And she looks just like her dad, minus the polka dotted shower cap!

No loss, no pounds gone away, no motivation to continue...I want to eat chicken fingers from West End with honey mustard. I'm not going to though, being very poor has its advantages! Maybe next week we'll see some progress. My Freddie Monster came home this afternoon and now he's singing "Zachius was a wee little man, a wee little man was he" It makes my heart happy. I didn't know that song until I was in my twenties! ;) Addie is wearing some big girl panties tonight, we'll see how that goes!

Last week I made a life altering decision. I don't want to be fat anymore. Yup, I used that ugly word, FAT! I'll post my rant here for you all to read. I wrote this in an email to dear Rachel. We are sticking to it, dang it! I have a goal...a lofty goal. I want to lose 100 pounds before January 2012 when the whole big Hunt/Allen/Sadler clan are planning a big trip to Disney World. That is a year and a half, and I WILL do it.

I WILL LOSE THIS WEIGHT!! I will look at pictures of myself in all of life's moments and smile instead of cringe, and I will stop taking tags off my facebook pictures! I will not buy anymore "one size bigger" jeans, and I will not make anymore excuses. I will not allow food to determine my happiness or my mood to determine my food. I will not buy into the lie that I like myself just as I am, because I don't. I am broken in my need to feel accepted while I have merely given up. I am a creative, loving, inspiring, hard working, giving, and amazing woman that is stuck in a body that tells others that I "can't." I can't take care of myself, I can't control myself, I can't take responsibility, and I can't muster up the energy to care. No more!

I started this in January 2010, when I asked myself why I wanted so badly to breastfeed Addie. This is the strange place that question got me, and I'm finally mustering up the courage to just post it.

Part I (of a likely many...)

I think I'm going to take this down a long winding road and bring it on back again, promise! The person I am now is so far from who I was as a child, in high school, or even starting out in college. The Lord has really softened me and turned my heart towards desires I never thought possible. Growing up witnessing the abusive mess that was my parents' marriage, that was not a relationship in the cards for me. At least, not the kind where the man is smarter than me, makes more money than me, or gets to run the show in any way. My mom taught me to not be "like her." She emphasized school, money, career, security, and getting all of this very quickly. She pushed me into kindergarten early, to graduate early, to get some kind of imaginary head start in life. I graduated high school at 16, and then she was devastated and made me wait to start college until the next year. I never wanted to get married, never even considered having children, and certainly had plans to be 30 before I would even consider it. I liked kids, thought they were sweet and all, but they were always a "burden" in my mind and nobody in my family ever rejoiced over a pregnancy. Nobody! In fact, people mourned babies. My grandmother cried when my mom got pregnant with my little brother and again when my aunt was pregnant with her first child. It was all kind of horrifying to me, and I actually learned to pity women with children. I know this is disgusting, but it was the absolute norm when I was growing up. Can you imagine it? It makes me just want to cry right now to know that all those sweet babies were born and nobody prayed to thank God for them. I bet nobody was thankful for me either.

At 17, I finally broke free. I earned myself a nice fat full ride scholarship to UCA in Conway. My parents lived in California at the time but I knew they wouldn't stay long and I had grandparents close by. I had a plan, and I'd had one for a long time. I would find a way to never have to depend on my parents again. Oh the guilt I still suffer for leaving my brother and sister there to fend for themselves. I should probably talk to a therapist about this, but Blogger will have to do! I love my mother dearly, but she was completely broken when she was with my step-dad (the only dad I know) and could not help herself or me and my siblings. My parents thought I joined a cult in college when my outlook started to change as a result of accepting Christ. You would think that college is where you go to run wild and sow all those wild oats and "find yourself." I did find myself, exactly where God would keep me safer than I ever had been in my life. I was put smack dab in the middle of four of the most amazing Christian women I have ever known. They were the first ones that ever showed me what compassion, trust, kindness, & friendship looked like on a daily basis. Before them, my dear Andrea was the only girl I ever allowed in. Girls suck, mean girls anyway, and even we had our times. God saved me, blessed me, encouraged me, tested me, wept with me, and held me up despite my desperate attempts to sink back down into the slavery of my life before Him. He had created me to be soft, warmhearted, loving, maternal, and oh my sweet goodness, SUBMISSIVE to His rule in my life. I was none of those things, and Kristina, Amanda, can I get an AMEN on how I fought? God had created me to be His daughter, Jason's wife, and a mother and He had serious work to do!

