And ready to get serious! I’m all our of excuses and who likes excuses anyway?

I literally have NO MORE EXCUSES:

-The “I just had a baby” excuse expired when she turned 1
-The “I’m tired” excuse expired when she started sleeping 12-13 hours a night
-The “I’m nursing” excuse is rapidly going away

IT’S TIME! I’m getting this weight off. 7 years ago I went from 200 pounds to 124 pounds. I did it sensibly and steadily. I did it by cutting out the sugar, eating whole foods every 2-3 hours, writing down what I ate, and exercising.

It technically starts tomorrow for me (October 1st) but I’m ready to basically start TODAY. I packed my food today, I’ve already had my breakfast, snack, and lunch. I AM having a not as healthy as I want it to be dinner tonight but that’s to get it out of the house and not waste the food and it’s actually not that bad. Tomorrow-it’s ON!

I’m also restarting P90X on Monday morning.

I put together a dinner menu for the month of October last night and think I’ll plan my lunches every week

A good friend sent me a great lunch bag yesterday that will be fun to pack every night after Lucy goes to bed.

I also bought a new crock pot last night because my current crock pot cooks WAY too hot and dries out all my meat. I looked at reviews for crock pots and that was common complaint. My new one has great reviews and 2 friends have it and agree. It should get her on Friday. A crock pot is the working Moms best friend 😉

Oh oh oh! Guess what else I’ve been doing? Knitting! I almost have a sweater done for Lucy. I went to knit night last Wednesday and will be going again tonight.

I guess Lucy turning 1 really gave me the kick in the butt I needed.

BTW-Hawii was AWESOME. Here are some pictures:

Our Hotel is off in the distance:

Lucy our first day there:

The start of our 8 mile hike:

Super Dad:

Nursing Mom!:

What we hiked to see:

Family Portrait:

My hiking buddies:

An example of the craziness that we hiked up and down (Shaun really is Super Dad!):

I mean really:

Lucy and her friend Jessica:

Lucy decided to feed herself:

Poipu Beach (We forgot our camera for our favorite beach):

Mommy really wanted a picture with Lu and Lu wanted NOTHING to do with it:

Then we got a cute one but evidently my husband only thinks Lu is worth taking pictures of (notice my face on the left side of the picture):

The view at the end of another hike:

This hike was in the pouring rain-that’s not sweat-it’s rain!:

Wet Lu:

The army family:

Me, Shaun, Lucy, and our Hawaiian friends (who we LOVE) Kelli and Jessica:

My Hula Girl:

My favorite picture of all time:

Lucy Standing Unassisted in the Water:

Happy Girl!

I cleaned up all the Spam and installed the spam filter that Kath recommended. I already had it installed but it was inactive for some reason. Humpf.

I went yesterday and got my hair cut, my brows waxed, and another wax in preparation for Hawaii ;). I’ve been growing my brows out since the horrible threading incident of June 25th! I only remember the date because it was my wedding anniversary. I got a recommendation from a friend (with great brows), I looked up her recommendation on Yelp! and she had hundreds-literally HUNDREDS of great reviews. I went in and she took half of my left eyebrow off. Seriously. You can see it in this picture:

