haircuts and snow days

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Cindy

The last time I got a cut and color was close to six months ago. I’ve been long overdue for a while, and lately I’ve been really itching for a big change. I texted my hairdresser, Kim (who’s also a friend of mine), and set up an appointment.

In the past, when I’ve mentioned making major changes to my hair, Kim usually advises against it. And since she always makes my hair look great, I usually defer to her advice. This time, I was planning my argument in advance: my face has gotten less round/more oval with the weight I’ve lost, and I feel like the long hair is sort of dragging it down and making it look even longer.

Instead, as soon as I walked in, she looked at me for a minute and said, “So! How adventurous do you feel today?”

And this is why I love her: she gets me.

The before and after shot.

She also re-did the color, with a few dark red panels underneath that only peek out if I’m in the sunlight. Nothing too severe or crazy, but enough that I felt like I got a major change (at least by my relatively tame standards).

I’ve gotten lots of compliments on it already, and Chris loves it. Funny story: way back when we first met, I remember that his dating profile said something about how he liked girls with short hair, and I kind of joked that if that was the case, I clearly wasn’t his type. Yesterday, I had told him that I was going to get a haircut, but I didn’t tell him how much I was taking off (I would normally just trim maybe a 1/2 inch), so this was kind of a surprise. And based on the way he couldn’t stop touching my neck last night, I’m going to venture a guess that he seems to be a big fan.

As for the kids, Catie said she liked it. Lucy gave me the backhanded non-compliment with, “Wow, Mommy, your hair sure is… different!” Um, thanks? But, you know, this is a child who says she wants “long hair like Rapunzel,” so I’m probably not taking my fashion cues from the three year-old.

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Completely unrelated topic jump!

This week has been insane, weather wise. The schools let out early on Monday because of snow in the forecast, and they’ve been closed all week because of icy road conditions.

The girls liked the snow the first day. After that, they were just kind of over it. (JUST LIKE THE REST OF US.)

And really, I’m incredibly lucky because our daycare has been open a lot of the time that the schools have been closed, and even when they closed early (during the worst of the weather), my parents helped out, Chris has helped out, and Dave and I have managed to divide up the time with the kids, so we’re both able to meet our deadlines and not go crazy.

Well, ok, maybe a little crazy.

It’s been a stressful wrench thrown into our routine, but we’ve gotten through it fairly easily. I don’t know how other families with less of a support system manage when these things happen.

Really, though? I mainly want the snow to melt so I can get back to running without worrying about slipping on ice. And yes, I know that by comparison to other parts of the country, the amount of snow and ice we’ve gotten here is nothing. (Sorry, people of Massachusetts, but there’s a reason I only lived there for a year, and then moved at the first opportunity. Southern girls don’t do snow.)

And I also know that in another 3 or 4 months, I’ll be complaining about how hot it is when I run. The thing is, I don’t really mind the cold all that much, I can bundle up and still run. It’s just the ice. The cold weather can stick around as long as it wants, as long as the sidewalks and greenways are clear.

Oh well. I’ll stop whining now, go lace up my sneakers, and fire up my tablet so I can watch a movie on Netflix while I run on the treadmill. There are worse things in life, I know.

how I talk to my kids about diet and exercise

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Cindy

This past Sunday, I went for a run while Chris stayed the girls. The half-marathon is in 6 weeks (yikes!), and I try to do my long training runs on the weekends when I have more free time. The kids are with Dave on alternate weekends, but when it’s my weekend, I usually leave them with either Chris or my parents while I go for a run.

I’m very careful with how I talk about diet and exercise with my girls. And a lot of that is because of my own baggage: I picked up a lot of negative body image feedback from hearing my mom complain about how fat she was when I was a kid. Back then, she was maybe a size 8 or 10 at the most, so she was most definitely not fat, but I know I internalized a lot of what she said. I don’t want Catie and Lucy to pick up any negative self-image issues from me, so it’s something I approach with extreme caution.

Since Catie is older, I can talk to her a bit more. We’ve talked about how Mimi has back problems, and how I want to make sure I don’t end up in pain like she is when I get older. My emphasis is more on health/strength, not the number in the back of my jeans. We’ve talked about how she gets enough exercise because she gets recess every day, but grown-ups don’t, and my job means that I sit at a computer all day, so I have to make my own recess time.

