On Facebook, I've seen nothing but the cute smiling faces of kids wearing back packs for their first day of school pictures (hard to believe I'll be having one of those of a preschooler in a few weeks). However, for us folks that aren't involved in school anymore (or yet again), Labor Day marks the last "official" weekend of summer. I'm hoping it also helps mark an end to my laziness. Granted, I'm not sitting around on the couch all day every day, or all day any day.....or at all any day for that matter but by my usual standards for myself, I've been pretty lazy lately.
My usual behavior of making lists and making it my daily goal to tick everything off them is long gone. My super motivation to work out hard to get back in shape just isn't there. My type A personality of having things done and completed seems to have hidden under a rock somewhere. I can't be sure what's causing it, but my assumption is that sunny summer days make me just want to play and possibly also just being dog gone tired just trying to get through the basics of life.
For the most part, I'm trying to give myself a break. I mean, I did "just" have a baby (7 months ago) and "just" got back to work (almost 2 months ago). These are big life adjustments and it's tough at times. However, I have been so uninterested in my previous go getting attitude that I'm starting to wonder if I just haven't changed gears a little bit. Could I be becoming a more laid back person?
In some ways, I definitely don't think that's a bad thing. I mean, time with my kids is my priority and I think it should be. That means that when I'm trying to get things done around the house and Dylan wants to have a light saber battle or Cade is being cute playing with something on the floor, I stop and play or watch them. Unfortunately, once the kiddos go to bed, I don't exactly feel the need to catch up with my projects. I feel the need to get the absolute basics done and then try to have an hour with my husband or by myself to watch a tv show or read a book.
In other ways, I disappoint myself. The biggest arena of disappointment is my progress with weight loss. I know I need to be working harder to get where I want to be. Sure I'm eating like I should be and working out, but not as crazy intense as I have in the past to shed the pounds. My lazy self is letting people tell me that what I'm doing should be enough to be losing weight but my experience with my body is reminding me that I don't fall into the normal population and I need to be doing more. At some point in every single day I say "that 5 oz glass of wine (yes, I measure) is not going to happen tonight (even if it does fit within your caloric allowance) and after the kids go to bed, you need to get on the treadmill for 30 minutes." Then 8:30 or 9 comes around and that will is just gone. Sure, the scale is going in the right direction but it is moving SO ssssssllllllllloooooowwwwwlllllllyyyyyy! Like ridiculously slowly, especially when you compare what my weight loss program says I should be losing.
During the week, when my mind wanders at work, I think about all the things I want to be done at the house and that I need to set aside some time on the weekend to work on those. Yes, things get done here and there but mostly when the weekend comes, I just want to play....do fun things, not to responsible, boring grown up things. I want to ignore the productive things that should be happening and just be lazy!
I'm not accustomed to feeling this way and it's a little jarring to my definition of myself. Who knows, maybe the fresh, crisp air of autumn will snap me out of my stupor. Maybe once I start getting some good, regular nights of sleep (ie find the solution to Oliver not waking me), I'll get re energized and ready to conquer the world again. Or maybe, just maybe, I'll stay a lazy person forever. I suppose only time will tell. For now, I guess I'll try not to worry about it or be so hard on myself and enjoy the last days of summer.
8/29/12
8/28/12
Cade Michael - 7 Months
Yesterday our sweet baby celebrated his 7 month birthday. This last month has been a doozy. Lots of developments for us to report on the little guy.
Sleep. Seems Cade's finally got the hang of it. He's consistently sleeping about 9-10 hours a night and good hours too, 8pm-6am. It's been great! There have been a couple of nights that he wakes somewhere between 9 and 11:30 but it's not the norm at this point. Yay! Now if we could figure out a way to keep Oliver from waking us up we might actual start to get some real rest. The only challenge the last couple of weeks is that Cade's losing it and needs to get to sleep around the same time Dylan does. It's not a big deal if there are 2 parents around to handle the insanity but quite often Mike is off trying to get a few things done that can't get done with kids around and I try to balance the insanity. Some nights work and others are disasters. I'm sure we'll settle in to some kind of routine that works for all at some point.
