The Texas Mama

You know those days where you just end up getting nothing accomplished? Despite your best intentions, housework is at a standstill, you and your kid(s) are bored, and you just feel blah.  That day has been today for me.  I was awaken much earlier than normal by Hali with demands of chocolate milk.  Not that the chocolate milk part is any different- that’s the sound I wake up to most morning.  She wants her chocolate milk and she wants it NOW!

I squinted my way down the stairs to serve Her Majesty as quickly as possible to avoid a major meltdown first thing in the morning (isn’t that a lovely thing to wake up to?).  Jeremy hadn’t even left for work yet, and we are NEVER up that early. It’s not getting dark until after nine, so I don’t usually get Hali to sleep until 9:00-9:30.  I really need to work on her curtains.  Poor kid is especially cranky without her 11-12 hours sleep.

Well, that’s enough.  Here’s one thing I have been up to lately:

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These are melted broken crayons.  Put them in muffin tins in the oven for a few minutes, and viola! Hali loves doing this, and you really feel crafty and thrifty that you are actually doing something with all those broken crayon bits.  You can also buy those individual heart shaped foil tins at the store (we got ours at Walmart) for cheap and use those for something a little different.  We had some leftover from Valentine’s Day.

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We did several for my sisters and brother as well to go in the little package we have been putting together for them.  We have lots of fun with the color combinations and putting them in “just right”.  Hali absolutely adores making these.  If she sees the heart tins she wants to make more.  One day after making them, I found her in her room breaking crayons on purpose, just so there would be more crayons to use for more hearts!  This is one of THE best crafts to do with kids- they love it. I highly recommend it. 

Remember a couple of months ago when I wrote about finally bagging up my too small clothes?  Well, I love to brag, so guess who just pulled them back out? Yay! In addition to that, I put all my extra large winter clothes in a bag. 

I haven’t dared try on any of my pre-pregnancy clothes on yet, even though I am down to that weight (woohoo!).  I am forcing myself to wait until I get a few pounds under, because I have a feeling that with the added “mommy pooch” I won’t be able to get into them right now anyways.  But you just give me a couple more weeks, and I will be shoving my saggy butt into my old jeans! 

You would think that losing over thirty pounds would be like going down 3 pants sizes, no?  Well, its not.  More like one. Possibly one and a half.  Well, at least the first thirty is. Doing the math, I realize that the next thirty pounds will have to drop me about three sizes to make any sense what-so-ever.  And that’s giving the “mommy pooch” some breathing room.

I have started working out, albeit slowly and pathetically.  I just cannot wait for my arms to lose some of their fat!  I am sooo self conscious about my arms.  They are disproportionately large, in my opinion.  I even have some stretch marks going on just over my arm pits. Yes, gross.

I must add that upon discussion last night with my husband on the topic of me being back to my pre-mommy weight but not size, we came to the unfortunate conclusion that I simply have less muscle tone than I did before. Dang.  How’s that for a self-confidence boost, eh?!  So, I worked out (albeit briefly) twice yesterday, and I am about to go work out again.  As soon as I dig out a bra that will at least somewhat support my poor saggy ginormous girls.

After Hali and I oohed and aahed over the ton of buttons that my grandma sent (yay, Grandma!) us a few weeks ago, I decided that it was time to DO something with all those buttons. Luckily, I had spotted this tutorial on marthastewartliving.com a couple months ago and was just waiting for my stash to bulk up a little more.  That and I had to dig out the whole whopping 88 cents to buy the elastic thread needed for this project.  So, in addition to the black one that I made for myself, which I forgot to photograph with the others somehow, here is what we made:

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From left to right, we made one each for my sisters: Ashton and Taylor, then the red for my mom, then the last two are Hali’s.  They all look much better in person- one, because my arm is much larger than any of theirs’ and so the bracelets are a little more stretched out than they should be, and two, its been storming and/or cloudy all day and I have had no decent lighting.

Keeping in theme with the buttons, we (I say we, because Hali didn’t object and was actually really excited about this) were tired of the plain, same ol’- same ol’ hair clips and such of Hali’s:

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We decided it was time to use up even MORE of our buttons as well as get rid of some severely outdated clips given to Hali by her aunt who herself used them a decade or more ago.  After I saw this tutorial I had to make some- we love buttons.  I’m sure I’ll end up buying some cute buttons and making some more- these are rather plain.

