Birthday Babies!

It's official, today the boys are one year old! What a year! We had their party on the third and it went pretty well. The boys loved their cakes, Brennan especially - he had it everywhere and the whole cake was almost gone by the time we took it from him.

This morning luck was with me and I happened to look at the clock right at the exact minute Brennan was born. I gave him a kiss on the forehead and wished him Happy Birthday. A minute later I did the same for Carter.

The boys are getting pretty close to walking more and more. They take steps in a row by themselves and can get a few feet without help, but then they lose balance and topple over. I think we'll have full-time walkers pretty soon.

Evan's home with me again today. We let my mom and dad borrow the car seat out of Kevin's truck so he could spend the night with them last Friday. When we left their house yesterday we forgot to grab it and it's such a pain to take Evan's seat out of the van since you pretty much have to take one of the babies' seats out to get to it. So he's here sitting next to me on the couch playing with his Elmo doll.

These days at home are coming to an end and I'll be returning to work in the very near future. I wasn't quite prepared when my father-in-law came to us to inquire about me coming back as soon as possible. I don't really want to get into details, but I had finally submitted to what I thought was going to be my future for the next 4 or 5 years: being a stay-at-home mom until they were all in school, so it took me a few days for this to really sink in. Daycare is just so expensive, but it looks like we'll be forking over some serious dough and making things work.

My diet went in the crapper this weekend and I gained a pound back from eating crap. The sad part is, it wasn't even worth it because eating junk makes me feel so gross now that my body isn't used to it anymore. Hopefully I'll see the scale go back down tomorrow morning. Now some good news, at my last workout I dead lifted 135 pounds - it felt pretty awesome to see two of the big 45 lb weights being added to the bar instead a bunch of the smaller weights.

A new adventure

Brennan has been munching away at his crib rails lately and it's starting to get bad. Carter is doing it too, but he doesn't seem as chomp happy. I started looking into crib teething guards to protect the wood, but our cribs are really thick and most products out there don't work well. I turned to etsy, thinking maybe I'd try to purchase something handmade. Each set was $75 dollars! I then thought to myself "well, they don't look that hard to make..." and decided to research the cost of sewing machines. I found one on Wal-Mart's website that was only available online, but was only $80, plus shipping, which was a whopping 97 cents! It also had rave reviews from amateurs and professionals, so I decided to take a leap of faith and make the purchase.

The machine came in today, so naturally I was pretty excited to get all of my supplies purchased. I packed up the boys and found a fabric and craft store in the next town over. We pulled in, I got the boys out of the car, into their stroller, and then into the store only to realize that they were moving. There was pretty much nothing in the store; 75% of the shelves were completely empty. I looked up and saw a sign that said, "come visit our new location!" and had the address listed. I then take the boys back out to the car and punch the address into the GPS.

We make our way to the store, boys packed into the stroller and walk in, only to realize they haven't even opened this store yet. I was really disappointed. This whole trip had already taken 50 minutes and I had nothing to show for it.

From there I decided to drive to Wal-Mart. I remembered seeing supplies there, but couldn't remember if they had fabric or not. I loaded up on all of the essentials, but they didn't carry any material so I was SOL on that front. I'm happy they at least had most of the basics that I needed to get started though, and I probably ended up spending less money on them there than at some specialty store.

A few of the girls from the message board suggested I try looking for some other stores and gave me a few names. Turns out the next town over has two of the bigger fabric and craft chains in addition to the one I had no success with. I guess we know where my field trip for tomorrow is going to be. :)

I'm back, baby!

I actually made it to the gym today! Jordan ended up charging me for just one of the three sessions I missed last week due to the plague that was in our house. We started things off with a set of 10 squats, then moved on to cleans with a 20 lb ball. After that I did some new, weird stretch against the wall. I immediately saw the benefits of it though, so that gets a thumbs up.

The exercise of the day was the clean and jerk. I started out with just the bar, 45 lbs. and progressed up to 75 lbs! Jordan was extremely excited for me and was really happy with my results - he usually doesn't get the opportunity to teach this to most clients.

The workout of the day was 9 minutes total; 3 minutes of sumo dead lifts with just the bar, as many as I could do in 3 minutes. Then I went immediately into 3 minutes of kettle bell swings, and then 3 minutes of push ups. I only ended up with around 120 reps for the entire 9 minutes, so it was a pretty crappy "score", but my hands kept cramping up into something I like to call "the claw". Three hours after I was done working out I was still having problems with them.

I'm going back tomorrow at 11:00 for another session, then again on Friday. I must be a glutton for punishment.


