Oh MOTY...

I have shared before that my niece & nephew do not have the best mother. In fact, Mr. Potts and I call her MOTY - Mother Of The Year.

Something she said this past Saturday triggered a huge realization for me. While it wasn't entirely positive, it was eye opening.

MOTY, in front of my 5 year old niece, regularly talks about being fat & needing to lose weight. All the while sitting down to lunch and ordering a 12oz steak. Yes, for lunch!

My niece is a tiny thing. She'll be short and petite and beautiful. And hopefully well-adjusted, if I have any part in it.

She piped up after her mother commented on my weight loss and said that she needed to go on a diet - that she has to lose weight. My five year old niece said this & it broke my heart. What kind of influence are you on a child if they look at themselves at 5 years old and are dissatisfied?

I felt a kind of slow rage begin to burn inside me. I reassured her that she is perfect. Mr. Potts told her that she is beautiful & just right. Her mother didn't pipe up at all.

I've never once in front of her spoken about my quest to lose weight and become healthy. Five year olds, unless they actually are overweight & at risk for childhood obesity & diabetes should never be burdened with these thoughts. Encouraged to run & play outside? Definitely! Speaking to them about how unhappy you are & how you are fat & need to lose weight while turning around & ordering a steak & mashed potatoes for lunch? I don't think so.

My takeaway from this? Children, no matter how young, pick up on things you say & do. They watch what you do & listen to what you say.

My niece, she'll never hear anything like that from me. I only hope that I can be such a good influence as to counteract her MOTY's bad influence.

Pumpkin picking at the pumpkin catch this fall. Fat? Not on my life!

Pumpkin Picking Success

Our afternoon at the pumpkin patch turned out really well. The kids had a great time and while we may have been freezing, it was fun. Both my Sweet Niece & Precious Nephew were excited to find their perfect pumpkins.

Sweet Niece posed immediately. Wonder who she gets that from?
Precious Nephew has a teddy bear harness. He LOVES that thing & it's quite handy - he's fast! He loves Uncle Mr. Potts! Mr. Potts kept a good hold on the bear's tail.
Sweet Niece found the first pumpkin. I can't get over how big she is getting!
They both wanted to pull the wagon.
When it got full, Precious Nephew needed a little help & Sweet Niece was right there to volunteer!

I'm getting ready to head to the airport. I'm off to New England for the week. Will be in Burlington, VT and Portland, ME. Should be super cold!! Wish me Warm!!

Hope you all had a fabulous weekend!

A glimpse of red

I saw these beauties last week & was able to snap a picture. I wish I could have pulled off on the side of the highway on my drive from Boston yesterday to take more pictures. The leaves here are changing & the reds and oranges and yellows are simply stunning.

I've been given a mission to bring back some leaves for my sweet niece to use for a leaf project for school. She is having such a hard time learning the simple things that most of the children in her class already know. Another instance of her MOTY (Mother Of The Year) doing her a huge disservice. My mom is working with her as much as possible & I do as well when I see her, but it just breaks my heart that she is having to work so hard when if any time had been spent on this a few years ago (when she was still with MOTY) she'd be showing flying colors.

Hope you'll have a beautiful day today. I'll be trying to comment more than last week, but it may still be less than usual due to being crazy busy & tired. Plus, I think I'm working on a chest cold. Fabulous.

Follow up to yesterday's question

I thought more and more about what I wrote yesterday and kept feeling that something was missing from the post. The more I thought about it, I realized that I had short-changed you all. Let me explain...
My sweet niece really is that. A sweet loving girl who wants desperately to please and be loved. She is the first to greet me when I walk into my mom's. She is the first to want hugs and kisses and she is the last to wave me off. When I call my mom, she always wants to talk and tell me about her day.

My nephew is just precious. The most loving little boy who really is getting the shaft due to the situation with his parents. Often he'll say, "Hold. Hold," while he lifts his arms for me to cuddle him. When we're cuddled, he is content to stay like that for a long time.

I love them both so much. Mr. Potts and I try hard to be the best influence that we can for them as we realize that we may be the only couple that they see in a loving relationship. I spend as much time with them and make sure to do extra, special things so that they'll know my love. We've taken trips to the zoo (Sweet Niece and I are going in March). My niece comes over to spend the night and we bake cookies. She loves going to church with Mr. Potts and me. I promised to take her for her first trip to the beach this year and on her first airplane ride - I'm thinking a short trip to Atlanta to go to the aquarium.

I'm not telling you this to show what a good aunt I am. I think I'm trying to tell you how much I love them and want to take care of them. It infuriates me (which is the nicest word I can come up with) that their parents seem to take no notice of the fact that they are children and need their unconditional love and guidance. They need to be cherished. It makes me mad beyond belief that there are people who would love them and cherish them as all children deserve to be - those couples who face an agonizing realization that their lives may not be blessed with their own children, but who would take these babies in a heartbeat and love them as raise them - yet these two parents of these wonderful children don't. I hate that my ex-sister in law uses them as pawns and that my niece begs for her attention and love. Who should have to beg their mother to want to do things with them??

Add to this the fact that my mother is stepping back and completely raising her two grandchildren when she should be enjoying her retirement. Instead, she spends her time raising these babies. She feeds and clothes them, she tries to teach them numbers and letters, she worries that she won't have enough money to take them to the doctor when they're sick.

I think the worst part of this is that my brother doesn't seem to see a problem with this. It enrages me that he would treat his own mother this way.

Maybe this wasn't so much about short-changing you all, but more about trying to explain why my first reaction to my niece's question the other day was such a harsh one. I don't want to be harsh, I want to be the loving aunt that these blessings need.