5 weeks

I have now been exercising regularly (4-5 days per week) and eating healthy for 5 weeks. Now, since it seems like every friend or relative I have has run some kind of half marathon/marathon/triathlon etc. I know that this will not impress any of you but it happens to be a record for me. I hate to exercise. I like to play sports like volleyball and I like to go on walks and such but frequent and strenuous exercise is not my cup of hot chocolate (which I have not indulged in for the said 5 weeks). I also happen to like baked goods and fried food a lot more than I should. Anyway, here are the results of my amazingly long heath stretch:

Weight lost: 5 lbs.

Inches lost: 1

endurance improved: I can now run 3.5 miles without stopping instead of .5 miles. Again, small step for others, large step for me. I happen to hate running and have trained more for the quick (the baby has a steak knife) type sprints.

Healthy recipes found (tasty ones): 6

Recipes (or the foods made from them) I would not feed to my enemies found: 3

Improvement in energy: none

improvment of attitude: none

So some stats are ok, others not so great. I would be happy if the last two listed stats were better but oh well. Now that I have broken my record for longest health kick I think I will go eat some icecream and catch up on all the tv and projects that I haven't had time for (just kidding, I am still plugging along but I can't promise how long before I crash).

Our Beautiful Madeleine

Madeleine Eve Redman is our third child. In fact she is a third child of a third child (me) of a third child (my mom). Does that mean anything? When Maddie was born I had a 2 year old a 1 year old and a newborn so sadly my memories of the time were of incredible stress. However, if I were to do it again I would space them just as I did. Maddie and her sister Gwen are best friends and have a great time together so hopefully that makes up any lack of attention.





Maddie has always been a sweet and happy little girl. When I read back over my journal entries from when she was a baby (there are a couple) I was always commenting about what a cheerful little one she was.Maddie is a very girly girl and has always loved singing, dancing, princesses, dress up, and all those other estrogen associated activities (though I have had a son or two who likes these things as well). She was a cute chubby toddler though she is skinny as anything now.
I mentioned earlier that Maddie and Gwen are the best of friends. I love how well they play together and how kind they are to each other. I hope that Mia and Evie are as good of friends as they are.

You wouldn't think it to look at this picture but Maddie is incredibly, sometimes painfully shy. Her shyness started as a toddler and I remember her sunbeam teacher asking me if she could speak. This was around March so she had been in the class for over 2 months at this time. We worried about her in school because she absolutely will not talk to people she doesn't know well and if she is upset she won't even talk to me and Aaron. She has had a couple rough times in school when she got upset or lost and wouldn't talk to anyone to get help but she has had some good, understanding teachers and she has made it through. Last year when she was in 2nd grade, about half way through the school year the teacher asked her a question during class and she answered the question. A boy in the class yelled "Maddie can talk!" and the whole class cheered for her. The mom of another child told me later that her son came home and the first thing he told his mom was that Maddie could talk.

On the other hand Maddie doesn't seem to have much stage fright at all. Her teachers have told me how surprised they are when they give her a part in a class play or reader's theatre and she will get up there and perform without a problem. She will also sing and dance for others, go figure.

As the picture shows, Maddie definitely has her saucy side as well, at least when she is at home. She was a rockstar (she called herself a cheetah girl because her skirt was cheetah print and she had heard the phrase from friends talking about the real (but not nearly as awesome) cheetah girls). She looks way too old in this picture and it gives me a queezy, I am soon to begin the teenage children years, feeling in my stomach.

Maddie turned 8 on January 21st and on January 30 she was baptized by her dad. This was my third baptism as a Mom and I will just say that it was just as special as the first. The spirit was so strong and I was so happy that Maddie was my daughter and that she was making the choice to be baptized. It was a truly wonderful day. I think the hardest part for Maddie was being the center of attention. We were worried about her Bishop's interview because we knew chances were she wouldn't talk to him but we asked him about it and he said a nod was just fine (thank goodness because that is all she gave him). She did a great job and looked beautiful in her baptism dress.
Happy Birthday Maddie! You are my favorite 8 year old in the world and I love you.

