I realize that i have been doing something stupid, selfish and vain.  Harsh words maybe, but they are real.  Stupid – selfish – vain.  I have a ton of pictures that I have slowly been scanning in hundreds of pictures that I have stored on my computer.   I have been trying to organize them and share them.  But as I was going through these pictures I noticed a couple things.   I hate pictures of myself and there are painfully few of them.

The reason there are so few pictures of me and why they are so hard to go through is really the same thing:   I hate how I look in pictures because I am way heavier than I want to be.  I am critical of myself in the pictures because I see every fault, and especially the fat and I hate seeing that.   It should be a touch crazy that there are so many pictures with no me and those few pictures of me that  there are I just pick apart because I don’t look like a model.

Someday my children will be looking through these pictures and what will they see?   Lots of wonderful times, and I won’t be in the pictures with them.   They will know that there mom was there, but she was either taking the pictures or making herself busy away from the camera so she wouldn’t be in front of the lens.  They will know that she didn’t want to be photographed because she wasn’t happy with her appearance.   All those years of avoiding the camera will lead to the inevitable  collection of family pictures with mom missing.   All the family vacations and outings, the Birthday parties and Christmas mornings and Forth of July, the days on the beach and the hikes in the mountains and no pictures of mom.   A few here or there where she had been “unlucky” and caught on film – a couple big family group shots with mom standing behind someone else.   Stupid  – selfish –  vain.

It is really rather silly of me to care so much that I don’t look perfect in pictures.   I know I am not the only one to feel this way.   The “Dove: Real Beauty Sketches”  was passed around and viewed so many times because it said something that so many women know is true, “we are our own worse critics.”  Strangers don’t care about the fat or the wrinkles or the bad hair days.   The people who love us don’t see that about us.  They see their friend, their mother, their sister, their wife — they see the love and friendship.  The oddest things is that when I look at pictures from years ago I am much happier with what I see.   I was younger, fitter, more beautiful than I remember feeling I was.   In twenty years I will likely look back at today with  every bit as much fondness.  Whatever the future holds the truth is that I will be older and the children will grow up.   I will remember these days fondly as love every moment of being in this phase of my life.

I love the photos I have been scanning in of my grandparents and parents.   My grandparents are all gone, but in these photos are so many memories of them young and happy.   I look at these pictures and see people who love me and it is a blessing to have these pictures.   The children have been loving seeing there grandparents as young adults and me and their uncle as small children.  When I look at these pictures memories of my childhood come flooding back and that is a joy. The only thing I achieve in  my camera shyness is making sure that those memories aren’t around for my children.

It is a bit vain that I think I should present some perfect visage.   I am what I am and while bits of that could change I shouldn’t let my fear of people seeing me as less than perfect get in the way of living  fully and sharing who I am with my friends and family.  In the case of pictures   I shouldn’t let this vanity rob me and my children and those who love me of the joy of those snap-shots and memories.

So, for me no more excuses on this.   I need to accept who I am (not a fashion model)  and allow myself to live  in the moment wrapped in the love of my husband and my friends and my children and my family.   I am strong and full of joy and don’t need to let insecurity or vanity  creep in and steal any more happy memories.

I am moving this from the old self hosted site:   The original was published here.

If you are interested in checking out where I plan to work on in my home here is my list.

So picture me.

I am sitting in front of my birthday cake as if I was nine.  There are candles all lit and instead of nine there are forty-one.  I blow them all out in one satisfying whoosh.  Then they start to light up again, yes, those self relighting candles….

No, this didn’t really happen, no one is that cruel to me.  But that is how I am feeling at the moment.  The second I put out one little fire another springs to life that I thought was out.  Eventually they will all go out — really I hope so.  But will the cake be worth eating covered in wax?

Babymoon baby.
Hard to believe a whole month has past by, but here we are.

No, I haven’t died or anything – just had a baby.

Beautiful little girl was born on September 2nd.

After a couple months of steady looking the kid has a job.  Her orientation is tomorrow and then she starts work.

One of the first things people say when the number of children I have is brought up is, “Wow, you must be busy, how do you do that?  I have trouble with my two.”    My usual response is “Oh they entertain each other it isn’t so bad.”  This is usually met with a dubious look, the eyebrow cocking up a bit  to express a bit of doubt.

But it is true.  Though it is hard to explain in the short span of a quick conversation.  There is something that I dubbed “The Sibling Effect”  that comes into play when you have a larger family.

Basically, the sibling effect is a result of each child being somewhat less the “center of the universe” and slightly more part of “team Family” than the normal American child.   Mom and Dad switch from being the people in charge of giving the child everything they want to “the bosses” and siblings are less competition for family resources and more fellow team members.