Thanks to all of you who have been so encouraging during my hopeless moment. I needed it, and I've managed to get back into the denial stage for now! I think we'll just have to do the least expensive plan for Jason & the kids that requires basically paying in $8000 before they'll pay 80% of anything major. That would at least keep us from going bankrupt if there was a major issue and well child/immunizations/etc. are covered 100%. Me...well we'll just have to pray that things change, because it would be an additional $200 a month or so for me in that plan, bringing it back up to the $400 range per month. Something will change, I just believe it.

In other news, I made a birthday banner last week for a friend's little girl. It is my favorite that I've done so far and now I've got the itch to do more! I've got another to do in September, so I think the jersey knit hats I'm making right now will keep me busy until then. Then it will be time to get on the knitting so the kids have homemade hats and mittens to keep them warm (minus the large holes from dropped stitches and accidental yarn overs, etc) this winter!

Get ready for too much disclosure! I'm having one, a hopeless moment where I've worked my way into a pit of despair. Most of the time I keep the reality of finances and the lack of healthcare neatly wrapped up in a bow of denial and a stupid grin that says, "God will take care of it!" Yes, I say it is a stupid grin, because God doesn't seem all that interested in finding me or my kids an affordable health insurance plan. It's probably one of those things where He's telling me that he takes care of the birds and the flowers and they don't worry, so why do I!? I was removed from my benefits plan & moved to part time at work in order to start working from home. I'm not hating or anything, because it's been one of the most wonderful blessings ever! It's just unfortunate that no benefits was actually considered a "selling point" in order to make the work from home situation even happen. At first, I thought that it would be okay. I thought we would surely find an affordable private option. Nope, not the case. We don't qualify for Medicaid now that Jason is teaching and to put all of us on his plan is close to $800 a month. Does anyone have an extra mortgage on a small home laying around every month?! We've called and applied for all sorts of plans and they are all too expensive or offer basically no coverage. I can't get the good ol' Arkansas Blue to cover me because of infertility issues.

I know this is a downer, and I'm sorry. I am just so angry that our ravenous need for capitalist profit has created a money sucking drain hole out of what I consider a basic need, to get help when you are sick! The only reason anybody needs health insurance is in case something happens, something big. Doctor's visits really aren't that expensive and even if you went once a month, it won't cost you as much as paying for insurance. With the plans I've seen, the health insurance company (at least on private plans) doesn't pay anything out until you've paid in anywhere from $5-$10 thousand dollars in deductibles/copays/coinsurance anyway, and if somebody has ten thousand dollars to put towards health insurance, odds are they could afford to pay for whatever big happened anyway! So, the only way to get out of this hopeless moment is to go back into denial. One of us needs a second job in order to pay for health insurance, because we can't imagine going bankrupt and losing our home and car and everything else if that something "big" did happen. We certainly can't pay for additional childcare and healthcare, and we certainly can't even begin to consider having another child when I have no coverage and we don't qualify for Medicaid. I can't imagine seeing less of my husband either, and we just keep pushing it off and away because it is too painful and disgusting and hopeless to think about very often. I guess this is being an adult, realizing that no matter how hard you work, or how much you think your kids deserve something, or how much pain and anxiety you feel, nobody is going to hand you anything and nothing is going to be "fair." So, my sweet babies, please don't get sick, and dear God, if you can't fix this now for whatever reason, please don't let the "something big" happen!

I am only creating a new post because it's the only way my reading list updates, isn't that silly?