Mia

Ok, it's time to admit that I am terrible at blogging. I really enjoy reading other people's posts but never take the time for my own. Mia turned 3 on Nov. 2 and I was determined to do a post on her on her birthday week but here we are three weeks later. Better late than never. Now on to my favorite 3 year old, Amelia Anne Redman!

20 fun facts about Mia

1. Mia loves sign language, she has watched a lot of signing time videos and knows somewhere between 300 and 500 signs. I don't know exactly how many because she knows way more than me.

2. Mia loves the word "fabulous" and uses it all the time. Usually in reference to her looks. The other day I finished her hair and she said, "I want to go show Dad how fabulous I look".

3. Mia loves to sing. It is a shame she wasn't in the primary program because she knew all the songs they sang.

4. Mia may have had a scary bathroom experience lately that I don't know about. She is potty trained and has graduated from the potty chair to the big toilet but yesterday morning she came out of the bathroom saying, "I use the potty chair. The big potty is too dangerous." No idea why she feels that way. I tried to ask questions but she just kept repeating that phrase. Hmmm.

5. Mia loves shoes. Shoes are fabulous.

6. Mia doesn't like to be called things she isn't. If I call her a turkey, peanut, donut, munchkin, etc. she tells me she isn't a ... she is a toddler. The other day I said "Come here babes" and she said "Mom, I am one babe, not two." so I guess she is ok with being a babe.

7. Mia is a girly girl and loves princesses. She has recently gotten into barbie dolls and loves to brush her Repunzel barbie's hair.


8. Mia changes her clothes way to much. I had to take out her drawers and hide them in a closet to keep her from changing her clothes 12+ times a day. She now has her clothes back but the changing has increased enough that I might have to hide them again.

9. Mia is a great sister.

10. Mia likes to spell things. She knows how to spell her name but a lot of words are spelled l m n o p.

11. Mia doesn't like to take naps, though if she can take a book with her I can sometimes convince her to lay down.

12. Mia loves to draw. She draws on herself, on walls, on the coffee table, on her sister, etc.

13. Mia eats my gum if she finds it.

14. Mia loves her baby doll and plays with it every day. Her doll's name is "water baby".

15. Mia loves watching PBS

16. Mia asks me to do her hair but then pulls it out a couple hours later.

17. Mia has a great imagination.

18. Mia wishes she could go to school like her older brothers and sisters.

19. Mia loves having joint birthday parties with her daddy. Their birthdays are only 2 days apart.

20. Mia is a wonderful, lovable, sweet, beautiful, smart, funny, wise, loving, crazy and adorable little girl. We love you Mia.

I have my costume for Halloween, in fact it's already on.

This is actually a 10 year old picture but I didn't want to take a picture of what I actually look like right now because it might send readers into a panic, worried for my sanity. Last night was one of those nights that serve as excellent birth control. Unfortunately it is too late for that for me. I had been up with the kids a lot the night before and had taken a nap with the two youngest in the afteroon. Well of course this gave me insomnia so I didn't fall asleep till 1:00. Then the fun started. At 2:30 Mia woke up coughing and crying so I went in and comforted her and gave her more tylenol. Then at 4 Liam came up and told me that Brock's foot had fallen asleep. I thought it was morning and he was looking for an excuse to wake me up so I said "sorry, I hope it feels better" and went back to sleep. Then a couple minutes I woke back of and realized that it was still night and I should check on Brock. He was downstairs in their room crying because he had woken up with a horrible headache (I think he got my migraine gene) and couldn't get back to sleep. Don't ask me how Liam translated that to his foot falling asleep. So I took care of him and went back to bed. Sometime between 4:30 and 5 Evie threw up. Even more fun she was in our bed. She had been crying off and on in her bed and I was too tired to deal with it any other way than by putting her in bed with us so I woke up to wretching right next to my face. After we got things cleaned up she didn't want to go back to sleep and a half an hour later, when I got up to take care of a crying Mia again, she followed me around talking and chatting as if it was mid morning. I took her back to bed and was tired enough I have no idea how long it took her to fall back asleep.

Needless to say, I am a zombie right now. I need a super hero like this:
to come save me.

