Let's Get Waist-ed: Week 2

Last week's weight:  152.0
This week's weight:  151.0
Weekly weight lost:  -1.0

So this week's weigh-in is two days late.  We had family in town all last week and traveled to the scientist's family's summer cabin over the weekend -- just arriving late last night.  I'm happy with my weight this morning, not overjoyed -- but happy.

Due to the fact that we had family around for the entire week, I didn't get to exercise at all.  I have decided that I'm going to start my exercise program next Monday.  I was going to start this week, but I fell down the stairs on Saturday at the Scientist's cabin and probably sprained my little toe.  At the time, it hurt so severely that I thought that I had broken my foot.  But after a night's rest, I felt better and spent the rest of the weekend limping around.  It is still slightly tender & achy right now -- so I'm going to rest it for the remainder of the week.

I have two weeks down and ten weeks to go with 18 pounds to my ultimate goal.  I'm still aiming high, but realistic thinking is starting to sink in.

And now for the photos - my first update photos...  Don't think that you can really see a pound and a half.

Let's Get Waist-ed: Week 1

Last week's weight:  152.4
This week's weight:  152.0
Weight lost:  -0.4

Not super fantastic, but not bad.  Last week I was going to just focus on eating better.  I did spectacularly for the first three days -- then the train kind of derailed in the middle and I tried to pick myself back up near the end.  A loss is a loss and I'm going to take it.  But I know that it could have been even better as I saw it on the scale throughout the week.  This coming week, I'm going to focus again on my eating and also start to throw in some physical activity -- just trying for daily walks with the kids/dog.  We have family in town, so it's always difficult to start an activity plan when you aren't in your normal daily routine.  So I'm aiming for a new exercise regimen next week.


I'm not sure if I'm posting a photo update.  I always feel so silly taking selfies.  I'm obviously not very good at it and feel very awkward trying to get the phone out of the way so that I can actually see myself.  No one will be crowning me the Selfie Queen -- that's for sure!

And the countdown begins!!!!!!!!

13 weeks...

Instead of posting a current photo, I'm going to post some throw-back photos as inspiration.

Alright, so here is it...  Written in black and white...  (Okay enough to the ellipses... Ha -- for the final set!)

My weight as of this morning was 152.4 and my waist measurement was 29.5.  I am setting my goal weight as 133 (so just shy of 20 pounds, although the weight isn't as important as my measurements).  And my goal waist line is 27, which is 2.5 inches.  That doesn't appear to the naked eye to be that much, but most of my weight is on my lower tummy, hips and ass which have nothing to do with my waist line.  So there it is...  20 pounds and 2.5 inches. And while I can post the numbers, I just can't post a photo right now.  I took one and next week, if I'm feeling frisky, I'll post a side-by-side.  But the photo is just putting me over the top right now.

Right before I got pregnant with Finn, I was weighing in at 138 and at her one-year birthday, I hit 133, my lowest recorded adult weight (I have hovered around 127 eons ago, but that was also in my early twenties while in college and all I eat was raisin bran and ran four miles every day).  Before babies, my waist line was usually around 26 inches.  So I don't think that 133 pounds & 27 inches are unattainable.

I'm going to start out slow.  This first week, I'm simply going to watch what I eat and cut out a good chunk of my sugar.  I haven't really sat down and figure out what will work for exercise in my current life style.  By simply cutting sugar and making healthier food choices, I give myself an extra week.  I'm also breastfeeding my little guy.  He has an insatiable appetite and my gut feeling is that I'm not dropping baby-weight anymore because of my food choices.  By simply breastfeeding Finn over the course of a year, I was able to hit 133.  I didn't stop eating junk food or sugar.  I didn't exercise a lick.  I just breastfed her and she didn't eat near as much as my big dude does.  I just want to hit my goal a little faster, so I have to do some extra work.

While I am going to be cutting back on sugar and making healthier choices, I will let you know that I am not cutting out beer or wine.  I will still be having my daily.  I don't over drink -- in fact, I've only had a handful of two drink evenings since probably last year May.  I usually have a single drink; either while preparing dinner or with my meal.  It's my desert and my end-of-the-day relaxer -- it's NOT going anywhere.

I've already made ONE tough sugar decision today and chose fresh-out-of-the-garden peas over some processed sugar snack.  Thanks to my brother for being such a gentleman-farmer and giving me almost two gallons of fresh pod peas.  I don't wish to be the scientist in a day or two when I'm going through sugar withdrawal.  (Yes, it is a real thing and yes, I've done it before.)  Hopefully he will still be alive next week!

