Courage...Sexy...Strong

There are many things in life that I am proud of, and many things I would prefer to forget. But one of those things that I am proud of is what you are about to see in my blog. But if you are not an open and supportive spirit, just stop here and move on to something else. 

It took A LOT of courage for me to do this. 

As a woman who doesn’t meet the norm as to what is beautiful I have often doubted myself. I have never felt pretty ( in a social standard kinda way) . I mean I am confident no doubt in almost all aspects of my life, but I would say that image is definitely not one of them. But I am working on it. See even that statement is yucky…what does that mean working on it… you work on a house or a car until it is perfect, but how can you work on your body and make it perfect? The truth is you can’t. We can try to live a healthy lifestyle and be better version of ourselves, but it should be for us and not to meet some ridiculous standard. Because it isn’t true. The covers of magazines are fake, movie stars have TEAMS of people with the right clothes make up lighting and editing etc.

So to try and help myself see myself as beautiful I followed in the steps of my beautiful friend Tina and decided to do a boudoir shoot. Not to be in a calendar or anything but to try and believe in my own self. To believe in my beauty even if it was outside the lines. I wanted to look at myself and feel the same pride I do as when I lace up my skates. So made a few calls and found a kindred soul in a photographer who doesn’t believe in photoshoping the body wither. Booked the date…and began to panic

I told not a soul except three people who mean more to me then they know. My beautiful Gina, Tina and Nancy. We call ourselves the goddesses ( humble people that we are). Nancy who has been with me for every step of my transformation journey, who has kept my spirits up and pushed me to keep going is also my INCREDIBLE Zumba instructor. I told her about my incredible lack of sexiness and how I thought this shoot was going to FLOP!

She attempted to inspire me…I tried I really did, but I can’t do it. Then she said something in class that changed the way I thought. Nancy asked us when we had lost our sexuality? When did we stop being sexy or feel like it was wrong? To myself I said “ hey Nancy it’s pretty hard to loose what you never had” But then I kept thinking about it…

So I tried to be sexy….FAIL! It just didn’t happen.

The next class I looked at myself in the mirror while I was dancing and I said to myself…WTF…how do I still look like this?!? I mean I have been doing this for what feels like forever…UGH! I didn’t like what I saw. I felt Fat and Ugly…Slobbish really. Why do we say these things to ourselves?

Anyways I did the shoot…and it was AMAZING!! Isabella ( Ella Photography) came and made me feeling like a rock star.

I want to share them with you because sometimes I see my own doubts reflected in the faces of my friends, in the faces of the beautiful women who dance at Studio Benefit with me, who walk down the street whose posts are self-depreciating.

We are all beautiful, we are all sexy we and need to love our selves, find the courage to look at yourself, make eye contact with your soul and love yourself to being a better you.

I would never have had the courage to do this without you Nancy, Tina and Gina . Thank you my Goddesses!

Being a Mom is HARD!!

This was such a great weekend full of highs and lows but really eye opening about what it means to be a Mom. We did all kinds of activities this weekend, from building a gingerbread house, to swimming and gymnastics and saw some family etc. It was great, and Layla Rose is just doing great, her words are coming along and we are working on attention span yadayadayada...

So why is being a Mom hard if everything was so fun...let me explain

I have been against gymnastics since day one. Not because of the sport itself, it is beautiful to watch and those athletes are strong and dedicated. My problem is 2 fold, 1 is the body thing I have been sooooooo scared that she won't fit whatever body they need to wear those suits and what others would say about her. Naturally this stems from my ridiculous opinion of my own body and the struggle i have had and continue to have with  my body image. I wanted to save her from going through the nasty world of body image. the 2nd part is that I am afraid of the injuries she could have. Layla Rose is fearless that borders on dangerous, so my images of her pitching herslef off a beam or soemthing have always held me back.

then the fact that she loves it and is good at it came in... ugh

then the recommendation form her psychologist that she do it...double ugh

And so the internal battle begun...do I do what i feel is right and keep her engaged in other activities or do i go against my gut and follwo the what seems to be the natural flow...not easy. I REALLY don't want her to do gymnastics.

So after fighting it, I finally gave in and brought her to Wimgym in their munchkin program. She was all dressed up in her cute little outfit and away she went. Eric waited down stairs and i stayed with her. She was so good! LOL! she did it all, the bear crawl, the beam the whole nine yards YAY! SO then we switched so Eric could see it also and I went into the waiting room. and IT happened.

So I'm  sitting with my little chunky Buddha playing and 2 Mom's are talking. And they are CRITICIZING their own daughters bodies!! One is saying her daughter gains 7lbs every winter and she looks terrible. the otherone was saying how much she has to spend in new suits because she keeps gaining weight. I DAMN NEAR jumped on them!! Against my natural self i said nothing...the reason for that is it litterally dashed my joy of the moment. I was SO HAPPY that my child was in somehting she was good at, that I was wrong all this time about gymnastics. and then THAT. UGH!

SO as a Mom I sit here debating what to do...i mean she is so natural there, and yet those 2 morons just validated my original fear. I feel like I have no choice because Layla Rose needs every opportunity to build her confidence so no matter what life throws at her she can face it. But how can i protect her from harpies like that.

Being a Mom is hard...hard choices...tough calls... I can only hope to make the right ones

Oh Happy day!!

