1. Standing, Babbling and Photos
2. The gender, it is determined!
3. Photos

We left Target defeated and for hours afterward I felt like the worst mom ever because Elias wouldn’t have a costume for the special activities planned at his pre-school (which he still attends a few days a week.) Right before I went to bed, I remembered my mom brought over a Superman t-shirt and I remembered my step-father’s almost standard Halloween costume of wearing a Superman shirt under a suit.

It may not be the best costume, but it’s something and it’s cute!

Noah does not have a costume. I’m not spending $10+ on something he’ll only wear once for our own amusement. We’re not going trick-or-treating or to any parties and as I said before, I’m not crafty enough to make something for him.

1. Trick-Or-Treat!
2. Sewing
3. Scratch Scratch

I’ve never had to get up in the middle of the night with him. He nurses all through the night and is happy to stay asleep when I’m snuggled up next to him. I’m so thankful that I have enough supply to get him through his night feedings without having to get up and supplement like I did with Elias. Noah has really blessed me in the bedtime department and I really hope this doesn’t change. Elias was always a great sleeper, but Noah brings a new definition to the term. Until he was around 18 months, I kept expecting Elias’ sleep patterns to change and for him to suddenly turn into a crappy sleeper, but that never happened. I have the same fears for Noah, but I’m more confident that he’ll remain a good sleeper.

I’m always hesitant to write about my good sleepers because they naturally like sleep and so many other parents struggle to get their babies to sleep or keep them asleep. I don’t want to forget how blessed I am.

1. Night #3
2. Sleepy Face
3. Sleep

I’m not sure I succeeded in any of last week’s goals. In fact, I know I didn’t. I know I’m drinking more water lately, so I’m very close there. I totally got distracted and didn’t put together a meal plan, but Mark’s found a few nice new recipes for us to try. He’s making one of them now. Exercise is not my strong suit, but I’m happy to say I’ve done at least 30 minutes of exercise in the past 3 days. I may not be Biggest Loser material, but I’m doing better than before… that’s something, right?

My goals this week are simple:

1. At least 30 minutes of exercise daily. Shoot for an hour.
2. Drink at least two 32 oz bottles of water daily
3. Make healthy choices

I’m really happy that I’ve started exercising daily and truly hope I will be able to keep it up. Fitting it into my day is proving to be a struggle and so far I wouldn’t have been able to do it at all without Mark’s help. I tried getting up an hour earlier this morning to exercise, but Noah just wasn’t happy with that decision. Mark had to get up with me to entertain him while I exercised. I’m grateful for that, but I don’t see Mark getting up at 6:30 every day.

I’ve been doing some yoga, which I’ve never really tried before. I can see the appeal! It takes a lot of concentration and really works out specific muscle groups. I’ve been feeling often unused muscles all day today and it feels good.

This week I’m down to 222.4 lbs, which is a 1.8 lb loss from last week and a 4.2 lb loss overall. A slow start, but any loss is a good one!

1. Body After Baby : Week Two!
2. Body After Baby : Week One!
3. Bah

We decided earlier in the week to go out to dinner at Kani House for Mark’s birthday with some of his friends. The hibachi experience for groups is awesome. The food isn’t really anything special in my opinion, but I always have fun when I go.

We’ve never seen Elias enjoy food so much. He refused to eat even a bite of his lunch (beef stroganoff) so we knew he’d be hungry. He was a bit fussy when they brought out the soup because he wanted to feed himself, but once the salad got there and he could shove food in his mouth at his leisure, he perked up. He had a great time watching the chef and all the flames. He LOVED the ginger dressing on the salad. Mark offered him one of his sushi rolls and to our astonishment, he gobbled it up and ate another one. We got him his own meal and I’m glad we did because he ate most of it. We got a kid’s tempura combo with fried chicken and shrimp and some tempura fried sweet potatoes (which was delicious).

I wasn’t sure how Noah was going to react, but he didn’t issue one cry of complaint. We got a high chair for him, but he looked so lonely sitting there that I put him in my lap a few minutes after we sat down and he stayed there through the whole meal. He was more than happy to sit there, look around and drool all over the two of us.

After dinner, everyone came back to our place and a few more friends who couldn’t make it to dinner came over. Elias absolutely loved the company. He’s a little social butterfly no matter how shy he acts at first. Noah was wiped out and slept a lot of the evening away. I went to the back to nurse him down around 7:30 thinking I’d be back out before 8pm to see Elias to bed. Elias apparently asked Mark to go night night shortly after Noah and I retreated to the bedroom though. Shockingly, Noah didn’t wake up once all night after he was nursed down.

We all just watched TV (a Florida gators football game since our friend’s a fan), played video games and chatted away. Some friends brought Cranium, but I seemed to be the only person interested in playing it versus watching one person play a car racing video game so it just sat there. Everyone left after the football game and by about midnight I was cuddled up next to a soundly sleeping Noah.

It was a great day. We need to get out more because the boys love it!

1. Tonight
2. Mr. Personality
3. Elias’ Adjustment

I thought maybe we could make long hair work on him, so when his daycare teacher offered to just trim his bangs, we let her. She did a great job and it got his hair out of his face for a while, but it was clear that his hair is still too fine to be kept long.

Finally we decided to bite the bullet and pay a little extra to take Elias to a kids hair cutting salon. We went to Circus Cuts Salon in Duluth and were there minutes after they opened as I didn’t want to wait very long. Ms. Mia greeted us and spoke directly to Elias. She was ready to take him immediately, so we got him right up into the cool motorcycle chair and we chose Sesame Street from a small selection of videos for him to watch while his hair was cut.

