Surrounded by light up plastic snowflakes with the smell of popcorn lingering in the air, my kids and I sat in anticipation of the Disney on Ice (Frozen & Encanto) debut. Kids clad in Elsa, Anna and Mirabel costumes waved excitedly as Olaf took the ice. The Frozen story was underway when Elsa and Anna popped up on a side platform as they got ready for Elsa's coronation.  

“Anna, you look beautiful” Elsa proclaimed. 

A giddy Anna said, “You look beautifuller….I mean you don’t look FULLER…..you just look very beautiful”. 

An awkward moment of silence just long enough for kids to understand that looking FULLER is not a good thing cut right through the popcorn haze. 

Damn you, Disney on Ice. I’m disappointed to say the least, especially amidst the absolutely awful new AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) guidelines that recommend medication, weight loss through dieting and...

I forgot how much I enjoy shushing down tree lined hills with fresh snow flakes sprinkling the air. A little bit of chatting on the chair lift, finding your own path down the mountain, gorgeous views and hours outside in nature. 

I also forgot how much I don’t enjoy skiing in pouring rain, chopping through sloshy snow and dodging sheets of ice along with out of control skiers. My wet noodle of a three year old also lacked in the desirability category despite her best efforts. 

I’ve seen bumper stickers in our area that read, “Ski The East”. The subtitle, IMHO, should be, “we brave every element”. It’s the equivalent to those 26.3 bumpers stickers. You ran a marathon? I did .1 more. You skied in Colorado? I skied in rain, sleet and snow. 

The biggest issue for me was the huge sheets of ice. Once you hit one, you’re better off riding it out than trying to turn or you’ll inevitability yard sale and pray that someone...

At 5:49pm my husband gave me the look. We both knew we had fifteen minutes before we needed to leave for his work party downtown and I was still getting kids settled/dawdling despite my parents being there to babysit. 

Two minutes to debate dresses, another few to make hair and face look like it wasn’t Tuesday at 9:30am and the last few to get a purse, shoes and some sort of jacket. No problem. Despite not having been out for a looooong time, I was heeding my own advice and acting like I’d been there before. You know, like going out was something I do on the reg and have a routine down pat to get out the door fast for all those cocktail parties and dinners I (don’t) regularly attend. 

One dress change and a several minutes later, I‘m downstairs trying to figure out some sort of sweater or scarf situation because it was freezing cold. My mom reminded me that I had to have a scarf or shawl somewhere. Right. Think, think, think. Yes, a basket in the...

If you thought Barney or Blue’s Clues was enough to put you over the proverbial edge, you haven’t met JJ from the cartoon, CoComelon. 

At first blush, it’s a harmless show with cute little nursery rhymes and topics that are typical for the preschool set. Don’t be fooled though, the more you listen, the worse the voices get and the repetition leaves you ready to pull your TV off the wall. 

Nevertheless, the littles are hooked.

It’s no wonder why they’re entranced because there’s apparently a dopamine hit that occurs in kid’s brains as the scenes change every few seconds. You and I both know that highly overstimulating kids isn’t a good idea. 

Ringing in for mom of the year, I let my daughter watch said train wreck during emergencies. Read: airplane travel. As we watched JJ and his siblings start singing about exercise, my ears perked up. With a degree in exercise physiology and career in fitness, I was intrigued...

I'm a terrible flyer. I've mentioned that nerves plus motion sickness make me a real peach to sit near on an airplane. 

I was surprisingly good on my last flight, especially compared to the guy a couple rows back. 

He was traveling with his two daughters with no other adult in sight which could explain his loud-talking-borderline-yelling. The minute he took his seat he was pleading/informing his daughters they better behave themselves for the next two hours. 

Right before the flight attendants did their safety speech, our buddy yells out, "how did you get that chocolate in here? You have to eat some almonds before you can have any chocolate, ok?"

It was a you-better-listen-to-me-kind-of-ok. 

During the flight there was more loud talking about who knows what since I was rewinding Sing 2 for the fiftieth time while helping my daughter unwrap her seventh lollipop. 

I felt for this dad. He's doing what diet culture tells him to do which is...

Since when did my trips to the mailbox start requiring a wagon? The number of catalogs rolling in during the holiday season is insane. Most of these go straight in the trash, but this year I’ve been on the hunt for some good family holiday pajamas (I know, cheesy, dork mom over here) so I was skimming through a few catalogs in hopes of finding some holiday treasures. 

Because we know a girl who models for a lot of the catalogs we get, anytime we open a catalog, it’s sort of a treasure hunt to find her on those glossy pages. A Where’s Waldo activity, but only better because her gorgeous face is easy to spot and it’s fun watching for her and feeling like we know a celebrity. 

What’s not fun is that I spotted her on a website that we wanted to cross reference from our catalog hunt and saw that she was modeling an adult sweater. Bless this eleven year old’s heart that she, of course, didn’t likely sign up for an adult gig, but the...

Last week I purposely stayed out of your inbox. Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday were all poised to rob your holiday spirit before December 1st. 

As soon as I had cleared the overwhelm and what felt like a thousand emails, I saw an email with the subject, “We won’t stop Wednesday”. 

This one stopped me, because these three words are basically the mantra of every diet/cleanse/lifestyle/wellness program pummeling your inbox, your brain and your social feeds from now until January. 

We won’t stop convincing you that you aren’t thin enough. 

We won’t stop making you feel less than. 

We won’t stop playing to your insecurities. 

We won’t stop tugging at your fears. 

We won’t stop triggering your anxiety. 

We won’t stop making you think that your body is a problem to be solved. 

We won’t stop making audacious claims that aren’t backed by...

My son sat at the top of the stairs with a small pool of crocodile tears collecting at this knees. I was sure something catastrophic had occurred as he sobbed over and over,

“I ruined it! It’s all my fault! I wreaked it again!”

It took me a minute to realize that we were talking about a Halloween slap bracelet. I was relieved that any tragedy had, indeed, been averted. My son, however, was deep in his guilt over breaking the second bracelet like this in the last two days. 

“Ok, buddy, it’s actually not your fault that the bracelet broke. These are not high quality items and the people who make them even know they won’t last very long. These aren’t intended to last forever.” 

He was not amused with my explanation and just dug in his heels repeating that it was ALL HIS FAULT. 

As we were talking, I couldn’t help but relate this situation to any diet. Like the slap bracelet, diets aren’t made well, only meant to...

Two weeks ago Friday at 5pm had my teen daughters debating the best songs on Taylor Swift's new album, Midnights. They both agreed that anti-hero was their favorite. Little did they know that the video of this song would have a not-so-hero moment (insert face-palm emoji here).

At one point of the video, Taylor stands on a scale while her devil self looks on at her side. They both look down at the scale and the word "fat" pops up on the scale instead of a number. Both Taylor and her devil self shake their heads disapprovingly at the scale read out. 

34 million have viewed her video, and thankfully, some of those millions spoke up enough to have her delete the "fat" read out moment. She's still shown on the scale giving a disapproving response which I actually think is very relevant and real in today's fat phobic world. Who really steps on the scale and has that feeling of enough or worth or value? Usually the feeling for a majority of women is that you'll never be thin...