With food, we talk about how it’s important to eat healthy foods that are good for our bodies, and how some foods are treats that are only “sometimes foods” – all the normal stuff, I guess – but I don’t really talk to them about my food habits. They eat their food, I eat mine. Unless I point it out, they aren’t going to notice that they’re eating mashed potatoes and I’m not. So I don’t make an issue of it.

But even still, they pick up on stuff. Catie once made a comment (and I cannot remember the context of how it came up) that she was “glad everyone in our family is skinny.” I kind of did a mental record-scratch, and said that “skinny” isn’t necessarily a good thing, because if you’re too skinny, you won’t be strong enough to do the things you want to do. The point is whether or not we’re healthy, not whether we’re skinny or fat.

(And we’ve talked about how we don’t talk about other people’s bodies because it might hurt their feelings. She’s friends with a little girl at school who gets teased by other kids for being overweight, and it upsets Catie a lot, so it seems like she gets it.)

And then there are stupid things that come up, like when “All About That Bass” came on the radio for the 37,000th time, and Catie asked me what it meant when she said “boys like a little more booty to hold at night.” In that case, I just said that it was kind of a grown-up joke that was inappropriate for kids, and she didn’t press it.

So, I get that they’re going to pick up on body image expectations from society no matter what I say, and that the best I can do is basically damage control.

Lately, Lucy has been fascinated with my exercise habits. If I’m doing a strength training workout at home, she tries to join in with me. She’ll say, “Lookit me! I do my essacise too!” Then she’ll do a dramatic pratfall and land on her face, and I basically die because you really shouldn’t laugh when you’re doing push-ups.

This past Sunday, when I was getting ready to go for my run, as soon as I put on my workout clothes, the questions started:

Lucy: You all sweaty now?
Me: No, baby, not yet. [I hadn’t even left the house yet.]
Lucy: Why you wear that headband?
Me: It keeps my ears warm when it’s cold outside.
Lucy: Why you wear headphones?
Me: Because I like to listen to music when I run.

And the one she asks the most often:
Lucy: Why you go running?
Me: Because you keep growing and getting bigger and stronger, so I have to be strong too, so I can keep up with you.

A couple of hours later, after I’d run over 9 miles, I walked in the house sweaty and exhausted. The girls were on the couch with Chris watching a movie. Lucy saw me, and hopped up and ran to me.

She said, “You do your essacise, so you strong now? You can carry me now?”

And all I could think was, oh, my sweet girl. I’ll carry you as long as you’ll let me.

8th birthday party in the books

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Cindy

On Saturday, we had Catie’s birthday party. As I mentioned a while back, we had agreed to do a small party at our house, with just a few friends and her cousins.

She wanted to have a Minecraft-themed party, but the problem is that Minecraft doesn’t really have much in the way of merchandise. Action figures, sure, but not party supplies. So, I hit up Pinterest and found some cool, free printable Minecraft stuff for her party. Print-your-own stickers for goody bags! A stencil so you can make Creeper faces on balloons! That kind of thing.

I really liked the Minecraft food labels I found:

And Minecraft cake toppers.

(I do realize that nobody is ever going to ask me to be on a competitive baking show. But this is the cake she wanted, and she was happy about it, so whatever.)

The kids had fun, and the great thing about their age range is that they mostly entertain themselves. Lucy was the youngest kid there by far, and I knew that the whole Minecraft thing isn’t her scene and she’d feel left out, so I turned on Frozen for her in the living room. She watched her movie and had her grandparents all to herself, while the rest of the kids hung out in the playroom, playing Minecraft or working on art projects or whatever.

What’s weird is that I was so stressed about the party beforehand, but once it started, I was fine. All the kids had fun, and I didn’t really need to obsess about every last detail nearly as much as I did.

So, yeah. It was pretty great.

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Random funny aside: my sister flew in for the weekend, which meant Catie got to spend some time with her favorite person on earth. On Saturday night, my sister and I were in the bathroom with the girls while they were in the tub together.