Like Dylan, Cade seems to like to be around people. He loves his parents and his brother of course, but he's a people watcher and enjoys when we're out and about. However, his very favorite thing is other babies. He's had a couple of close encounters with other bambinos the last couple of weeks and he very excitedly "talks" to the other babies.....it's more like screaming hysterically (in a happy way). It's pretty amusing.
Cade has finally worked those abs enough that he's able to sit up on his own. At 6 months, 6 days old, he officially was able to sit up solo. That was with us sitting him up and him being able to stay on his own. That very quickly developed into getting into a sitting position by himself. Now, he's mostly perfected the skill and is even able to "catch" himself and get resettled when he wobbles....most of the time. There's still the occasional fall backwards head bonk. This new perfected skill was put to good use over the weekend when he had a tubby. He sat right up in his tubby and experimented with splashing the water. It's the first time he actually seemed to enjoy bath time!
However, Cade was not content to "just sit." Within a couple of days of his first solo sit up, he was getting on to hands and knees and rocking back and forth - a pre crawling motion! As of Sunday, he kind of had his first crawl - 2 shuffles over to Luci (who very quickly took off). While Cade's got the necessary skills, he's still working on putting them altogether so he's not moving where he wants to go just yet. It's likely only a matter of days before we have a professional crawler on our hands.
Cade is loving food and continues to try new stuff. We keep adding new foods to put in the mix. Over the last month, he's tried baby food varieties of plums, blueberries, mangoes and spinach. He's also enjoyed baby yogurt and the more advanced baby food flavors that have rice and whole grains in them. As for "real people" food, he ate some cantaloupe and I even caught Mike feeding him some soft pasta. But what he really enjoys is feeding himself mum-mums (dis solvable baby crackers).
Eating all that new food has really been helping him grow. I have no idea what his weight\height stats are, but I do know that he's growing out of all his clothes. Last weekend, I had to clear out all the 6 month sized clothes and bring in all the 9 month stuff.
Other random stuff. He continues to love "toys" (which is pretty much anything to a baby). That helps us out a lot because handing him a new object will very often buy us a couple extra moments of time in the morning to finish getting ready. I'm not sure when it started but it's been at least a few weeks now (maybe more) that Cade is able to hold on a bit to me when I hold him on my hip. Makes it easier to grab him and a handful of other stuff when staying busy around the house. And lastly, Cade's hair is still not plentiful but the fuzz is definitely growing in. He won't be a baldy much longer!
Sleep. Seems Cade's finally got the hang of it. He's consistently sleeping about 9-10 hours a night and good hours too, 8pm-6am. It's been great! There have been a couple of nights that he wakes somewhere between 9 and 11:30 but it's not the norm at this point. Yay! Now if we could figure out a way to keep Oliver from waking us up we might actual start to get some real rest. The only challenge the last couple of weeks is that Cade's losing it and needs to get to sleep around the same time Dylan does. It's not a big deal if there are 2 parents around to handle the insanity but quite often Mike is off trying to get a few things done that can't get done with kids around and I try to balance the insanity. Some nights work and others are disasters. I'm sure we'll settle in to some kind of routine that works for all at some point.
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| Cade Sporting His New Babiators |
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| Cade (on right) Meeting New Friend Parson (on left) |
Eating all that new food has really been helping him grow. I have no idea what his weight\height stats are, but I do know that he's growing out of all his clothes. Last weekend, I had to clear out all the 6 month sized clothes and bring in all the 9 month stuff.
Other random stuff. He continues to love "toys" (which is pretty much anything to a baby). That helps us out a lot because handing him a new object will very often buy us a couple extra moments of time in the morning to finish getting ready. I'm not sure when it started but it's been at least a few weeks now (maybe more) that Cade is able to hold on a bit to me when I hold him on my hip. Makes it easier to grab him and a handful of other stuff when staying busy around the house. And lastly, Cade's hair is still not plentiful but the fuzz is definitely growing in. He won't be a baldy much longer!
