Aaaaaand... we're back!

Okay, I know that hitting the reset button on a Monday morning is horribly cliché. But clichés exist for a reason. Monday seems like the perfect opportunity for a fresh start!

I made it to the gym this morning after a week off last week. Felt hard, but good.

The gym is having an interesting effect on me. You know how people who lose a lot of weight often say that they still think of themselves as heavy? Well, all the mirrors at the gym are reminding me of the extra weight I'm carrying! We only have a couple of mirrors actually hung in our house at this point (yes, still moving in) and the image of myself that I carry around with me is the pre-pregnancy one. So I am extra motivated to get moving.

Daily target: 32
Daily total: 36
Activity earned: 6
Flex points bank: 35

Wee break

Okay, I know I'm only two weeks in and I don't want to lose my momentum, but I'm putting the plan on the back burner. Just for a couple of days. I've got a bit of a perfect storm happening, with a cranky teething child who won't nap, helping my bestie out with childcare for her kids, and, well, woman troubles. If you catch my drift.

I know lots and lots and LOTS of women deal with much more difficult situations than I'm experiencing. They are awesome. I am just tired.

And sometimes fatigue requires a piece of chocolate chip banana bread.

Two weeks down

Okay, no time for a proper post! More soon.

Sunday
Daily target: 32
Daily total: 39
Flex points bank: 22

Monday
Daily target: 32
Daily total: ?? (Yes, I got sort of lax.)

Second week weigh-in: 170
DOWN 1.5 lbs

Total loss: 4 lbs!

The boy from Oz

I am in love.



I'm not usually prone to celebrity worship. But after seeing Hugh Jackman's stage show this past week, I might consider becoming a groupie and stalking him full-time. Sure, it'll be awkward with Viv strapped to my back. And the Husband may not particularly like my new found purpose in life. (Although he'll totally understand! In fact, he predicted that I would fall for the Aussie after seeing him live onstage.)

But I can't help myself! He was so spectacular!! I laughed, I cried, I screamed (although not nearly as loud as a few of the women in the audience) and I gained a whole new respect for Wolverine. He sang "Soliloquy" from Carousel. It was absolutely beautiful. He told a few poignant tales from his life, but also poked fun at his Hollywood experiences. It was a really fantastic night out.

Too bad for the Husband that our second date night since Vivi was born ended with me lusting after another man...

Here's how the last few days have played out. It's been busy! (Vivi has screamed more in the last four days than in the past four months.)

Wednesday
Daily target: 32
Daily total: 32
Activity points earned: 7
Flex points bank: 34

Thursday
Daily target: 32
Daily total: 32
Flex points bank: 34

Friday
Daily target: 32
Daily total: 39
Activity points earned: 7
Flex points bank: 34

Saturday
Daily target: 32
Daily total: 37
Flex points bank: 29

And one more. Just 'cause.

Welcome to the jungle

Exhausting day! Managed to get the kid to nap for about 45 minutes total in the house and another 30 minutes while I was out walking. (Had a lovely, unexpected visit with a good friend today. Thank goodness for a reality touchstone!) I think she also snoozed a bit in the car on the way to and from my dentist appointment.

While I'm happy for every bit of sleep she gets, on the harder days it's difficult to not resent that she will only sleep in situations that don't allow ME to sleep. This fact is why new moms HATE the "sleep when the baby sleeps" advice. If only it were so easy!!

Currently she's back in her vibrating chair, in the living room. We're hoping it might knock her out and then we can transfer her to her crib. We tried putting it in her room, but that didn't go over well. Separation anxiety?

Anyway, despite the fact that I did not make it to the spinning class I was going to attend, it was a pretty good day.

Daily target: 32
Daily total: 33
Flex points bank: 34

More celebrity mom inspiration.


I totally think Reese and I would be friends, given the chance.

One week down!

Sorry! I went awol there for a little bit. It's just that Violet has suddenly decided a) to nurse A LOT, b) that her crib is a place of torture rather than a peaceful retreat, and c) that sleep is for the weak.

Yep. A trying couple of days around here. For about three months she's been happily sleeping in her crib for a few naps a day and from 6pm-ish to 6am-ish, only up once for a feeding and then right back down most nights. Sunday night we couldn't get her to sleep in her crib until 9:30pm. Last night it was 11pm, after an hour long walk, more than an hour of nursing, and lots and lots of screaming. And the only way she would nap yesterday was on my lap, after being nursed to sleep, or in the car.

Sigh.

Did I mention that the mornings after these trying nights she started her day at 5:30am?

Ugh. I am, once again, tired. Like, really tired. We think she's working on some more teeth and/or going through a growth spurt. All I know is that the awesome schedule I was accustomed to, where she would have 45 minute cat naps every two hours with little to no fuss, is gone. Time to figure out what to do now.

