Kids = Motivation! (and just a gross tooth story)

Wellllllll I've REALLY been enjoying the Holidays and all of the food that goes with it since about St. Patricks day of last year! I had a few spurts of motivation here and there, but nothing REALLY lasted. After all, I sort of just had a baby. However, that baby has now turned a year old and even my kids aren't buying my excuses anymore. A couple of days ago while I was doing laundry, Daniel (3) held up a pair of my grey exercise pants and excitedly shouted to the other kids that he had found "Santa's pants" in our living room! They almost fell over laughing as they explained to him that those are "mommy's pants". Then last night he started patting my belly and talking about the baby in there. I replied, "Yeah, well mommy is going to exercise and eat healthy and then that "baby" is going to disappear!". Alivia promptly started yelling, "No don't do it" and crying about losing our "baby". Sometimes as a mom I'm just not that bright! I had to spell out in black and white that there is no baby, just FAT. Daniel wanted to know why so I had to explain that it's there because I eat too much candy and junk. Daniel didn't even let me off easy after that embarrassing explanation. He kept gawking at my stomach and saying, "so you're fat, huh? You eat too much, huh? Too much candy, huh?". OKAY!!!! I got it! I can't hide anymore. It's time to do something or be happy about it and move on. I'm pretty sure I'm going to do something about it, but sheeesh, how do I get the 3 year old to be quiet about it in the mean time? I hope to be grateful to that loud little kid one day when I'm trimmer, but for now, I better buy a girdle!

I think this next story is motivation to Emma to keep her teeth up high when leaving them out for the Tooth Fairy. First of all, can I just say that our Tooth Fairy has about had it with this inquisitive child? Emma writes letters to the Tooth Fairy with EACH tooth she yanks out (and it seems like she'll never run out either!). She expects the Tooth Fairy to write back and the first time, the Tooth Fairy thought this would just be one simple little letter to write to "prove" her existance. She typed out a letter in tiny, tiny print, put a cartoon picture of herself and sprinkled the letter with gold "fairy dust".  The next letter and tooth had specific questions about where the Tooth Fairy lives, if she celebrates Christmas, what kind of gifts she likes, etc. The next letter asked for a return letter in the Tooth Fairy's OWN handwriting with even more questions, like "what do you do with all of the teeth?". Good grief, I need to buy a book about the Tooth Fairy or  something. This always  happens when I'm too tired to think straight and we're not sure where our glitter is, not to mention that I'm not sure what the Tooth Fairy's REAL handwriting should look like. Emma put her tooth out last night on the bathroom counter, but when she went to check on it before bed, it was gone. She was very distraught, but we explained that her tooth fairy knows her so well now and is probably over the time she tried to trick her, so she would just believe her about the tooth. (Emma left the white part of candy corn out for the Tooth Fairy one time, but the Tooth Fairy just left her play money for her "pretend" tooth.)   She didn't have to fret for long because we noticed Lilyanna chewing on something and when we pulled it out, it was Emma's tooth! Gross, I know! It had been knocked on the floor and so it was fair game for our little muncher.