A few years ago my summers changed. I finally started wearing shorts. You expected something more dramatic I am sure but if you never wore shorts in your life because you thought they did not suit you then you will understand. I never used to wear them because I did not like my legs in them. I don't have thin legs, I also do not have fat legs but they are not a part of my body I like particularly. I always felt like shorts made them look bigger so I avoided them. I wore a lot of dresses and skirts, long and short. And I was fine but then my cousin, Mary, gave me a piece of advice that I will share with you now:
If you want your legs to look thin in shorts you have to buy them two- three sizes bigger than you actually need.
Sounds crazy? It is not! The shorts need to be baggy around your legs and that makes your legs look thin. It really does! If you buy them in your size they are always tight around the thighs, sometimes they even squash them. Try it. Now that summer is around the corner and you will be going shopping for summer clothes you should buy yourself a pair of oversized shorts. Just combine them with a tight T-Shirt and pair of fabulous sandals and you are ready to go!
You should follow Mary's facebook page "Chick Bible", Click here hope she will soon start her website because it will be amazing. And now I am done giving advice. Well for today :)
Lena Dunham, is a writer, director, producer of the HBO "Girls".
She also is the star of the series and has written a book called "Not that kind of Girl. A young woman tells you what she's "learned"". So I am not going to summerize her biography, you can look that up on wiki or google her or whatever. I want to talk about how she has inspired me and how I think she is inspiring young girls/women or how she can inspire us but maybe won't.
I read her book a few weeks ago and it is a memoir but written as essays. And what I find incredible is how honest she is about her everything: her life, sex, her childhood and teenage years and her problems with herself. When I was reading her book I often was thinking "oh my god I felt exactly the same way" or "I would have never admitted to that, ever". You read it and you recognise yourself in it and you remember thoughts or actions that were similar to your own but you would have never, ever talked about them, not to your mother, best friend and definitely not the whole world.
She talks about her sleep issues as a child and how she suffered/suffers from OCD. Most people especially celebrities like to hide personal problems from the world. Of course they do because everyone will be talking about it but I believe that if they did talk about it they would open a dialogue for "normal" people to talk about mental health issues or uncomfortable topics. Let me give you an example from my life: I was anorexic for a 5 years and thank god I am not now but in those years I lost all my friends. People stayed away from me because they could not handle it. They could not handle me being depressed, they could not handle watching me starving myself and basically saying to the world "I don't want to live". My friends could not bear it and did not how to deal with it so they ignored me and I was alone. I had my family without them I would not be here. And even to this day nobody ever talked to me about it, even the people I became friends with again. Nobody asked me one question about it. They never apologized, they never wanted to talk about it. I never forgave them for it. I know we were young but still?!
After reading the book you feel a little less alone with everything you have done, felt when you were a child, teenager and young woman. She tells you everyone goes through shit, everyone has bad experience with men and friends. Nobody is perfect, nobody had the perfect childhood, everyone has bad memories of being a teenager it's just that most people do not talk about it but not Lena Dunham. I think she will talk about almost everything.
"13 Things I've learned are not okay to say to friends
1. She's chubby in a different way than we are
2. Don't worry, no one will remember this when you're dead
3. No, please don't apologize. If I had your mother I'd be a nightmare, too"
10 more to go but you will have to read them in her book.
"When someone shows you how little you mean to them and you keep coming back for more, before you know it you start to mean less to yourself. You are not made up of compartments! You are one whole person! What gets said to you gets said to all of you, ditto what gets done. Being treated like shit is not an amusing game or a transgressive intellectual experiment. It's something you accept, condone, and learn to believe you deserve. This is so simple. But I tried so hard to make it complicated" (Lena Dunham In "Not that kind of Girl. A young woman tells you what she's "learned"")
I could now talk about her series and about the characters but I won't- you should just watch the series and you will see that Lena Dunham tries to show a real version of how girls in their 20s struggle to figure out how to live. I can try to explain what Lena tried to do with the series but really she could do it so much better. So I am going to let her do it. Isn't amazing that we have youtube. :)
What you need, really really need are a pair of shoes that make you feel like a million dollars when you are wearing jeans and an old t-shirt you found in your boyfriend's/husband's cupboard. They can be highheels, sandals or flats it does not matter. All they have to be is absolutely fabulous. That does not mean they have to be madly expensive or a designer. No, it's more about how you feel in them and how they change your outfit: sometimes they complete your outfit and they were what was missing all along and sometimes they are best thing about your outfit.
