Last month I did myself proud and actually completed the February photo-a-day challenge. I’m really terrible at things that require me to commit every day to it, so this feels like a huge deal. It gives me hope that maybe I can do other things everyday too. Like shower. Or wear something other than stretchy pants and a college t-shirt with no bra underneath. But, baby steps though, right?

You can see all my pictures from the challenge on flickr, but here are my 10 favorite:

Day 3 – “Orange”

Day 4 – “Childhood”

Day 5 – “Square”

Day 8 – “Water”

Day 13 – “Perfect”

Day 14 – “Heart”

Day 16 – “Create”

Day 19 – “Feet”

Day 24 – “Half”

Day 26 – “Light”

Which one do you like best?

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As part of our year of mommy/son dates, I thought it would be fun to bust out the crayons and see what happens. I knew he probably wouldn’t “get it” yet, and that I’d likely end up flossing crayon out of his cute little baby teeth, but we had fun anyway.

If you want to have some incredibly unproductive fun with your baby too, here are a few tips:

Lock up your animals

It’s for their own safety. They’ll thank you later when they don’t have crayons lodged in their nostrils.

Hand out two crayons at a time

As the crayons begin to meet their untimely demise, just keep handing out more. Bonus points if you stop to appreciate how cute their chubby little hands look while holding crayons.

Expect crayon-to-mouth action

It’s okay, because the brains over at Crayola have made these suckers non-toxic. So technically you could call this play time and lunch if you wanted to.

Don’t expect a masterpiece

Seriously, congratulate yourself with a celebratory cookie and a glass of wine if you got them to color on the paper at all.

Have fun, smile, and laugh

Take it easy mommy. Your little bundle of energy is probably going to flip out over the fun new chew toys you’ve handed him. Go with it. Take some pictures. And thank God for Magic Erasers.

Got any other tips? I’d love to hear them!

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So, let me tell you about my week.

First the ice maker broke. I love a delicious ice cold glass of water, so that was pretty bad news. And then the dryer broke. I love not having to hang all my clothes out to dry, so that was pretty bad news too.

Other than that, it was another uneventful week. I did mom things and made sure the child was fed and kept clean-ish. I picked up toys and put them away, only to have them spread around the house 2 minutes later. I made a lot of macaroni and cheese. I said a lot of “Please, just go to sleep” and “Please don’t hit the dog” and “Please get down from there.”

And then there was Valentine’s Day. Now, we don’t really do Valentine’s Day. We might give cards and some candy, but we don’t go out. This year though, Ryan planned a night out for us. He made reservations and got a babysitter and told me when to be ready. What a nice guy, right?

I’ll tell you, we’ve only been out alone a handful of times since Wyatt was born, so it was pretty special to get to go out on Valentine’s Day. We ate Greek food, and drank champagne (It came with the dinner, we’re not actually that fancy on purpose), and at the end of dinner he slid a ring across the table and asked me to marry him.

Here’s a crappy picture of my pretty ring

**update** I finally got my act together and took a proper picture of the ring. You guys, it’s really lovely. A little bit different, and not too flashy. Just what I wanted.

Now, I know a few of you are all like, um, you guys aren’t married? Nope, we aren’t. We’ve discussed it a lot. We talk about how making our family “official” would be nice. We’ve entertained the idea of just going down to the courthouse and getting it over with. I mean, we basically live like we’re married already, so why not just do it?

But somewhere between him moving to Indiana and starting our life together and having a baby and moving away from all our friends and family, getting married has just always been on the back burner. A someday kind of thing.

So for him to do this, to get a ring and officially ask, it means the world. He gave me such a special moment that I thought I was going to miss out on. I love him for that. And I am so happy that in the very near future I get to call him my husband.

So now, all my married friends, I’m requesting your best wedding-planning tips. Because Trish and her Type-A personality are freaking a little bit. Annnnnd GO!

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I’ve just resigned myself to the fact that this post will always be late. There’s nothing I can do about it (except manage my time better and/or stop being lazy, but those don’t count).