Tracy was explaining to Lucy how she’s the big sister and I’m the little sister, just like Catie is the big sister and Lucy is the little sister. She said, “So I’m like Elsa, and your mommy is like Anna!”

Catie kind of snort-laughed and said, “Yeah, except you don’t have ice powers.”

It just so happened that right then, Tracy walked out of the bathroom to go get something from the next room, and as soon as she was gone, Lucy turned to Catie and in her most Stern Teacher Voice, said, “Catie! That was really rude!”

Like, you can’t just TELL someone they don’t have ice powers! Maybe she does and you don’t know!

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Anyway, hooray for birthday parties! A good time was had by all, and the party successfully exhausted everyone. Even Beaumont.

ice has a magic can’t be controlled

Posted on December 17, 2014 by Cindy

Back in July or so, I got an email about Disney on Ice. I had taken Catie to see Toy Story on Ice about four years ago when I was pregnant with Lucy, and we loved it. They really put on a great show. This year’s Disney on Ice show was going to be – what else? – Frozen.

I mentioned it to my mom, and she said, “Here’s my credit card, go order the tickets, we’ve gotta go.” We decided we’d make it a girls’ night – me, the kids, and my mom.

The show was this past weekend, and Lucy was SO. EXCITED. We’d been talking about it for ages in advance. Catie was iffy about it – she’s tired of Frozen, but she also really loves to watch ice skaters. And the skaters at the Disney on Ice show are fantastic, and it’s even more exciting to watch them in person than on TV. So she agreed to come along with only a minimal amount of complaining.

(Seriously, the guy that plays Kristoff did a freaking backflip on the ice. TWICE. Those skaters are crazy talented.)

Lucy asked if she could wear her Elsa costume to the show, and I normally don’t let her wear the costume out of the house, but I figured this was one place where she was surely not going to be the only little girl dressed up like Elsa or Anna, so why not. And I’m really glad I let her, because nearly every other little girl in the place was dressed up like a character from the movie (we even saw some Olafs!). So if I had said no, she could’ve (justifiably) been mad at me for that for YEARS. (Catie was kind of the odd-girl-out in her dragon t-shirt and jeans, but she didn’t care.)

We got our souvenirs (a sword for Catie, an spinning light-up Elsa wand for Lucy) and our snacks, and settled in to watch the show. It really was great, the skaters are phenomenal, and they stay true to the movie, with just a couple of plot tweaks here and there to make it translate to a live show.

And when the skater who played Elsa came out to skate to “Let It Go”? My first thought was that it was basically the equivalent of a One Direction concert for preschoolers. It was insane. Every kid in there was singing at the top of their lungs.

Lucy at Frozen on Ice. You can kind of hear the other kids singing too. It was nuts.

A video posted by Cindy W (@poobou) on Dec 12, 2014 at 7:44pm PST

Catie was sitting on the far side of my mom, but she was singing just as loud. She talks big about how she doesn’t like the movie, but she still enjoys the soundtrack quite a bit.

To sum up: It was loud, it was crowded, it was over-priced, and I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat to watch both of my girls have that much fun.

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Somewhat related and completely inappropriate anecdote:

This morning Lucy was playing in the car with her Frozen action figures, and a Wonder Woman action figure that was mine way back in the 80s. (I swear, my mom saved some of the most random crap from my childhood.)

From the backseat, I hear her say, “Look, Anna is sitting on Wonder Woman’s face!”

I almost swerved off the road trying not to laugh. I don’t think that was an intended subplot of Frozen, and I’m pretty sure it was never in the Wonder Woman comic books either.

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Not really related at all anecdote:

Last night, Catie made out Christmas wish lists for both herself and Lucy. (Guess what Lucy wants for Christmas? Pretty much everything to do with Frozen, including things that don’t even exist, like a Prince Hans doll. What the hell, Lucy, Hans is the villain! Nobody wants him!)

After Catie made out the lists, I made an offhand comment about sending them to Santa, and she said, accusingly, “Last year you didn’t, because I found mine still here after Christmas!”

Without missing a beat, I said, “Oh, that’s because I just took a picture of it and texted it to Santa.”

