Letters to Lucy - Bald is Beautiful

Dear June Bug,

My daughter and I are balding! Yep Lucy, that's what I'm telling people. You and me kid! We're in this together. We both came into this world with a lot of hair and a cool Mohawk. You still have yours but the rest of your head is suffering. These days you're still my beauty queen and people still fawn over you wherever we go but honey your hair looks like a cross between Albert Einstein or the Nutty Professor! You look like you stuck your finger in a light socket. And so much of your hair is gone we have to do the old man "comb over"! I can't lie. The other day because you were in blue...this lady comes up and says "How old is he?" I almost smacked her. I really did. Daddy calmed me down. The thing is that happened to me when I was 6. I had this beautiful hair and your Nana cut it all off into one of those absolutely appalling "bowl cuts" claiming I'd look like Dorothy Hamill. (She's a famous ice skater...looks her up in your ancient history books.) I vow never to cut your hair off in the shape of a bowl, Honey. As God as my witness! What was she thinking?

Anyway who am I to talk now either? I just started losing hair in the shower by the handful. My hormones are running amuck! It's pretty emotional for me and I keep running out with fistfuls of hair yelling at your daddy "Look! Look! I'm going bald! I'm losing all my hair. Life is over! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" So I know I sound like a raving lunatic but I think anyone male or female can understand that our hair is a hot commodity and we'd like to keep as much of it on our heads as possible. Even your dad understands this one, Honey. I immediately went to my friend the internet and www.babycenter.com to read that many others new moms experience the exact same thing with their hair shedding after delivery. I just thought it wouldn't happen to me. No matter who I talk to that has gone through it. I don't believe it's normal because it's now happening to me and it's new. I hate the unknown. Every single symptom I had in pregnancy scared me because it was new and unknown. I hate not knowing if and when my hair will stop falling out in mass amounts and when it will grow back. They say weeks or months and there's not much I can do to slow or stop it. I'm still trying though. Of course I'm loading up on fish oil and Vitamin E and anything else I've heard can help. I'm proactive that way.

I take the fish oil because since I'm still nursing you (because I'm awesome...thank you...thank you). The fish oil is what I took when I was prego with you and it's supposed to help your gifted brain to develop even more so you can grow up to be extra brilliant and discover the cure for cancer or baldness or play the violin and get a scholarship to college. Whatever you pick...we have several options laid out for you including: golf star, math genius, Olympic ice skater or world famous Dr. You don't have to marry a Dr. It's 2008..you can be a Dr. Your nana would love it. She could get free prescriptions!

But the thing that makes me laugh in all of this hair loss drama is that you as usual, don't seem to care at all. The more I get to know you and your happy go lucky attitude the more I aspire to be like you. You smile when you're fed and after a nice long nap you wake up ready to face the world and play to your heart's content. Whether you're in your favorite hand-me-down flannel PJ's or some ridiculous sequined number your mother has forced you to wear you still know you're a star and that you're beautiful inside and out. I pray to God you never EVER lose that attitude. I don't want the world and all its TV commercials and fashion magazines to influence you to think you're anything less than sensationally perfect in every way. God made you amazing and I don't want you coming home from school someday thinking your body isn't absolutely flawless. I think that one boils down to the fact I think my heart will break if I ever see that you are sad. I don't care that your thighs are adorably chubby. You have these delicious rolls on your belly that everyone wants to take a bite out of. I wonder if that bothers you. I don't think I'd like people biting my stomach all the time but it seems to make you giggle. Most things in this life seem to make you giggle.

What is your secret Lucy? Can I join you in your world for just one day? Can I put away the worries about my chubby thighs and roly-poly belly and come lie in your crib and stare at the Winnie the Pooh mobile and drift off to a peaceful dreamland? Maybe I should stop trying to fit into sexy lingerie or skinny jeans and just wear flannel footy pajamas all day long? I'll ask your dad what he thinks. It's not like he's trying to fit into skinny jeans or sexy lingerie. (Sorry for that visual baby...my bad).

I think if I was 5 months old and no one told me having hair was a big deal. I could relax a lot more. I am so overwhelmed every day as I watch you take on life's big challenges with total peace. You are learning to grab things now and sometimes you try and try with all your might to hold something in your tiny grasp. When it doesn't work and falls from your little hands you just smile and try again. You're really exploring how those hands of yours can work to your advantage and it's precious to watch. You can't crawl yet but when we set a toy in front of you, you find a way to scoot up to it as best you can. It's funny that you enjoy fancy baby toys and pieces of wrapping paper to play with the same enthusiasm. When we took you to the show this weekend and they let you play with these fancy sitting tables in the nursery you were in hog heaven. I felt kind of bad because our little home is so small I don't think we'd be able to fit a big swing or rolling table for you in it. I sometimes wish we had a bigger place and a yard for you to play in. For now we have a 4 ft patio and a living room/office which is all of 110sq ft for you to exist in. But I hope you don't mind because we'll always make sure you have food to eat and some kind of toys to play with and 100 kisses a day from each of us. For now you're convinced playing with mommy's headband on the floor is a true delight and I hope that doesn't change for a long, long time.

