I am the weeeeener!  I never win anything, despite a bizarre habit of entering all sorts of contests and giveaways.  Lately though, I’ve had a streak of awesome luck!

First, I won a gift card to Target through MomConnect.  I submitted some ideas for their Rainy Day Activity eBook, and I was chosen for the card.  It was awesome, and thanks to that and the unexpected and very cool gift sent by my favorite Brandi, I should be ordering my espresso machine this week!  Woo!

Then, when I checked my mail this morning, I discovered that I won the Celebrate Italian Heritage Month contest on La Bella Lingua!  The Bella Lingua blog is a fantastic place to find some really great posts about Italian, in general and in specific cases.  The prize package includes some awesome tools from Living Language to help me practice my Italian, a copy of the La Bella Lingua book (La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language), and a 2010 Fodor’s Italy travel guide!  It is ridiculous how excited I am.  I am hoping this will be just the push I need to get back to studying my Italian properly.  I miss the language!  I hope it misses me too.

I am off to spend a day with an awesome mom friend, so I hope the blogoverse treats everyone well today!

I’ve officially committed to eating better, so today Aaron and I sat down and made a meal plan and shopping list for the whole week.  I tried to use as much as I could from what we already had in the pantry/fridge, and then include lots of healthy stuff.  It’s not perfect, and I’m sure it could be healthier, but I wanted to document it just in case it helps someone else.

We had pancakes for breakfast.  For lunch, we had pastrami and cheddar melt sandwiches with horseradish and mustard and some wilted spinach with garlic.  For dinner, I made zesty southern pasta and bean salad.  I used fat free zesty Italian dressing, and substituted 1.5 cups of crushed tomatoes for the chopped ones.  I also used radiatore instead of “seashell pasta,” and I think the shape was better for the super thin sauce.  I left out the red pepper flakes because we don’t have any, but I think they would have been really good.  The recipe turned out really well, and it made eight nicely sized servings, so we’ll be eating it all week!

For dessert, we had Sara Lee Cookies ‘n Cream Cheesecake Bites.  Hey, no one’s perfect, and they were good!  We’re trying for baby steps in the hopes that gradual changes will stick.  I have to say that dinner was refreshing.  It tasted like vegetables and good, healthy food, and I really liked it.

So here we go…

I’ve been in a bad mood.  I’ve been cranky thanks to the uncomfortable process of drying up.  I’ve been less than motivated and, as such, having trouble balancing work and life and my possibly misguided entry into this year’s NaNoWriMo.

And then I read this on Mrs. Flinger’s site.

You can click on the postcard to head to the blog where the whole story is located, but in short it is the story of a beautiful little girl whose life was cut short by a simple act, something that could easily happen to any of us.

I know what loss feels like.  I know what it is to wake up without someone who ought to be there with you.  I look at my sweet daughter, here and healthy and so full of life, and I choose to let go of all of the grumpy.  It slips away too fast and, in some tragic times, too soon.  I cannot afford to let a momentary discomfort, a worldly stress come in and put a shadow over our sweet world.

I won’t do it.  I will honor every lost child by treasuring mine more every day.  I am only human, but I can choose to let the grumpy go and enjoy my day with my beautiful daughter!

Dear Evi -

I can’t believe you are six months old today.  I don’t know where the time went, but I still wouldn’t trade it.

You are awesome.  You are such a good baby, always laughing and smiling even when your teeth are coming in.  You make it so easy to stay home and take care of you.  Sometimes I feel a little guilty when I have to work, but it’s worth it to get to stay home and see all of the cool things you do every day.

You are so playful now, really enjoying games and having a great time.  You laugh at mommy’s funny faces or daddy’s silly games.  You say mama, dada, puhpuh, haha, baba, mmmm ba, and thuh.  You are great at sitting up now, you never topple over anymore.  You love your Sophie teether and your sock monkey toy.

I am so happy to have you.  You are our little miracle.  Sometimes I think back to the beginning of my pregnancy with you, and I still can’t imagine we have come so far.  You are strong and smart and healthy, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

I hear you waking up, so I will go.  I can’t wait to see your Good Morning smile.

I love you little girl.

– Your Mommy

Mommy’s little monster…

Daddy and Monster

A Devil and her Monster

Happy Monster

Hungry Monster noms a Daddy finger.

]]> http://yummysushipajamas.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/as-promised-3/feed/ 2 Yummy Sushi Pajamas http://yummysushipajamas.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/happy-halloween/ http://yummysushipajamas.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/happy-halloween/#comments Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:56:01 +0000 Yummy Sushi Pajamas http://yummysushipajamas.wordpress.com/?p=2310 ]]>

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Here’s wishing everyone a fantastic day, a spooky night, and a lot of fun!

I’m pretty sure we’ve chosen the green monster costume, so I will be sure to post new pictures of her all dressed up!  Thanks to everyone who voted.  If you’re bored and looking for more voting, please go vote for me for the awesome Sam-e blogging gig!  You can vote every day.  :)

Okay, I can’t decide what to do for Evi for Halloween.  Please weigh in?

Option 1:

Option 2:

Option 3:

The sock money is a little bit big….  You can click on each picture to take you to my Flickr set with a few more shots of each option.

So?

First, an update.  I went to court yesterday for my recent accident, and I am thrilled to report that I was released with no fine or points because there were no witnesses to prove the state’s case that I was guilty of negligent driving.  Personally, I am relieved as I really don’t believe that I could have done anything to stop the accident from happening.  I wasn’t speeding, I wasn’t on my phone or playing with the radio.  In fact, thanks to the rain, I was driving quite carefully.  So…  phew!  I was going to write a post about all of the people I saw in the court room, ranging from the sad to the sadly stupid and beyond, but then something changed my mind and my outlook.