The Changes:  My first two children are 18 months apart.  When Rachel was born Ashley was excited to be the Big Sister – she would fetch diapers and hold things and watch the baby.  This went on right up to the point that baby sister started getting into her stuff, then baby wasn’t as much fun, in fact she was down right annoying.

By the time Christopher came around Ashley had more or less gotten over the fact that little siblings will get into your stuff.  This baby wasn’t quite as exciting as the first new sibling, but being helpful when you are 7 is still a thrill.  Plus Ashley was now old enough to hold the baby, make the baby laugh and understand more of what was involved.   There was also a fellow “victim” with the annoying aspects of older sibling life.

I suspect four children will definitely create the sibling effect and maybe three depending on the parenting style and how close in age the children are, but once the dynamic is created it changes the parent/child dynamic and creates a very different sense of family.

Among our community of larger, homeschooling, Catholic families one of the things I notice most is how open the older children in the group are to watching out for the younger ones – not just their siblings, but all the children in the group.

I think I am out of touch

At least with most pregnant women.  Or at least with the ones posting on pregnancy message boards.    I am not sure if it is because I am older, more religious,  more married or more inhibited, but I just don’t remember my thoughts being as out of sync.  Back when I was expecting Christopher I don’t remember so many of the women posting racy “belly-shots”.   I do remember all of us being very opinionated about what was the right way for everything from pain medication during birth to  diapers to feeding to sleeping arrangements,  opinions based totally for the most part on supposition and what was trendy, but I don’t remember the level of nastiness in the disagreements.  I also don’t remember the moms being so down on their baby’s fathers and I don’t remember the other expectant mothers being so certain that they should be the center of the universe.    It seems that a much greater percentage of the moms posting are unmarried and have no problem at all talking about the most intimate details of their lives to total strangers.  Needless to say I haven’t joined in on a board this time round and really don’t feel worse for not.

This has been a very odd pregnancy healthwise

I actually haven’t gained any weight so far.  I was overweight to start with and I have honestly been trying to be very good with my sugars especially, but it is still sort of alarming to me.  The other odd thing is that I think we might have finally tracked down the source of my two year, off and on, mystery cough.  I have a bacterial infection in my tonsils.  One of those normal bacteria that everyone has that opportunistically sets up camp in a damaged place and starts causing trouble.   So I am on antibiotics until baby is born then I need to get my tonsils taken out.   Fortunately I have good friend promising me ice-cream for my recovery.

I am thinking this fall is going to be crazy

Usually I would lay out my homeschool plans and feel like I was starting with some modicum of control.  This year I have no illusion of control.  I know that I need very streamlined plans and very easy routines or I am going to drown in a sea of new baby – meets new school year – meets  everything else that will likely hit me in September – like having my tonsils out.

My mother went through a phase for about 12 years were she attempted to do the “Traditional, Matron, Holiday, Spectacular Meal” for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.   These were the big events where she would plan an elaborate meal, polish the silver, bring out the china and decorate the house with the idea that the family would gather round the big table and bask in the glow of a yawning holiday table straight out of a Victorian greeting card.

The reality was always a stressful mess.  Something would burn, something would break, something would be missing.  Tensions would rise, someone would say something stupid and then someone would start crying or stomp out and then someone else would laugh and we would all wonder at how crazy we all were .

I certainly don’t fault my mother for attempting to do this.   It is just the most perfect example I can think of to illustrate a principle  that is really common – overly elaborate visioning.  It is really, really easy to do.  It is especially easy to do in the context of woman’s magazines, homemaking blogs, Home and garden TV shows that present “simple ideas” to create “special memories” and they are all such neat ideas, so cool, they look like so much fun.  But then in reality the attempt to fit in these things becomes overwhelming.  I do this, I look at the tea party or birthday party on someone’s blog and I am sure that I am the worst slacker in the entire universe.

But I know I am not, not really.  I am just like most moms, blessed with too much to do and crippled with a lack of energy, resources and time.  Much like my mom trying to recreate a romanticized idea of  a Holiday dinner from a household with wealth and domestic servants in a different time there is a  disconnect between the resources I wish I had and those I actually do have.   Then there is simply a matter of priorities.

This comes into play with camping.  I might image how wonderful it will be to have steak and corn on the cob with potatoes on dutch oven apple cobblers and watermelon.    Until I have spent a hot day at the lake, have a campfire to attend in 30 minutes and all that clean-up.  Do I really want to spend my time away from home working on such a meal, or would it be more fun for everyone to do foil dinners. Basically I have a tendency to over complicate things.