Notice how they are both VERY thin and the left one just disappears? It’s a shame too because threading really does a great job of removing the hair. I think the lady just had an off day and she messed up and rather than owning up to it she just made it worse. Oh well, it was a learning experience and my eyebrows are almost back to normal. It’s amazing how much better I feel when my brows look good <-- Wow that makes me sound like such a girly girl! I love that picture though. My husband's clone actually somewhat looks like me in that picture-I think it's the smile. Work is getting less hectic but it's still insane and OF COURSE they're making my last days in the office just jammed pack. ARG. I will NOT work past 5 PM tomorrow. I still have to pack! I have almost everything out but I have to physically put it in the suitcases and get everything ready. I was up at 12:30 last night worrying about that. Here's what my schedule DID look like: Up at 6:30-Nurse Lucy, Get Ready for Work 7:45-Drop Lucy off at Daycare 8:30-5:30 Work 5:30-Drive home-pick up Lucy on Tuesday and Thursday. 6-Make Dinner 6:30-Eat Dinner 7-Put Lucy down 7:30-Get Lucy's bottles and food ready for daycare 8-until I finished-Work-most nights 10 or 11 Sleep. Cut out the working after 8 and that's my day for the last 2 weeks or so. Still hectic but doable. Man getting dinner on the table by 6:30 is HARD. I think it's really important for us to eat as a family and I don't like making Lucy something different so most nights we eat as a family. Yes Lucy is eating what we eat now with a few supplements 😉 She is such a big girl. I have a TODDLER now. She's not quite walking on her own but she is OH so close. I don't know if she'll be walking by her first birthday but I'm sure soon after, I'll have a walker. Today I turned in my hospital grade pump. I only have one pump session left today. 2 tomorrow and then I get a break while I'm in Hawaii and then I'll only be pumping once a day for the following week and then I'm DONE. DONE. DONE. I am SO over pumping. I'm actually pretty much over breastfeeding but then we'll have these sweet sessions and I get all sad. I'll miss it but I'm ready to move on. It just means my little baby is growing up. Which is wonderful and sad (bittersweet) all at the same time. Okay, I should get back to it.

I’m still alive. It’s probably a bad time to “start” writing again since we’re leaving for Hawaii in 3 days (yippee btw!). I really miss writing and getting it all out. Once you stop, it’s hard to start again. Work just got too crazy for me to keep up on anything. I’m stalled at the same weight-7 pounds from where I was when I got pregnant. Sleep wins over working out most if not all days (I always said that I’d never be one of THOSE people and I am).

BUT

Life is really great. I LOVE my life and I’m so thankful for it. Lucy turns 1 in less than two weeks (OMFG!) and it’s seriously been the best year (by far) of my life. Hard but awesome. Once we get back from Hawaii weaning starts in earnest and I’m ready. I’ll miss it and it makes me sad that that chapter is ending but I’m ready to have my body back. I could actually go work out in the morning and not have to worry about A) my boobs exploding and B) how Lucy is going to get fed.

I should go to bed (I’m tapping this out on my iPhone) hopefully more tomorrow 🙂

I don’t know if anyone is even looking here anymore. But just in case-I’m alive. I’m so busy that I just checked my Gmail for the first time in 4 days. I’m in the middle of a HUGE project and I’ve been pulling 60+ hour weeks. It’s been awful. I miss my friends! I know that Sabrina is getting married THIS WEEKEND and I haven’t even gotten to read the pre-wedding freak outs or lend any support or excitement. I haven’t read any blogs since about June 15th. I miss you Kath!!! I miss everyone. I miss my life. I literally only have time to eat, sleep, work, and be with Lucy. Shaun only gets to talk to me because he lives with me!!! The only reason I’m able to write now is that I’m so run-down that I had to take a sick day today. I’m coughing, have a sore throat, the chills, the aches, everything. It’s my body’s way of saying STOP!!!

I hope it slows down and that I can find some balance and SOON because this is just not healthy.

In good news-I am getting up every morning and working out. I got P90X and I really like it. I’m a month in and about to start Phase 2.

I miss you all and hope to be back SOON!

Seriously? Titles suck 😉

I’ve been so insanely busy at work that I just haven’t had much time for outside stuff. We went camping this weekend and that was fun but it means that I was out of town 2 weekends in a row and now have a lot of catching up to do at home. It seems that I’m always playing catch up. Either at work, at home, or here! My grand plans of having this blog with 2 daily posts and I can’t even manage one a week. I’ve become one of those really annoying people who blogs about needing to blog.

With that said, I don’t know what to write. Well, I can give you some fun Lucy activity:

-She’s started scooting all around. No crawling but she is mobile!
-She started really babbling this weekend and says Da Da a lot. We don’t know if she knows that that is Shaun but we try to reinforce that Shaun=Da Da.
-She has about 4 teeth trying to poke through.
-She’s started eating chicken and black beans and now feeds herself finger foods!
-I’m going to get cauliflower for her to try this week-I still haven’t tried the coconut milk-maybe this weekend.
-Sleep is still a struggle but we’re working on it. Last night she went to sleep without my nipple in her mouth-baby steps right?!?!?!?

In fun Chelsea and Shaun news-our 4-year wedding anniversary is next week and we’re going out to dinner-just the 2 of us. The last time that happened was in February-I’d say it’s time, wouldn’t you?