By 9am this morning, when she was clearly exhausted but not interested in being in her crib, I pulled out her vibrating chair. We had thought she was long done with it, preferring to wiggle and be free. It worked like a charm... for about a half an hour. I'll take what I can get!

Anyway, here's where we are with this challenge of mine.

Sunday
Daily target: 32
Daily total: 36
Flex points bank: 18

Monday
Daily target: 32
Daily total: ?? (Things kind of fell apart at the end of the day. Not that I went crazy at all, just that counting was no longer a priority.)
Activity earned: 2

First week weigh-in: 171.5
DOWN 2.5 lbs!

That's the right direction! And it motivates me not to eat everything in the house today, even though this fatigue wreaks havoc with my willpower.

To market, to market

Lovely summer Saturday!

Firstly, I get to sleep in on Saturdays. After I breastfeed the wee one, the Husband takes over, giving her some solid food and entertaining her until nap time. It's heavenly! I scootch over and sleep in the middle of the bed, spreading out. Ahhhhh!!!

Then we finally made it to Evergreen Toronto Brickworks for their farmer's market. What a fantastic place! Super cool and a GREAT spot for a special event. (We were saying we should get married again and do it there. A summer wedding this time, with white fairy lights strung up everywhere.)

But the real standout: the FOOD! Obviously they had all sorts of fresh, organic produce. (Hello cherries and kale!) Also lots of people selling the kind of yummy, grainy bread that makes grocery store bread look like the sad imitation of food that it is. What we weren't expecting was the all the booths selling incredible prepared meals!

In the end, we indulged in a plate of curried veggie tofu with both beet and quinoa salad, a vegan banana cupcake with maple icing and a small scoop of fresh, organic chocolate ice cream, which rocked my world. I had to do some guessing on the points, but since we split everything, I don't think it was so bad!

Here's how I think the day played out.

Daily target: 32
Daily total: 35
Flex points bank: 22

And here are a few shots.





All the excitement tired our little Vivi out:

Reunion!

Busy day yesterday kept me from blogging! I got to see one of my lovely cousins, who was visiting the city with her gorgeous little family in tow. It had been 15 or 16 years since we last saw one another, besides Facebook, and it was like no time had passed at all. Her two daughters are gorgeous and sweet, and her husband felt like family. Good times!

Here's the stats.

Thursday
Daily target: 32
Daily total: 33
Flex points bank: 31

Friday
Daily target: 32
Daily total: 41 (oops!)
Activity earned: 3
Flex points bank: 25

Best laid plans...

I had high hopes for today. A morning trip to the gym for a weights class followed by a Stars and Strollers showing of "Bad Teacher." While I was bustling around, getting ready, I checked my email and saw that something I'd ordered was on the truck for delivery.

So I decided to skip the gym. Surely it would arrive before noon, so we could hit the movies.

And then we skipped the movie.

It's 2:35pm now. We're still waiting. Waiting to go OUTSIDE! There are some errands that we can run still, if it gets here soon.

Meanwhile, since I've been hesitant to start anything requiring a lot of time, in case Purolator arrives and we can get the hell out of here, we had a little photo shoot:

Gettin' my move on

My one regret about my pregnancy is that I stopped exercising.

Initially I was quite determined not to let this happen. I had lots of good intentions and even subscribed to "Fit Pregnancy" magazine. (My name is Tammy and I am a magazine addict.) Then a combination of factors got in the way. In the early days, while I was still feeling good, an insane work schedule kept me from my lunchtime workouts. Then the fatigue/nausea/hunger set in and I couldn't figure out when to go to the gym when I wasn't a) exhausted, b) feeling disgusting, or c) ravenous or full of recently consumed food. Then I just got bigger and slower and, let's face it, the habit of going to the gym had long left me.

Cue signs of a not-so-active pregnancy, including carpal tunnel that caused me to wear splints at night, back pain requiring a big belly support girdle-thing and just a whole lot of trouble getting around. (I remember needing to get groceries, but not fathoming how I was going to get to the far end of the grocery store for eggs and back again. Not a fun time!)

Thankfully the inactivity didn't hinder delivery, which was altogether easy compared to most stories I've heard.

Then there was a wee baby to take care of and the dead of winter to contend with. December is actually a pretty good time to have a baby, as long as you don't get cabin-fever too badly. By spring I was ready for long walks. Except something wasn't right...

Cue plantar fasciitis. (Nope, not the wart thing. The heel thing.)

Apparently this annoying issue can be a very normal thing caused by pregnancy weight gain (also cute, flat, non-supportive shoes, which is all I wore for the last few months), but I can't help but think I might have avoided it if I hadn't gained so much.

