too icy out (freezing rain out there right now) go for a walk outside at least two times (two days off) this week. If I can do this. See just where I stand on the whole 30 Day Shred thing.  Can I even do it at all.
• Goal 5: Take a car load of stuff to donate.  I may try to do a 365 items purged goal this year.

Because of course rewards are a motivation (and I need little things to keep myself from making my reward in the form of chocolate cake), for each week, a reward.

Reward: New patterns for the serger.

So, 2012, is about getting myself healthy again.  Toddlers, are a lot of work.  Active toddlers, even more so.  She’s already about to crawl at six months, and I need to be ready to take on a motivated and mobile kid.  I’m going to turn thirty-five this year, I’m in my 35th year, so it just isn’t going to get any easier.  Now or never so to speak.   So, for the year I turn 35, 35 things I WILL do this year to help improve myself.

1.  Walk more.

2.  Run again.

3.  Run at least one 5K.

4.  Eat more vegetables

5.  Give up soda again.

6.  30 Day Shred – I am Jillian’s Bitch.

7. Find a therapist I like.

8.  Talk to therapist about having been abused.

9.  Talk to a therapist about my batshit crazy mother

10.  Get my tonsils removed.  Those bitches are going down!

11. Breastfeed this baby until she is at least a year old, then wean her and not feel bad about it.

12.  Spend more time getting to know my almost five year old.  Like really get to know her, not just be her mom.

13. Take more deep breaths (both literally & figuratively)

14.  Use the online community to help me reach my goals (I’m talking about y’all, and twitter…)

15.  Embrace my geek.

16.  Have more sex. (with my husband… duh)

17.  Go back to the endocrinologist regularly.

18.  Learn how to use my serger.

19.  Make clothes for my kids and myself.

20. Be the best aunt ever and design cool clothes for my niece’s AG doll.

21.  Make a couple of new friends.

22.  Create a sewing area in the basement.

23. Dance more.

24. Take more naps.

25.  Advocate more, for mental health issues, for those who need the rest of us to be there for them.

26.  Laugh more.

27. Clean my desk.

28. Keep my desk clean.

29. Remove more clutter from my physical space.

30. Read more to/with my kids.

31. Eat less red meat.

32. Learn how to poach fish.

33. Support more local businesses.

34. Go to parks more.

35. Wear my Wonder Woman shirt in public proudly.

A very very merry holiday was had by all.  I only thought bad thoughts about a relative once. I ate way too much. I have plans, many plans, for what I want to do next year.