baby Calvin

My friend Kayla took these awesome photos of baby Calvin for us this weekend. The one where he's sitting on my chest, that's the first time he ever did that. He thought it was super fun. He is growing entirely too quick.

Everything is going well, we are tired and happy around here. :) Christmas was a blast.

They induced me at 9:30am and I had him at 12:30pm.

It sort of went too fast for Brian. He had left to go home, make lunch, vote and come back. When she came in to check me a few moments after he left (without our one cell phone) she said, "Oh where is your husband, you are really close at 7cm" Well with Ethan, the time between 7cm and baby delivered was just an hour. So I called home hoping to catch him and tell him to skip the voting. 20 minutes later I felt the "urge to push". I was shocked. I called her in and yup, baby was right there. Like I could touch him. RIGHT THERE. I didn't catch Brian! He was on his way, but I was ready to push NOW. Thank heavens we live close. My Dr said it was ok to wait as long as I could stand it. Baby was looking great on monitor. Brian walked in expecting more labor, baby was out within 3 minutes of him walking in. Everyone was suprised at how fast the delivery went. I loved it. I mean I was overjoyed. I didn't break a sweat, didn't strain, just popped him right out.

I guess because the delivery was so super easy I've felt great. I'm sleepy, I didn't sleep great the night before and last night I had a brand new baby wanting to nurse every few hours. But otherwise I'm fine. (Yeah, a bit sore, that's expected) I cannot believe how easy it all was. Makes up totally for the rough pregnancy.

Calvin is perfect. He has brown hair, which was my wish. He barely cries, the nurses were all amazed. I mean like he's cried out twice at all. But he's breathing fine, nurses great, no jaundice at all. Sleeps in nice chunks mostly. He fell alseep in the car on the way home and is still sleeping in the carseat right now. (about 1.5 hours) He is already trying to hold his head up.

Well that's the birth story. :) Love you all.

Some things that happened

Well October is always one of the most busy and fun months for us. Here are some things that happened.

Brian and the boys went to the Air Show.Halloween Happened.
And the Kelloggs spent a ton of time working on Lego. (There will be MORe lego pics on the craft blog http://erinkcreations.blogspot.com.

One thing we thought we would do this month but did not do was have a baby! We are inducing on this coming Tuesday November 2nd. You know, unless I have him in the next day that is. I'm kinda happy because I got to do almost all the fun things of October I wanted to do. I did miss Roniece's birthday party, I had THREE kid parties already on Friday and just couldn't party any harder. I am hugely pregnant you know.

Baby Shower

I see it's been forever from the last update to this blog.

We named the baby Calvin Verdie. He's due in 5 weeks. Exciting.
I had my baby shower yesterday. Here are photos; Look at the crazy look on my face in some of these. I had a GREAT time. I don't know why I have this horrible look on my face in these photos.

Here are some of my cute decorations, cute friends and cute food. :)

Here are my guests playing that discusting game where you figure out what candy bar is in a diaper but it looks like horrible poop.

All in all it was super fun. The food was DELICIOUS and I have tons of leftovers, so I don't have to cook today! Woohoo. I got a ton of cute stuff for Calvin and a bunch of diapers.

The question on everyone's mind

The baby is...


a

BOY.

I'm excited. Girls are scary. I did think it was a girl though, so it was a suprise. Now to picking a name.

Tomorrow is baby gender day

Tomorrow is the day we find out if "The Baby in the Tummy" is a boy or a girl. Keep us in mind for this fun day tomorrow.

If anyone is interested it goes a little something like this:

Stephen - wants a boy
Ethie - wants a girl (or a puppy)
Brian - wants a girl
Erin - changes every single day, one day I'm all about a boy and girl makes me nervous, one day I'm all about a girl and think I have two boys already time for a change.
Everyone else - GIRL.

I have never had so many people care so deeply about what gender the baby is. Like I'm missing out on half of life just because my kids are just boys or something.

I do want to SHOP for a girl. So if I don't have a girl I need one of my closest friends to have a girl. I need siblings so I can have a niece. Wouldn't that be good?

On to names:

Girl names: Either Megan Lee Kellogg or Lilyann Lee Kellogg. This will be based on if the kid looks like a Megan or a Lily. Mostly dark hair makes you a Megan and light hair means Lily, but it's pretty much going to be up to me. You know during that insane hormone surge and supreme fatigue of having just given birth, THATS when I'll make the decision.

