apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Everything changed! I had my first in college so I switched schools to be closer to my parents, worked and went to school at the same time, stopped swearing, ate better, exercised more, and became more patient.

ug...unfortunately not much. however i am gonna have to start cleaning up the language pronto! my 3 year old's most overused phrase of the week? "mommy, don't say oh my god!" but seriously, our relationship with his parents completely changed. before, we rarely saw them and holidays were mostly unpleasant. now, we see them often - she watches the kiddos several times a month while i am at work and will ask if we can bring them over if they haven't seen them in a while. i would say we now get along about 90% of the time...quite an improvement!

I developed a love for milk, a need to eat healthier, a better sense of priority, the ability to show patience most of the time. All of those I hoped I'd do.

What I didn't expect-to completely adore all kids and the fun that they bring to life. To be overcome at the sight of a tiny foot. To feel so very young and so very old at the same time. And to never really get back they sleep I missed.

My first child is a girl. I decided that I wanted to raise a healthy and fit child with no diminished confidence in her appearance or capabilities. While I am not thin, I exercise, eat as best as I can to model for my children, and I don't talk about how I need to lose weight or how fat I am. Those thoughts are reserved for my inner self. My now 7-year-old is slender and athletic. She doesn't notice weight or make fun of people who are larger. She loves to dress up and feel good about herself. Those are all the things I didn't feel about myself at her age.

i think the biggest intentional and ongoing change i made was in the way i relate to extended family, and really everyone around me. throughout both pregnancies and my four years of parenting (four years on tuesday!), i've made a lot of choices that break from what others have chosen for their kids, and people take offense to that, as if i'm criticizing them by doing things differently. i've learned to "own" my choices much more. now, when i've done my research and given careful consideration, i present myself with more confidence than i used to. i've learned to stick to my guns without engaging in stupid emotional arguments. in that way, becoming a mom has made me better at a lot of things.

The first thing that changed is that I felt like throwing up all the time. That pretty much consumed me for 17 weeks. (:
The second thing that consumed me was the thought that this was a committment even more binding than marriage.

I started driving more safely and I tried to cut back on swearing as abundantly. Neither stuck :)

Eating healthy was something I was already doing. I wanted to exercise more, but I ended up doing that simply by keeping our changing table upstairs and climbing the stairs 10x daily to put our son on his potty and change his diaper.

I started eating even better, and stepped up my efforts to clean out my home...with a new person about to "move in" with us, I suddenly had motivation to pare down to the basics.