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I don’t know what it is, but Hali and I are obsessed with buttons- we have them all sorted out by color in a tackle box that I use to organize all my little craft things like buttons, thread, floss, and ribbon.  She loves to pick out the “cool” buttons- the ones that are shaped differently, mainly.  Which I encourage, I suppose because on some semi-conscious level I want her to keep thinking that the “different” ones or the oddly shaped ones are cool.  Like in life. Uh, ya.  Dang, my insecurities about my body sneak into everything!

Guess who has lost 26 pounds in less than a month? ME! Oh, that’s right! Since Mother’s Day I have lost over 26 pounds.  I know this because that is when we got a scale. I saw the truth right there in numbers.  Really, really high numbers.  That was a hard week for me.  So I bucked up and decided it was now or never. No more half-way jobs.

I was told about a diet plan ( I hate the word diet, I think it gives the wrong message, but in this case it is pretty fitting) where you consume a Puny 300 calories a day.  However, the women that I know of that are doing this have the aid of one of those diet pills that helps you feel more full and gives you energy. Me? Nah. I don’t need no stinking diet pills.  Diet pills NEVER turn out to be safe- and yes, I know the FDA has approved this new one, blah, blah, blah.

So I made up my mind that I WOULD do this diet- I HAD to lose weight this way. How could you not, right? The first two weeks the pounds jut kept falling off.  It was AWESOME! I was hungry all the time. But, I had lots to do to keep my mind off of it- my family was coming down! I really think keeping busy is the key so that you don’t think about your hunger.  I do have to say, though, that after the first week or two, you don’t feel nearly as hungry.  Your stomach must shrink a little when you don’t fill it up. So it’s not as pitiful as it sounds. 

The last couple weeks I have hardly lost anything- I believe I have hit my “plateau”.  There always seems to be this weight that you get stuck at, and I am at mine right now.  Unfortunately, I have not even lost half of what I want to lose.  I am about 6 pounds shy of my pre-pregnancy weight.  That in itself is great, but unfortunately I had put on forty pounds the year before I got pregnant. So, ideally I would like to lose 46 more pounds, but I believe I will be very pleased with only another 36 or so lost. Heck, I already am pleased with myself. All my clothes are falling off me, people!

What do I have to do now? Well, unfortunately I have to start exercising. I’m so lazy and still overweight (although not AS overweight as I was, thankyouverymuch) that I just abhor working out.  I am not a morning person.  For me to force myself out of bed before nine is an accomplishment to me.  To drag my fat butt out of bed an hour earlier to TORTURE myself??? It just does not seem right to me! 

Unfortunately, with a seriously clingy three year old, Texas weather, and an ocd self, early mornings are just when it is going to have to happen.  I am so out of shape that I will have to work out several times a day for 20-30 minutes each.  I need to get one of those over with before Hali is awake.  Thankfully, Hali and I are always have some activity planned that requires some decent exertion on my part. 

When I made up my mind to do all this, I knew I would have to start working out regularly.  My plan was to do this for two months and decide from there what I want to do.  I am half way done.  I think I already know I will need to continue this for longer.  Once I make working out a habit in another month, I believe I will increase my caloric intake a little, but not much.  Maybe just a little so I can eat a FREAKING BOWL OF CEREAL FOR BREAKFAST! Oh, sorry, that was Monster Charli.  She gets out sometimes- she’s hungry a LOT lately.

It’s Father’s Day weekend (wow, no s%$#!) and I say that, because I sure tried to stretch Mother’s Day out into a whole weekend, so Father’s Day deserves the same.  When I went to go write this entry, I realized that there are TWO important fathers in my life- my dad and Hali’s dad.  Sure, they have their similarities, but really, they are two different men with two different parenting styles. Maybe this requires two separate entries, but I am going to squeeze them both into one, as I bet only one will ever read this anyways- my husband (dang nosy guy started reading my blog…).  So, because he comes first in my life these days, Jeremy is first up:




Jeremy may only have been a dad for about three and a half years now, but he was waiting for a few years before that.  Seeing as he is only 27, that is impressive.  I remember walking through Walmart together when we were first married and he would literally freeze and stare at any cute baby nearby.  The dorkiest grin would be plastered on his face.  I think he had to refrain himself from actually going up to the babies and picking them up. He had baby fever.  Thank goodness we had one just over two years after we got married! 