Boy names: So this is why I kinda hope for a girl. I HAVE two great girl names. I have no GREAT boy names. The middle name will be Verdie. It's a family name and that part is totally set in stone. All our names have to end in "n". Brian likes Warren a lot. I used to but am over it. I like Jackson or Lincoln. Marcia and Gram like Simon. Brian thinks "Jackson" is weird because we live in Jacksonville, but we do like it here so I think that makes it ok. We talked about Dalton, which is the lovely town my family is all from, but Brian's never been there and we don't love it, just the way it sounds, so that's silly. Kids are liking Ammon from the Book of Mormon right now. I don't know about Ammon Verdie, I mean those are both pretty weird.

I'm hoping if the baby is a boy that boy names will start to feel better to me. Or maybe that's why they don't, because it's not a boy so why would they feel right.

Side note, I'm in my pj's and my neighbor is edging his side yard. I need some curtains... Just sayin.

A few changes here aka Nesting

So you know about "nesting" right? The crazy pregnant girl urge to reorganize everything and move lots of furniture? Boy howdy do I have it BAD this time. I expect at any moment for my family to call me to task on it!

Today I had the bedroom painted! This YUMMY yellow color. Now side note, we have lived here for four years. In that time I had never painted my bedroom. I've been picking a color for four years. Because I'm a dork. It's been dirty white all this time. ICKY white. Anyhow I finally pick this yellow, which I love. Then I realize it's the same stinking yellow I had in my last bedroom AND the same yellow I put in Stephen's bedroom. I mean not the exact same but really crazy close. Four years to decide on a color I've used TWICE already. It's ok I love it anyhow! Mom! Look! I made the bed! Those of you who know Brian and I really well know this is an issue for us. He has like SEVEN layers of blankets on his side, I have just the sheet. He doesn't care about making beds, but it drives me CRAZY that it's so hard to make a bed like that. Anyhow I finally figured it out sorta. It's not super crisp, but it doesn't look like a sloppy teenager lives here either. (In the seven layers, six are from his or my HIGH SCHOOL beds. There is some ICK factor with that.) That deer picture has been in my Farrell family for generations and I LOVE it more than I can express. I'm going to hang my huge mini-quilt collection over the bed. It is going to look CHARMING. *

That lovely quilt my mom made when I was a kid. I'm working on a large king sized quilt, but I HAVE to have a handmade quilt folded at the bottom of my bed, even if it doesn't really fit. Also, yes I have a lot of books, no, these are not all of them, not even close.

See that awesome flamingo painting? So I steal stuff from my mom. I tell her and all, so I guess I extort stuff from her. Anyhow she had this FANTASTIC art in her Laundry Room. Right over the litter box. Like for the cats to look at while they use it. Um.. heck no! I had to "rescue" it. See how awesome it looks in my room. When I was picking colors this painting was one of the things any color HAD to go with. I've been watching House Hunters and everyone hates mirrored closet doors. I had no idea! I love mine. I also love my pool view and those curtains are black out. :)

This is the last view, sorta boring, you can see into the bathroom a bit, on the floor are the mini quilts. (I don't keep them on the floor, I just put them there for the picture.) Flaming June is the orange art, it's my favorite art of all time.

Other things I've done is rearrange the kid's furniture. I do this all the time. I keep thinking that if I figure it out just right they will go to sleep without complaint. I'm not sure why I think this? Sometimes I want to just chuck ALL their toys and get them down to dressers and beds only. Not really, but it's a sick fantasy of mine. haha.

We took that cute huge rat back. Switched him for a different rat. What I thought at the store was cuddliness was actually terror. Nice. A terrified rodent isn't a good mix with kids. Jumpy and bites. Also the rat and Victor were not friends. And it bit me a lot. So I switched. I'll get pics of the real new rat soon. His name is Roderick. We are TOTALLY keeping him. He's one of the best rats ever and Victor loves him. They sleep squished together in a tiny corner of the huge cage. They are both very happy.

So you know my living room? And how the way the TV is I can't put any more seating in there and it bothers me. A lot. Well I think I figured something out! I'm hoping Brian will help me try it later. He's tired from all the moving of furnature and the TONS of yard work he did today. (I did stuff too, just not heavy stuff, pregnant and all.) Anyhow if it works I'll take pictures of that tomorrow.