So ladies if you don't have a pair of shoes like that in your wardrobe then stop whatever you are doing and go shopping now!!! I mean it, go now!!!
these are my million dollar shoes. Don't you just love them? I love them and I don't know how I lived without them.
Babies and children are inspiring.
I have been living in Israel for nearly two years and I know about 40 words in hebrew. I know it's pathetic. I had a place at a language school but my son was born early and I could not go. Time passed and my son was very attached to me and I was very attached to him. He would not stay with anyone else and I do not think I was ready to leave him with anyone. Look, things would have been different if my parents lived here or my in-laws but I don't have close family here so it is hard, you know? Anyway I did a very intensive langauge course with a friend of mine who is a hebrew teacher. And it was great but it was so hard. I think I complained a lot. I just felt like it took me 10 hours to remember one word and you feel like a complete idiot. It takes me about 5 minutes to say a basic, very easy sentence in Hebrew and when I try to read anything it takes me forever and a day that I just want to give up. And as I have not been on top of it for the last few weeks I feel like I have forgotten everything again and that I will have to start at the beginning. And it is not just a new language, it is everything. If you want to learn anything new it will feel like it takes forever. I never learnt a music instrument because I was too lazy to practice and I just wanted to be able to play it without working for it. I am certain that a lot of people are not like me but still. How does one learn to be patient with one self?
Babies and children are inspiring and they should inspire us because they are so patient with themselves. Or maybe they do not know how not to be patient. But no.. because one can see that they too get frustrated sometimes but they will still try again and often they will try even harder.
I see it every day with my son. He was been walking around furniture for 7 months and two weeks ago he started walking on his own and he is still falling on his bum every four steps and he just gets up and starts again. Isn't that amazing and he is like that with everything. He has to learn everything new and if it takes him a hundert tries he will try until he succeeds. At the moment I am trying to teach him that his eyes are his eyes. But he does not get it. He knows his head, tummy, feet, ears and his pippiman. Yes that is what we call it. I did not like willy and penis just sounds so weird. I am not a doctor why should I call it that. And somehow pippiman sounds like a superhero, like superman or batman. I am hoping it will help him have a good relationship to his pippiman- you might ask why I am worried it about it. Well I think if everyone was obsessed with your pippiman during your childhood you would have a difficult relationship to your pippiman or actually pippiwoman as I am not talking to men only. My son had a problem since he was created, he had problems weeing and he needed to be born early and have an operation. And for the next years he is going to have to visit his urologist religiously. So yes I am worried he is going to have a difficult relationship to his pippiman. Why did I start talking about that? Oh yes because he does not know his eyes, nose or mouth. And I have been trying to teach him every day and he is just not getting it.
So now I don't just have to be patient with myself when it comes to learning something new but also with my son. But somehow it is easier and I am hoping that it will teach me to be more patient with myself and also to be kinder to myself. Children are amazing that's all I can say, that is all that needs to be said, don't you think?
At first I thought I would delete all the things I wrote here before I changed the name but then I decided not to. I love looking at blogs and in my head I would love to have a fashion blog but I am just not that kind of person who likes to pose infront of a camera day in and day out. Also I just don't have the money to but myself new clothes every week. Then there are the food blogs that I love looking at and I was thinking of sharing my recipes online but my pictures will never resemble the ones you find online. My food taste nice I know that but I wouldn't say it looks beautiful. And you should see my cakes and muffins. I always love the idea of baking but then in the middle of it I think to myself:"why did you think this would be a good idea?" And I just wish I could stop, sit on the couch and hope that the fairy godmother will come and clear up the mess I created in the kitchen. I am one of these people who always has to fish out eggs shells from the bowl and reads the recipe 100 times and still gets something wrong. Somehow and don't ask me how it tastes quite nice at the end thank god otherwise the 2 hours I spent baking were a complete waste of time. But again I do not want to share these experiences with anyone. I do not even want to relive them while writing about them. So what else? I thought I would share my experiences as a new mother but that didn't work out either for many reasons . One of them was that I was fed up talking about it. When you become a mother it seems like the only topic you have with your other mother friends. Is you child walking yet? What does he eat? How does he sleep? If you are not a parent and you overheard these conversations you would think that mothers are the most boring people on the world. And of course we are not. Babies and their