Kids say the darn-dest things

You know how little kids say everything they feel? Sometimes its cute, like when you see those greeting cards with how kids think about love, or something like that. I found out today, though, that sometimes this is not always the case!

As you know, I teach first grade. Fun, the kids are cute... it's great. A lot... I mean A LOT of work, but still - it's great and so far I like it. Today, three girls were discussing playing "teacher". Let's call them Emma, Grace and Megan. Okay, and for the sake of this story, I'll tell you that Megan is a chubby little girl. Has to be told for the story to make sense.

Emma says: "Let's play teacher. One of us can be Ms. Nevila, one can be Ms. Elizabeth, and one can be Ms. Katherine. Grace you can be Ms. Katherine, okay?"

Grace: "No, I can't be Ms. Katherine because I'm not fat. Megan (the chubby one) has to be Ms. Katherine because Megan is fat."

Me: (thinking to myself) ouch.ouch.ouch.ouch

Megan: "Okay, good I will be Ms. Katherine because she's beautiful."


Moral of the story is kids are always truthful about everything (and blunt!). I took it with a laugh, because I'm pregnant now, and hey - what can you do? For the next 6 months, there won't be a pound coming off of me. It was a big issue with me when I found out I was pregnant. I love this baby and I wouldn't trade being pregnant for anything in the world, especially not to be skinny again. But, to my defense, I have been struggling a lot with my weight since before the wedding (mostly due to stress) and have been having such a hard time in my weight loss efforts. My self-image and confidence is already shaky at best because of this, and because of the fact that I wasn't able to lose any of that weight before my wedding. I had a hard time smiling for pictures at my wedding, even though I was the happiest girl in the world to be getting married. I just wasn't happy with my body that day.

So, it took a while for me to accept that I'm going to be gaining a lot of weight now, even if it is for the most precious reason in the world. I've come to terms with it now, and so that's why I was able to laugh it off today. They are just little kids and they don't think badly of me or mean me any harm anyway.

In Albanian culture, it's not considered rude or impolite to tell someone that they have gained weight. I had a real shocker with an Albanian girl at work one day. Let's just say that she saw a picture of me from a few years back, and her comment to me was, "Wow, Katherine! You used to be so beautiful! What happened to you? Wow, you gained a ton of weight". Yes, exact conversation, trust me - I remember. That one stung a lot. This was before I had really accepted my weight as not going anywhere but up for the next 9 months, and I was crushed. This was already something I thought about every single day, and now this girl was pointing it out to me that, yes, Katherine - it is true. You used to be so beautiful and look what happened to you.

Oh, well... Nothing to do but just laugh it off and do the best that I can.