I reorganized my pantry some. I redid some of the scrapbook room, just minor changes in there, I have a REALLY well organized scrapbook room. I made curtains for the kid's rooms. OH! I should sort out my closet and dresser! I'm so doing that next week!

We find out if the baby is a boy or girl next Thursday. I'll be sure to tell you.

Catching up.

I'm going to cover a few things to catch up.
1. I've been feeling that Victor looked lonely. I thought Stephen would want him out and playing ALL THE TIME, but he doesn't. Rats like to be in groups, they are very social. We were not filling his needs. Introducing the new rat (and a larger cage). New rat is a boy too (of course) and doesn't have a name yet. Technically it's my rat. (paid for it with my "fun money). It's huge. Enormous. It's way more mellow than Victor. That seems to work for them though.
2. We went on vacation last week. Just me and the kids. Poor Brian can't get any time off work. (Which is a whole other suckfest.) Anyhow we had a good time. I was EXHAUSTED by the time we got home. I won't be visiting anyone else till march of so of next year. My camera died on me after these fishing photos. This was the boys' first fishing trip. :) We went to my mom's too and played tons there, but, camera was dead. Mom has pics I'll try to get them loaded here soon.

3. Ethie had his birthday. He's 4 now. He didn't have a party or anything but he had a boatload of presents. he's REALLY FUN to shop for. I think his favorite was the silly singing fish. He also got a huge stack of gift cards to his favorite resturants. He is forever wanting to eat out. I mean he'd eat out every day if I let him. So the gift card thing was Brian's idea so Ethan could influence eating out more. I'm going to die if I ever eat McDonalds again! (Kidding, but I do need at least a week off from it.)

I think that's all for the pics. Pregnancy is going great now. Occasional headaches, but I have that medicine now that kills them. I'm thirsty and tired all the time. More tired than with the other two, but of course I have two very active boys now so that's expected. I can feel the baby move for sure now. At first I wasn't sure that's what I was feeling, but now I'm sure. So that's good.

I got a magazine yesterday that had three of my cards published in it. So that's always awesome. Reading a pretty good book, got two more new ones just waiting for me. I'm happy.

Tears for Jeff

So look how adorable and sad Ethan can look and imagine this face during the story:

Yesterday we needed some packing tape and insoles. So we drove right up to the CVS quick as you please. Now my car has a lot of junk in it. Kid junk, but plenty of junk just the same. When we got there I hopped out to undo Ethan's many straps on his carseat. Imagine my suprise to see him crying and holding an old Toys R Us paper crown from Stephen's birthday.
E: I'm wishing Jeffrey would come back
Me: *thinking we are talking about the giraffe at Toys R Us, because he's holding the crown and fingering the picture of the giraffe* I think he only comes when stores open.
E: No! My uncle Jeffrey, I think he's dead because I know he's loving me, but he never visits me anymore.
S: Uncle Jeffrey is dead? What??
E: *rolls eyes at Stephen* no, MY uncle Jeffrey
M: NO! Uncle Jeffrey is FINE guys, he's DEFINATELY not dead. He's doing great. He's happy!
E: Why is he never visiting me? I know he loves me! *starts to dry tears*
M: Well he's really busy, but we can see if we can visit him in a few weeks.
E: If he's not dead he will let me visit him.

OH MY HECK. First of all you see why I thought it was the stupid giraffe right? I mean he was holding a picture of him on the paper crown. We "met" the giraffe when the new Toys R Us opened in our town. Second of all Jeffrey has visited us TWICE in Ethan's life. And yes, Jeffrey (who goes by Jeff now) does love Ethan, he even mailed him a Birthday card recently. My point is it's not like Jeff used to come once a month then suddenly no contact for a year. But it HAS been a year.

I talked to my mom and she said she will try to get Jeff for one of the days when we are there. Even if it's just for dinner. She also emailed Ethan some photos of Jeff to "prove" that he's ok. Ethan is ok now.

VPK Preschool is over!

Today was Stephen's graduation from VPK. My camera's battery was dead so I did video instead.

Let's see if I can get them to post properly here:





OK here goes nothing. haha.

We are looking forward to sleeping in.