This morning I was listening to the radio and I heard a story about Mattie Stepanek.  He was fourteen when he died from disautonomic mitochondrial myopathy.  Despite his very short and difficult life, he was the author of some beautiful, inspiring books that really focus on positivity and the beauty of life.  The interview was with his mother, who has recently written Messenger, a book celebrating his life. She was talking about all of the ways in which her young son inspired her and others.  She said two really powerful things that really spoke to me.

Do not lie down in my ashes.

Her son told her that when he knew he would die.  What a sad, beautiful thing for a child to say to his mother, and so true.  Do not lie down in the ashes of those you’ve lost.  Do not settle for a live half-lived.  Do not go through your days in a haze brought on by the things that have happened to you.  They were not done to you, they simply happened as things do in this sometimes cruel and often beautiful world.  Instead,

Choose to inhale.

This was another gem from Mattie Stepanek.  Do not go about your days breathing because you must or because your body does it automatically.  Every morning when you open your eyes, choose to inhale.  Live on purpose.  Embrace all of the positive things in your life.  They pass too quickly not to be cherished.

I have been thinking a lot about this in my own life, about ways that I can more fully embrace the good, the now, the beautiful and leave the rest behind.

Thanks to a comment on my guest post, I started thinking about my current eating habits.  Thanks to the routine I have gotten myself into and the general sense of tired, we’ve gotten into the really bad habit of eating a lot of quick, prepared foods.  Even when we cook, we tend to take shortcuts that, in the end, decrease the value of our meals.  I want to go back to the Mediterranean diet.  I know I have said this before, but the truth is that though cooking that way took me more time, it was SO worth it.  It was cheaper because I was using fresh, local ingredients.  Aaron and I both felt better, happier and healthier.  This is not about my weight.  I meant what I said about loving my body.  I just want to be taking the best possible care of it, and a diet with more vegetables and whole grains and less prepared, packaged foods is a huge step in the right direction.

A friend of mine has a young daughter who has just decided that she is ugly.  This little girl is only seven, and she is actually a beautiful girl.  I am sure someone at school made some sort of comment, but it kills me.  I hate that we live in a world where seven year olds have any concept at all of beautiful and ugly in terms of physical appearance.  I hate that now her mother has to worry and wonder, and try really hard to keep impressing upon her the importance of inner beauty, intelligence, and strength.

We are all beautiful, and now I am determined to embrace all of me.

This is my chin.  I call it my King Tut chin because I feel like it is oddly long and sticks out strangely, like this:

Other people don’t see it this way, but I do.  So who is right?  Really, who cares?  In the end, it is a perfectly serviceable chin and it is just fine.

Hello, nose!  I happen to think I have a really large nose.  That’s why you very rarely see profile shots of me.  Is it really a big nose?  I don’t know.  I see other people with smaller or larger noses who look lovely.  I just have had a hang up about mine since a cute boy in middle school said my nose had a hump in it.  Before that, I don’t think I ever thought about my nose.  I don’t think I would ever change it, because then I would stop looking like ME, and I like me!

Oh, my belly.  It was much smaller before, and has gotten significantly flabbier and marked by stretch marks since Evi’s arrival.  I am self conscious about it.  But really, how can I be?  How can I knock what gave me my son and daughter?

I know this is a tough subject.  I know that there are people who might see these pictures and be angry with me, thinking that they only wished they had a stomach so small or a nose so straight.  There are others who will see these pictures and think about how disgusting they find me, how ashamed I should be.  In the end, I think that is the whole point.  No one sees us the way we see ourselves.  No one notices your flaws the way you do.  Plenty of people don’t notice them at all.

So today I will try to stop.  I will try to see myself more through the eyes of the people who love me.  I will make better food choices for the sake of my health, for the purpose of living longer and stronger for my family.  I will have bad days, I will feel cranky and focus on the negative sometimes.  I will hate my stomach at least one more day in my life, and I will avoid a profile picture at some point in the future.  I cannot shake these feelings entirely, but today I choose to try.

I will wake up each morning, and I will LIVE!  I will choose to inhale.

Hey, check me out!  I’m blogging over here today!

I am sitting at Panera listening to a group of women talk about their kids.  These are the odd, vague generalizations I am hearing:

• breastfed babies don’t get fat
• once they are breastfed they won’t take formula ever

These are the sort of comments that crack me up.  Are they true for your kids?  Sure, maybe they are.  But they are by no means some sort of kid facts that are true across the board.  I was especially amused when they increased their volume while discussing the worth of breastfeeding as I fed Evi her bottle.

They also launched into a discussion of the latest parenting scandal, in which Disney is offering refunds to Baby Einstein purchasers because it not only does not benefit kids but can, apparently, harm them.  My issue here is that the article that explains how children can be harmed does not name the videos by name.  In fact, it just generally says that children under two should never watch television.  Of course, it then goes on to explain that the harm comes from children doing ANY sedentary activity (including drawing and reading) for several hours at a time.  The study was commissioned to address obesity concerns in children.

Are our children getting fatter?  Well, sadly, yes.  However, that means that the article set out to prove a particular point and, as such, is a bit biased.  I don’t believe for one instant that children should sit in front of the television for hours, but I do think that there is ZERO harm in a little bit of tv now and then.  I also think that there is nothing wrong with a few hours a day of reading or drawing, as long as you’re making sure they also get at least an hour of real, aggressive physical activity per day as well.

As in everything else, it is all about balance.  BALANCE!