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| Cade - 7 Months |
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| Is That a Crafty Smile or What? |
8/14/12
The Family Sail
It just so happened that the long planned date (about a month ago now) provided us with perfect weather for a day on the boat and beach. The morning of, we got up, ready, packed for the day and made the drive up to Gloucester harbor.
By around 11am, all 21 of us were loaded onto the boat. The gang consisted of Captain Bob and First Mate Nancy, Mike and myself with kiddos Dylan and Cade, Jamie, Erik and Jessie with their kids Justin and Ryan, Maureen and Joe with kids Patrick and Emily, Kristina and Jim with kids Corwin and Jacob and Mike's parents who are known to the grandkids and Nana and Bumpa. And it wasn't even crowded. Yup, it's a big boat!
Dylan wasn't quite comfortable with this new setting just yet and Cade was safer in the cockpit out of the sun, so we hung out there for most of the first half of the trip. The sails were actually kept down for the day and the motor was used. We traveled through Gloucester Harbor, up the Annisquam River (that seperates Cape Ann from mainland Ma) and over to Cranes Beach in Ipswich.
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| Me and My Super Cool Travel Buddy |
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| Cade Wore His Nautical Outfit |
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| Captain Bob! |
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| Mike, Erik, Patrick, Maureen and Joe You can see one of 2 drawbridges we traveled through in the background. We had fun waving to the folks standing by the bridge as we passed by. |
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| Emily and Cool Dylan |
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| Patrick and Kristina |
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| Cade and Emily |
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| Justin, Ryan and Erik |
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| Dylan and Mike |
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| Me, My Boys and Emily |
Once at Crane's Beach, Captain Bob shuttled all of us and belongings to the shore in the dingy. With so many of us and so much stuff, it was no small feat. We all set up camp and began the beach fun.
As I think I've mentioned before, Dylan has a bit of an obsession with skeletons. His cousin, Emily, found him a dead crab which, of course, has an exterior skeleton and Dylan loved it. Later, his Nana asked if he wanted to walk on the beach to look for shells and Dylan said "no, I want to look for more crab skelechickens." I joined them for that walk, as did Maureen and Emily and we saw some super cool stuff. In addition to shells and seaweed, we saw a couple of dead horseshoe crabs (skeletons) and a huge fish head skeleton. Dylan was pumped! For us that enjoy non dead things, we were excited to see some sand pipers running about followed by some babies. They were really stinkin' cute. The ranger on his atv stopped to chat with us and informed us that they were 10 days old! Cool!
While our camera didn't make it on shore, Maureen's did. So, thank you to her for providing the following pictures from the day.
In the late afternoon, it was time to head back. We loaded up many trips on the dingy and some of the crowd entertained themselves by diving off the boat while we got everyone back on. We almost didn't leave "on time"....the boat was starting to bottom out! Any longer anchored where we were, some of the divers might have had to start digging out the hull.
With a long exciting day without naps, Cade was content to snooze on me and Dylan and I snuggled to stay warm on the trip back. Surrounded by cuteness...I was pretty ok with that.
Even though I didn't get to thoroughly enjoy all parts of the day (I never even had a chance to get my bathing suit on), that is the plight of being a mother. It wasn't about me, it was about my kids having a good time. They did so I did too.
While our camera didn't make it on shore, Maureen's did. So, thank you to her for providing the following pictures from the day.