Happy Birthday and Mother's day to me

So my birthday is Sunday. And of course, it's Mother's Day too. Brian just suprised me with this: I kinda stink at flower arranging, but they are lovely! He also ordered me a DVD and book I'm wanting on Amazon but they wont' get her till after my birthday/mother's day.

I AM a lucky girl.

By the way, I've not been sick in THREE days. It's stinking amazing and I'm taking every healthy second as a blessing.

The kid does have style

So Stephen has a new Mohawk. He loves it of course. He also has a new tie and belt. (he does not have pinkeye or a black eye, as it looks in this pic, not sure why the photo looks like that) And a new rawrtastic pose for ya:

Overheard

Stephen: If I love you, will you love me.
Ethan: Yes!
Stephen: I love you
Ethan: I love you too
Stephen: Are you going to beat me up tomorrow?
Ethan: No.


This is all very sweet. I'm still mad at them though. They locked Stephen's bedroom to "keep the ghost in" but we can't find the keys (I suspect they are IN there) and I can't get in. ERRRRRR.

Oh and Ethan actually seriously requests that we call him Ethie now. It's hard to remember. No worries though, he is happy to correct you if you forget.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STEPHEN DEAR

Today is Stephen's fifth birthday! Yesterday we had a super fun party at the park! (that's me in yellow) Here are some of the party guests. And some parents too! Stephen collects ADORABLE little girls.

Here he is with more guests and a present he's opening. This present was from the much famed Lauren who he insists he will marry. Brian was the kid wrangler of the party, he's wrangling trash here.

Here is the Balloon Parade I lead the kids on after presents so that Brian and company could pack up the gazebo. (There were two other groups wanting it, they actually got in a fight when we left over who would get it)

Here is me and my BFF Roniece. That Atari logo I just noticed, I've been seeing that as grafitti around town actually. Must be something to that. More importantly don't we look cute!

Stephen got an amazing amount of presents! I'll try to list some:

A N Power Digital Media Player, it's a MP3 player that does video and games and music. - Kaya and Neesa

A remote control truck. - Hanna

A light saber. - Isaac

A set of bubbles that makes huge ones - Elenore

Some action figures - Lauren

A huge truck building kit - Andrew

Tons and tons of money - Gram, Nana, Grammy

Bakugon Trap deca - Ethan

A rat (had this for a while now but that's what's from us)

Easter Party

Stephen's school had the cutest Easter Party on Thursday. I took a ton of photos: In the classroom
All his class together.

With Mommy and Ethan

Stephen's teacher Miss Australia

Friends

This is the girl Stephen assures me he is going to marry.

Some more friends.

Ethie and Stephen

Smile.

During the Parade

Stephen is proud of how in this picture he is really showing his smile in the croud.

More Parade.

Lining up and getting counted.

What's going on at the Kellogg House

Well for one we are getting a new roof. It's terribly expensive, but the amount of work they are doing! Heck, I think it's worth the money they charge. Bless their hearts. This color is called "slate" It's pretty much dark gray but I picked it for the little flecks of red. Our old roof was dark ugly brown. We don't like the brown and wanted to get as far away from that as possible. My neighbor just got black and it does look nice, but I couldn't see getting black in Florida. Although honestly this dark gray isn't too far from black, just go with me. Healthwise I'm still throwing up A LOT. I've lost 12lbs in two weeks. I can keep fluids down now though so I guess it's not so serious. It makes me wonder though, I saw this Lifetime type movie years ago about a woman who had bulimia and got pregnant. Now I KNOW bulimia is a serious desease and not at all healthy. In the movie they made it like she was killing her baby. Now I'm not kidding you guys I throw up EVERY SINGLE BITE I eat. ALL of it. But my Dr's tell me as long as I can keep fluids down, although it's not healthy for ME it won't hurt the baby. And I have to admit each time I get sick I wonder why they gave that bulimic girl such a hard time when no one is concerned that I can't keep anything down. I just hope those huge prenatal vitamins they gave me have everything the baby needs because that's all the little seahorse of a thing is getting. It is welcome to metabolize some of my fat stores if it needs some fat. Babies need fat right?

Stephen and Ethan are doing great. They do that you know, being nearly perfect kids that they are. Darlings. Stephen has allergy stuff going on as usual, but he's a trouper. Ethan never gets sick and is generally a tank of a kid, so not a lot to report there. It's almost Spring Break for Stephen. I'm THRILLED. I really don't like him going to school. I mean I DO, it's a great school and he has fun and it's good for him, but I miss him terribly the three hours he's gone a day.