Why I don't like reporters.

Just kidding, I do like reporters, I just don't like when they are reporting on me. Something I didn't take into consideration when I decided to run for city council was the possibility of being interviewed. I am really self conscious when it comes to that kind of thing and always feel like an idiot afterward. So I have been interviewed twice now (well kind of). The first was a girl from USU who came to the house, taped the interview and took a picture for their "Hard News Cafe". I was nervous, especially when the tape recorder came on, and even though I had thought about what I wanted to say before, it didn't seem to come out right. I read her story and it wasn't what I would have wanted highlighted but it wasn't all that bad.

The second interview was a guy from the Herald Journal who contacted me by email asking for a statement (with my professional background and reasons for running) and picture. I seriously considered ignoring the email but decided that wouldn't be fair/responsible so I wrote a short statement and sent a picture. The reporter then called me and told me he felt my statement was too short and the guys running for mayor had much larger statements than me and the other woman running for city council. I informed him that it was probably because we were running unopposed while the men were running against each other. He conceded my point and left my statement as it was. Anyway, I am totally running on but the profiles were in the paper yesterday and he made me look like a total idiot. This was my statement: I graduated in 1999 with a BA in English and have been running a rapidly growing organization (the Redman family) ever since. My family moved to Millville in 2007 and plan on staying for years to come. I am running for City Council because I want to do my part to make sure Millville remains a great place to live.

This is what he wrote (without the bold): Redman graduated in 1998 with a bachelor's degree in English. "Since then I have been running a rapidly growing organization (the Redman Family) ever since."

So he said that I had a degree in English and then in the next sentence made it look like I said "since then...ever since". Now I am not a grammar freak, in fact my grammar is quite lousy at times but I felt like I looked like a total idiot. My only hope is that nobody read the article.

I am probably blowing this way out of proportion but was so nervous and hated the idea of being interviewed in the first place and now I feel my fears are justified. So I will bank on the hope that I won't be interviewed again unless I run for city council again in 4 years and if I do I already have my statement ready: If you like what I have done the past 4 years vote for me again. That's it.

Family pictures, and oh, what a family.

We finally did the family photo shoot that we have been planning to do for over a year. My extended family has started using a photographer named Amber to do pictures for engagements, weddings, babies etc. and I have wanted to get family pictures done for about 18 months now. Last year I was going to do it but didn't get around to it and suddenly it was winter and too cold with babies. So then spring pictures was the plan with pretty spring flowers in the background. Well that didn't happen either. Neither did summer pictures. What can I say, I may have bitten off more that I can chew with that last baby. Anyway, one of the things that kept me from making the appointment was that I wanted coordinating outfits and i was never getting around to getting them so I just decided to make the appointment first and then figure out the appointments. Anyway, long story not quite so long, I made the appointment, I found the outfits (all found in the closet or at DI except for 2 shirts, $3.50 each), and we did the photo shoot. I am really happy with how the pictures turned out which is good since I opted out of school pictures this year. I have a couple group shots here and I have decided to blog about one of my kids each week and post their individual pictures then. I meant to write about each child during their birthdays but it didn't happen so will hopefully make up for it.

Almost a Tragic Headline

Last night was one of those times that you say an extra big thank you prayer. I was out with the youngest two in the jogging stroller and it was getting dark so we were headed in. I saw Mia's trike in the driveway so I walked up the slight hill of the driveway with both the stroller and the trike to where (I thought) it was flat and then put the trike away. I turned around to get the girls out of the stroller and it had started rolling back down the driveway toward the road. I chased after it and caught it and we skidded to a stop right as it was about to roll into the road. Right then there was a loud noise and a woosh as a big truck zoomed past us. It must not have seen us because it didn't even slow down but 2 more feet and we would have all been hit. The kids weren't strapped in because I had only been in the driveway so there is no way it could have ended well if we had been hit. So thank you, thank you, thank you to Heavenly Father and to guardian angels for keeping my babies safe ( by the way, they were facing toward me rather than the road and had absolutely no clue that anything was wrong). We had a family lesson later about turning strollers parallel to the road. I think I have learned my lesson.