Beauty.

"Momma, are you big or little?"  

From the mouths of babes comes this loaded question.  Gabbie is three and she's learning about sizes: big, little, small, tiny.  How do I answer that question?  Unfortunately, this question will likely plague her a lot when she is much older, unless she is very confident, or our world changes very drastically.

As a baby, I was roly poly, with chunky legs and chubby cheeks.  I was large at birth and stayed that way until I was a toddler.  Then I thinned out, as most people do.  I was very thin into my 20s; blessed by good genetics and a high metabolism; I never once worried about what I was eating or dieting or anything like it.  I never read Cosmo (didn't even know what it was until I was 19), thought eating disorders only happened in zip codes like 90210, and had an insatiable sweet tooth.  Well, eventually things caught up with me, and I started gaining weight.  I was never obese, but I certainly missed my size 00 days.  

	As a kid, I was awkward in (many) ways, but that's a story for a different day.

I'm proud of my body.  It has carried both of my daughters into this world, it has rocked a sick or tired baby, it has lugged them both around for the last 3 years, it has seen me through many trying times, and the week after Lilah was born it almost gave out on me.  It isn't perfect, and it's rounder and softer and squishier than I wish, but it's a work in progress.

Fortunately, I have a wonderful husband who loves me as I am, and I am working on getting back to a size that I would be happier with.  I don't diet, I never say words like "fat", "obese", "diet", "scale" or the like.  I never want my girls to look at themselves and see anything but an amazing person.  I also believe that how they see me treat myself is very critical to their sense of self-worth.  If I constantly stare in the mirror, or call myself unkind words, they WILL see me that way, they will see their peers that way, and they will see themselves that way.  I don't want them to grow up in a "Mean Girls" world, but for that to happen, they need to be kind to themselves first.

So, what was my answer when she asked if I was big or little?  Fortunately, Joel took that one and said that Lilah is the littlest, then Gabbie, then Momma, then Daddy is the biggest.  Thank goodness this was a simple one to answer, but I'm already preparing for the day when it's not so easy.