I think Lucy has been reading my blog 😉 Ever since my last post she has been pretty close to her “old self”. She’s been happier at night and even lets Daddy play with her while Mommy is in the kitchen/laundry room/bathroom. She also slept 8 PM – 5:30 AM straight through last night!!! We think she’s been cold. It has gotten warmer here and so we had started to just put her in fleece footed pjs with no sleep sack. Well, Shaun though that maybe she wasn’t sleeping because she was cold and suggested the sleep sack last night. It may be a coincidence but she slept like her old self again-that sleep sack is going on tonight-that’s for sure!

We’re headed down to Monterey tomorrow night for the weekend. Shaun has a Mountain Bike race there on Saturday. He’s really been looking forward to this and has been training since January, so it should be a lot of fun.

Lucy gets new foods every Wednesday and Saturday. I can’t decide if she’s going to get black beans or coconut milk on Saturday. Since she can’t have any dairy, I thought the coconut milk would be a great source of fat but black beans would be a great source of protein. Hmmmm. You’d think this was rocket science-really, it’s just feeding a baby 🙂

Oh and this just cracked Shaun and me up. Someone in my 18-unit building posted this above the garbage chute on our floor:

Priceless.

WAS WRONG.

Lucy is going through separation anxiety plus trying to figure out all her emotions and learning how she can get what she wants without having a vocabulary.  It is kicking my butt.  What happened to my happy smiley baby? Sure she’s still happy and smiley alot of the time but she’s starting to throw tantrums and cry and not sleep.  It’s hard.  It’s really hard.  I guess I deserve it.  I had such an easy go of it and now it’s not so easy.  She’s also getting to be more fun-it’s weird.  Her little personality is emerging and we can play with her and know what makes her giggle and get her sense of humor but at the same time if we do something she doesn’t like (like take away the remote or my watch or the keyboard) she throws a tizzy fit.  We don’t give in but then there’s the sleep issue.  Sometimes she just doesn’t want to go to sleep and she’s screams and cries.  What do we do then?  I have never been a fan of the “cry it out” method but I was desperate the other night and tried it.  I let her cry for 5 minutes and then went in there to soothe her.  They tell you to not pick them up but to rather rub their backs and speak gently to them.  When she realized that I wasn’t going to pick her up she got PISSED and started wailing and then choking/gagging.  Of course I picked her up.  Oh and she doesn’t want Daddy through all of this.  If he tries to soothe her and rock her she flails her body, tries to hit him, and screams like someone is hurting her.  It’s exhausting. It took us 2 hours to get her down that night.

Last night she went down without a fight at 7:30 but then woke up at 9:30.  I nursed her and tried to put her back down but she did not want to go to sleep and started screaming.  I tried to soothe her for about 20 minutes but every time I would make a move to put her in the crib she’d start screaming.  Well, I was running on 3 hours of sleep and was tired so I brought her into bed with me and she slept on my chest (after screaming while laying on my chest for 15 minutes) until about midnight (I think?) At that point I put her in her crib.  She woke up at 5 to nurse and started fighting the crib again so I brought her into bed with me again.  Thus giving her exactly what she wanted BUT Mommy needs to sleep!

I know that this is a stage and that it will pass but it is just really hard.  Really, really hard.  I hope it passes quickly.

I have lots of exciting things to talk about!  But first I have to complain about ME.  Lucy woke up last night at 1:30 to eat (I think she must be growing because she ate A LOT yesterday) after I got her back down, I never went back to sleep. WTF?!?!?  That means I got maybe maybe 3 hours of sleep last night.  ARGH.  Oh well.

First I wanted to answer Monica’s question-I know I could have done it in the comments of my post that she commented  on but I’m too lazy so I’ll answer it here-I only keep track of how much milk I pump in my spreadsheet.  She only gets a bottle at daycare.  When we’re home she’s a boob feeder-thank GAWD!  I’ve only ever fed her a bottle once and it was because she was having trouble breathing and was biting me.  She much prefers the boob.

Next-fun stuff!

I planted my garden yesterday:

Tomatoes:

Cucumbers and Bell Peppers:

I should have veggies and tomatoes (aren’t they technically a fruit?) in about 60 days. WHIPPEE!!!