So honey, if you are reading this: I appreciate the father that you are to Hali- not just for what it means to me, but for what it means to her.  She might be a booger, but she is your booger through and through. You guys are so wonderful together that I can’t help but just sit there and listen to you two play.  It brightens up my night when you two are in the other room loudly having a good time at whatever game the pair of you have contrived.

Jeremy is overprotective of Hali in the most endearing/sometimes annoying way.  She would be a bubble girl if it was completely up to him. He cannot stand the thought of anything- not even the tiniest bruise or scratch happening to his girl.  Some of the most wonderful and memorable moments in the past few years have happened when we weren’t doing anything at all.  Just sitting back as a family. Jeremy leans over and kisses Hali’s little head and looks over at me, his eyes are simply glowing with a fierce love of our little girl and our little family.  He smiles and says ” I love you, I love my girls, I love our little family” and I know that we are both thinking and feeling the same thing. This is family at its best.  The sharing of these moments of intense love of your child and of each other.  The fulfillment that only we can bring to each other as a family.

Happy Father’s Day, Jerm.  I know you think its a day just like any other, but it isn’t.  I know I will be thinking kind thoughts of you. At least this weekend, anyways…

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My dad is a quiet, average height, average size, good looking guy. I have been told by many women that he is handsome, and seeing as he is my dad, thus I have half his DNA, I have to agree.  He isn’t the most social guy around, but he is the kind of guy you want for a friend, because he will help you out, no matter what.  He is surrounded by beautiful women. No, he’s no Hef, it’s just that my mom is very beautiful- one of the best looking uh, women her age that you’ll ever run into and all my sisters are so gorgeous.  Poor guy. Hot wife=good. Hot daughters=bad.

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   (See?! They’re so pretty- all but the dorky one on the right- she’s really let herself go…)

I never thought of my dad as the sentimental type until I was married.  Then, one day I was at my parent’s house helping my mom look for something amongst all the pictures, drawings, and other mementos of our big family.  I stumbled upon this simple but beautiful poem that he had written when I was a few years old.  It brought tears to my eyes.  He was probably all of twenty years old at the time he composed it.  It was a big turning point for me in how I relate to my dad as an adult, but still as his daughter.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad- I miss you.

I’m still here! I have a good excuse! Really!  Jeremy took the laptop I normally use to work with him and I had bookmarked on it the exact url for my Quick Blog.  So I couldn’t write!

Then, my family was in town (state, really)!!! That was a BLAST! I missed them sooo much- hadn’t seen them in over a year!

Now, the laptop is finally home, and here it is, 11:30 at night and I am being forced to remove all me files, pictures and bookmarks from it, because apparently, Jeremy sold it to a guy at the shop.  The same guy he sold his truck to a week and a half ago.  Apparently this guy likes our stuff.  We are actually making money on it (we bought it used on Ebay) so it’s all good. 

I have a ton to post about, but I am so busy with figuring out how to make sure the new computer’s owner can’t steal our identities or hack into our banking account! I thought that I had run out of time on this blog (I thought it was for only 1 year I paid for- they sent me a notice a while ago) and was stressed. 

But here I am still! I am switching over to a free blog soon, though.  And ditching the web site.  So if you want to know where I will be blogging in the future, e-mail me (charli@thetexasmama.com or theidahostouts@yahoo.com) or comment here soon.  If you have ever commented here (ya, I know, all three of you) I will send you the new url as well.  I won’t be posting the new blog’s address, because, well, frankly, I am going totally anonymous and I am still worried that the in-laws read this! I just have to think of a really cool alias. Any ideas?

I am considering 2 blogs, actually.  One for crafty goodness that Hali and I have been way into lately, and the other for well, what I do here. Complain. A lot.  And let’s not forget whine! With cheese.  Stinky, smelly, rotten cheese! 

Oh, I just am bursting with all kinds of news, but it will all have to wait!!!