A Little Bit Of Everything...

Back in February when I started this whole life transformation, I had put weight loss goals on my calendar every 4 weeks.  This Sunday I am coming up to week 21 and my goal for this week was to be down 42 pounds, I am not quite there, but I am at 38.4, pretty damn close!  I am so glad that I am staying on track!  Kara has recently told me that I have wiggly arms and has asked if I'm having another baby cause my tummy is so big... thanks kid!  But, it has encouraged me to work on my wiggly arms and pregnant belly...hopefully soon I will be able to say that I no longer have wiggly arms or look pregnant! 

Here's some pics from along the way:

Hugely Pregnant: 

Right After Macy was Born:

January 2012: 

April 2012:

End of April 2012:

Mother's Day 2012:

June 2012 (back down to pre-pregnancy weight, 6 months post-baby!):

My ultimate goal is to lose about 30 more pounds... we'll see if that changes as I get closer to my goal!

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Now let's talk about Joe... Joe turned 30 on June 3rd, and of course I planned a fantastic birthday celebration for him!  Joe and I both love beer, so we had a day full of beer.  We started off at 11:00 in the morning and went to Steel Toe Brewing in St. Louis Park - they only sell growlers right now, but they also had samples - we both really liked their beers!  Next stop was Flat Earth Brewing in St. Paul.

Here we are enjoying some samples at Flat Earth:

Next stop was Liftbridge in Stillwater, they have a tap room here, so we hung out for a bit and enjoyed some pints of beer.

Back in the car again (thanks to Jerry and Becky for being out DDs!)

Next we went to Fulton Brewing in Minneapolis, they also have a tap room, we hung out here for quite a while.  Their beers were delicicous!

After Fulton we headed to Republic Bar in Minneapolis.  They have a huge selection of craft beers on tap.  A bunch of our friends also met us at the restaurant to celebrate Joe's birthday.. we had a great time there!

And I of course ordered him a Surly Coffee Bender Cheesecake, it was AMAZING!

After Republic we went to Harriet Brewing, which is also in Minneapolis.  We hung out at Harriet until about 11:30 - they have a tap room and also had a band playing.

I think I did a pretty good job of making Joe's 30th birthday a memorable one.... I turn 30 next April, he better have something amazing planned for me :) 

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Now let's talk about the girls a bit.  My little Macy-kins is 6 months old!  At her 6 month appt she weight 17 pounds 7 ounces and was 27.5 inches long.. she is a big girl!  She is wearing 9 month clothes and size 3 diapers.  Kara was always a little peanut, so it's kinda fun having a little chunker!  She has finally figured out how to roll over and is sitting almost completely by herself.  She is such a little joy, so cheerful and smiley all the time!  

It's so hard to believe that she has gone from this:

To this:

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And last but not least, Kara... at about 7:00 this morning I got a text from Joe with this picture:

And I was laughing hysterically!!  Apparently last night Kara decided she wanted to be Spiderman!  When I was putting her to bed last night she kept looking for her red marker, I said, Kara it's bedtime, go to sleep, we will find your marker in the morning, well, she obviously found it...  haha!  She also said that she didn't want Macy to sleep in her room last night, she obviously had this all planned out!  Never a dull moment in our house :)

Week 8

I have started blog posts the last 2 weeks, but never got them completed, so this will have to serve as a recap for the past two weeks.  Today is the start of week 8 and I am down 15 pounds, a total of 33 from my pregnancy weight!  Back in February I had made a goal to be down 20 pounds by my birthday, my birthday is 2 weeks away and I have 5 pounds left to lose... I can do it!!

I had some issues the beginning of March with horrible shin and calf pain, so I took a few days off from running to rest.  On the 7th I went to the Running Room to get fitted for new running shoes and I found out I need stability shoes.  It was amazing how much different walking around the store felt in these shoes compared to my old running shoes.  The following Friday morning I tried out my running shoes and quickly realized they were way too narrow and short for my feet!  My feet felt completely squished and my toes were hitting the front of the shoe as I tried to run, and again my shins and calves were killing me, so this wasn't exactly a successful trip to the gym.  Over the weekend I went back to the running room hoping to exchange for a size up and a wide width.  They had either a wide width in the same size, or a size up but not wide... so I opted to go for the size up.

