Me vs. Spanx: Part Deux

Just sayin'.

On Spanxing

There are several truths looming over me right now:

1) My baby weight is not BUDGING.  At all.  Despite PB nursing like a fiend and packing the weight on, the numbers on the scale fluctuate maybe 1/2 a pound at most no matter what I do.  Annoying to say the least.

2) There is a very important wedding coming up in about 6 weeks.

3) I have to don something other than maternity clothes.

*gulp*

I ordered a dress that looked lovely online - the right color, appropriate cut, good price, etc.  It showed up, and I tried it on as soon as it arrived.... *double gulp* I looked awful - like some oddly misshapen caricature of my former self.  I hollered that I was not going to be stepping out of my closet in the dress and everyone scoffed at me until my husband came in and winced and said, "Yeah... maybe we should find you a different style."

Ladies, from a man that has to vie for attention with 4 kids, a house full of mold, a sink full of dishes, a laundry room full of pure hell, and a computer full of Facebook?  That's bad.  (I can't tell you how much I appreciate his honesty here - I think it'd be worse if he told me how sexy I looked.  Then I'd have to punch him and I don't know if I'd have been able to handle guilt on top of self-disgust.)

Cue my mother-in-law: "Have you tried Spanx?"

Whomp.

(That was the sound of my self-esteem hitting rock-bottom.)


"Um, no... Spanx are for faaaaaaa............"  (Pause mid-sentence as I realize that she's holding up a pair of her own... and when it dawns on me that I'm actually there.)  "Um, no I haven't.  It hasn't been something I've thought about before." (Tactful enough?)

"You should try my Spanx.  Seriously.  Try them.  If they work, you can keep the dress - if not, we'll go shopping."

Sigh.  I had heretofore done nothing but scoff at the Spanx-wearing population and assumed that all ills can be cured with proper diet and exercise.  (Yes, my foot does taste delicious, thanks.  So glad I'm eating it now.)  Dejectedly, I took from her this thing that looked like I'd have struggle to get onto my twins' baby dolls, let alone on my foot (and for-freaking-get actually smushing my ass into it).  Seriously, this thing could have fit into a powder compact.  Easily.  So I start stretching it out to fit it over my foot and come to my first observation: In addition to working my thighs, butt, and abs, I need to work my arms.  Then I get it halfway up my thighs and look down and realize I've effectively rubber banded my legs together and am turning purple from mid-thigh downward.  "Ma!  Seriously?  This thing is gonna make me lose weight by forcing the doctors to amputate my legs to remove it!"  "Shut up and put your big girl panties on, Melis!"  "I am putting my big-girl panties on, MIL!  That's the problem!"  (She hurls a dish rag at me...) "Quit bitching and hike 'em up."  "[insert explitives here]"

Nearly an hour later (no more than ten minutes, but it felt like an hour and I was sweating like a sinner in church by the time it was done) I had managed to squeeze a pregnancy's worth of me into an elastic tube (and had a new-found sympathy for the ground pork that gets stuffed into casings to make sausages) that began just beneath my bra and ended just north of my knees. 

Grudgingly, I had to admit... the thing worked.  I don't know where it put the lumps and  bumps, but somehow the Spanx had smoothed my... er... issues.  I mean, we're far from perfect, but I can for sure wear the dress I purchased with some decorum of pride and class - okay, well, at least without feeling like a side-show. 

Really?  Spanx?  I'm wearing Spanx?

But... my butt... it did look much better.

And my hips were only the bottom of the hour-glass, not the bottom of one hour glass AND the top of another one.

Sweeeeeeeeeet.

And then, I had to pee.  Damnit.  Well, I figure I'll have to modify my own (soon-to-be-purchased [in two colors]) Spanx to include a pee-hatch.  I'm thinking something with snaps.  I dunno.  But either I am going to have to figure something out or I'm not going to drink anything before this wedding and risk dying of dehydration because the thought of wrestling those things down and then back up in a restroom stall with a baby strapped to my chest and twins clumped around my knees gives me nightmares.

Whatever - the things we do to not look like we've given birth to 4 kids in 4 years, right?  I'm totally fine with spending a mortgage payment on medieval torture devices that squish my fat from one part of my anatomy to another.  Just so long as I can wear my damned dress.

