Another Competition Saturday

Today marked Sarah's return to cheering competitively, the first time since her injury the first week in October. So the little girls and I packed up and headed to Forsyth for the Regional Championship. The girls did well and came away with the first place in their division. But better than that, Sarah came away, knee in tact! Here is a picture of her in the stands. All the other pictures of them competing turned out blurry. We were not allowed to use flash photography, so I couldn't use the trusty "auto" setting on the camera!

Charlotte spent most of the day doing this...which does not bode well for sleeping tonight, and of course, it is my night. Don't know how the girl does it...cheerleading competitions have to be the loudest of loud sports and she snoozes on through them. I guess that's because she's used to so much noise at our house! Ha!
Hannah took all of her little toys that her sweet cousin Benji had given to her way back in September and spread them out on the bleachers.

We go back to the doctor for Sarah's knee on Monday, and hopefully will get the "official" OK to go back to cheer...and then it's on to State Championship next weekend in Columbus!

I go back to the doctor on Tuesday morning for a recheck of my blood pressure and a fasting blood draw. Turns out that not only do I have high blood pressure, but high cholesterol too. I was feeling better about my blood pressure, despite the rise last week and the increased medicine. I was finally not worrying about it all the time. Then on Tuesday, it spiked again. Also Tuesday, I had to have an echocardiogram done on my heart to check for structural damage, and thankfully, all looked normal. And then Thursday the dr. called to tell me my cholesterol was high.

tick...tick...tick...

That's how I felt...that I must be this walking time bomb, just waiting to have a heart attack. I was mad at myself for letting myself get to this point, frustrated with my body for not reacting the way that it always has, scared that I was a heart attack waiting to happen. (Daryl says that he knows where Maddy gets her dramatic streak...I'm just not seeing it...)

This past week, I've had all of this confirmation that my lifestyle needs to change. First the medical tests, the blood pressure, the cholesterol, and the ever present pain in my back and knees. Then, more confirmation, this time from first graders, and you know...when a child tells you something, you know it is true. Six year olds have no tact. So when, in one day one of them tells me that I look like a grandmother and another gets in trouble on the playground for hitting another child who said his teacher was fat, you know it's time to change.

But most of all, this is my motivation....

and this.

Now don't get me wrong. I love my big kids every bit as much as my little ones. But they got the young mom, the mom with energy, the mom who ran around with them and played with them, the mom who could play airplane and sit on the floor, and the mom who wasn't tired all the time. It's bad enough that Chick Fil A waitresses are mistaking me for Charlotte's grandmother. (And I'd like to thank my wonderful husband for pointing that out to me and laughing hysterically and then retelling the story to all of our friends!) I won't miss out on their childhoods. My desire to be there for them, to be a mom that they can be proud of, inside and out, has to be more than my desire for that cookie, that Chinese food, that Reese's cup, and yes, even that Diet Coke. It has to.

I pondered just putting it all out there...you know...the number. "Just type it out...let everyone know...then you have to lose the weight to save face!" Then came the echo on Thursday and I had to tell the tech doing the test...in front of my husband. And yeah, I figured I probably had to tell the truth and not fudge it like on my driver's license. So I just closed my eyes, said it, and didn't look at him. Didn't want to see what he thought, his reaction,...just couldn't bear to see it. So yeah...putting it all out there...not gonna happen.

Just know that in addition to some pretty average pictures of some pretty amazing kids, you're probably going to be getting a pretty good dose of diet rambling as well. I'll try, though, to keep the ranting to a minimum. But hey, five days without nary a drop of Diet Coke....I'm just sayin...