What an emotional day today was, we went through about a month or so of tests ( not all at the same time) to try and diagnose our beautiful Layla Rose and why she is not developing "normally". As a parent it is extremely draining, emotional, scary to think that your child will not have the same experiences as others, that she will have to go to a special school, or who will take care of her if something happens to me? Its nuts, nothing i write here will truly transmit those concerns or questions, and as many of you are parents you are each facing your own worries and concerns for your own children. That's what being a parent is and each of us are walking a journey that we never thought could be filled with such love and worry all at the same time. So as this all come to a head today was our "D" day. The results were in...we were going to label our child. It kind of felt like we were going to a fortune teller and she was going to layout Layla Rose's future for us.

Obviously that's not the case as anything can happen, but we were dreading the word AUTISM. Now i know many of you say well its not that bad, or there are worse things. Even worse is that I am trained to work with special needs kids and here I was fearing the diagnosis. Not because these beautiful children are pariahs, but because its not what i want for my own child. I want her to be happy and fit in , have friends and have a relatively "normal" future. I am almost ashamed to say these things, but who wouldn't want their child to be as "normal" as possible?

So there we are sitting in front of her and the first thing out of her mouth is that the dragon is NOT autistic...exhale. So, YAY! huge relief to us, then come the actual diagnosis which is a global developmental delay including speech and a sensitivity to over stimulation. I'll explain. GDD is a fancy way of saying that your child is not developing typically in multiple areas for a variety of reasons. For Layla Rose that includes some fine motor skills, social skill and basic life skills. Her language is obviously quite delayed  but is coming along.  So why is this good news? because it is not a life sentence, not for her anyway. Layla Rose has shown through the testing as well as her development that she CAN learn and is interested in learning. She is curious and inquisitive meaning that she will over time and with an enormous amount of time spent in stimulating her be able to develop into what I have no doubt will be a dynamic spitfire of a person. As parents and people who love her, we need to build her confidence, encourage her to socialize ( play date anyone?) and keep loving her no matter what! ( DUH how could you not!) Her early diagnosis makes intervention even more effective since they are at the age of absorbing everything. So for now She is getting all kinds of help in speech and behaviour. We are at the Mackay center starting in January, she has a wonderful therapist in her daycare and simply THE BEST day care educator int he whole world. seriously this woman is a SAINT. As for her over stimulation, well for those of you who know her, this is nothing new. She can't be thrust into new situations with loud noises and lots of people. We simply have to work on coping skills and slowly expose her to a world of new things.

We have a lot of work to do with her, but we feel blessed to have her in our life, as she teaches us to have patience and compassion and what it really means to connect with another person. She makes us better people and int he end better parents to her and Anthony. Ah our little dragon, who knew we could love something as much as we love her and Anthony. I just don't know what or who I would be if I didn't have my kids. Thank you universe for giving me these gifts and thank all of you who are walking this journey with us!

10 Months already!

Wow is october almost over YIKES! well today Anthoyn is 10 months old...it goes so fast holy shmoly! LOL! Lots going on at this time. but most important we have just finished all of Layla Rose's testing phew! and we await the results. This could take baout 4 weeks and then we will have an action plan of how to go about all of this. Either way knowing one way or the other what we are dealing with will be releaving, right now we just keep guessing and frankly its exhausting. So away we go and hopefully we will know where we are headed soon. In the mean time, she is talking much much more and depending on the day she is doing great in with other people in different settings. So a few more fun pics to tide you over :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey hey all you amazing people...Today was an AMAZING day can I just say that. So here's why, When y9ou have kids you have all these dreams for them and you have these things you just really want to do...for each of us it is different. When I found out I was having a girl I dreamt of playing hockey with her. Of being that role model that i never had in sports. I had imiges of coaching her team and showing her just what a girl can do. Then all this crap happened and we are so jumbled in our heads with Layla Rose's development. She is being treated for her speech delay, tested for at this piont everything under the sun. She is on all kinds of waiting lists for therapy and intervention and through all of this a lot has to be given up. You stop dreaming of things because you just don't know whats coming. In the plac eof those dreams comes worries...will she ever have any friends? will she get invited to birthfday parties? Will anyone fall in love with her? So hockey is pretty low on the list and quite frankly i just stopped thinking about it. Then last week during the evaluation from her phsycologist she was asked to make a necklace with wooden beads and I am thinking in my head "PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT no way" she can't sit still that long, she will get frustrated and so on . But then she did it, and i mean all alone, she dropped a few beads, but never gave up and finished it. I was in TEARS!!! I felt so proud and so much hope ( and so much disapointment that i underestimated her) anyways, becaus eof all that today We decided was the day we slap on a pair of skate, pop on that helmet and give it a shot. So away we went to the arena and SHE DID IT! no tears, no frustrations, there was even excitment and I am sure I saw a smile. She got on the ice with me and didn't cry or hate it. I held her up and it only lasted about 10-15 minutes. But that is 10-15 minutes more than I ever thought possible. Lets not kid ourselves, she only stood on her own twice and for 8 seconds before she fell. but even when she fell she just kept tring to get up, she just kept going. I have never been more grateful in my life for anything than for today, it showed me she has such a bright future if the people around her just believe she is capable and never los ehope. This child has been a blessing since day one and she teahces me to be a better person everyday. Here are some fun pics from today.

as requested...