I read a lot about shin splints and one thing I kept reading over and over was to slower your pace if you are new to running.  With the combination of my new shoes and a slower pace, I am happy to report that my shins have no longer been causing me pain. I slowed my walking pace to a 3.0 and my running pace to 5.0.  With these slower paces I have been able to run all my intervals of the C25K program without wanting to die.  Speaking of C25K, I have completed week 5, day 2.  Every time the running intervals get longer I think that I won't be able to do it, but every time I have completed every single interval without stopping!!  The real test will be tomorrow when I have to run 20 mins straight!  I know it's all in my mind, so if I think I can do it, I will be able to do it!

Joe went back to work last Monday, which means that Macy had her first day of daycare, and both girls are in daycare full-time now.  The reality of how broke we are is going to be setting in pretty quick.  Macy has just started crying, more like screaming bloody murder, when anyone other than Mom or Dad are holding her, so we were a little nervous about how she would do at daycare.  But she did great, didn't have too many crying episodes, and even smiled for them a bit!  Kara also had a great week at daycare last week.  She is normally full of meltdowns - meltdowns over anything and everything.  She had one rough day, other than that she did great - was even pretty great at home! 

Macy wiped out after her first day of daycare:

This week was a big week for Kara too, we went and looked at a preschool for her to start at next fall.  The preschool is through Beth's (our daycare provider) church.  Beth will transport the kids to and from preschool, so it's really our only option as most preschool schedules are not accommodating to working parent's schedules.  Kara was very excited, and loved the room she would be in. We have signed her up for a 4-day a week class that is a kindergarten readiness program.  It's hard to believe that she will be old enough for preschool this fall and kindergarten next fall!!

And a shot of Kara riding her bike, her favorite thing to do:

We have also been working on re-decorating our bedroom.  We have had the same red and grey walls, comforter, everything for about 7 years.  It was time for a change.  I really wanted to brighten up our room, and I think I accomplished it!

Here is a before shot:

Primer on the walls:

And a couple of after shots - the color we chose is called Extra Virgin Olive Oil - it's really hard to capture the color accurately in a photo:

And here is our amazing new bedding in our room:

We also bought a funky little Ikea chair to put in the corner to have a little reading nook.  I don't have any pics of that yet though.

That's all for now, I better post this before it never gets posted!  Hopefully I'll be back soon with an update on how I do with my 20 minute run!

Where has the time gone?

I thought my maternity leave was going to be a nice, relaxing time at home with my baby girl.  I thought I would be able to catch up on housework, get things organized, keep my blog updated, keep up on pictures...boy was I wrong!  Macy will be 5 weeks old tomorrow, I have had 5 weeks off work and I feel like I have been off about a week!  Christmas is a complete blur, did it really happen??  We have been so busy and I feel like we are just getting into a routine, barely...  So here is a little update of what I remember from the past 5 weeks!

When Macy was 4 days old we had to bring her to Children's Hospital Heart Center to have an EKG and an ultrasound of her heart.  While I was pregnant with her her heartrate was always very high and after she was born she had a murmur, so her doctor wanted to be sure that it was a normal murmur and nothing to be worried about.  Macy did really well hooked up to all those machines and in the end it was found that she had 2 small holes in her heart, but they are nothing to be worried about.  It's possible that one of the holes will close over time.  We go back when she is 2 months old to have her checked again.  Another thing that happened while we were here - they measured Macy and found that she was 18", but she was measured 21" at birth... so yeah, pretty sure that her length listed on her birth certificate is wrong.  At 3.5 weeks she is only 19.5 inches, oh well...

