Back At It...

I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again - I NEED TO START BLOGGING MORE!!

I need to use this as a place to keep you updated on what is going on in Kara and Macy's life.  Ok, I'll be honest - I use it as my scrapbook/baby book/memory log for the girls, so I need to keep it updated so that in 10 years I can remember the first food Macy ate, her first words, when she took her first steps, how Kara's first day of preschool went, when Kara lost her first tooth.  Am I the only parent out there that doesn't have scrapbooks or memory books for my kids? Please say no so that I don't feel like such a horrible parent!! :)

Let's start with the girls - Kara has started going to preschool at Sonshine Preschool at Rose of Sharon Lutheran church.  We are lucky enough that our daycare provider will drive Kara to and from preschool.  If we didn't have that option, Kara wouldn't be going!  I don't know how any working parents can work around preschool and half-day kindergarten schedules, it's ridiculous! Anyway, she is absolutely loving preschool and is learning so much!  Pretty soon she will be smarter than Joe and I combined.  They are starting the year off by learning colors and in the next week or two they will start learning numbers, and then move on to learning letters.  They practice writing their names everyday and Kara can now write her name all by herself, granted the letters aren't in the correct order, but she's getting there! :)

Kara also had a birthday back in August that we haven't talked about yet.  In true Kara fashion, she wanted a Lightning McQueen (the red car from the movie Cars) birthday party, and the only thing she asked for was a Lightning McQueen Power Wheel.  Let's just say that she got what she wanted!

Macy is our happy little chunker!  She started crawling just after 7 months and quickly learned how to pull herself up onto everything.  We have to constantly keep an eye on her to prevent her from eating everything off the floor or hurting herself!  She is quite a handful at times!  She has started waving, blowing kisses, clapping and giving high fives in the last month or so.  I still cannot believe that she will be 1 in just 2 months!!  She says bye-bye, momma, dadda, tries to say clap - I'm still waiting for her first real word, Kara's was pinetree - I'm hoping Macy has a good first word like that!  She has taken a few steps in the last week and I think she will be walking very soon, and then we are really in trouble!  She also has this new obsession with licking things, particularly the floors, but she'll lick pretty much anything.  At her 9 month appt she weighed in at 20 pounds 6 ounces and was 28.5 inches - she's about the same size at 9 months as Kara was at 1 year!  She's got 2 cute lil teeth so far, but with the way she's been acting lately I'm guessing that a few more are working their way through.

Joe and I ran (I'm using the term ran VERY loosely here) Joe's first 5k on July 15th.  We did The Color Run - they throw this powdered color on you at each kilometer and by the end you are covered in color, it was a great time!  The running part was not so great.  It was about 98 degrees out that morning, I felt super dehydrated and just couldn't run.  Every time we reached one of the color stations things came to a complete halt.  Overall I think our time was about 41 minutes, but that's not important, all that matters is that we had fun! 

A shot from afar of one of the color throws that happened every 15 minutes at the finish line.

Do you love the hand print I left on Joe's back?

Most of the crew - Me, Joe, Meghan, Emily and Christina - not pictured Roger, Riana, Megan and Ian

After our first, and hopefully not last, 5k together

Back in June when I last blogged, I was at 38.4 pounds lost - since then I have lost another 17.6 pounds for a total loss of 56 pounds, total of 73 since Macy was born!!  The last 6 weeks or so I have been fluctuating up and down the same 5 pounds.  Which I mostly blame on my beer consumption on the weekends :)  

Here's what 73 pounds lost in less than 10 months looks like - and trust me, if I can do it you can too!

I just finished week 4 of an 8 week group strength training class that is offered through work.  If I go to at least 13 of the 16 classes I get fully reimbursed.  Here is the structure of the class:

First 20-25 minutes is a circuit of 12 exercises.  8 of the exercises are weight machines - chest press, shoulder press, tricep extensions, lat pulldown, leg press, leg curl, bicep curls and calf raises - the other 4 in the circuit are considered 'the line' these are cardio exercises that change up every week, but have included things like burpees, jumping squats, jump onto a bosu, things like that...

The next 15 minutes we do different exercises each week, which include - planks, up and down planks, planks on a bosu, push ups, crunches, squats with shoulder press, supermans, and all sorts of core work, but I don't know what those exercises are called.

Then the last 5 minutes we do stretches and use foam rollers to roll out our tight, sore muscles.