I've been walking for months, despite the intense pain after even a half hour of leisurely hoofing. Also wearing supportive shoes during all my waking hours. (One of the Husband's colleagues said Crocs were good for this, so at home I sport bright blue plastic shoes I wouldn't be caught dead in outside. Cute for kids and fine for gardening, but not exactly the style statement I'm going for. They do, however, make my feet feel good.)

A couple of months ago, I was desperate to incorporate some more activity, so I went out for some walk/run intervals to get back in the swing of things. Only a half hour and nothing insane. Well, when I woke up to pee in the middle of the night, I couldn't put any weight on my bad foot.

So running was out.

All this to say that I started back at the gym last week. They have child-minding, which Vivi seems to quite enjoy so far. (She's an observer, watching what all the other kids are doing.) And I've learned that spinning* doesn't hurt the foot. Weights are good, too! And working out is helping make me feel like myself again. Finally!

Points target: 32
Daily total: 35
Flex points bank: 32

*Could barely keep my legs moving through yesterday's spin class, despite the inspiration of all the very toned bodies around me. Oh, and the pregnant woman in front of me whose due date is TODAY!

So far, so good

First weigh-in bright and early this morning. (Vivi is a 6pm to 6am girl, with usually one nighttime waking these days, so no sleeping in for Mommy!)

My current weight is: 174 lbs

That's about 25 lbs more than I weighed when I got pregnant and about 35 lbs more than I'd like to weigh. But this isn't all about the numbers! First tangible goal is to get my wedding rings on once more. I can put each of them on separately, although not comfortably, but I can't seem to squish them on together.

Also, just to fill you all in, I am following WW, but not the latest and greatest version of it. (Free fruit! Sounds amazing!!) The only reason I'm hanging out in the Flex Points system is because I have all the stuff, including those little sliding scales that figure out how many points something is worth and some of the old info books.

I am still breastfeeding, so that gets me a bunch more points. (Yay!) And I am back at the gym (more on that soon), so I'll be earning-and most likely eating-activity points, too. Also, for those of you who aren't familiar with how the WW works, you get a bank of 35 points to use whenever you want during the week.

Here's how the first day played out:

Points target: 32
Activity earned: 6
Daily total: 37
Flex points bank: 35

Good start, I'd say!

Celebrity mom inspiration:

Project Yummy Mummy

It's time to talk about the baby weight. Let's start at the beginning.

I was not one of those people who could wear a little extender on her jeans and put off buying maternity clothes until the third trimester. Not at all. In fact, I bought a couple pairs of maternity jeans before I even got around to spreading the news! So at my first OBGyn appointment I asked the nurse, who you see first, if I should worry about weight. She gave me a little lecture saying not to stress about it, just eat healthy food and they would touch base with me if things got out of control.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

As someone who's never been medically overweight, I've still erred on the side of curvy rather than svelte and spent a great deal of time trying to sway the results in the other direction. I was looking forward to not being fixated on the scale for a while.

Then the doctor came in. I didn't bother to ask the question again, but he took it upon himself to bring the subject up. His lecture was about how I shouldn't gain too much! Here's the kicker - he didn't reference the health of me or my baby in his warning. He only said that I'd have a harder time losing it. It was all about aesthetics.

In case there was any question, I chose to listen to the nurse. But the assholey doctor was right.

In a few days, my little one will be seven months old already. The baby weight that was supposed to just magically disappear through breastfeeding and pushing a stroller through the neighbourhood has remained firmly in place. Not that I'm not to blame! I think the people who promised me it would be easy thoroughly underestimated my commitment to croissant sampling and fatigue-induced carb binges. There was also that succession of chocolate-eating holidays (Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter) that fell during the earliest and most challenging (so far!) days.

But now I'm ready to pay attention to the scale once again. If only so I can stop wearing those same maternity jeans that I first bought. Other non-scale goals include:

- Wearing my wedding rings again (I'm so close! And I miss them.)
- Getting some professional shots of the family (Not so keen on full-length photos of myself at the moment.)
- Wearing all those other clothes in my wardrobe (They will seem like new again after all this time!)

Most importantly, I want to be a strong, healthy example for my daughter. And that means NOT having breakfast dessert. (Yes, you read that right.)

I'm going to use this space to work toward my goal, much like I used it originally to pay off my debt! Starting tomorrow, I'm going to weigh myself and post the number. (Gah!) Then I'm going to follow trusty old Weight Watchers, meaning I'll post how many points I have each day and how many I use. You guys will be my community, because I can't bring myself to go back to WW meetings. When you've done the program a couple of times, which I have, you cannot sit through the same lesson on how to order at a restaurant or deal with saboteurs. You just can't.

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, but have felt weird about being open and vulnerable about this online. But I need some support. And you guys were SO instrumental in helping me with my debt! Therefore... here we go...