(Technically this isn’t a lie – I did take pictures of their lists, & I texted them to Dave, because that’s how we decide to divide them up and who’s going to buy what.)

Her: “WHAT?! Santa can text?”

Me: “Of course.”

Her: “How does his phone work at the North Pole?”

Me: “The best reception in the world is at the North Pole, because it’s the top of the earth. How else do you think he sends you those videos on the Internet every year?”

(I was referring to the Portable North Pole site, which if you haven’t ever used it for your kids, you should check it out because it’s fantastic.)

So, yeah, I basically blew her mind. I know I don’t have much longer for her to believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and all that stuff, but that little window of time where kids believe in magic is so short, and I just want to drag it out for as long as I can.

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Completely unrelated to anything Disney or Frozen or Santa Claus:

Today is Chris’s birthday. I mentioned it to Catie last night, and she decided that she and Lucy would both make him cards.

I like that Catie took it upon herself to label Lucy’s, so he’d know who did which card. As if it isn’t completely obvious.

And I love everything about Catie’s drawing – that she drew herself in her favorite outfit and wearing her glasses, and Chris wearing the outfit he had on yesterday. I love their disproportionately long arms, and that their fingers look like Wolverine claws. She was upset that she drew Chris’s hair too long (he does keep it buzzed really short), but she had drawn it in marker and couldn’t erase it. I think it’s fantastic.

Inside the card, she wrote (the spelling is all hers here):

Happy Berthday!
We hope you had a good year and we hope you hav a good next year to.
By your frend Catie

The words are all surrounded by hearts. It’s adorable, and damned if I didn’t tear up a tiny bit when I read it.

Now I’ve just got to figure out dinner plans for the birthday guy.

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Yes, the title is from the “Frozen Heart” song that the ice miners sing at the beginning of the movie. It’s been in my head all day.

my girly girl

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Cindy

I blogged a while back about Catie trying to sort of find her place in the world because of her less-girly, more-nerdy interests, and it’s funny to me how on the flip side of that, Lucy could not be more different. She is the epitome of the girly-girl.

While Catie has always been a Daddy’s Girl, Lucy is basically my mini-me. And I don’t mean that she looks like me — although if you put my baby pictures next to hers, it’s a little unsettling to see visual proof that I kind of gave birth to myself. But her personality is a lot like mine when I was a little girl: total goofball who wants to make everyone laugh, a little shy with new people but total snuggle-bug with the people she loves, and she has an insane imagination and acts out elaborate stories with her toys.

She’s my little shadow who wants to follow me everywhere. When I’m in the bathroom putting my make-up on, she wants to sit on the counter and play with my make-up too. I usually let her use some of my brushes/powder puffs. She likes the textures, the sensation of how they feel, but there’s no color or anything that will show up on her face. I bought her a Little Mermaid chapstick, mainly to keep her out of my lipstick, and she loved it. After she put the chapstick on about 15 times, I told her that was enough and we needed to put it away. A few minutes later, I found her hiding behind the couch with her chapstick, frantically reapplying it as fast as she could.

Lucy loves her baby dolls. She pretends to change their diapers and feed them, she tucks them in with their blankies, it’s really cute. And I say that as someone who generally finds baby dolls to be borderline creepy, but it’s still pretty sweet. And another example of how she’s different from Catie, because Catie has always loved stuffed animals, but could not give less of a crap about babies.

But Lucy’s main interest right now? Disney princesses. More specifically, Frozen. Lucy is all-Frozen, all-the-time. She loves other Disney princesses too, like Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty because “they have yellow hair like me!”, but let’s face it, the majority of the merchandise you see in stores right now is Frozen, so that’s the main thing on her little 3 year-old radar.

Back at Halloween, she couldn’t decide if she wanted to be Elsa or Anna, and my mom ended up buying both costumes, thinking we’d return one the day after Halloween.

Well, we haven’t returned either of them. Because she wears one of those costumes every single day. At least we’re getting our money’s worth out of them? I’ve made the rule that she can’t wear her costumes either to bed or to daycare, but other than that, she is always either Elsa or Anna.

Seriously. All the time.