I am really enjoying this class, and I will be so sad when it's over!  Another cool thing about this class is we did a pre-fitness assessment and bod pod assessment and will get to do them again at the end of the 8 weeks to measure our progress.  The fitness assessment includes doing as many push ups and crunches as you can, one time maximum leg press, one time maximum chest press and a flexibility test.  The bod pod uses air displacement to accurately measure muscle mass vs. fat mass - it was pretty cool!  My body fat was measured at 28.6% which is in the 'moderately lean' category - this totally blew me away!!  I for sure thought I would be in the 'excess fat' category!  I'm super excited to do it again at the end of the 8 weeks and see how much progress I have made!

Things I'm happy about with my weight loss:

• I weigh 20 pounds less than I did BEFORE I was pregnant with Macy (and remember that I gained 51 pounds while pregnant and she is not even 10 months old)
• The weight on my driver's license is more than 20 pounds higher than my current weight!!
• I'm 10 pounds less than the lowest weight I ever got after I had Kara (and I was only at that weight for about 1 week!)
• I wear a size smaller pants than I did before I got pregnant with Macy - since February I have gone from a size 20 to a size 11!
• I feel like I am finally making progress with running

Speaking of running - I ran two other 5ks since my last post - the Big Gay Race to support Minnesota United For All Families - VOTE NO!!! - and the MMRF 5k to support Joe's aunt who has Multiple Myleoma.  Both of these 5ks were in the same weekend, and both were PRs for me.  The Big Gay Race I finished in about 35:30 and the MMRF 5k was just over 33 mins!  Wooohoo!!  I track all my running on dailymile and runkeeper - be my friend if you are on either of those sites!

Alright, I must go to bed now.  Thanks for reading, I promise to update more frequently :) 

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!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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!

Oh, poop!

On my way home from work on Friday I got a text from Joe saying that Kara had pooped on the toilet and we were going to have a special dinner that night!!  Kara has been wearing underwear for a year and a half, but would not poop in the toilet.  At one point she was only pooping at daycare during naptime when she had a diaper on, once she wasn't wearing diapers at daycare anymore she would ask us for a diaper every time she had to go.  We have offered everything we could think of as a reward/incentive to get her to go on the toilet, but she didn't care, she wanted to poop in a diaper... so her pooping on the toilet was HUGE!!  After she pooped on the toilet Friday night Joe and I decided that we would not give her anymore diapers anymore, she would have to go on the toilet.  The rest of the weekend she didn't go.  Anytime she had to she would throw a royal fit and scream and yell for a diaper, but we didn't cave.  Finally on Monday she was pacing all over the house, we could very clearly tell that she HAD to go.  I told her she was either going to go in the toilet or she would have an accident.  She tried to convince us to put her in a diaper any way that she could think of, but she wasn't going to poop in the diaper.. yeah right!  Finally Joe brought her in the bathroom, set her on the toilet and she went!! WOOHOOO!!  We told her again that there were no more diapers and she would have to go on the toilet every time that she needed to go.   After she went she asked to get her camera from grandma and grandpa's house, this is a reward they have had waiting at their house for her for months!!  Joe and Kara drove out in the snow to get her camera, and she was so excited!  So today, Tuesday, she has gone poop on the toilet nine10 times, yes, you read that right...9 TIMES and now 10 TIMES and now we are up to 11 Times!!, and it's only 6:00 pm!!  haha, Joe said she needs to find a new hobby.  I am so proud of her, and so, so, so glad that we seem to be over the fear of pooping on the toilet!

On to me... Last week was pretty rough on my diet and exercise.  In the end I gained 2 pounds, but I am still down 6 overall... so that's a plus, and much better than what I was expecting.  I am working hard this week at counting calories and I started the Couch 2 5K program on Sunday, so I am hoping that will help motivate me to get to the gym at least 3 times a week.  The Couch 2 5K is a 9 week program, 3 workouts a week, in the end you are supposed to be able to run a full 5K.. wouldn't that be nice?  You can check out the program here.  There is also a nice free app for the android phone, you can listen to your own music and there is a beep every time you are supposed to switch from walking to running, it worked great for me on Sunday when I tried it out!  Hoping to get to the gym tonight for day 2!

I have also become rather obsessed with crocheting lately.  I learned how to crochet about 3.5 years ago, but I was taught wrong, so nothing ever turned out right for me.  I took some time to read my crochet book and look up stuff online and I think I finally have it figured out.  I am currently making infinity scarves.. I have made 8 so far, only 2 for me!  I also made super cute hats for the girls, a couple of headbands for Macy, a hat for Joe and a Valentine's hat for Macy.

Here are a few of the things I have made:

On to Macy, she is an eating machine!!  She eats 4 ounces just about every 2 hours on the dot!  She still sleeps through the night, which is awesome, so I guess she's just making up for all the ounces she isn't eating overnight.  She has found her hands and is constantly trying to get them into her mouth.  She has also starting reaching and grabbing for toys on her play mat.  I just love her!

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