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| Dylan Burying Emily |
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| Patrick and Mike Playing on the Beach |
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| Betsy and Joe |
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| Kristina and First Mate Nancy |
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| Finding Dead Crabs |
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| Cuteness |
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| More Cuteness |
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| Cuteness Dipping His Feet in the Water |
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| Nana and Cuteness |
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| Me with Both of My Cuties |
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| Fish Head Skeleton |
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| Jacob (He and Corwin were in the water ALL day so not many pictures of those 2 on the beach.) |
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| Emily Showing Off Her Awesome Gymnastic Skills |
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| Tom, Joe and Kristina |
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| Crane's Beach |
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| The Last of Our Crew Loading Into the Dingy |
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| Snuggly Boys Dylan used a towel as a blanket and I kept Cade warm while he napped. |
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| Cousin Jamie stated it right when he told me I was surrounded by a serious amount of cuteness! |
Even though I didn't get to thoroughly enjoy all parts of the day (I never even had a chance to get my bathing suit on), that is the plight of being a mother. It wasn't about me, it was about my kids having a good time. They did so I did too.
8/13/12
Long Time No Talk!
This might be the longest amount of time I've ever gone without posting. Want to guess why? Yup, it's the oldest excuse in the book - I've been busy. Here's a little bit about what's been happening with me these last several weeks. Just me. No kiddos. (Sorry Mom, that means no new baby pics.)
I've been back at work right at a month now. The first couple of weeks back, the old brain was really rusty and it took some time to clear away the cobwebs. Add that to not getting enough sleep....well, I wasn't the most productive person in the world until I got back into the swing of it. Over the last few weeks, Cade's been sleeping more and I've been relearning my job more and I feel like I'm a good contributing member to the company again.
Sleep. I'm tired. It's the main reason I haven't been posting regularly. When I get a few moments at night (and I literally mean very few moments and only on occasion), pretty much the last thing I want to do is try and form a complete thought in writing form. If I have enough left in the tank to watch a brainless 30 minute show, maybe chat with my husband for a couple of minutes and slip on my pj's, I'm doing pretty good. I hope this area of my life is getting better. Cade seems to have taken a very good turn on sleeping (knock on wood) so I hope to be waking to tend to him less during the night. However, there's still another kid of mine causing issues. A furry one named Oliver.
My dear Oliver. I love him so. But, he's become a big problem between the hours of 4 and 6 am when he meows incessantly, jumps on the bed, walks over me, jumps down and repeats. When we weren't sure if he was on his last feline life or not, I didn't have the heart to lock him out of the room. My sweet boy has slept next to me for 16 years and I couldn't shut him out like that. Flash forward several months and the door has gotten shut in his face many times. Unfortunately, even that's not enough to drown out his cries. We're considering more drastic measures like locking him in a room downstairs but haven't taken them yet. I know he's still not feeling great so it's hard to be so tough on him. But, it's tough on me to be SOOO close to actually getting a decent night's sleep again that I might have to take those drastic measures. Poor Oliver.
Back to work talk. Other than learning my job again, I'm having to learn to get used to these long periods of time away from my kids. Monday's are the worst. After getting to see them over the weekend, it's serious withdrawal come Monday when I go for about 10 hours without hugging them. It often makes my weekends very much unproductive because I'm trying to catch up on snuggle time and fun time with them. I do still seem to be getting my bills paid on time though so priorities are pretty well in place.
On a work day, I pretty much only see the boys when we're getting ready in the morning and for about an hour to an hour and a half in the evening when we have dinner and then get the boys to bed. This means not only multitasking general child care with getting ready and dinner processes but juggling attention to 2 kids during that time. Most days, it makes me feel like only 1 child has managed to get any of my attention. It's definitely something I feel like I need to work on.
One of the main things I was looking forward to in getting back to work was getting back on a regular work out schedule. In the last 4 weeks, I've managed to join 1 personal training format gym and tour 2 other ones that I'm considering joining for general work out. I've also been visiting and acupuncturist regularly for a post partum ankle issue I've been having, going to regular doctor's check ups for the boys, had a few appointments regarding other personal business and taken a couple of vacation days for previously planned long weekends. That amounts to really only getting 2, maybe 3 work outs a week and maybe 1 walk with the boys on the weekend. Definitely not enough to get all these pounds off. However, the training I have been doing has been working but the pounds are coming off though a lot more slowly than I would like them to be. I'm optimistic that all the day time commitments I've been having are tapering off and I'll be able to focus on getting more exercise in during the weekdays. I've been really great on the diet\nutrition\calorie part now I just have to vamp up the work out part of the plan.
