Baby Phillip

Little Sister has a new favorite toy. She calls it her "baby". She holds it lovingly, takes it everywhere with her, and speaks to it in her sweet little mommy voice. Here they are.

Can you tell who her baby is? Not sure?

Yep...it's a bobble-head. A bobble-head of my brother-in-law Phillip Wellman to be exact. The umpire scolding, base throwing, grenade launching Phillip. Still not sure who I'm talking about?

Ain't he sweeeeeet?

You Snooze...You Lose

Or so I hope anyway.

A while back I wrote a post called We're Breaking Up about my struggles with my weight. I have this...shall we say...bootylicious problem that I continue to struggle with. Anyway, this past Monday, The Today Show on NBC did a story on how your sleep habits affect your weight. I heard about it from a friend (I'm a Good Morning America gal) and had to check it out.

Apparently everyone (but me) knows that lack of sleep can contribute to weight gain and getting the right amount of sleep can actually help you lose weight. What?!?! So all I have to do is sleep MORE and I'll lose weight? Of the women who participated in the study, nearly all of them lost weight and one who lost no weight, still managed to lose inches! Over the course of 10 weeks they lost anywhere from 6 to 15 pounds! They made no other significant changes except to sleep at least 7 and 1/2 hours each night.

Okay, think about it. When you become a mom, it gets harder to keep your weight down...when you become a mom, you also get a lot less sleep. We live in an obese country...we live in a busy, sleep deprived country. I'm just putting two and two together people. The studies show that those who "sleep 5 hours or less a night are 30 percent more likely to gain 30+ pounds than those who got more rest". "The average woman gets 6 hours and 40 minutes." The healthy minimum is 7 hours 30 minutes! Go to the article here to read all the details. It's fascinating.

I'm a night owl. After the girls go to bed, that's MY time. Just me and Daddy. I like to savor it as long as possible so I always go to bed LATE. Unfortunately, the girls always wake up at 6:15 on the dot. I'm not missing the healthy requirement by a whole lot, but that 7.5 hours is a minimum! At this point, I have about 2 non-elastic waist pairs of pants that fit so I'm willing to try anything. And I do love to sleep.

So Monday night, my Bible Study was cancelled and I was in the bed by 8:30pm and asleep by about 9:30. That would be 9 hours of sleep...except...Little Sister was up at 4:30am. 7 hours! Just short by 1/2 an hour! I tried again Tuesday night and the SAME THING! I'm starting to think she likes me big and soft and these are her attempts to keep me that way. Finally, last night, I went to sleep at 10:00pm and the girls came downstairs at 6:15am. That's a little over 8 hours...and I feel thinner already.

So how much sleep do you get each night? And what do you think about this study?

If You're Happy And You Know It

Tonight, on the way home, we were singing songs in the car and we decided to sing "Jesus Loves Me". When we finished, Big Sister said in a choked up voice, "That kinda made me cry." It was so sweet. She couldn't speak for a minute. Oh how I pray that the thought of how much Jesus loves her will always produce such a stirring in her soul.

On a funny note, check out Little Sister's version of "If You're Happy And You Know It". Please excuse my singing. I was more interested in capturing the choreography. Especially when she gets to "then your face will surely show it." Here goes...

Blurb It Baby!

I might be the last one to know but I made an amazing discovery this weekend. You can turn your blog into a book! Check out www.blurb.com! It seems fairly affordable as well. Wouldn't it be cool to have a hard copy, pictures included, to look through in years to come. Wouldn't it be neat for your children to have something each year that chronicled your thoughts, struggles, interests, recipes, photos, etc.? I've heard it is time consuming but easy. I was at a SuperBowl party and a friend showed me a copy of a book done by one of her friends. The friend had spent a year in Italy and blogged about it. At the end of the year she had this beautiful book with all of her travels and pictures of all of the sights. It was AMAZING! So if you're like me and you're not good at journaling but you love blogging, check it out!