Bumpdate: post 22 weeks

 I'm not posting a photo of myself yet.  It's the same as it was the last time I posted a photo at 13 weeks 9 weeks ago.  I still have a nagging 11-13 pounds to lose.  But now I have bigger fish to fry.  I've gone ahead and made a pretty big goal for myself.  I'm not going to share the reason yet.  But the goal is 20-25 pounds, three inches off my waist and I want to be able to do 25 pushups by the end of October.

I'm going to put my plan into action when we return from Iowa early next week.  At that time, I'll shame myself by putting my current weight and waist measurement up.  I'll also be holding myself accountable by putting up my weight weekly and my measurement monthly.  I will be taking all my measurements monthly, but the only one that really counts is my waist for my goal.

Part of this is spurred from the fact that I'm tired of wearing yoga pants as it really does count as 15 minutes of cardio trying to put my pants on and they still don't button.  I refuse to buy larger sizes and so I'm stuck in anything stretchy, which doesn't really look very good on someone who has about 15 pounds to lose.  I have a shit-ton of fabulous clothes that don't look good anymore.  Instead of buying a new wardrobe, I'm getting back down to my fighting weight.  There is another motivation for the new fitness goal which will be a surprise.  Photos will be involved and shared when the time comes.

I haven't decided how much detail I'm going to go into on here.  I'm going to let this be a fluid thing and do what feels necessary for me to achieve the end result.  In other words, I don't know how much I'm going to share about workouts, foods, progress photos and such.  But I will definitely be posting the numbers, both weekly and monthly. 

THERE!  I'm now accountable.

Crazy ringing in the middle of the night

So this past weekend, my neurotic brain got a serious workout.  SERIOUS workout.  For all those who don't really know, I get super paranoid when the Scientist is gone for travel.  I come from a super small town in Iowa (800 people small) with half of the town being my relatives it seems.  So when I initially moved to Jersey to live with him, I started becoming paranoid that someone was going to try and break into my house at night and stab me (no joke).  And if you ever saw our little bungalow in Jersey, you would know that NO ONE would ever try to break into that little crap-hole (but I loved that place because it was OUR little crap-hole).

That little crap-hole was only about 600 square feet. And at one time, we had two people, two cats, two dogs, and six puppies that little crackerjack house.  Good times.

Anyway, fast forward to buying our current house and moving to a little suburb of Cleveland, that fear hasn't went away.  In fact, it has grown exponentially due to the fact that our house now is a lot nicer than our little crap-hole in Jersey.  And in my mind, if I was a bad-guy and wanted to break into a house, I would pick a house just like mine (paranoid much?).  The Scientist goes away quite often, so I usually lose sleep while he is away, jumping at every little noise in the middle of the night.

This was taken when we first moved in -- we have since added an iron scroll security/screen door, which was the only thing between me and the crazed bell-ringer.

Okay, now fast forward to last Friday night, the Scientist was working super late to get his talk ready for his conference that he was leaving for on Sunday morning.  I brought the kids upstairs and we were all sleeping in my king-size bed.  I'm suddenly awakened by a ring of our door bell and Munk started going C-R-A-Z-Y barking at the top of our stairs.  His barking startled Finn who woke up and started crying.  I glanced at the clock while I soothed her and told her to lay back down, 11:01pm!  What the hell? -- and the door bell rang again.  Munk raced downstairs, barking hysterically along the way.  I stood at the top of the stairs for a moment with Munk going crazy downstairs, hoping that the dog would scare away whoever was at the door.  But the bell rang again.  I started down the stairs, but realized that I didn't have proper clothes on to have some stranger see me.  I run back up the stairs and throw on some pants, meanwhile the door-bell is now ringing constantly.  Whoever was at the door was now going wild with our doorbell, which meant that my dog was going WILD (sidebar: Munk could be standing with me at the front door and if I rang the bell, he would go crazy.  Now imagine a stranger at the door, constantly ringing the bell!).

This was where I was standing when the crazy bell-ringer was at my door, only it was dark outside.

This is the front room of the house It's taken from the kitchen doorway (which looks just like the one on the upper left) and there are babygates on both sides to keep the kids from falling down the tiled stairs.

