What Father's Day Means To Me

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I have never really had much of a relationship with my father. If you are a newer reader, I'll recap shortly.

My parents were married until I was eight years old. I was the biggest Daddy's girl ever in the universe.

That is, until my dad became a drug addict who cheated on my mom and eventually abandoned his family. I didn't see him again until I tracked him down when I was eighteen. He was still on drugs and had no real interest in being in the lives of his children then, either.

And finally, when my nephew was born in 2010, my brother reached out to him again. Thankfully, this time he is at least off drugs {as far as we know}. He seemed to be doing better, was engaged, has a nice home, a steady job...etc. I tried my best to make it work for close to a year.

I had a hard time trusting him, after all of the years of pain, and just before I gave birth to Sophi, I cut ties. I caught him in lie after lie. That isn't something that I want in my daughter's life {lies and him coming in and out of her life}, so I called it quits.

Needless to say, for pretty much my entire life, Father's Day was either a bitter day for me, or a distant memory....

Until The Sophster was born.

Even though Mitch was deployed when Sophi was born, and has been deployed for nearly a year of her life, he has always been there. The night she was born, he made it a point to stay up all night with me, on Skype, supporting me through my labor and celebrating the birth of our beautiful girl!

Sophi and I went through a very difficult first four months without him home, but he was always there. Then came homecoming. I was nervous about how things would go with them meeting for the first time, but she knew who her Daddy was, and he stepped right into that role like he had never missed a minute.

He has never complained about changing a dirty diaper, he always makes time to play with her, even with his crazy work schedule, he ALWAYS tells her how much he loves her, he doesn't anger when she refuses to talk to him and comes screeching to me. And she loves him for it.

And I love him even more for it.

Where most girls have wanted to find a man like her Dad, I have always wanted to find a man who is the exact opposite of my dad, and I did. I thank God every day for my husband. He is my knight in shining armor, the peace to my chaos, my voice of reason, and the best Daddy I could have ever asked for, for our child.

So babe, THANK YOU for always loving your girls, for always being passionate about your family, for being the BEST DADDY I've ever known, and for teaching me that Father's Day is a day to celebrate, and not a day to scorn.

We love you more than anything on this Earth! :)


Happy Father's Day, to all of you amazing Daddies out there, who choose to be there and love your babies unconditionally! You deserve all of the good things in the world! Thank you for stepping up and being REAL MEN!

Montessori....Maybe It's Not For Us.

As a parent, I want to do everything "right" for my child. I want her to learn the best way possible, use the most popular most affective methods, and to teach her without making things too complicated or frustrating.

When I first started reading about Montessori schooling, I thought it was just the coolest thing ever. I thought, "this HAS to be for US!". But the more I read, the more overwhelmed I get with it all. I don't know a better way to say it than simply, overwhelmed. But Montessori is supposed to be simple, right? Don't get me wrong here, I still think that it is SUPER cool, and I love the concept...I'm just leaning towards the "maybe it's not 100% for us, after all", thought.

I've made it very clear in other posts that I am a little on the messy side and quite unorganized {Thank God for my organized husband!}, so the thought of keeping shelves in order, switching out trays for tot school {while keeping bins of tot school stuff neatly stored away}, and creating perfectly put together play shelves every month, makes me a little on the twitchy side. lol

I do like to put together "trays" for Sophi to come out to after her nap sometimes, but not every week, and certainly not every day. I do think that setting new things out, showing her once how to do it, and then watching her come up with many many other ways to play with that specific thing, is outrageously fantastic! I love learning from her! She teaches me new things all of the time.

Sophi's toys definitely need a serious overhaul right now.

She is currently taking over the house with her stuff.



This is too much, yes, but I don't think I will ever get her down to just a few shelves and some trays every week. So, my goal now, is to STOP FEELING GUILTY about not being the perfect Montessori mommy. My kid is smart. So smart. She is 28 months old and can identify every letter in the alphabet, sing her ABC's, count to 18 on her own, she knows colors that {I would think} most two year olds do not {gray, gold, etc.} and all of the basic colors, she knows the difference in an airplane and a helicopter, a fire truck and ambulance, and can even tell them apart by sound alone, she has an imagination like I've never seen {she even has an imaginary pet lizard living in her bed}, she is well mannered {most of the time}, well spoken {she can pretty much carry a clear conversation now, forming full sentences!}, adventurous, and she is the sweetest child I have ever had the privilege of knowing.

That said, we may be messy, we may not be Montessori material, but we are perfect for each other. That's what counts at the end of the day, anyway. Right?