Elias sat there in silence watching Elmo and occasionally pointing him out to us while Ms. Mia cut his hair without any problem at all. She remarked several times that he was the best first haircut she’s ever had! I suspect this might have something to do with his age. Ms Mia was finished within ten minutes or so and Elias was given a dum-dum and cookie monster hand stamp as a prize for being such a big boy!

I’m so glad we got his hair cut! It’s wonderful to clearly see his big, beautiful brown eyes and expressive brow. Although pricey, I’m so glad the whole ordeal was a pleasant experience for all.

1. Haircut!
2. Haircut – Style Curly
3. haircut

My goals for the first week were to drink at least 60 ounces of water a day and try to cut out junk food and soft drinks. I don’t feel I did very well in this regard.

I have a 32 ounce water bottle and most days, I didn’t get through a full bottle of water. The past two days were the first days I met my goal, but today I’m not sure I’ve had any water at all yet!

We had more take-out this week than we should have. I also had some candy and cookies. I’m not proud.

Mark and I have been watching The Biggest Loser to try to get inspired to lose weight. We’ve gone on more walks this week than we normally do. It’s been really nice to get out as a family and walk around our apartment complex’ beautiful grounds. I don’t really count this as exercise, but movement and fresh air is beneficial for everyone.

This week, my goals are going to be more specific since I’ve shown I do things half-assed when I say I’m going to “try” them:

• Drink 2 full water bottles (32 ounces each) per day.
• Develop a weekly meal plan to execute starting week 3. I will publish this meal plan next week. I want to give us time to put it together, shop for it and implement it.
• Walk 10 full flights of stairs daily. To me, a full flight is walking up and down a set of stairs. I live in an apartment on the 2nd floor and work on the 8th floor of a building, so it shouldn’t be too difficult for me to add stair walking to my daily routine.
• Walk at least 15 minutes/day This is week 2’s mini challenge. I rarely get 15 minutes all to myself during daylight hours so I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to fit this in yet, but I will find a way. Maybe I can take Teyla on walks in the morning. I know she’d appreciate that.
• Get contact lenses and start wearing makeup daily. I have an eye appointment this afternoon and I hope I’ll be getting at least a test pair of contacts until my order comes in. I wear disposables and ran out of new contacts long before Noah was born. I’ve been wearing solely my glasses since his birth and it’s annoying. I used to wear makeup to work daily and now I very rarely do. Wearing makeup to work is something I started doing the first time I lost weight to build my confidence and I think it’s something I need to start again.

I’ve decided that I want to lose 2 pounds a week total during this 8 week challenge, so my goal weight on the final day of the challenge is 210.6 lbs.

Last week, my weight was 226.6 lbs. This week, despite my very poor efforts to diet, my weight is 224.2 lbs. While I’m excited at the lower number, I’m disappointed in myself and hope week 2 can really motivate me to make better choices every day.

1. Body After Baby : Week Three
2. Body After Baby : Week One!
3. Eye Makeup

I wish we would have bought a high chair in a neutral color, but when we got it for Elias, I was only concerned with how cutesy it looked. Oh well! Now to finish putting away the boxes in the dining room left over from our March move so we have a place to set the high chair out of the way!

I really can’t believe my baby boy can sit in a high chair now!

1. Space
2. Dining Room – Done!
3. Clean!

Before I got pregnant with Elias, I weighed around 188 pounds, down from 260 pounds the previous year.

While pregnant with Elias, I got up to 226 pounds. Within a month of having him, I was back down to 190 and so happy that my weight loss prior to being pregnant wasn’t lost. Then I got my Moby and could eat any old crap I wanted to eat again. I filled up on junk food and before long, I was right back up to about 230 pounds.

I was around this weight when I found out I was pregnant with Noah. I did my very best to make better nutrition choices in my 2nd pregnancy and to my surprise, I only gained maybe 4-5 pounds total. (I most definitely was not trying to keep myself from gaining weight, just tried to eat better.) A few days after Noah was born, I was 210. I weighed myself just a couple weeks ago and it read 217. To take part in this challenge, I stepped on the scale again and to my dismay, I am now back up to 226 pounds.

I’m very excited for this challenge. I know I can do this because I’ve done it before.

Week One focuses on water. This is an excellent place to start because your body just doesn’t function right if it isn’t properly hydrated. When I lost weight before Elias, the biggest change I made to my lifestyle was to cut out soft drinks and drink a lot of water. Probably around 60-90 ounces a day.

My goal for this week is to drink at least 60 ounces of water and make a concerted effort to cut out junk food and soft drinks. I’m not looking forward to giving up junk food… really.

And now for the embarrassing part: before photos. (At least I hope they’re going to get better than this or it will be doubly embarrassing!)

1. Body After Baby : Week Two!
2. Updates
3. Weight Gain. Blah.

Noah:

Total:

Whenever breastfeeding comes up, I feel the need to explain myself. Not so much because I feel guilty, but because I don’t want to give people the impression that what I am facing in regard to breastfeeding is normal, because it isn’t.

I’m in the process of writing up my breastfeeding story with more details, however since I’m posting these ribbons on my new site to people who don’t know my history, I thought I’d take the opportunity to very briefly summarize my breastfeeding situation. Most of my breastfeeding plights have been captured in my archives if you want to dig through them.

I have chronic low supply caused by insufficient glandular tissue. Elias received at most a few ounces of milk from me a day and was primarily supplemented. I stopped nursing him entirely by 6 months because I couldn’t pump and my milk completely dried up after going back to work.

I still have low supply issues with Noah, but he requires MUCH less supplement. In fact, we’ve recently been able to reduce the amount we’re supplementing each day which really delights me! I am able to pump between 2-4 ounces a day while at work. I hope to continue nursing Noah until he weans, even if he is not receiving 100% of his nutrition from my milk.

1. Booyah!
2. Boob Nazi
3. Breastfeeding Update