My mom even made her a pink cape that looks like the one Anna wears in the movie.

Lucy’s Frozen obsession has gotten so severe that she – my child who used to scream when I approached her with a hairbrush – now regularly asks me to braid her hair. Sometimes she wants one long braid (“just one Elsa braid!”) or two (“like Anna wears!”).

On the up side: I’m getting really good at hair braiding.

(Don’t get me started about how the Anna costume went missing for a few days, and Lucy was distraught, and Dave and I were frantically texting each other, “Have you found it? I thought it was with you! I’ve looked everwhere!” Turns out Lucy had packed up her Hello Kitty suitcase with her Anna costume, as well her Anna and Kristoff Barbie dolls, because I don’t know, she was planning some type of Frozen-themed vacation and didn’t tell anyone?)

The main things on her Christmas list for Santa this year are all Frozen-related. Sure, she also wants a baby doll with its own stroller, but Frozen stuff is still top of the list.

And the thing is, I guess in theory I should be getting tired of it. I hear other parents talk all the time about how they’re so sick of the movie and the soundtrack and all of it, but I’m honestly not. I feel like this stage where she’s obsessed with princesses is so short and fleeting, and I just want to revel in it while it lasts.

I know the time is rapidly approaching when she’ll be more influenced by what her peers like, and all of the princess stuff will be dismissed as boring, dumb, and/or “just for babies” (which is what Catie says about princesses, although I have totally caught her secretly belting out “Let It Go” on more than one occasion).

So if Lucy wants to dictate to me whether I’m supposed to sing the Elsa or Anna part of “For the First Time in Forever,” well, I’ll be damned if I’m going to argue with her.

"For the First Time in For-oopsies." (This is high comedy among the 3 year-old set.)

A video posted by Cindy W (@poobou) on Dec 12, 2014 at 3:54pm PST

As great as I think it is that Catie sort of bucks traditional gender roles with her love of science and video games and all that stuff? I think it’s equally great that Lucy is a total princess-y girly girl. I don’t think one thing is more valid than the other. (I know the Disney princesses have some questionable at best feminist values in their movies, but I also know that most of us grew up with Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella — not to mention Barbie dolls — and for the most part, we all turned out ok.)

Mainly, I love seeing how Catie and Lucy are their own unique little people, how they’ve each individually gravitated toward the stuff that they like, and how they’re both just completely funny and wonderful in totally different ways.

Procrastination Placeholder Post

Posted on November 26, 2014 by Cindy

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and I’m starting to panic a little about all the things I need to get done today, so it seemed like a good time to put off everything on my to-do list by writing a blog post.

I had the girls last weekend, and I try to plan outings for us whenever they’re with me, but I had a little bit of a hard time trying to figure out something fun for us to do.

On Saturday, Catie wanted to go to Dave’s. He joined a gym that has an indoor pool, and she wanted to go swimming. He didn’t mind taking her, and I think it’s good for her to get some one-on-one time with her dad, so I said ok. Lucy wanted to go see my parents (she likes being the only grandchild, it means she gets ALL the attention), so I took her over to their house, and went for a long run.

I’m trying to do my long runs on the weekends to train for the half-marathon. And even though I don’t technically have to start a training plan until next month, I want to get a jump on it now, because I’m pretty sure there are going to be days in January and February where I wimp out on doing the super-long runs.

I was only planning on going maybe 7 or 8 miles, like I have the last few weekends, but I was mentally calculating the distance from my parents’ house, rather than my house, and math isn’t my strong suit, so… well.

I ran over 10 miles. And THAT is not a sentence I ever thought I’d type.

By Sunday, I had figured out a fun outing for me, Chris, and the kids. We headed downtown to the NC Museum of Natural Science (where we had Catie’s birthday party), because I had gotten an email that they were having a special exhibit called “The World’s Largest Dinosaurs.” Sounds totally up Catie’s alley, no? And it was great.

The girls got to sit in a model of a dinosaur footprint.

And they got to dig for (fake) fossils.

It really was the perfect type of thing for Catie, even though Lucy got a little bored and whiny about it. (She was more excited about going up and down the escalators over and over.)

