Cookie monster

We are a family that likes cookies. Chocolate chip cookies are a favorite. Which led to us purchasing a rather large container of them right before Mother's Day in 2003. Little Bear was only 13 months old. It was pretty much my first mothers day that did not involve praying for sleep and trying to get a newborn to stop crying and or latch on. I woke up that morning to find that Little Bear had crawled out of bed already all sneaky like, and was giggling happily in the living room. Bleary eyed I got up and walked into the living room and found this:



He had pulled the container off the table and had upended it, opening it in the process, getting at the precious precious chocolatey cookie goodness that was trapped inside. He was covered in chocolate. My couch was smeared in chocolate. My rug had chocolate and crumbs ground into it. There was chocolate on the walls, on the table... everywhere. My initial reaction was to want to cry at the mess, and the cleaning it would entail for me on what should have been my "day off". Instead I made one of those decisions - what kind of memory did I want this to be? I decided to laugh, and grab the camera.

Eventually, I grabbed him, and sat him in his highchair to finish the mess off while I started cleaning, laughing all the while. He was my kid all right. A cookie monster!

Losing It: Not just our Sanity - Week 1

Weight loss is a funny thing. It looks on the outside to simply be a matter of Less calories in than out. Really there is so much more to it. The reasons why we do the things we do, how we view ourselves, how the world views us, and how it effects how we want to look. UGH. While I am not thrilled, but any stretch with my current weight, shape and size, I am also not filled with the self loathing others might expect. Mostly, I want to feel healthier.

I had already made this decision a while ago - to set my physical fitness as a priority. I went to physical therapy for my knees. Followed up with every damn doctor they could throw at me. So the next logical step was to join a gym, which I did earlier this week. The day I went to the gym I weighed in at home. My starting weight - the heaviest I have ever been. I totally wanted to crawl into a hole instead of going to the gym that day, and who am I kidding, pretty much every day since. But I got up and went. And did what needed doing. Feeling a bit like I was throwing grains of sand at the incoming hurricane, when I really needed a truck full of sandbags.

The next day I got up determined to go again, but still without a drop of real motivation which changed while I was procrastinating checking twitter and came across #LosingIt10

So rather than feeling kind of helpless, I suddenly had a challenge. Which kept me going all week.

I don't plan on posting my weight. What I WILL be doing is posting my percentage lost each week. This week: 4% Which frankly is pretty damn spectacular, and might well have been a fluke on the scale this morning. And if it is I will work harder next week. And if it is not, is a darn great start.

I signed up for SocialSpark!

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine.

I have, of recent, been spending a lot more time and energy on this blog. I have been loving meeting the other bloggers, tweeples, and getting to know their lives and families. In the process, it became apparent that a significant number of them have a developed a rich landscape of opportunities and in some cases even full time careers.

Following the suggestion on one led me to IZEA where I signed up for SocialSpark! Anyone who has been reading this knows I have opinions and are all too happy to share them, so the idea of doing so with sponsorship sounded perfect.

It was really easy to set up an account which involved inputting some basic information about my blog and interests then I claimed my blog (put some invisible code on my blog to verify I was indeed the owner) before I was able to look at the opportunities available. The opportunities I qualified for included at least one I was interested in and I don't HAVE to do any of them - just continue to write about what interests me. Which to me is pretty perfect as I don't intend this blog to become just an advertising space.

"It's a meal"

When I read Diane's post on Girl Talk Thursday that started with "I’m not an athlete." I thought, hey *I* am not an athlete. Score! Then I read Maria's post and decided this was clearly the event for me.

I have an uncanny ability. You will be able to easily guess this if you have ever eaten a meal with me, seen me after a meal, or really just noticed my shirts. I drop food on my chest at every meal. Every. Meal. This earns me a Bronze medal I would think. More often than not it is something that makes a mess, earning me a Silver. Entirely too often it is something that stains. Which would probably earn me a gold, but really if any of you have seen the size of my chest you understand just what a showpiece this is, earning me the often coveted Stain Stick medal for having one more reason to stare at my boobs.

I have, of recent, started wearing scarves in situations that I would prefer not to walk around the rest of the day advertisement of my meals. This does not stop my darling husband from declaring EVERY time he sees it happen "It's a meal".

We were off to such a great start

I suck at packing. And leaving the house on time. And lots of other things too, but not all of those are relevant right now. Our goal was to get out of here in time to get to the airport to leave for Disney/FL in plenty of time to check bags, park the car, get through security (with a laptop, a CPAP, 4 pairs of shoes, coats, scarves, etc. this takes a while) and eat lunch before our flight.

