almost... "NORMAL"

My little love, A, is turning 4 in six days. OMG (more on that later). this past saturday was his "finding ne.mo" birthday party. the morning started out beyond stressful (there was a 5K going on at the site of his birthday with no entrance into the rec center - enough said) but everything turned out well. unfortunately, i was seriously S.T.R.E.S.S.E.D. throughout the whole party, though. too bad... :( but little love seemed to have a great time. another point of stress was that my size 16W Levi's kept falling down. i'm THRILLED that i'm now a size 14 jeans (YAHOO!) - but wish i didn't come to that realization during his party. in some pics you can actually see my pink underwear! yikes!!!

one super cool thing i noticed, though, is that i look somewhat "normal" in the photos (albeit tired)! i used to rarely allow my pic to be even taken and when it was... well, i looked pretty darn big... see photos above (for some reason, i can't move them to this paragraph - annoying!) of me in the first pic - in the black dress. it was taken in june 2008 - and that wasn't even at my highest weight. i look BIG, esp. next to my (admittedly very thin) friend. now, in the recent pics taken on saturday, i look somewhat "normal". i'm not "standing out" (literally) for being so large. even though, i must confess, i did zoom in the pic of me standing and analyzed "the fat rolls" that you could see in my apparently-too-tight-but-so-cute new gap t-shirt. anyway, it feels GREAT to look normal again and not stand out (even though my undergarments were - ugh)!!! it also felt great to buy 2 short, form-fitting dresses last week that are beyond cute.

About 10 pounds to go until my bmi changes from "obese" to "overweight". looking forward to that day. then it will really feel REAL (hopefully). i definitely feel like "myself" again. it's the best motivator yet (well, that and the cute dresses, haha). ;)