Spanx.  I'm there.

Sigh.

The Sounds of Summer

MOM!  Maaaaaaaaaaaaawmmeeeeeee!   Muh-ooooom!  Mom?  MOM!  Momma? Moooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom!  Mom-mom-mom-mom-mom-mom!  Mom? Mom? Mom? Mom? Mom?  MAMMA! Muh-om-meeeeeee!  Mommeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey? Mommmmmmmmmmmma!  Mom-UH!  Momma-momma-momma-momma-momma-momma-momma? Mom.  Momma.  MAMMA! 
Mom.
Mom.
Mom.
Mom.
Mom.
MOM!
MOM!!

Ugh.  I'm going to go soothe my nerves by listening to nails on a chalkboard. 

Where I've Been (alternate title: Ugh)

Wow, that's quite a gap - like, a month... and a half.  Fail.

I'm super duper annoyed with myself for being a slacker.  It's totally fair for you all to be annoyed with me too.  I can't really explain why I haven't been blogging much without sounding like Whiney Whinerson, so I'll try to keep it brief since I don't love crying into my blog like it's a hankie:

Some dudes royally screwed the pooch with our house (Remember? The gorgeous, monster house I love so dearly and posted about before?  That house.  Yup.) and we ended up with a basement (which is where the kids' rooms are) full of mold.  And, as it turns out, basement walls full of water.  And a bunch of douchey contractors that refused to acknowledge the scope of the problem until I took it upon myself to start ripping baseboards off the walls.  It's awesome.  No, like truly AWESOME.  That nonsense isn't fit for human habitation so I have all 4 kids sleeping in my bedroom.  Yup - all 4.  (On the plus side, hooray for a master bedroom big enough for 1 queen bed, 1 crib, 1 Pack 'n Play and 1 twin-sized bed!)  And remember my struggles with Chronic Laundry Buildup?  Imagine what CLB symptoms look like when I no longer have THREE closets in which to hang 4 children's worth of clothing and when I cannot fold the 894 onesies Peyton has into dressers or the 9,476 socks Jack possesses or the 88 pairs of pants I have for the twins are homeless due to dressers being in mold-infested places.  So I've brought the dresser drawers upstairs and they ALSO number among the orphaned furniture items now cluttering up my bedroom.  And I have essentially no time to do anything because I spend about 75% of my life on the phone trying to get someone to do something beyond painting Killz on some baseboards and expecting me to be happy with that. 

Dudes, it sucks.  Look:

 Nursing chair, Pack 'n Play next to my side of the bed (the night stand is full of baby PJ'S)...

 There's Jack's bed - the mattress covered in junk on the floor in the corner next to Justin's side in front of a door.

 There's the crib... and no, I don't think it's a good idea for 60 lbs of terrible two's to still be occupying a crib, but I have no idea what else to do with them.

 

 

There's the stacks of drawers... the brown ones are Jack's, the long white ones are Peyton's and the short stack of many drawers belongs to the twins.  It's super annoying. 

And this is what I found when I pulled the baseboards off the wall in Peyton's room.  Grody, no? 

So I've been a super delightful person lately and haven't really wanted to burden anyone with my anger and frustration - my poor kiddos get enough of it as it is.  (I think we're all just getting tired of me being on the phone and us being reduced to 900 square feet of living space and constantly sushing because someone is always sleeping nearby - usually Peyton or Justin if he's on night shift) and no one having their own space to go to get away from the others...

Blech.  Be glad you're not me.  Actually, be glad you're not the contractors working with me because I reduced 3 grown men to near tears yesterday. 

Or be glad you're not a baseboard in my basement because that would mean I had abused you with a crow bar. 

Deep Conversations in the Grocery Store

I hate - hate - checking out at the grocery store with kids in tow.  The narrowness of the lane, the brightly-colored candy displays, the smutty Cosmopolitan magazine covers raising questions I don't really want to answer ("Mom, what does 's-e-x' spell?"), etc.

This weekend, my un-doing was the Time magazine with Osama Bin Laden's face on the cover with a big, red "X" across it.