Today after taking the boys outside to swing, I brought them in for diaper changes. I finished with Brennan and sat him on the floor in our bedroom. I had Carter up on the bed and was halfway through his diaper change when out of the corner of my eye I see Brennan smack his face into the the corner of our bed frame. Of course he cried, so I picked him up (Carter was still half naked on the bed) and I immediately noticed blood in his mouth - a ton of it. I kept my wits about me and didn't panic. I'm actually really good in situations like this. I put him down for just a second so I could put Carter down on the floor (still no diaper on) so that he wouldn't fall off of the bed.

I picked Brennan up and took him to our bathroom and started to clean his mouth out with water to see where the injury was. After much inspection, I finally found the source - he had torn his top frenulum; that little flap of skin in between your lips and gums. I took him to the kitchen to grab a cold, wet paper towel and let him chew on it, by this time the bleeding had almost stopped. I brought him back into the bedroom, looked down, and noticed a dark, moist line coming from right in front of where Carter was sitting and stretched out about a foot in front of him. He had peed on our newly cleaned carpets. Awesome!

Sick

So we quickly figured out that the babies' problems this weekend with the lack of sleeping was due to a virus. They had diarrhea while we were down there, but I honestly thought it was from my parents feeding them nothing but fruit all day long. Hellooooo fiber! But it turns out that was not the case.

Evan ended up catching it as well. Yesterday morning he woke up and said his butt hurt. I thought he was just constipated, but a minute later figured out I was wrong. This horrible smell quickly filled the room and I checked his pull up (thankfully he wasn't in underwear since it was right after he woke up!) It was like poo soup had flooded his pants. I took him into the bathroom, and once again, thankfully there was no dripping or leaking because we had just had the carpets cleaned the day before! As soon as I opened up the side of his pull up it was like the levee broke. It was everywhere! Even on my pajama pants. Sorry for the grossness if you're still reading!

I got him cleaned up and a new pull up on, there was NO WAY we were going to chance it with underwear. Daddy left and called school on the way out to tell them Ev wouldn't be there. Ten minutes later, as he was laying with me in bed and watching Dora, he puked all over my mattress and blankets.

The rest of the day went okay, but just as I was thinking he'd get to go to school tomorrow (they have a 24 hour rule), he had another bout of diarrhea. He's here with me again today and seems to be doing just fine.

I however am not doing so well on the workouts this week because of this stupid virus. I missed my session on Monday and Jordan was kind enough to reschedule me for Wednesday...and then Evan got sick. So now it will have been a whole week since my last workout when I go back tomorrow. It's going to suck so bad!

Sleepless in Dittmer

Yesterday Kevin and I had a large list of things we needed to get done around the house before the boys' birthday party on July 3rd. We sent the babies off to my mom and dad's house. Actually, I woke up, packed their bags, and drove all three down there by myself with the intention of Kevin getting an early start on his outdoor chores. The heat index was supposed to be somewhere around 105, so it get's hot early. It's an hour drive down there, I spent half an hour visiting, and then another hour on the road going back home to start the chores. I fully expected Kevin would have had a few things crossed off of the list by the time I got back.

Boy was I wrong. He went right back to bed after I left, got up for what I presume was a window of about fifteen minutes to shovel down some cereal, and then went back to bed. I was fuming when I came inside to find him snoring and snuggled into the covers.

Anyway, the plan was to hammer out our housework, and drive back down to my parents' place to spend the night. We had to go back down because they had tickets to an event with some of Dad's coworkers. Little did we know we were about to walk into the fiery pits of hell. It turns out the babies had only napped about half an hour the entire day. They were completely over tired and over stimulated. We managed to get them off to bed for the night pretty easily. Around 10 o'clock we all headed to bed. The babies were each in their own pack 'n play, and Evan was in between Kevin and I...but we were all in the same bedroom. Can you see where this is going?

Their house has ridiculously high vaulted ceilings and hardwood floors throughout. Noise travels quickly and loudly no matter what room you're in. Mom and Dad got home around 11:30 and the babies stirred a little bit when they came in, but nodded back off to dreamland pretty quickly. About an hour later, Uncle Nate came strolling through the door and the babies woke up again, except for this time they refused to go back to sleep.

Kevin and I continued to fight them for the next half hour to forty five minutes when Kevin finally got pissed off and sleep deprived enough to strap them into their car seats and go for a drive. I didn't argue with him, but knew what the end result would ultimately end up being, there was no stopping him at this point anyway. He ended up driving half an hour in both directions and got back home a little after two in the morning.

I was still in bed with Evan while he was on his night drive, but didn't really sleep well. I couldn't shake a very worried feeling I had that since it was so late and that they could all end up in a bad accident or something. They were fine and my prediction was right; the second he got them into the house and laid in their beds they started wailing again. We tried for another fifteen minutes to settle them when I realized they were both wide awake. I took them into the living room, turned the light and tv on and let them play with their toys on the floor while I fought to stay awake.