I haven't been working out these past two weeks. My throwing up is way worse at night so I'm usually dizzy and faint at night. Also Brian has been traveling and doing church stuff most nights. I'm getting back into it next week no matter how sick I am. Even if I can't do it all just to get going and do something. But I'm loosing weight so I guess it's even. Someone, either mom, Roniece, Tracey or Marcia said, "you are working out, you do it several times a day in the form of throwing up."

Well this roofe tile smells weird so I'm going to go throw it back outside and lay down more.

Shower talk.

So general update, I've been REALLY sick. I mean I thought I'd have to be hospitalized sick. Throwing up more than ten times a day, no fluids kept down, just horrible. I had a cold and my normal pregnancy queesieness. My Dr thought it would get better as the cold cleared up and she was totally right, I feel pretty ok today, still a bit shakey but ok. Kept down some stuff.

So I was writing on my other blog about how I want to have a shower this baby. And how I'm going to do this as the theme. What do you think? I love it.

Speaking of showers and buying stuff. I got this booklet about all the crap you are supposed to buy. Kindly put out by the selfless corporation Babies R US because they just want me to have what I need. *ha* Anyhow it was silly. And I remember with Stephen totally living by that thing. "I HAVE to have seven side snap shirts, I don't know what the heck for but The List says I need them." So here is my true list of the crap you need .

• 20 or more onesies.
• 20 or more sleepers. (more if it's winter)
• One or two "cute outfits" to show your baby off in
• Like 4 socks, the baby is going to just loose them anyhow.
• As many as possible of the soft stretchy blankets. These are to wrap your baby up in, they like that, also when you are at a friends and your baby needs to be put down you can use them for that.
• Those soft little pants, like 4 pair. You can pull them on with the onsies and call it an outfit.
• an ungodly amount of burp cloths. We usually just get the prefold cloth diaper ones. But Stephen was a spit up kid, we needed like 15 per DAY, not kidding. Ethan barely spit up and could have used 4 super cute ones. Hard to know, get one cute pack, but be ready to get 50 cheap ones right after birth.
• binkies. (pacafiers) I know it's controversial but I won't live without them. Ethan actually didn't take to his, he did finger sucking for a while, then just nothing. Ethan was a CRAZY easy baby though and didn't need one.
• A good carseat
• a stroler (no lie I went like 6 months without one, just carrying the carseat around. Because I'm a crazy cheap idiot) I like one that the carseat can just snap into. Cars make babies fall alseep, this way you don't have to wake them up. NEVER WAKE UP A BABY.
• A boppie is nice, esp. if you are going to nurse. You CAN use a pillow though so don't let anyone MAKE you get one.
• A swing or bouncer. Don't bring your baby home until you aquire this item. You will never shower until you get one. NEVER.

Things you do not need to buy:

• hats. I mean I don't, I live in Florida, it's just not that cold. And they don't stay on. Except the ones they use in the hospital, those are great, STEAL AS MANY AS YOU CAN. You can't buy those elsewhere.
• side button t shirts. Babies have weird fat tummies that will constantly stick out of these. I'm quite sure this is why the onsies were invented.
• shoes. I mean how cute are they! But totally silly. People who can't walk don't need shoes. Well I guess people who are in wheel chairs can certainly choose to use them, but babies don't need them
• link-a-do's . People had totally convinced me I HAD to have these. Neither of my kids cared and I hated the weird plastic rattle noise.
• toys. I mean later you will need them, but all they do when they are newborn is stare at you, cry, eat and sleep. I will admit I'm letting each of my boys pick the new baby a toy and buy it for him or her, but that's more of a brother bonding thing. Babies don't need toys at first. And you could go broke with all the cool stuff.
• educational videos. Ohmyheck the waste of money!
• That mirror you can mount up to see your baby's face when they are in the rear facing carseat. I loved this mirror. LOVED it. But got tired of everyone on earth telling me it was going to smash my baby's face in and kill him. I mean random strangers would stop me to tell me this news. It's not even glass people! It's flexable plastic. It's not like I'm keeping a pit viper in the back seat with the baby, it's a small piece of plastic. But I took it down because it pisses me off when strangers talk to me about stuff like that. (going to do a whole nother post about random things people feel they need to say to you while you are pregnant or have a new baby)

Any other essentials you can think of? Or total wastes of money?