At one point, there was a little movie about a dinosaur, and the girls sat on the floor to watch it. Then this happened, and I damn near melted.

That kind of thing doesn’t happen often, but it’s pretty great when it does.

The kids have been with Dave the last couple days, but I get them back tonight and I’ll have them through Thanksgiving. My brother and his girlfriend are coming over from Charlotte, so I’m excited to see them.

Oh, and my cleaning ladies come today, which is my favorite thing about every other Wednesday. Having a clean house right before a holiday? Even better.

And now I’ve got to get started on all these side dishes I need to prep before tomorrow…

running, working, family-ing

Posted on November 21, 2014 by Cindy

I registered for a half-marathon. I’m kind of back and forth between super-excited and also completely terrified, because I have literally never done any kind of official race at all. Like, not even a 5K. And it’s not even about trying to compete with other people for me, because I know I’m an “average at best and actually pretty slow” runner. It’s more that I just want to prove to myself that I can do it — that I am capable of running 13.1 miles — if that makes sense.

The Betty Rocker workout challenge in October definitely helped boost me a lot, and I’m still using her workouts a couple days a week for strength training. I’ve also lost about 6 pounds since October 1st, which wasn’t something I was actively working on, but you won’t hear me complain about it.

In related news: all of my disposable income is now being spent at sporting goods stores (I need workout clothes so I can run through the winter months), which is further proof of how we change as we get older, and how 20-something me wouldn’t even recognize 38 year-old me.

(Oh, the race is next spring, after my birthday. So I’ll be 39 when I run my first half-marathon. That’s… probably not something normal people do, I’m guessing.)

I will try not to talk about it too much because blah blah blah nobody cares about my workout regimen. But it’s kind of A Big Thing that’s on my mind right now.

(Added because it’s one of my favorite GIFs of all time.)

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I don’t talk about it much here, but my job has been so good lately. I changed managers a few months ago, when my manager moved to a different team (I can’t remember if I ever blogged about that or not). I was initially really nervous about it, because my new manager is a guy that I’ve worked with for the entire four years that I’ve been at this company, but I could never figure out whether or not he liked me. But the transition has been very easy, and we have a really great working relationship now.

Last month, I had my first performance review since changing managers, and I got some really great feedback, as well as a raise. I feel like I’m insanely fortunate to have a job that I enjoy, and get to work with people I really like.

Work has also gotten a lot busier recently, which is part of the reason the blog has been so quiet lately. But it’s all good stuff there.

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Oh, and I got more pictures back from our family picture day, and I just… my god, I don’t know how I got so lucky to have these two beautiful little girls.

They’re so different, and so much alike. They are each their own individual little people, and they are delightful.

The other day, I thought about how when I was pregnant with Catie, and we first found out she was a girl, I was terrified, because I didn’t know if I’d be a good mom for a girl. I’m not a super girly-girl type, and I have so many body image issues of my own that I was afraid I’d project onto a little girl, and I just thought I’d be terrible at it.

(Funny thing: it was the opposite when I was pregnant with Lucy. By that point, I was scared of having a boy, because having a girl was all I knew. That time, I was relieved to find out we were having another girl. I was like, “oh, another one of these? Ok yeah, I got this.”)

I think Catie and Lucy are proof that we get the kids we’re supposed to have. Because they’ve expanded my horizons and my worldview so much, and the fact that I can now have extensive conversations about both dinosaur fossils and Disney princesses without batting an eye? I think that just makes me a more well-rounded person than I was before I had kids.

Oh, this guy of mine is pretty great, too.

(Side note: that picture was so awkward to take — “look over our shoulders at each other, say what now?” — but I really love the way it turned out.)

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to reading online reviews of running shoes, because apparently that’s the type of thing I do with my free time now. Yeah, I’m a weirdo. I know.

PooBou.com

Mom. Stepmom. Nerd. Feminist. Pretty good wife. Outstanding ex-wife. I try to keep it light and funny. I'm not always successful.

Category Archives: Lucy

haircuts and snow days

how I talk to my kids about diet and exercise

8th birthday party in the books

ice has a magic can’t be controlled

my girly girl

Procrastination Placeholder Post

running, working, family-ing

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