Amazingly enough I succeeded. I even managed to keep my checked bag under max weight 49.5lb to be exact! Everything looked to be going so well. The flight was even looking to be on time. Possibly even arriving in Orlando early. We load onto the plane and wait. And wait some more. And they announce that we are waiting for some passengers from a connecting flight. Since I think missing a connecting flight would suck, I have a lot of sympathy, but even still, I am watching my schedule for dinner slip away.

Why do I care so much about my dinner plans? I spent entirely too long getting reservations for us at Disney's Kouzzina by Cat Cora. This was to be the first time we were seeing my sister in law in years, and would be meeting her fiance. Special, important, reunion. And we should have had plenty of time. I allotted for the hour and half of taking a bus from our hotel (Coronado Springs), to Downtown Disney, and then taking another bus to the Boardwalk where the restaurant was located.

The plane takes off late. We arrive late. We manage to meet my SIL & fiace on the Magical Express. Indy has even stopped crying about her ear hurting. We are all hungry, and starting to run late. But I have hope. We did online check-in so this should move quickly. We get up there and get our Keys to the World. And I find out that my room request has been ignored (I could not have been farther from El Centro) and to boot we are far from bus stops, and I did not have the Water View I paid for. Ok well, they can't seem to do anything about the room. I breath through as they give me a credit for the lack of water view and run to drop off our stuff in our rooms.

At this point it is clear we are never going to make the res. if we take the bus. So I call the front desk for a taxi. No problem they say, and connect me to they taxi company. We request a minivan since there are 6 of us, and give them our room number and building and are told the driver will call when he arrives (it is raining so waiting outside not ideal). Ten minutes go by. A half hour goes by. No taxi or phone call. I call the taxi back. The guy picked up the wrong family, they are sending someone now. Ok, dinner reservation is NOW. Wait some more. Phone rings, and it is the dispatcher. Taxi can't find us. Where are we in the lobby. Uh dispatcher? We are not in the main lobby that is why I gave you our room and building number. Well, apparently taxi can't pick us up at our room and we are so far from the lobby we would have to take a bus so we just decided to do that. And then take the second bus. We are now an hour late for our reservation.

All the while I am frantically on the phone with Dining Reservations trying to make sure we will be able to eat when we get there because we have not had food since before noon and it is now around 8:30pm. We make it to Kouzzina. The place is PACKED. We are starving and the wait is almost an hour. At some point I just started to apologize. It was my job to plan, organize and make sure things ran smoothly. To keep people fed and happy. I am full of fail. Bear decides we are not going to torture ourselves with the buses any more than necessary, so I call Hertz and not only are they able to start our reservation days early, but they will pick him up at the hotel. YAY HERTZ!!!

I check with the hostess about how much longer till we are seated - could be 10 minutes could be a half hour. The kids look translucent they are so hungry. She goes and gets them some warm bread to eat while we wait, and amazingly our table is ready. I do have to say that if it had not been nine hours since the last time we had eaten I would not have minded the wait.

The food was wonderful. Everyone was happy with everything. If I can find it I will post what we all ate, but sadly, in my exhausted state I did not take pictures of the food, and well, that seemed to have held true the rest of the trip. We did eventually make it back to the hotel and to bed, stuffed, cold and moist from the rain. I was up and down all night nervous I would sleep through our wake-up call, and hopeful our next day would be filled with Disney Magic.

Meets or exceeds expectations

Little Bear brought home a note asking me to come to a meeting to go over his evaluation for OT. Which seemed to mean they had finally completed said evaluations. After showing up to the meeting I was asked if I had any questions about the report. Why yes actually I did - When would I get a copy? They looked confused and told me it should have been sent to me as soon as it was complete, and I assured them it had not been. After finding a copy they went over it with me. Basically, he is holding his own. He of course tried his very hardest for the OT so she did not see ANY of the issues his teacher or I observe on a daily basis *head desk* However the teacher was able to provide her with samples so she at least saw it happened at all.

Long story short? He does not qualify for ANY services. His school work, with the exception of his writing, is exceptional, as is his behavior. They did agree to put a plan in to try addressing some of the writing issues. Different paper, the possibility moving forward of typing work, etc. was discussed.

The teacher, while not thrilled with this, at least they are acknowledging that there is some issues, so moving forward if it gets worse we at least have a basis of comparison. Personally I am not surprised, and will continue to work with him at home. I am so glad we decided to homeschool until he got to this point, but am sad the system is not willing to help him live to his full potential.

If I am able to manage this on our own the so be it. If not, I will go back to private OT. I am really trying to avoid it as it kills what little down time the kid has - OT is an hour away, so that eats up three hours a day easy.