Me: Month One

I have insecurities. Occasionally, they cripple me. They tell me that I'm not good enough, that my nose is too big, that I have too many pimples, that my body is too jiggly, that I'm unorganized, that I'm never enough. Truthfully, it's Satan who whispers these lies to me, and sometimes, I believe him. My Creator made me wonderful, and I will listen to HIM this year. I will learn to love myself, my big nose that wrinkles when I laugh, my terrible skin that my baby girl loves to cover in kisses, my jiggly body that my husband adores, and the chaos that envelopes my house from time to time when the kids and I just play all day and don't pick up our toys. 

This blog is usually about my kids. This year, I'll be taking one or two posts a month and dedicating them to my journey, to figuring out who I really am as an adult. When I turned 26, I began realizing that even though I though I knew who I was at 22, I didn't. If you're reading this and you're 22, you don't either. Trust me. 

So here it is, the first of at least 12 self portraits this year, no airbrushing aloud (insert anxiety...HERE). In Big Bear, in the snow, freezing, kiddos laughing all around me, too shy to look into the camera, knowing I would be posting this frame. 

Cheers 2011.

Three

She woke on her birthday, excited, hair a tangled mess. She pranced about in her purple footed jammies, tearing open pink paper and bows. Jabbering, laughing, pretending.

She was a month early. She was tiny. She was covered in lanugo that had yet to fall out. She was colicky. She had jaundice. She had a hard time nursing. She never slept. She insisted that she lay safely in my arms at all times. She threw fits. 

(Correction: she THROWS fits)

She is beautiful, full of fire and life. She is determined, incredibly smart. She loves to be loved upon, kissed and cuddled. She potty trained herself. She loves the color purple and wears a tutu over her jeans, along with mismatching rain boots.  She has a birthmark on her belly, and a freckle on her ankle. She makes me laugh, makes me cry, and makes me think that perfection can exist in a 25 pound ball of feistiness. She is mine.

She is three....

....and off to school she went. Quiet, contemplative, leaving behind a Mommy who was not ready, and sad to see her go. She loved it. She loved all of it, and when we were driving home, she asked me if we could go back.

Sort

There is a folder on my desktop that waits for me.  It is patient, understanding, full of unlocked potential. It grows from time to time, occasionally bursting at the seams. Within this folder, little treasures await, like this one....

This folder is called "Sort". It's full of the images that I will get to, that should be first upon my list. The ones I love are hiding within this folder, the ones I cherish the most. This year, I will sort first, and work second. Backing up a bit, here's Christmas. Christmas was a house full of love, naturally-flavored-no-artificiallly-colored-jelly beans, excited children, and tension. My parents are divorcing, and everyone was at my house Christmas morning. It's tough. It will continue to be tough. We'll all come out of the other side, and we'll be better for it. We did have a few quiet, coffee drinking, fresh fruit and vegetable juicing goodness before the madness happened.

More from Sort to come. 

PS Pardon my dust as I learn about Photobucket and images......apparently I selected the wrong size when resizing my vertical images, and there are two sleeping beauties in my house that need to arise from their slumber. Momma doesn't have time to fix this. Images+Blogger=ridiculously ridiculous and nowhere near as cool as Wordpress.