Second-We.Are.Going.To.Hawaii!!!!! WHIPPEE x2! My husband gave me a very good piece of advice about 2 years ago. When I wanted a baby BAD, I bugged and bugged and bugged him about it. He told me “If you stop talking about it, I’ll want a baby faster.” I didn’t say a word from that point on and what do you know? A month later he was ready for a baby. So I pulled the same tactic here and have not mentioned Hawaii for a week or so. Well last night he showed me a picture of a bike with a bike trailer for a kid (we’ve been looking into renting these locally) and he said “Doesn’t that look neat?” and I said “Yeah…we’ve been looking at those for a few days…” and he said “Yes, but this one is in Kauai!” I’m so excited-we’re going in September.

Third-Since we’re going to Hawaii in September we have to look at dates and Lucy’s birthday is in September (on the 22nd to be exact). I don’t want to be in Hawaii for her actual birthday since I’d like her to have a cupcake on her birthday and she’s allergic to both dairy and soy. Which means I’ll need to make her birthday cupcake for her and even though we’ll have a kitchen at the condo where we’re staying, making cupcakes would be difficult. I know a silly reason but a very valid one to me. Additionally, I want Lucy’s birthday party to be close to her birthday and if we went to Hawaii over her birthday that would cancel out the 2 weekends closest to her birthday. Which brings me to my point. You still with me? I’m an super planner person and so I’ve been thinking about Lucy’s first birthday party for quite some time. I’m not alone though because Shaun said to me 2 weeks ago, “wouldn’t the park be a perfect place for Lucy’s birthday party.” My thoughts exactly sir! Her party is going to be Very Hungry Caterpillar themed and then that theme will no longer be an option because I don’t want Lucy or myself to OD on it. I also want to do cupcakes for the party and thought that I would make them in the shape of the caterpillar. Well a foodie friend of mine (who has not heard my plans) just sent me a blogpost to show me this picture:

Other very cute cakes can be seen here.

I doubt I can do the fondant but this was very close to what I was imagining so now I have a blue print!

See? Those were 3 very exciting things!

I miss it but I’m so uninspired! Argh. I spend all my time on the dang computer.

In exciting news I’m going tomorrow to get some EarthBoxes so that I can grow tomatoes, cucumbers, and bell peppers on my 12’x5′ balcony. Urban Farming! I’m seriously SO excited-I can’t wait. Maybe this will make me excited about food again?

Last weekend Lucy and I had a playdate and my friend Laurin took this picture of Lucy and me-I love it!

I had to dig into the last of my freezer stash this week and use up all of my frozen breastmilk. What this means is that I have to produce enough in my pumping sessions everyday to replace what Lucy eats at daycare. She normally eats 16 ounces a day. I used to produce about 20 ounces a day. It dropped down to 14 ounces and then I started using all the tricks I talk about here. And I bumped my production back up to about 15-18 ounces a day (yes I have a spreadsheet). In recent weeks my supply is more like 10-14 ounces a day-not the 16 that I need. I can counteract this by pumping over the weekend and using that to supplement what I pump during the week but by the end of the week I’m all out of breastmilk. So I’ve started supplementing with 1-4 ounces of formula a day. Slight issue-my baby is allergic to milk and it turns out allergic to soy. Most formulas are milk or soy based. I called Lucy’s pediatrician yesterday to ask for a prescription for hypo-allergenic formula (which is really expensive) and thankfully they gave me 5 cans of the stuff (saving me like $200). They also recommended that I start drinking a beer every night! They said that the yeast used in the fermentation process helps with milk supply (which would explain why Brewer’s yeast is helpful). The advice nurse recommended O’Doul’s but screw that-I’m gonna have a real beer! I already drink occasionally-very little gets through into breastmilk and I almost always do it after Lucy has gone down for the night. If I have to choke down a beer (I really don’t like the taste) I’m going to drink the real thing! I did get the O’Doul’s last night because I wasn’t sure if the recommendation was O’Doul’s specific-it’s not. The O’Doul’s actually wasn’t that bad but I do think I’m going to become a Guiness girl. I’m going to try at least. Let’s hope this works!