Smiling Mom

I’m so lucky.

*(I added Kayla, my dog, per my brother’s com­ment.)

Or, you know, MY the best cap­tion. I just might win something pretty that Mrs. Fussy made. Now VOTE. Thank you. xoxo

As I wal­ked into the cha­pel in which I was to be married, my breath caught in my throat and tears stung my eyes. I had to stop. The fee­ling was overwhelming.

Years later when BC, my son, took his first steps, the same thing hap­pe­ned. These were pro­found moments in my life.

Jum­ping back to my high school days, my father was, at the time a middle school vice prin­ci­pal. And he was escor­ting his eighth grade class on their end of the year class trip to Dis­ney­land. He took me with him.

Gro­wing up in San Diego, I had the plea­sure of going Dis­ney­land a num­ber of times throughout my life. So it sur­pri­sed me as my father and I sat down to watch the Elec­tri­cal Parade make its way down Main Street and my breath caught in my throat and tears stung my eyes.

Memo­ries.

At that moment as I sat on Main Street, I remem­be­red por­tions of many of the trips my family and I made throughout the years to Disneyland.

And I was overwhelmed.

I remem­be­red that my parents took my brothers and me to Dis­ney­land on each of our fourth birth­days. I dis­tinctly remem­ber being able to drive the car all by myself in Auto­pia. A four year old dri­ver! Ima­gine that.

Dis­ney­land has pro­vi­ded me with many won­der­ful memo­ries throughout my life.

On Sun­day I was, again, stop­ped in my tracks as I wal­ked into The Uni­ver­sity Club in Palo Alto. I had to take a breath.

Dis­ney­land Resorts and Sili­con Valley Moms Blog put on a recep­tion for the SVM­Blog­gers, that’s me!, and their families.

Dis­ney trea­ted us like VIPs! We ente­red the room and were pro­vi­ded with gift bags filled with goo­dies for the family, from light up Mic­key ears to auto­graph books.

Dis­ney also brought many peo­ple with them up to the Sili­con Valley to help make this day spe­cial for the kids. There was a woman doing face painting.

A man sketching pic­tu­res of our favo­rite Dis­ney cha­rac­ters, then giving our us the sketches! (We were given Daisy and Donald Duck.)

There were Mr. Potato heads to create, Dis­ney tat­toos for the taking, video games, coo­kie deco­ra­ting, and more! It was amazing.

Mic­key, Min­nie, Buzz Light­year and Cin­de­re­lla also made an appea­rance. Oh what fun!

I think that BC’s crush on Cin­de­re­lla offi­cially star­ted Sun­day. He LOVED her!!

It was an ama­zing day and the start of many Dis­ney memo­ries for my children.

The Dis­ney Effect.

What a feeling.

For more pic­tu­res of the even go to SVMB’s Dis­ney Flickr page. For more pic­tu­res of my family go to my pho­tos page.

I’m fairly cer­tain that women were not the crea­tive genius behind many things.

Two that come to mind are the public bath­rooms and Turbo Kick Boxing.

I mean, seriously! Bath­rooms for women should always have more than 2 stalls and lots of space for wai­ting. Need I say any­more on this subject?

Didn’t think so.

Issue #2 Turbo Kick Boxing:

Well, I should cla­rify. It’s not that I don’t think a woman crea­ted this exer­cise class. Frankly I don’t know. I just don’t think that a woman who gave birth vagi­nally, and then nur­sed a child crea­ted Turbo Kick Boxing.

I came to this rea­li­za­tion on about minute 27 of my hour-long trial Turbo Kick Boxing class Thurs­day night. It came just as the cute perky thang, who was no older than 20, with rhythm to die for, shou­ted out a new combo of jumps, kicks, punches and jacks.

Jacks.

As in jum­ping jacks.

Twenty seven minu­tes into this wor­kout I, who has about as much rhythm as Elaine from Sein­feld, am trying des­pe­ra­tely to keep up with CPT (cute, perky thang) and falling short of the mark in oh so many ways.

Insert the jum­ping jacks.

I know jum­ping jacks! Now this is a combo I can do.

My con­fi­dence begins to grow. I’m fee­ling the anti­ci­pa­tion of suc­cess lea­ding up the the jack.…

Kick, Punch, Punch, annnnnd Jack.

Annnnd I pee.

Right there in the middle of class my musc­les fail me and oops! out comes pee.

Les­sons I lear­ned that night were many.

First. Do not do jum­ping jacks without wea­ring some sort of, ahem, pro­tec­tion down there.

Second. Nursed-out breasts flop, while doing kicks and jacks, no mater their size.

Third. Turbo Kick Boxing is a cruel, cruel joke pla­yed on post-birth/nursing moms.

Fourth. I have no rhythm. This les­son was lear­ned years ago, just rei­te­ra­ted Thursday.

Fifth. This form of exer­cise should really be rena­med Turbo Kick My A$$.

Sixth. I think I’ll stick to the ellip­ti­cal machine.

This was cross-posted at Sili­con Valley Moms Blog on Saturday.