development are fascinating but I decided that I didn't also want to write about it. A few weeks ago my husband, son and I were invited for dinner to a gay couple who invited a few other people too. None of them had kids and for the first few hours I just ran around their flat trying to stop my son from opening all their cupboards or breaking something. I didn't do a very good job because he did break something. And although they said it was fine I did feel bad about it and thought they would never invite us again. Anyway what I really wanted to say is that my son went to sleep at 9 and I put him down on their couch and there he slept till we left. For three hours I was myself again. We didn't talk about babies or pregnancies or births. And when we left I told them that they made me feel young again which they thought was funny because I was the youngest at the table. It was the first time since my son was born that I felt like the old me. The me that has fallen into the shadow of the new mummy me. That's how it is but I realized that I needed evenings like that more often so I decided that it was time to sleep train my child so that me and my husband could go out in the evenings every now and then. I haven't done it yet because my beloved child has been ill non stop. I also wanted to talk about grandparenthood? Why you might ask! Very good question. I wrote my bachelor thesis about it and I thought I would share my thoughts about the subject. Unfortunately it took me a whole day to write one post because everything I know about the subject is saved in my brain in German. I studied psychology in Germany so everything I did was in German. And it is very difficult to transfer this information into English. I don't know why I have such a hard time with it but maybe if you are bilingual you will understand and feel the same way. So you might think after reading all this what on earth is this blog going to be about? It's going to be about everything and anything. Everything that fascinates me this could be a book I am reading, the tree in a park, my son, my friends, my husband, who knows. The world is our oyster let's explore it and talk about it. Also I am hoping this is going to keep me sane. The last few nights I have been up with my son because he has a cold= he sleeps even worse then he normally does and needs to be carried around for hours during the night. At some point I drove him around at 4 in the morning. It doesn't just sound crazy, it is crazy. I need something that will keep me sane, something that is mine. And also if I have only one person who reads my post and feels a little inspired or understood then that is enough for me. So what do you think? Should we start our journey?!
It has been a while since I have posted anything. This has many reasons. One of them was that my son was not sleeping in his crib and needed to be carried around or held while he was sleeping. So I did not get round to anything all I could do was walk, stand and maybe if I was lucky sit on the couch, I lost quite a lot of weight though. Worst diet ever: have a baby get him into a bad sleeping habit and never have time to eat or sit :). And when he was awake I wanted to spend time with him or I had to do some of the housework. So now you must be thinking? Well if she is writing now she must have got her baby to sleep in his crib. Yes I have but we are still in the training phase. You can not imagine how much research I did before I started sleep training him. I was hoping for an easy fix so I kept on looking I thought someone in his world must have found some magic trick. Guess what? I NEVER FOUND IT but I am still hopeful and looking.
I would not describe myself as a very patient person but I realise that I have to develop patience with a child and I have become much better. But when you are looking for training solutions you have the choice between ones that feel like they take forever or the ones that tell you to let your baby cry. I can't do that, I can not listen to him cry for longer then a minute. So I started with the "Picking- up, Lying- him- down" training which means that you put him down in his crib and when he starts crying you pick him up again and so on. I read that one woman had to pick up her child 140 times before he slept. Imagine 140 times? When I heard that I just wanted to take a nap myself. But I tried it, after 1 1/2 hours I was ready to give up and let my child sleep on me for the rest of his life. I'm not kidding! You feel like you want to kill somebody after that. AND he wasn't even asleep after 1 1/2 hours!
I did give up and a week later I started again because I knew ultimately that I need to do it for him and for myself. But in the end I did it my own way. I'm not sure if it is the right way but it is the way that I chose. So I did pick him up and put him down again but I rocked the crib and I put on the extractor fan in the kitchen, as white noise calms him down. This we did for a week. This week I am fazing out the noise and next week I am fazing out the rocking. And once I get him into a routine of that I am going to get him to sleep in his big crib in his own room.I have a lot of fazing out to do I know! And lets hope his teething will not get into the way of that. Yes my son has decided that he needs his teeth already. At the moment thank god they are not bothering them but the horror stories you read on the internet do not sound encouraging.Can not believe that he is teething already. Always when he does something new I see him going off to university. He is growing up so quickly. But back to sleeping. One step at a time.