So that's me in a nutshell. Trying to balance it all and adjust to the new schedule. I think it's been going pretty well so far but that's not to say it's without it's challenging. I'm still having to focus on one day at a time. Right now I'm going to focus on getting to bed early so I can make it through the next day. Later folks!
I've been back at work right at a month now. The first couple of weeks back, the old brain was really rusty and it took some time to clear away the cobwebs. Add that to not getting enough sleep....well, I wasn't the most productive person in the world until I got back into the swing of it. Over the last few weeks, Cade's been sleeping more and I've been relearning my job more and I feel like I'm a good contributing member to the company again.
Sleep. I'm tired. It's the main reason I haven't been posting regularly. When I get a few moments at night (and I literally mean very few moments and only on occasion), pretty much the last thing I want to do is try and form a complete thought in writing form. If I have enough left in the tank to watch a brainless 30 minute show, maybe chat with my husband for a couple of minutes and slip on my pj's, I'm doing pretty good. I hope this area of my life is getting better. Cade seems to have taken a very good turn on sleeping (knock on wood) so I hope to be waking to tend to him less during the night. However, there's still another kid of mine causing issues. A furry one named Oliver.
My dear Oliver. I love him so. But, he's become a big problem between the hours of 4 and 6 am when he meows incessantly, jumps on the bed, walks over me, jumps down and repeats. When we weren't sure if he was on his last feline life or not, I didn't have the heart to lock him out of the room. My sweet boy has slept next to me for 16 years and I couldn't shut him out like that. Flash forward several months and the door has gotten shut in his face many times. Unfortunately, even that's not enough to drown out his cries. We're considering more drastic measures like locking him in a room downstairs but haven't taken them yet. I know he's still not feeling great so it's hard to be so tough on him. But, it's tough on me to be SOOO close to actually getting a decent night's sleep again that I might have to take those drastic measures. Poor Oliver.
Back to work talk. Other than learning my job again, I'm having to learn to get used to these long periods of time away from my kids. Monday's are the worst. After getting to see them over the weekend, it's serious withdrawal come Monday when I go for about 10 hours without hugging them. It often makes my weekends very much unproductive because I'm trying to catch up on snuggle time and fun time with them. I do still seem to be getting my bills paid on time though so priorities are pretty well in place.
On a work day, I pretty much only see the boys when we're getting ready in the morning and for about an hour to an hour and a half in the evening when we have dinner and then get the boys to bed. This means not only multitasking general child care with getting ready and dinner processes but juggling attention to 2 kids during that time. Most days, it makes me feel like only 1 child has managed to get any of my attention. It's definitely something I feel like I need to work on.
One of the main things I was looking forward to in getting back to work was getting back on a regular work out schedule. In the last 4 weeks, I've managed to join 1 personal training format gym and tour 2 other ones that I'm considering joining for general work out. I've also been visiting and acupuncturist regularly for a post partum ankle issue I've been having, going to regular doctor's check ups for the boys, had a few appointments regarding other personal business and taken a couple of vacation days for previously planned long weekends. That amounts to really only getting 2, maybe 3 work outs a week and maybe 1 walk with the boys on the weekend. Definitely not enough to get all these pounds off. However, the training I have been doing has been working but the pounds are coming off though a lot more slowly than I would like them to be. I'm optimistic that all the day time commitments I've been having are tapering off and I'll be able to focus on getting more exercise in during the weekdays. I've been really great on the diet\nutrition\calorie part now I just have to vamp up the work out part of the plan.
So that's me in a nutshell. Trying to balance it all and adjust to the new schedule. I think it's been going pretty well so far but that's not to say it's without it's challenging. I'm still having to focus on one day at a time. Right now I'm going to focus on getting to bed early so I can make it through the next day. Later folks!
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