What about you? Are you raising or planning to raise your little one in a Montessori style home? What are some things that work best for you?

June Fitness Goals...with May Recap and Progress Pics

Dear May, you sure were one hell of a month!

At the beginning of the month, I wrote this post about specific fitness goals that I had for the month of May. I was determined to work hard all month and come out better and stronger and blah blah blah.

Well, I did great...for about the first 10 days. Then, we started celebrating my 30th Birthday. I turned 30 on Mother's Day this year {totally got cheated there! j/k}, so Mitch took leave from that Friday-Monday, so that we could have ample time to celebrate BOTH days. Have I mentioned that my husband is pretty fantastic?? He is. Anyway, we started the weekend off with running the Friends Never Forget 5k, which benefits the children of fallen heroes by raising money to send kids to fun summer camps and such. The run was a lot of fun. My little brother, Justin, and my nephew, Jaiden, came out to join in on the fun. Mitch, Justin, and myself all ended up taking 2nd place in our age groups! It was also the last race I would run in the 24-29 age bracket. :)


That night, we went out for my birthday and I drank a few...plenty...ok, a lot of dark German beer. Plus a shot at midnight. We had a lot of fun and stayed out until we shut the place down. I wish we had taken pics, but we were lame and didn't. Basically, we got pretty drunk, made lots of new friends, had a blast....and consumed a lot of calories!


The next day was Mother's Day. We had my mom, little brother, and nephew over for some brunch {lox, bagels, and lots of mimosas}. Then, over to my friend Kim's house for BIRTHDAY CAKE!! Since it was my actual birthday, and all. What? I turned 30! You're darn right I ate some cake! Either way, you see how this month was turning out?

In the weeks following, I had my three day women's conference at church, where I didn't work out or eat good. Plus some other stuff and plenty of excuses to NOT work out. None of them were good excuses.

Besides that, and let me get pretty deep for a minute, I don't know that working out was helping, even when I did. Mitch and I had started drinking. More than usual. What I mean by that is, we pretty much had to have a couple of drinks each at night. Enough to get a good buzz {lots of added calories}, eat a bunch of crap {even more calories}, pass out on the couch {bad}, and then not feel good enough to get up and work out the next day {real bad}. All of these things ended up in disaster. By the end of the 3rd week in May, I had hardly run and only participated in about a third of the squats and plank challenges that I had committed myself to at the beginning of the month.

So, I decided to change things. I started running every day, Mitch started going back to the gym, we went and bought more protein and supplements for ourselves, I jumped back into my squats and planks, and we decided to NOT DRINK during the week days AT ALL, and only on the weekends IF we had put in a good workout that day {and even then only have a couple of drinks max}. Those are the rules.

I ended up finishing my squats {250} and planks {3 min}, on the last day of the month. I was proud of myself, but SO FLIPPING SORE! Wow! My legs STILL hurt! I know that I slacked last month. I'm not perfect. But, I did make some progress! The scale only shows a 1.6 pound loss, but this is why I take measurements...

Screen shot of last months measurements {in inches}:


This Month -June- {in inches}:
Shoulders: 41
Chest: 34
Bicep: 10 {x2}
Forearm: 9 {x2}
Waist: 28.7
Hips: 38
Thigh: 22 {x2}
Calf: 13 {x2}

In case you didn't break out your calculator like I did, that is 6.7 inches in a month! A month that I really didn't push hard until the last week of the month! I'm totally pumped about that and can't wait to see what will happen in June!

So, here are my May 1st/June 2nd pics to compare:



It's not a huge improvement, but I can definitely tell a difference.

Anyway, here are my goals for June...

- Keep up the running. I'm throwing distance and time goals out the window. I got an awesome heart rate monitor a couple of weeks ago and I'm kind of obsessed with it. It has been a driving force for me lately. I'm in constant competition with myself over how far I can run and how many calories I've burned. I like to see what my calorie comparison is between running inside on the treadmill and outside on the street. It's always higher outside. Just in case you're thinking about getting a heart rate monitor for yourself, I highly recommend this one:

- I'm going to continue doing the plank and squat challenges from last month, since I didn't do so great on those

-I'm going to incorporate a new ab challenge from the Fit-Tabulous Facebook page, and keep working on getting my abs strong and tight! Here's what the new challenge looks like:



If you're still following me and my {slow} progress, I want to say that I appreciate you. Having people to hold me accountable really helps me.

Are you doing any specific challenges for the month of June? Did you reach your goals for May? I'd love to hear what you've got going on in your fitness calendar for this coming month!

Also, are you following me on My Fitness Pal yet??

MyFitnessPal - Free Calorie Counter