While we were at Children's we also had to go to the lab area to have her blood drawn to check her bilirubin levels since they had been elevated.  The results came back very high!  Her numbers went something like this from the day she was born 8.5 - 13 - 16.4, so they were rising, and rising pretty quickly.  It was determined at this point that she needed to have a biliblanket to help break down the bilirubin in her system, so a biliblanket was delivered to our house that night.  We hooked her up to the blanket and had to go back to the hospital on Saturday (the following day) to have her blood drawn again.  Let me tell you this - having blood drawn from your tiny little newborn baby is the hardest thing to watch!  And she had to have it done day after day.  So we stopped at the hospital on Saturday hoping for a real quick in and out visit.  First of all, we couldn't get to floor 3 where the Children's lab was.  No one mentioned to us that the Children's lab was closed on Saturdays.  After wandering around trying multiple elevators and not being able to get to the third floor we finally found some people to ask and found out that we had to go to the lab downstairs.. ugh!  Why do things have to be so difficult?  Her levels from this day were up to 17.8 - so she got to stay on the biliblanket for at least another day.  She ended up being on the blanket for almost a full week.  Finally on the following Wednesday her levels were starting to go down, so the doctor decided that she could come off the blanket.  Saturday was also the day of the Adams' Family Christmas - so after our adventure at the hospital we drove out to Ramsey to celebrate Christmas and let Macy meet the Adams' Family.  Christmas was a lot of fun and both Macy and Kara did great - thank goodness for Aunty Em keeping an eye on Kara for us!! :)

Macy in her biliblanket

At 6 days old Auntie Emily came out to our house to do Macy's first photo shoot.  Of course this is the day that Macy decided she didn't want to sleep, because we wanted a sleeping baby in pictures.  It's ok though, cause Emily got amazing pictures as always!

One of my favorite shots from the photo shoot

You can view all the images here

At 8 days old I had commented to Joe that I was so proud that we hadn't had to supplement any formula for Macy, she was 100% breastfed - which was huge cause I had some serious troubles breastfeeding Kara.  I was really proud of the fact that breastfeeding was going so well.  Yes, it was hard when she wanted to clusterfeed and be attached to me for hours at a time, but I knew that that was an important part of supply and demand, and I knew that breastfed babies should be fed on demand, so I dealt with it.  Then day 9 rolled around.  I had horrible chills to the point that I was shaking uncontrollably, my whole body ached, I felt completely miserable.  I would go from having the chills to being incredibly hot and sweaty, it was horrible.  After the second day of feeling like this I knew that I had mastitis.  Mastitis is what made me quit breastfeeding with Kara.  I got it when she was about 4 weeks old and it killed my supply, I tried for 2 weeks to build my supply back up, but it wasn't happening, so I gave up.  I was able to continue breastfeeding and pumping with Macy and made it through the 10 days of antibiotics and was still breastfeeding.  We did have to start supplementing with 1 or 2 bottles of formula a day, but for the most part she was getting breastmilk.  And then 1 week after finishing the antibiotics I started feeling really sick again, it came out of nowhere, but I knew instantly that it was mastitis AGAIN!  UGH!  This happened on a Friday night, I figured I would just call the on call Dr the next morning and get an antibiotic, well guess what, apparently the answering service for my doctor's office doesn't take messages on the weekend for prescriptions.. WTF?  They wouldn't let me leave a message, they told me I could go to the ER or wait until Monday.  I am still a little pissed about this and plan on talking to my doctor and the clinic manager, but I haven't had time for that yet.  I am almost done with my second round of antibiotics, and I'm really scared to be done with them, I just have this feeling that I am going to get sick again right when I come off them...

Other than all of the above, life has been great with two girls.  Macy is a great baby.  She really only cries when she needs a diaper change or needs to be fed, she sleeps good at night, she is just a good baby!  I really love the newborn stage, they are so cute and snugly, I could snuggle her all day long!

Kara is an amazing big sister.  When she came to the hospital to meet Macy she couldn't get in the room quick enough - she couldn't wait to hold her, it was adorable!  She loves to hold Macy, help me wash bottles, she brings Macy toys, blankets, pacifiers, etc..  She calls her 'her baby' and you can't just say that Kara is her sister, you have to say 'big sister'.  She does great with Macy, but has been acting out towards Joe and I.. for the most part she is good, but she definitely has her bad moments, which is to be expected I guess.

At 5 weeks post partum I have lost about 18 of the 50 pounds that I gained.  So now I get to try to lose 30 pounds, that should be fun!  I want to try to get into running again, I'm thinking I'll start the couch to 5k program as soon as I can.  I don't have a gym membership anymore, so I will have to run outside, and that's no fun when it's cold and icy.  Eventually I will get back into all my pre-pregnancy clothes, until then I will continue to wear the one pair of jeans that fit me every single day :)

Me and my lil babe

Joe will be laid off as of Tuesday.  It will be nice having him home more, but it will be hard living off two limited incomes.