Meet the sprout

This shrimp looking thing is our new baby. It is 7.4mm long apparently. Just a sprout of a thing. But it has a heartbeat! So that's way more than our last baby ever had. Also I want to say that they told me a due date of November 7th SEVERAL times, but this sprout-meter clearly says "11/11/10". So I really have no idea when the baby is due. My Papa's birthday is the 5th so maybe that would be good? My BFF's is Oct 30 so that would be good. I really like Halloween, so that could be fun. I'm just so excited that we made it further than last time. It didn't really feel real until I saw that tiny heartbeat.

I've been REALLY sick. Sicker than ever. And I have a cold. And did I mention the sickness? Lots of sickness. And for the love of everything you hold sacred do not bring a cooked chicken anywhere near me. If you have a friendly live chicken that likes to be petted please bring it right over. Especially if it likes to look at pictures of beansprout babies.

New love

So I read a book Hot House Flowers and the Nine Plants of Desire. It was a good read. It REALLY made me want to grow a house plant. I have this little cutting from "fluffy the cat plant" but it's just roots and one leaf. My mom has tons of it, the original died last year. Thank heavens for cuttings. But I want something more. Something more beautiful and more rewarding. So I decided I wanted an orchid. This type of orchid is super common and super easy. It's Phalaeonopsis. It's most likely the orchid in your local store, if it looks kinda like this. Also called Moth Orchid. Comes in a million colors.

Mine is white with the sweetest yellow "tongue" with some pink where the tongue connects to the other petals. I wanted white, some pinks and yellows drew me in, but I wanted white.

I especially love how she has this arch. This has to do with how you stake them. If they had used a longer stick and kept her straight she would do that. I love the graceful curve she shows too. Also my books (I got half the orchid books out of the library before getting her) encouraged me to pick one that had unopened buds, that means that I'm only at the start of this flower stalk's life, so I should have blooms for a while.

I even love her beautiful leaves. And I totally love this glass pot. It has some issues, watering is different, I have to be sure to drain out so she's not sitting in potting soup.

Well that's the latest here. Time change is HARD on Stephen and Ethan. They are exhausted, which means I'm exhausted.

In our pretty garden

Today me and the boys redid the front garden. First we pulled out all the weeds that had creeped in. We also took the sickly azealias out. I put them in the back in a much shadier spot. This spot gets a lot of sunlight

Then we got a pile of flowers. And top soil. And fresh mulch. We got some of these pink mystery flowers. Do you know what these are? We have 18 of these.

We have three yellow snapdragons. We are not sure if these will grow. I've never seen any here. They had tulips too and I am almost SURE those don't grow here? (Zone 8). So these snaps are a trial. We like the idea of the whole back row being full of them, but we shall see.

Then we have this dusty miller. We actaully got 8 of these, two large like this, and 6 tiny ones. Ethan is in LOVE with this plant. We put three tiny ones in last year and they literally disappeared overnight. We don't have rabbits or anything, they just sorta poofed and were gone. So we put a lot this year, I hope they don't disappear.

And that's what we did today.

Soccer Shots

Stephen had Soccer Orientation today. He is doing Soccer Shots for soccer this year. They are basicly focusing on young kids and introduceing them to the game through play and games. Today they played a few games like "keep the ball close to you while you dribble or the cookie monster will eat it up" and "You are spacemen and these cones are astroids you have to nock over by kicking the ball at them". Stephen had a BLAST so we are signing him up. It's right at the school once a week. Love it. This is his class lined up. I believe there is a rule at the school that if you are girl you MUST wear pink. As much as possible. The woman on the right is Miss Antoinette, who rocks.

The woman who you see from behind in the left of this picture is the awesome Miss Australia. She and Antoinette are Stephen's two teachers. Today the whole class went to soccer, but only the kids who sign up will go in the future. I hope enough sign up for them to do it, Stephen is totally excited.

I'm sick. Stinking figures. I have sore throat, aches and such. Could be flu, could be allergies and my general tired ness.

I've been working out about 4 weeks now. I have not lost any weight, but I'm tons stronger, and look skinnier. Especially in my face, I have cheek bones and only the one chin.