Jack asked, "Mom, why does that guy's face have an X on it?" 

"Because he's gone."

"Where did he go?"

"Uuuuuh... well, he's not alive anymore."

"So he went with Jesus Christ?"

"Um, no."

"Where did he go then?  Why did he die?"

At this point, Justin was looking at me with that annoying "better you than me" face he gets when I am forced to navigate the murky waters of moral education of our children as he stacked box after box of Rice-a-Roni on the conveyor belt and played peek-a-boo with the girls.  I mouthed "douche" at him and turned back to my questioning son.

"Jack, honey, that man was very bad.  He was a bad guy.  He hurt lots and lots of people so our good Army guys had to go and kill him.  He's not in Heaven because he sinned too much."

"But we shouldn't kill!  He did sins?  We don't shoot people.  We don't kill people!"

Sigh.  Great.  So now I'm forced to try to explain a dichotomy that I don't quite understand myself to a 4-year-old and hope that he doesn't apply the same logic to issues at home - I can hear it now: "I hit Jordan because she was hitting Addie and Addie needed me to protect her and hitting was the only thing I could do."

So I did what any self-respecting, loving parent would do...

"Look at all the candy, Jack!"

"Wow! Can I have some Skittles?!"

Phew.  Crisis averted.

I Did It!

I have always believed in working hard and following my heart. 

And I've always believed in giving everything I can for my family.

So, when I felt the pull to turn my photography passion into a business, I did.  With the support of my family, I began putting together a business plan, researching tax laws and local photography rates.  I prayed and pondered and stayed up late night after night building a website and planning marketing strategy - hoping against hope that I have the talent and gumption to make it work.

Wish me luck as I don yet another hat...

(And while you're at it, please visit my website, my blog, and my Facebook page - thanks!)

Making Mommyhood Sexy...

...is totally not what this post is about.  At all.

I am not a sexy beast right now.  Unless "sexy" equals weird-smelling, rumpled, spit-up crusted, messy-bunned zombie.

Obviously, then, I'm right up your alley.

I'm pretty sure I've been wearing the same cami/shirt combo for about 4 days.  Maybe 5.  I can't tell.  I could probably do carbon-dating on the various spit-stains on the shoulders and figure it out if I cared to.  Occasionally I swap out the pants - PJ's for most of the time, maternity jeans for those occasions that require a public appearance - but truthfully, even that is only because they get wet from bathwater and I can't stand the feeling of cold, soggy pants any longer. 

(I'm almost afraid to change clothes in case Peyton no longer recognizes me as her mother.)

It's not that I look hideous... it's just that I've got about 4 shirts that look good and are comfortable and give quick access to boobs.  And once I find something that works, why change?  Right?  Right.  That's what I'll tell myself. 

Because yesterday, I rolled out of bed in my jeans.  Yep.  Jeans.  I wore jeans to bed and didn't even realize it.  I shrugged and just kept going. 

It's all about convenience.

The best part of all this?  Less.  Laundry. 

I hate laundry, so this is flipping fantastic.  So much so that I don't bat an eyelash when I use my shirt hem for a burp rag.  (Don't worry, I draw the line at using it as a baby wipe during a diaper change.  Barely.)  Even LESS laundry.  Bonus!

This is not sexy or cool or fashionable, and I'm totally aware of this.  But by the time I stuff 16 wiggling limbs through 16 cruelly-small holes and cover 8 adorable little butt cheeks with undies or diapers and find 8 socks and 6 shoes and create 4 pig tails, figuring out how to make my squishy butt fit in anything designer or making a cute shirt nursing-friendly isn't high on my priority list. 

Besides, honestly, it doesn't matter how hawt I may or may not look... when I'm out in public with my zoo, people are going to look at me like I'm crazy.  (And I've gotten both the "Wow, good thing you neglect your kids to put on makeup" comments and the "wow, good thing you don't care about your appearance" comments so someone will always be unhappy.)

So you won't find me looking like Grace Kelly any time soon... but you won't find me losing any sleep over it either.  Friends, yes, I might lose friends over it.  But then again, I'm always nice to have around so I can be that girl that everyone keeps around to make themselves feel better.  I'm sweet like that.