Appearances

The other day, I was sitting by my daughter, and we had the opportunity to hear two sweet young girls sing. They were maybe . . . eight or nine years old. I was enjoying the song, wondering what I sounded like when I was that age, and wondering if any of my kids would ever want to sing like that in front of people.

Then, Jill leaned over to me and said, "That one girl is fat."

My knee-jerk response was, "Oh, she's not fat. She's just bigger." (She really wasn't fat. She just wasn't scrawny.)

Then I thought about it and added, "And we usually don't say when someone is fat."

Then I thought more and said, "There are plenty of nice things to mention about her, Jill. You could comment on her long blond hair, her beautiful smile, her bright eyes, her lovely voice, or how brave she is to sing in front of us."

And then I just stopped saying things, because I wasn't sure if I was saying the right things or just making it worse.

I am sure this will happen again though, so I need to be better prepared next time.

So, what do you think?

I don't want her to look at people and call them fat. But I also don't want to get her to stop calling people fat by making her think that being fat is something to be ashamed of or not talked about. Honestly though, she doesn't see many obese people, so perhaps she just mentioned it, because it was out of the norm and not because she wanted to make fun of the girl.

The deeper issue I worry about how to teach her is making sure she understands that body shape and size don't reflect worth. That one 5'5" woman might weigh 180 pounds, eat healthily, and exercise regularly, and another 5'5" woman might weigh 120 pounds, eat junk, and never exercise. And even then, whether you eat  junk food or healthy food, exercise or not, has nothing to do with how kind you are.

So much to teach these sweet children.

Jill is really observant. Well, maybe all four year olds are. She's my first child, so I don't know. Anyway, she is very observant.

As I've mentioned, the majority of our neighbors in Virginia are from India. About a month ago, Jill was coloring a picture of herself. There was a dot on her forehead between her eyes. She showed it to me and explained that it was "not a chicken pox—it was the Indian mark." She drew a bindi on herself.  I don't even really notice the bindis on my neighbors. They just use a small red dot, not jewels or anything big. But Jill had.

In other news, the kids and I are in Michigan staying with my parents. Jeff is still in Virginia, crashing at a coworker's house. We sublet our townhouse, because we were supposed to be gone by now. But we are not in Brazil and didn't have our house to live in. We have high hopes that we will be together in Brazil by December, but we'll see. We don't have any control over when we go, so it's just a waiting game! We've been apart since October 30. :( Jeff did come visit over Veterans' Day weekend. With all of his frequent flier miles, he only paid $5 to fly here from DC. Nice, eh? I am enjoying the time with my parents; I just wish I could have them and my husband. Ha. And the moon, please. ;)

Here are some somewhat recent pictures.

The first is a dress my parents bought while they were in Germany. 

The second is a dress Jeff bought while he was in Laos.

Looks like pink is popular no matter what country you're in!

Jill and Daniel wanted to pose as goats.

I haven't told them what the sign said. :)