Joe with Macy on her first visit to Surly Brewing Co. 

Macy in her Surly shirt

{Macy Amelia 12.12.11}

Monday, December 12th was my first day of maternity leave and I was 39 weeks 2 days pregnant.  I woke up early so that I could make it to the hospital by 7:30 am for a BPP and NST.  Before I left the house I was sitting at the kitchen table eating some cereal when I heard Kara open her bedroom door and she came and joined me for breakfast.  I told her that as soon as I was done eating she would have to go snuggle up in bed with daddy cause I had to go to the hospital to check on baby.  At that point Kara told me that the baby was going to be born today and asked who would pick her up from daycare.  I told her that grandma would pick her up, but only if the baby was born, if the baby wasn't born mommy would be picking her up... she told me that grandma would be there to pick her up, she also told Beth, our daycare provider, that grandma would be picking her up today cause the baby was going to be born.  I think she has some psychic abilities.

7:30 am - Arrived at hospital.  Started with the BPP, which is the ultrasound that they do to check on the baby.  I told the ultrasound tech that my 3 year old had predicted that the baby would be born today, she said she didn't like to hear that.  During the ultrasound she found barely any amniotic fluid, in the end the total measurement was just under 2cm, but the baby also had a full bladder and belly, so there was some additional fluid.  Then I had to move on to the NST where they monitor the baby's heart rate and my contractions, while I was having this done the doctor was reviewing the ultrasound and determined that today was the day!  So I had to call Joe and let him know not to start working cause he had to come to the hospital!  I didn't get to leave to go home and get my things, I got to go straight to labor and delivery.  Of course my doctor was on vacation, so the nurse had to try to figure out who was on call and let them know that I was being admitted.

9:00 am - admitted to labor and delivery.  I was brought straight back to a delivery room to have an induction started.  The plan was to get me on cervidil which softens your cervix and makes it more favorable for an induction.  I was about 2 cm dilated at this point, and when the nurse hooked me up to the monitors she discovered that I was contracting every 1-2 minutes, and I wasn't feeling anything!  This changed the plan, because they won't use cervidil if you are having regular contractions, so I got to wait while they figured out what they were going to do with me.

10:30 am - An IV and pitocin were started, and Joe finally arrived at the hospital.  He had to do lots of running around and pick up all of our hospital bags, get Kara's stuff packed up, etc... but he was finally at the hospital with me.

11:30 am - The only thing in the world that I could think about at this point was food.  I had only had a small bowl of cereal before I went in for my appointment, and I wasn't allowed to eat anything.  I could drink water up until I decided to have an epidural, but that was it.   I wanted a Davanni's hoagie incredibly bad.  I tweeted "I sure hope my baby is born before Davanni's closes.  I want a hoagie after I give birth." and guess what.. they responded and ended up sending me out 2 coupons for free hoagies and a Davanni's baby bib!!  Oh the power of social media!

1:30 pm - A doctor came in and broke my water and they inserted an internal monitor to better monitor the contractions, this gives a much more accurate reading of the strength of the contractions.  It was around this point that I started getting really uncomfortable and the contractions were getting pretty painful, but I wasn't sure that I was ready for an epidural yet.

2:45pm  - 3 cm dilated and ready for my epidural!  Getting the epidural hurt like hell - I don't remember feeling pain when I had an epidural with Kara, but this was baaaaad.  I don't know if it was cause I was having contractions while I was getting the epidural or what, but it was a burning, stinging, sharp pain... I don't ever want to deal with that again!  I did learn that when men get epidurals they get morphine prior to the epidural to help with the pain, women just get a small bit of numbing medicine.. WTF, not fair!  Anyway, the epidural hurt like hell, but of course ended up being a life saver!

4:00 pm - 4 cm dilated, feeling much happier now that the epidural is working like a charm.  Between checks from the nurse I was trying to sleep.  It had already been a long day, and I was feeling pretty worn out.

6:00 pm - 5 cm dilated.  Not much else to report at this time.... other than I was getting sick of only progressing 1 cm every two hours, I really thought things would move quicker.  Thank God they had cable in the hospital.. I got to watch all the crappy reality tv shows that I no longer get to watch at home!