I am sure you know this feeling of relieve when your baby is finally asleep and you think "now I can do the washing and start cooking and tidy up but first I will check if someone wrote to me on facebook or maybe I got that E-Mail I have been waiting for" and half an hour later you still are sitting on the couch in front of your laptop either on facebook, pinterest or looking up what your child should be doing at his age. Never good idea to do that. Always ends with fear, guilt and stress. And when you finally get up to do all the things that are written on your "DO TO LIST" you hear the baby waking up! "WHAAT? why did he only sleep for 30 minutes? WHY GOD WHY?"In his next nap I will need to research that and I will let you know what I find out ;)
I have been reading alot about having a premature baby and about all the different kinds of feelings one experiences after one has given birth. A lot talk about feeling guilty because mothers often believe that it is their fault, that they could have done something to stop it. Or they feel angry because they just do not understand why this has happened to them. Anyway. I was thinking a lot about how it was for me when I gave birth. And for a long time I did not feel anything but anxiety for my child. There was so much adrenaline inside of me that did not allow me to think about myself. It was only much later when my son was doing much better already when all these feelings appeared.
I was angry but I was already angry when they diagnosed my son and told us that he would have to have an operation after birth. I just did not understand why god would allow something like that to happen to a baby. I also felt like that when my baby was born. My husband never was angry with god and he is a real believer. I at some point during the pregnancy said I can not believe in a god who would do something like that. But in the end when my son was born I prayed for him to get better. I prayed for him not to suffer too much. While I am writing this my son is lying on me, sleeping and snoring. It is such a sweet noise. Sometimes he lies on his dad and they both snore away together. It always makes me smile. Later I was angry that I could not take care of my baby like I wanted. I had to ask when I wanted to hold him. I could not change his nappy or hold him when he cried. I wasn't allowed to see him for 6 hours during the day because there were rounds or ultrasounds or something. There was always something going on. It was so frustrating that I was told to leave my baby crying because there was a shift change or I do not what. I often refused to leave till someone came to comfort him. The doctors and the nurses hated me but what do I care. You have to fight for your child, you have to protect him. I was sad that I did not get to be pregnant for 9 months. That I did not get the experience of having a huuuuuge belly. Most people say that I should be happy and I did not miss anything: Everybody complains about the 9 month. And yes I am sure one feels terrible but I think the body and your psychic needs to go through that stage. It is you getting ready to have the baby. I was never ready to have the baby. It was like they ripped him out of me. And I missed him. When I went home it felt like I had forgotten something. When I was out shopping for the baby stuff it just did not feel right, I was not pregnant any more but I also did not have my baby with me. I do not know what it is like when you start bleeding and you have contractions and you know it is too early but there is nothing you can do. I can imagine that it must be very scary. But at least your body experiences natural contractions. Your body gets ready to give birth and if you are "lucky" you can give birth normally. I was told I had to give birth today, they operated, cut him out and they took him. They took him away from me. And yes I know it was because they could take better care of him then I could: It was safer for him to be born. How does it make you feel to hear that? I will tell you. it makes you feel inadequate.
And now I realised that I felt alone. I was not really alone. my husband was with me in hospital every day for the first month. When I was still recovering from the operation he did not leave the hospital. Even at night when he could not be with me in the room. Stupid rules. He was amazing but I felt alone. He did not understand what I was feeling, nobody understood what I felt. I do not even think the other mothers in the NICU understand. Everybody has their own story. And No words can really explain this feeling. I was afraid of everything. The machines, the nurses, the doctors. I was afraid that I would never bond properly with my child. I was afraid that my baby would have all sorts of psychological problems. He probably will. But all I can do is do my best and as Winnicott says be "a good enough mother". And now I am going to say something that I do not feel good about. But I was jealous. I was jealous of all the mothers who could take their babies home. At first it was just the mothers who were not in the NICU. Then it was women who were still pregnant and then it was mothers in the NICU. Of course I was happy for them, You becomes friends with these women, you talk about everything because everything comes up when you are sitting together in the pumping room. But you still feel jealous when they can go home and you remain. The worst time for me was when more then half the babies went home and some of them babies who came after us. And I knew that some of these mothers had been in the NICU for much longer then we had. But still they were going home. I felt guilty about feeling that way. I can assure you one does not want to feel that way. I feel guilty that my child had to go through such horrible things. And I feel guilty that he now has to get tests done that are uncomfortable and bother him a lot. He is now much more aware of things which makes it even harder. And sometimes I feel guilty that I did not go to the doctor earlier. But how could I have known that I did not have enough amniotic fluid? You can think now she is an idiot she should have noticed that it was leaking out but it was not!! It was in him. That is why he lost so much weight after birth. Yes it is normal for him to lose weight but not so much. I couldn't have known. But I feel like I should have! You know?