So I get downstairs and my heart is pumping out of me chest.  I left the kitchen lights on for the Scientist and the front door was still open (with the screen door locked).  There was a guy standing at my front door and Munk was standing at the baby-gate barking and barking and barking.  The guy was young -- maybe in his early twenties and he was trying to tell me that I stole his cell phone.  Two things now -- I was in a deep sleep when this all started and my paranoia was getting the best of me, so I was utterly confused at this point.  I started to open the babygate, so I could go down into the front room to talk with him (instead of him yelling over my barking dog and the 25 feet distance).  But then I realized that this all sounded so fishy, that I thought if I went down the stairs, I would have to lock Munk behind the babygate to save him from jumping on the security door, clawing to get to the stranger.  So I stayed put -- putting the lock security door and a babygate between me and this guy.  He asked me if I was on East 4th (which is a street that has a lot of restaurants/bars on it) that night, because it says that his cell phone is here. He was a valet and his cell phone was here, that some older lady took it.  I was so confused and totally thought that he was trying to break into my house because while I am older, I wouldn't classify myself as an older lady.  I thought that it all sounded SO crazy that he was trying to find out if I was there alone, so he could break through our security door and come in and get me.

I repeatedly told him that I didn't have his phone, that I had babies upstairs that were sleeping and that I was home all night with them, not on East 4th.  After about 5 minutes of trying to talk over a barking dog, he finally turned around to leave.  I watched as he walked down the steps and around our house to the back (which is bordered by the neighbor's driveway).  I watched him from the darkness of my living room as he got into his car (which was parked on the neighbor's driveway) and watched him slowly back out.  He drove down the street and turned in front of our house (we are located on the corner) and he slowly drove by the front of our house.  I went back into the kitchen and out the side door, creeping in the darkness to see if he had pulled into our other neighbor's driveway to find his phone.  They have girls that are young that I could see at East 4th on a Friday night.  When I got to the garage to peek around, I saw his car slowly creeping past our house again going in the opposite direction!

So I ran into the house and called the Scientist, asking him when he was getting home because there was this weird guy that keeps driving past our house.  He was about 5 minutes away and he stayed on the phone with me while the guy actually pulled into our driveway and just sat there.  The guy pulled out of our driveway as the Scientist was driving down our road.  When he finally got home, the car slowly drove by again.  The Scientist went out into the road to talk to the guy.  It turns out that the guy was a valet and his phone had dropped out of his pocket into a car he was parking.  He used the "find my iphone" app and the app told him that the phone was at our address.  As the Scientist questioned him more, the guy told us the make of the car, which was our neighbor's car on the backside of our house.  Their driveway actually touches the back of our house, so the guy thought that the driveway was ours (I guess).  He had called the police and they were on their way.  We realized that the older lady was our neighbor who is actually an older lady who must have eaten on East 4th with her friends and valeted their car there.  So the crazy bell-ringer wasn't really crazy afterall.  But it was a great way to start the weekend that the Scientist was traveling away for me!

He left on Sunday morning and about four hours after he left, I received a really weird audio FaceTime request and when I didn't answer, they texted me.  Now, that wouldn't normally make me concerned, but check out the name of this person that tried to contact me...

WHAT THE HELL?!?!?!?!?!  PS I have no idea what "rumr" is or who Ashley is...  And I don't normally get strange things requested on my phone -- twofer on Sunday, I guess.

Who chooses a name like that?!?!?!?!?!?!?  Honestly!  Needless to say, I'm anxiously awaiting the return of the Scientist who is scheduled to return either Tuesday evening or Wednesday afternoon.

Days like this... (an update on life as a SAHM)

Okay, it's no secret that I absolutely LOVE me some Van Morrison (and this happens to be one of my top 6 Van Morrison songs).  But this seems to be my life right now.  I think that I really enjoy being a SAHM.  But there are days when I don't know if it's the right thing for the kids.  Crazy?  Maybe.

I had such big dreams and aspirations on how our days were going to look.  Wanna know what I say about that?  Ha!  I know that Finn & Fish love staying home with their mom.  But there are days where I don't know if I'm the best thing for them.  Let me explain...

Finn came from a daycare where she had constant interaction with other kids her age.  They said at daycare that she was a pretty quiet girl who always did what was asked of her.  That is SOOOO not the kid that is with me right now.  She struggles with me daily.  I'm the heavy and tell her "no" a lot of the time.  There are struggles for candy before noon.  There are struggles for nap time (in fact, today it took us almost 90 minutes for her to fall asleep).  I want to be the free-lovin' hippie mom that I had envisioned before getting knee deep into diapers and toddler tantrums.  I actually had the thought today that if my manager offers me my old/new position that I should jump at the chance so that Finn can get some routine back into her life.

