Bye-bye Botox! This 40-year-old is just fine -- even with her lines.

Momlogic's Yvette: Maybe it's because I turned 40 last week, but lately, I've found myself spending an unusual amount of quality time alone with my mirror. I know every enlarged pore, blackhead, freckle, crease and crevice of this now 40-year-old face. And while I've come to the conclusion that it's time to start taking better care of my skin and maybe even splurge for a facial now and then, I've also realized something that many may find surprising and even shocking. I like my lines.

While so many women are obsessed with fighting Father Time right now, I've decided to instead to embrace the creases, crevices and lines which have etched themselves into my once baby smooth skin. I know so many women who botox with the best of them each time a tiny wrinkle appears on their forehead or around their eyes. Now while I may have been tempted once or twice to consider it, I've decided instead that I would miss those little guys if they were ever to cave in to the siren song of the cosmetic surgeon or dermatologist's needle.

Maybe it's weird to get weepy over crows' feet, but when I see those crinkles I don't see a women who is aging -- instead, I see a woman who is LIVING.

Those pesky laugh lines may just be the result of all of those goofy knock-knock jokes my soon-to-be 5-year-old likes to tell over and over again. He recites them, and like any doting mom, I dutifully dive into hysterics. Those worry lines could very well have been born the time I spent all night crying and holding my daughter's fragile hand in the hospital as the nurse stuck the IV needle into her skin to replenish her dehydrated little body. The two lines which look like parenthesis around my mouth might be from gritting my teeth and pursing my lips during a bitter, tear-filled argument with my husband. But as devastating as some of those fights have been, they ended up making us better, happier -- stronger.

So while some might look at me right now and see only the tiny lines that are fracturing my once youthful face, I refuse to look at it that way. Instead, I see them as the cement which has held my family together through our laughter as well as our tears -- through pillow fights, tickle fights, and fights with my husband, which at some points I was certain would make me a single mother.

Those creases and wrinkles are my battle scars.

I've fought long and hard to get our family where we are today ... happy, healthy and together. I'm proud of those lines, of us -- and of my life story etched so visibly on the canvas of my face.