And since I’ve got this kid who’s all like “feed me, change me, clothe me, entertain me, make sure I don’t die” (seriously, who does he think he is?) I’m going with a mostly picture post again.

So this week we…

Struggled intensely with bedtime. My sweet baby just doesn’t like to go to sleep. He’s very busy and important, so I suppose it’s hard to wind down with all that pressure. But when he does fall asleep, he does it nearly naked.

Had our first toddler class. Wyatt took things very seriously.

Went to the Mall of America with my parents, where Wyatt found his first true love, the escalator.

And rode his first carousel

And had ice cream shoved into his face. Not that he was complaining.

And here’s one more, just because it’s so cute I can’t stand it.

So tell me, how was your week?

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For a few years now I’ve been a pretty faithful Biggest Loser fan, but something always nagged at me about the show. While I admired the transformations these people were making in their lives, the method seemed a bit extreme. And watching their lives and bodies on display was uncomfortable at times.

But I let it go, because it was a game and it wasn’t hurting anyone. Plus, they were getting healthy!  And motivating the country!

Right?

I’m not so sure anymore.

A debate has been going on since the recent finale, when 105 pound, 24-year-old Rachel Frederickson won the game with an incredible 60% loss of her starting body weight.  Was she too thin? Did the show contribute to her developing an eating disorder? Will she gain some back now that she’s won the show and doesn’t need to maintain such a low weight anymore?

When I saw her walk out during the finale, my heart dropped a little bit. Her face looked gaunt. Her legs were stick thin. She just didn’t look healthy to me. Thinner, yes. Healthy, not to my eye.

But was it fair of me and everyone else to start forming these opinions about her new body? Plus, who are we to speculate about her health? It’s her body after all, not mine.  And I don’t want people focusing on my body and health, so shouldn’t I extend the same courtesy to her?  Well, yeah, except I didn’t go on a nationally televised weight loss show. She did. And discussion about the results needs to happen. Because people are watching these transformations as an example of how they should eat, exercise, and live. And I’m not sure the example of a woman who ate so little and exercised so much that she ended up underweight is one that needs to be broadcast to the world, at least not in a positive way.

Suddenly those nagging feelings about the show weren’t something I could ignore anymore, and I made the choice to stop watching. Here are the reasons The Biggest Loser will no longer find its way onto my TV lineup.

1.  I don’t want to be entertained by other people’s mental and emotional issues.  Many of the contestants come to the show with some serious baggage, which becomes a part of the “entertainment.” They go out of their way to expose these raw emotions, focus the camera on them, and wait for the waterworks. And we sit at home captivated by someone else’s pain. I don’t think it’s okay.

2.  The weight loss depicted on the show isn’t realistic for the average person. The contestants are sequestered and their entire focus is weight loss. They don’t have jobs to go to, family to take care of, or even errands to run. Everything is taken care of for them so they can focus on the game. We’re expected to be motivated by huge weekly weight losses that we will never be able to achieve. And suddenly, even though we worked our butt’s off for it, the half a pound we lose in a week doesn’t seem to quite measure up. Isn’t this show supposed to be motivating? Yeah, it’s not.

3.  At the end of the day, The Biggest Loser is a game.  Both for the contestants and the producers. While they talk a good talk about the health aspects, ultimately it’s about that $250,000 prize and the millions in profits the show brings in. While I’m sure many of the contestants are happy to be there to lose weight, undergoing daily humiliation, and what seems like verbal abuse, has to take a toll. Suddenly it doesn’t seem at all like it’s about health and fitness, but more about using the stigma surrounding weight in this country in order to turn a profit. And we tune in very week to be reminded that fat is bad and thin is good. Thin is so good in fact, we’ll pay you to do dangerous things to get there. It’s sick.

I know there will be people who don’t agree with me, and that’s fine. I’d really like to open it up to you and find out how you feel about the show, especially after this recent finale. Did it change your mind about the show? Do you think what the contestants go through is worth it?

Let’s talk about it.

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