Our house seems to be constantly in shambles.  This is something that has been eluded to before -- I like a neat house.  I know those that read this will just say that when you have kids, you can't have the tidy house that you would like.  Well, I'm a SAHM -- I feel like I should have a tidy house because I have the extra time to make sure that my floors are clean and the dishes done.  But holy shit, where does the day go?  If the baby isn't crying, then the toddler is.  I try to clean up here and there, but wow, this is exhausting.  I don't think surviving the day is hard (although there have been a day or two where it seriously was a countdown to five o'clock somewhere and beer was cracked).

The scientist will come home and ask what we did all day and where we went.  On the days where we didn't go anywhere, he said that Finn really needs to make friends.  And then another day after being told that we didn't go anywhere, he said "Wow, you must be getting bored!"  But the fact was it was the end of the week and my weekly chore list wasn't even half done.  I don't get bored as there is always something to clean or someone crying. 

And then there is the friend situation -- for me.  I have realized that I'm quite excellent at making acquaintance, but quite terrible at making new friends.  I don't like the awkwardness that is in the beginning.  The "should I ask for her number"?  "What is she says no or is only giving it to me because she feels obligated?"  Let me tell you -- making mommy-friends is a lot like dating.  If you are really looking for a relationship, it blows.  But if you are just playing the field, it's a lot of fun.  It started as playing the field, but now with the scientist's comment about Finn having friends, I feel like I need to find a relationship.

But I love being a SAHM.  I know that I am trying my best and there are days where I just sit there and smile at my kids, knowing that I am truly lucky to be able to be home with them.  I guess the whole meat of this post is that I'm beginning to question "am I doing this right by my kids?"  Or would it be better if I made the $$ to keep them "at school" as we call it.  I don't doubt that I'm a good mom and my patience has actually increased by leaps and bounds since being home with them.  But I'm starting to feel really insecure about the fact that I don't have any friends who have babies or toddlers that I can socialize my kids with.   I don't remember having playdates with other kids when I was little and I think that I turned out fine.  But then again -- now that I think about it -- my neighbor was exactly my age and we were best friends growing up. 

So I guess -- just one.  That's all I need to find.  Just a best friend for my little girl.  And it wouldn't help if her mom was my kind of girl either.  Sending positive vibes into the cosmos to send a cool mom-daughter-son trio my way.  I have a big playset and beer on tap.  Anyone?  Anyone?  :)

Postpartum Bumpdate: 13 weeks

Yes, it's still called a "bump"date, because apparently, I still look pregnant.  I was asked at a Kentucky Derby party last weekend if I was expecting (more on that later).  So here we are...  Lookin' eerily similar to 7 weeks ago.  Ugh.  Just ugh.

• I'm happy to report that I have lost weight.  I am down down 34 pounds of the 47 that I gained with Fish.  But that means that I still have 13 pounds left to go.
• I am also happy to report that I was able to get into my biggest pair of jeans.  But they still aren't for daylight wear (meaning they won't see the light of day yet).  They were smackass tight, like 70s-style lay-down-on-the-bed-to-zip-up (although I didn't have to lay down to zip them) tight and if I bent my torso the slightest degree, the big Mom muffin top popped out over the waistband.  The Scientist (God bless his little soul) said that they looked great and he couldn't understand why I was changing out of them that morning.
• As mentioned, I went to a Kentucky Derby party this past weekend -- with Derby attire required.  That meant that I had to scour through my dresses to find some that was suitable and large enough.  I found a red jersey one that stretched and put on control top pantyhose -- but still felt like a 10 pound sausage in a 5 pound casing.  I had made that exact comment to my friend (the hostess) and someone asked me how far along I was.  Yikes.
• Unfortunately, I don't get much longer to hide my skin.  The weather is starting to get gorgeous and with that means less clothes.  I'm excited to gain a little bit of a tan (I am Patty Pasty right now).  And a photo was taken at the above mentioned Derby party and sent out to everyone -- you could spot me from across the room from the glare of my ghostly white skin.  I always amazes me how much my skin looses its pigmentation during the winter months.  But its time to bust out the self-tanners to give myself a little glow before I can get the natural stuff working. 
• In the exercise front, I went walking/running on Monday morning.  I was scheduled for another run on Wednesday morning, but it was raining.  Maybe I'll try to bust a move this evening (or just make up the run over the weekend.
• Also, I have given myself a goal of two weeks to get my hair done, my initial pedicure completed and to begin the bronzing process.  A rejuvenation of sorts!  Stay tuned!