Ribbon, Ruffles, Bows, and/or Lace

The title alone is enough to make some people gag, I'm sure.

allowing time for gagging here...

I'll wait...

This morning, as I was stepping repeatedly on the stepmill, I was also watching "Live with Regis and Kelly." And what do you know, but Kelly inspired me to share some thoughts with all y'all. First of all, she was wearing a shirt that I just absolutely really resonated with. It contained at least two of the elements that most of my favorite shirts contain,* which are ribbons, ruffles, bows, and /or lace. While I'm sure that the shirt Kelly wore was completely expensive, I was at least inspired to look for something similar at my favorite cheapy stores. (Crossroads being my optimal fave.)

I'm sorry, but I have to interrupt myself here for a short rabbit trail.

(I also garner inspiration for cheap shopping from magazines, and the funniest thing ever is when the magazines are trying to be helpful and tell you how to find things for cheap, and they write it like it's the newest revelation around. "Jeans for a reasonable price! Can you believe we found this for you?" um, everyone I know already knows how to find inexpensive things. What we don't know how to do is spend thousands of dollars on meaningless junk...because we have yet to find the tree where the money grows...and even if we found it, we would put it to better use, I'm sure. So just show me the ridiculously priced, top of the line thing, and if I like it, I will search out something like it at Target. and I might even like the Target version better. Maybe.)

While Kelly was wearing this inspiring shirt today, she was having a conversation about pregnancy. Y'all, I love conversations about pregnancy and childbirth. And Kelly said that she gained 68 pounds in her first pregnancy. Thank you, Kelly, for saying that. And then she said my favorite Kelly Ripa quote ever:

"Don't judge me, don't you judge me."

I have adopted this saying into my everday life and conversations, mostly just with Derek, and mostly in moments when we are laughing at ourselves for some reason.

So here's my own pregnancy weight gain list:

1st: roughly 65 lbs

2nd:roughly 50 lbs

3rd:roughly 65 lbs, again.

4th:an unprecedented roughly 80 lbs.

(And lest you think this weight gain affected the size of the baby, let me just say that baby #2 was bigger than babies #1 and 3 by half a pound, and baby #4 was only bigger than baby #1 by 1 ounce.)

Snaps to Kelly Ripa for being my pregnancy weight gain twin. I'm sure that people said things to Kelly when she was pregnant that sounded like the things they used to say to me, too, like:

"Wow, you must be due any day"

so that they could gasp in disbelief when I had to say for the zillionth time that I still had months to go,

or

"Are you carrying mutiples?"

so that they could gasp in disbelief when I had to say that there was only ONE baby in there,

or

"Well, it looks like the weight is all baby."

Really? Because I distinctly remember that my arms did not look like sausages BEFORE I was pregnant...in fact, BEFORE I was pregnant, my arms actually fit into my sleeves. But thanks for trying to be positive. Snaps to you, for your go-getter attitude. It will either get you far in life, or it will get you smacked.

But relax, peeps, it's all good now. You lose the baby weight, dress the baby up in all the ribbons, ruffles, bows and lace you want in the year or two before the little darling starts sporting an opinion. (and not all children do, clothing wise. So those moms are free to dress the child any which way she wishes.) But in the end, it's all good, because I can still dress MYSELF in all the ribbons, ruffles, bows, and/or lace I want. Ah, so satisfying. Thank you, Kelly Ripa.

"I never expected to have so much in common."**

*This is excluding shirts for running, and probably for camping, too...but I'll have to go camping first before I can say that in all confidence.

**Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.