8:00 pm - STILL 5 cm dilated.  At this point I was pretty sure that I was not going to be having my baby on 12/12.  The doctor who was going to be delivering Macy came in at this point and decided to stop the pitocin for a while and see what my body would do on it's own.  She also decided to have me sit up in bed for a while to hopefully help the baby move down, as she was still quite high.  The doctor decided to head home because she didn't think that I would be ready to push anytime soon.

8:30 pm - Extreme nausea.  Joe was trying to find something for me to puke in, and trying to call the nurse.  The nurse came in and I told her that I felt really sick so she had me lay back down on my side.  She said sometimes sitting up with all those meds can make you feel like that, so back to laying down I went.

9:00 pm - The contractions started to become extremely painful again, it almost felt like the epidural wasn't working at all.  I called the nurse again, she came in and I told her what was going on, so she checked me and guess what... I was fully dilated and effaced and ready to push!  So in one hour I went from 5cm with the baby still high to completely dilated and ready to push, no wonder I felt to sick!  The nurse called the doctor and told her to head back to the hospital cause it was time!

9:43 pm - I started pushing.  With Kara I pushed for 3.5 hours, so I was hoping for a much shorter time this time around!  At this point in the day I was so worn out and didn't want to push at all, let alone for 3 hours! I pushed and pushed and pushed... it felt like I wasn't doing anything, even though the doctor and nurse said I was.  It was a lot harder to push this time around and I think it was cause I could feel the pain, I have no idea how or why women decide to give birth without pain meds... maybe I just have a super low tolerance for pain, but man, I couldn't imagine going all that time without any pain meds.

10:09  pm - 26 minutes of pushing and Macy made her screaming entrance into the world!  She looked so tiny to me, and exactly like her big sister!  She was very covered in vernix (the white slimy stuff), she was so covered cause my amniotic fluid was so low, but she was my tiny, slimy, beautiful, perfect baby girl!   She weighed 7 pounds 1 ounce and was 21 inches long.  This may be TMI, but it's a part of the birth story... so I had an episiotomy (if you don't know what that is, don't google it - you don't want to know) anyway - I am glad that they allow you to hold your new baby and ooh and aah over the baby while they stitch you back up, it's a good distraction from the pain...and  that's all I'm going to say about that. 

Holding my sweet new baby girl.

 

Screaming baby on the scale

 

Proud Daddy

 Proud Mommy

Big sister Kara meeting Macy for the first time

Our first family picture

And another of the proud big sister

So there is the birth story and a few pictures for ya.  Macy is now 10 days old.. so I will start a new post on how the last week and a half has gone, it's been pretty hectic and the time is just flying by!  We are loving our sweet little Macy and trying to settle in to what it's like to be a family of four! 

The Countdown Has Begun!!

29 days and counting until baby Macy is due!!  These last fifteen seven months feel like they have gone by really fast, but it also feels like I have been pregnant FOREVER!  Only 4 more weeks to go though.. I can do it!

This pregnancy has been pretty non-eventful.  My last couple of visits Macy's heart rate has been kind of fast, but it's still within the normal range, so nothing to worry about.  I have started to prepare Kara's room to be a room for two.  Kara wants to play with everything that we get or take out though - she likes to be a mommy to all her little stuffed animals, so all the tiny stuff for Macy has become accessories for Kara's babies.  Which is totally ok with me at this point, I just hope we don't have a struggle when Macy is born and we need to take all these things back from Kara... 

Like we don't have enough on our plates trying to get ready for a new baby in our house right around the busiest time of year.... we now get to do a total remodel of our downstairs bathroom!  Joe had noticed that the toilet was leaking water, he thought it just needed a new seal at the base of the toilet - well guess what, he was wrong... water had leaked under the tiles, so he had to pull up all the tiles and take out the vanity.  Our bathroom looks a little like this:

Pretty, huh?  Joe took the day off work today to deal with this.. lucky him!  He bought new tile last night, so hopefully we will have a nice, new, unleaky bathroom soon!

A few other random thoughts:

Kara was Scooby Doo for Halloween - isn't she adorable??

MY child picked out a DRESS to wear for pictures.... willingly.. it was actually her idea!!