They were so tired; constantly rubbing eyes and laying their heads down, only to jerk themselves around, pull their own hair, or poke at my face to stay awake. Finally at around four a.m. I decided to turn off the tv and light and hold both of them while rocking in the recliner. It was inevitable, just as one would start to nod off, the other one would start in on a yet another desperate attempt to keep their eyes open...waking up the other brother. I fought them for forty five minutes when finally they were both to the point where they were so exhausted all they could do was sit, squirm, and scream at the top of their lungs. I was getting to the point where I was running out of options.

Thankfully PawPaw finally heard them crying and came out into the living room. Gammaw followed shortly after and they took the babies from me so that I could try to get some rest. At this point it was within minutes of turning 5 o'clock. It was a little longer before I remember noticing that the cries had stopped. I guess they eventually got them both down (see how much simpler things can be when there's a 1:1 ratio?) and took them back to their bed.

They woke up around 8 in the morning and you could still tell from their faces that they had some catching up to do on sleep. However, they continued to laugh in the face of restful zzzz's and protested every time we tried putting them down for a nap. It has been a horrible battle with them this weekend.

We put them down tonight at 6:45, gave them a bottle, put on their night time diapers, laid them in their cribs and shut the door. One of them cried for 20 or more minutes, but we knew we just had to let whoever it was just go at it. Going in to check on them would have just started the whole tear filled, painful process all over again. Here's to hoping they stay asleep for the night and wake up well rested.

I did it!

Woke up this morning, hopped on the scale and saw a b-e-a-utiful number: 139.6! Squee! Of course by the time I ate and put on shoes and workout clothes I was about three pounds heavier, but I still saw the number. Jordan forgot to take measurements at the beginning of our session, so we did it at the end instead. You know, after I'd sucked down an entire bottle of water during our workout ;) and the gym scale showed 144.0 I guess that's pretty in-line with my scale at home (like I said, after shoes, food, and workout clothes...and we can't forget that whole bottle of water ;) ). Super excited; lost another inch from my waist and another half inch from my arms. My body fat went from 25% last month to 22%. Jordan said he'd love to see 20% next month and 139 on the gym scale. I think I can do it. And I'm getting so close to my goal I can almost taste it. I want it so badly.

Today I did 21 sumo dead lifts in a row, unbroken, one after the other with no resting. Ho-lee shite! The workouts we do apparently all have names. Today I did Helen (giggle): 1 lap around the building, 21 sumo dead lifts, 12 push ups - all times 3. Just for the record, Helen is a bitch! Trust me, you never want to meet her, unless you want to lose weight and build muscle...then you kick her ass!

I'm throwing around the idea of going in for a tummy tuck consultation soon, just to know what they can do for me and how much I need to be saving up. There are a few places that have free consultations, so I think I'll try one of those first. Generally, what I'm seeing is that they start around $6k. I'm sure mine would end up being more, there's a lot of hanging skin that spreads well past both of my pelvic bones towards my hips. Some places offer financing though...which I'm sure we could always go that route as long as the interest rates aren't through the roof.

I hope this day continues to be fantastic and I can keep this momentum going!

Going Solo

Today I got myself and the babies fed, changed, and into the car to head to the gym because I *thought* I had a session with my trainer, Jordan, today. I was wrong. I realized it as I was warming up on the elliptical machine - I remembered having a conversation about this week doing Monday and Thursday instead of our usual Wednesday.

No harm, no foul. I made lemons into lemonade and decided to give this working out on my own at the gym thing a try. It helped that my trainer wasn't even there. I would probably have just left if he were because I would have been super intimidated. I still was, but I mustered up enough courage to do some of the exercises we do together. I think I got a pretty good workout on my own, but there's no way I can push myself as hard when he's not around screaming at me ;)

Tomorrow when we meet up, I think I'll have him take a little bit of extra time walking me through some of the prep processes of the free weights so that I can attempt dead lifts, cleans, push presses, and all of that other crap by myself. He said he really wants me to start getting comfortable doing these things on my own anyway, so I guess it's time to really start focusing on the small details.

Jordan said ideally, he'd have me do workouts like the ones we do together on my own and ditch the cardio at home all together since our workouts usually incorporate it in there and will do more for me. So, I've already told Kevin I have a gym wish list. In a perfect world, I'd like to finish off a room in the basement for working out...with a rubber padded floor, big mirrors on the wall (no, I'm not that vain, they really do help you when trying to make sure your form is correct), a Smith machine and rack, and a set of kettle bells and free weights - along with the treadmill and other small things we already have.

I was also prepared to weigh in and take measurements today and was super bummed that I haven't broken through the 140s yet when I checked myself this morning at home. I'm seriously getting pissed. I'm literally teetering on the line, this morning on my scale I was 140.6. Point effing six...come on already, throw me a bone stupid scale! It feels like I've been stuck there for a little over a week.

Hopefully, if I drink enough water and take care of myself today, when I wake up in the morning that .6 will have magically melted away. We'll see!