I love you little bug!
Mom

What's In Those Pies Mary Ann?

I realize in this blog I'm usually defending Christians in entertainment and saying how we always get a bad rap from the press. I'm convinced you should never believe most of the stuff you read about celebrities because the media's only concern is to sell the story. But seriously folks...seriously, sometimes the story is just too good to mess with.

Our dear sweet Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island i.e. Christian actress Dawn Wells got busted for having four marijuana joints in her car on March 11th, 2008. It was her 69th birthday and she was driving home from her party when an officer noticed her swerving on the road. He pulled her over and smelled the marijuana. She told him she had picked up three hitchhikers that must have been smoking it and she didn't know what it was (Very Christian). He arrested her and took her to the other "joint"!

The next day after she posted bail and her "friend" testified he was the one who left one of the joints in Dawn's car the day before. I don't know about you but if I was her "friend" I wouldn't want to be referred to some "hitchhiker". And what happened to the other three mystery joints? Was she burning prayer candles with them?

So we have two totally different stories going on here and both of them seem completely fishy. I feel like we're playing a bad game of "Clue" except this is the Gilligan's Island version. "It was the professor and Mary Ann ...with the pipe ...down by the lagoon...I mean freeway..." And why does it always seem to be the actor who has professed to be a practicing Christian that gets caught? So one of our own, again, has a scandal to overcome. But wait a minute? What if it's not Mary Ann's fault?

And come to think about it everyone was in a good mood after eating one of Mary Ann's special pies on the island. What if everyone was involved in a cartel of Marijuana on that "Three Hour Tour"? The Howell's were the Drug Lords, the professor prepared the joints, Ginger was the celebrity decoy, Skipper was in charge of shipments and Gilligan was quality control/tester. Maybe he's the one that got sweet little Mary Ann mixed up in all of this? Was Gilligan that hitchhiker? He did also play Maynard G. Krebbs on the "Dobie Gillis Show" the most stoned character on TV until Shaggy from "Scooby Doo" hit the scene. Gilligan was sneaking pot into Mary Ann's pies!

Come on people do the math! Poor Mary Ann was framed! That fateful night those castaways asked sweet Mary Ann for a ride and how could she turn them down since they'd bonded for so many years on that island. It's all a big Hollywood scandal and Mary Ann deserves the same treatment as Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. She now needs a book deal and a publicity tour about all that she's learned in prison and she'll soon be starring in her own Lifetime Movie of the week "When Pie is Not Enough; Baked and Broken - the Dawn Wells Story", Starring Dawn Wells. Just remember the next time you see a 3 letter crossword clue asking for a word to describe Mary Ann and it starts with "P"...you might want to reconsider before you write down P I E! I hope you readers know this article was written all in good fun. Ms. Wells has gotten her share of bad press lately and I just want us all to remember we're human and we make mistakes. Jesus said "Those to cast the first stone...not those who never get stoned!" Don't be so quick to judge or maybe you'll be the one in the STAR paper next month.

Letters To Lucy - Top Ten Things To Do While Breastfeeding

1. Plan your next vacation-sans children.

2. Wonder who Pamela Anderson and Madonna hired as their "Wet nurses" and how you could get their numbers.

3. Ask God why if women carry the baby why couldn't He have men do the breastfeeding? Then remember it's because men are usually late and would forget to feed the children.

4. Play the minute game with the clock closing your eyes and seeing how close you can come to 60 seconds without peeking.

5. Remember what it was like to wear tiny lacy bras and wonder who Pam Anderson and Madonna hired as plastic surgeons and how you could get their numbers.

6. Think of all the chores that need to be done around the house and shout them off to your spouse loudly one by one starting each sentence with" Honey, since I'm breastfeeding your child could you..."

7. Make important business calls knowing this will be the one time your baby is quiet.

8. Realize your exotic dancing career will probably never happen now and being that you're a woman of great morals rationalize you're ok with this fact.

9. Vow never to do a topless scene in any movie even if Matt Damon is your co-star and the money will send your kids to college.

10. Look lovingly at your baby remembering that you will remind them weekly for the rest of their lives all the sacrifices you've made for them as their mother and they owe you big time!