Now the challenge is to get her to wear it for pictures and have her cooperate

for pictures.  I think she can do it!

And, how cute are these matching I <3 Santa shirts I got for the girls??

I have to hope that Macy doesn't come too late, otherwise she may not be here in time for Christmas, but I'm still planning on having her early, so it's all good.

I really truly cannot wait to be done being pregnant.  I can't wait to stop having crazy cravings, I'm totally over the hip and sciatic nerve pain, I want to see Macy, I want to start running again, I want to do the 30 day Shred again, and I want to have a dang beer already!!

The Naming Dilemma

Many, many moons before Joe and I had really even talked about having kids we decided on the names Kara and Cameron for our future children.  Yet, while I was pregnant with Kara we couldn't agree on a name and finally decided on her name a month before my due date.

FF to the present day.  Pregnant with baby girl #2 and our girl name has already been taken.  I always preferred Cameron for a girl though, so that has been a top contender for baby girl #2's name.  This whole pregnancy I have been trying to find different ways to spell Cameron so it's more feminine (I didn't want her to grow up and start a job and get emails addressed to Mr. Cameron)...there's Kameryn, Kamryn, Camryn, Cameryn...but I really couldn't fall in love with any of these spellings, and we couldn't find a middle name that we loved.

I LOVED the name Macy while I was pregnant with Kara, but Joe wasn't so fond of it.  I don't want to say that I have been harassing Joe with the name Macy over the past few months, but I have kind of been harassing him with the name Macy over the past few months.  I just love it so much.  If I saw other people were going to use that name for their baby, or just saw it online or written somewhere I got a little sad that I would never be able to name my child Macy.  I'm not sure what happened, but something changed in Joe and he was coming around to the name Macy.  Now that Joe was coming around to Macy, I was set on Cameron... afterall, we had had the names Kara and Cameron picked for years and years, and they just sounded perfect together, so it was hard to think of using any other name to go with Kara.

I am happy to announce that we no longer need to refer to baby girl #2 as baby girl #2, she has a name!!!  And it's......drumroll, please......





Macy Mae!!!



Yay!!  So glad that we have finally picked a name, and we can start calling her Macy instead of baby girl #2!!

Surprise!!

I have been working on multiple blog posts about our surprise for over a month, but I just don't feel like finishing any of them, none of them seemed quite right... so here it is: 

We're having another baby! 

Here is the timeline of events:

• April 13th - Positive pregnancy test
• April 14th - 2nd Positive pregnancy test.. had to make sure the first one was right :)
• April 27th - First ultrasound to determine my due date, I found out I was 6 weeks 4 days pregnant with a due date of December 17th.  A Christmas baby!?!?!  I have always said how badly I don't want a Christmas baby, but I have gotten more used to the idea over the last couple months, so I think it will be just fine!
• June 1st - Second doctor appointment, at 11 weeks 4 days.  The doctor couldn't find the heartbeat, so she sent me on to the hospital to have another ultrasound... you could say I was freaking out a bit at this point.  Got to the hospital, had the ultrasound and saw the baby right away, moving, kicking, heart beating.. it was great!  Baby measured right at 12 weeks!

So, we found out I was pregnant at 4 weeks 4 days, and kept it a secret from most people until after the June 1st ultrasound... that was a long 7 weeks!  Especially since I feel like I look 6 months pregnant...

We told Kara right away, and she is super excited!  We bought Kara a 'Big Sister' t-shirt and she loves it, she wants to wear it constantly!  She is also obsessed with looking at pictures of the baby on my phone via the babycenter app.. which are obviously not pictures of our baby, but she thinks they are!  Last week she put her hand on my belly and said "The baby kicked my hand" haha, she is too funny!  Kara is 100% convinced that we are having a baby girl, and so far I am too... only a few more weeks and we will be able to find out!

Anyway, that is our big exciting surprise!  Now that it's out there expect lots of posts about cravings, mood swings, etc..... 

Here is baby at 6 weeks 4 days, heartrate 114, pretty much just a blob!

And here is baby at 11 weeks, 4 days, heartrate 167 - I tried to outline the baby because it is very hard to see in this picture, but on the ultrasound I could see the baby's head, body, arms, legs.. such a difference 5 weeks can make!