Just Started This Workout Program and Man Am I Sore!!

So, I feel like I may be dying! Everything hurts and just seems to be getting worse. I do keep adding to the muscle strain each day, so that sorta makes since, but still... I do know that pushing through the first week or two is the only way to help ease the level or soreness, so I am committed to getting though it and getting stronger, but I am so sore!! And Tired!!

I am still trying to do everything on my "to do" list daily and keep both the girls happy and I have added a layer with the workout program. It is going to take some time to adjust to the new pace of my days. I used to be busy, but now I have to be busy on a more structured schedule and at a faster pace than before. It will take some time to get comfortable.

I am looking forward to getting the first round of deep cleaning and organizing done in the house. I feel like that will free up a lot of time during the week, since upkeep will involve less time than the first overhaul has. The plan is to work on the kitchen some each day and have it finished this weekend so I can start on the downstairs next week. If I do a little something down there each day too, then it should take about two weeks and then the house will be done! Of course, then it will be time to start over...

I have cooked dinner each evening this week so far, OK so it's only Tuesday, but I have cooked dinner the last three nights! I have made snacks for the following day, so I wouldn't be tempted to grab take-out and that seems to have worked pretty well. Also, I am motivated not to undo totally the workouts that I have been doing by eating junk! I have been dairy free, except for the leftover desserts from the Greek Festival that I ate yesterday, so that has been good.

Overall the week has been going well as far as my goals and aspirations are concerned. Smug-Baby on the other hand is having a rough week. It seems that she may be working on her two year molars and they are really hurting her. She just bursts into tears while playing happily and grabs her mouth. She is living on the baby Advil now and won't let me brush her back teeth at night. She isn't sleeping well/deeply/long either at night or during naps. It is really hard to watch her in pain and not be able to do much about it.

I hate to admit this, but it is also really hard to be slammed busy and so sore you can't bend over to pick up your shoes and have a baby crying and pulling at you every 90 seconds and then as soon as you sit down to hold her, it passes and she is off back playing. So, you get up (no small feat, since your ass is sore) and get back to work and then the next wave of pain hits. It wears a persons patience! I hope that they break through soon or stop growing for a while, one of the two! She and I both need a break from them!!

Until Wednesday folks!!

Day 1 of Goals and Aspirations

Today is Monday. Monday is always a new beginning. I know that people say that Tomorrow is also always a new beginning but for me, if Monday is a bad day, the rest of the week just goes downhill from there. If I don't get things done on Monday, then those missed things get pushed to Tuesday, which means I will get less of Tuesday's things done and push off more to Wednesday and so on. So, Monday is an important day.

The plan for the day was to leave the office, hit the bank, drive to Smug-Sister's and nurse Smug-Baby talk with her for a bit and then take the girls out for a 30 minute walk around the neighborhood. Then I would come back and make lunch (A wonderful lasagna from Peas and Thank You), then change everyone’s diapers and head out for nap time, ending back at my house to do a 20 minute workout video, fold the last load of laundry, put it away and work on organizing the drawers in the kitchen (all 5 of them), then I would take Smug-Niece home and come back to my place to do another 10 minute workout video, make dinner and get us all ready for bed.

In reality, I actually did everything except the kitchen drawers! I ended up taking Smug-Niece home right after her nap because Smug-Sister had some free time and wanted to be able to hang with her daughter, so we just played outside on the swing set until about 4 when I headed home. I ended up doing both the 20 and the 10 minute videos back to back and am already feeling sore – welcome to starting from scratch again! But, it is a good feeling all in all. It was hard to do jumping squats and jumping jacks with a small child holding her arms up to you, saying “dance, dance” so the workout was modified a little to make it a team effort J

I made dinner and finished the laundry while Smug-Baby ate a nice Cauliflower Cacciatore (again from Peas and Thank You) and watched Elmo. I got the kitchen cleaned up and bath time going, and got us all ready for bed. The kitchen drawers pushed onto tomorrow’s to do list. Now Smug-Hub is reading to Smug-Baby and she is looking like she is heading for sleep soon.

Tomorrow is another day, but having Monday be such a success, I have a feeling that Tuesday is going to be great!

UPDATE: Smug-Baby went to sleep at 8:30 and I followed her at 9 with my aching legs and butt. She woke to nurse at midnight and never really woke up but never really settled down either. She was up for good at 3:45 so I haven’t slept much as I get ready to walk into the office. I am confident that I can still get my list done today. Today is supposed to be grocery shopping day, but I did it on Friday, so I am just going to focus on the organizing in the Kitchen and watching the season premiere’s of Castle and How I Met Your Mother!!

Aspiring

I am aspiring...

I aspire to be a vegan. I have made the switch to vegan milk and vegan butter in the house and vegan cheese in recipes. However, I still sometimes have "real" cheese on things like eggs, when the cheese is a big part of taste factor. I am not vegan when eating out, mostly because in my small-ish city, finding vegetarian food is often hard enough! So, I have some goals to help me get where I want to be:

     1) Limit the cheese that I eat at home to once a week
     2) Limit eating out to twice a week (that includes meals with family, husband, and/or meals on the go)

I aspire to be organized. I am working on deep cleaning and organizing my house and it is really hard to keep working on one little thing each week and not get overwhelmed at what is left to do. It is also hard not to keep going back over the rooms already completed. My thinking is to have the house on a rotation, once I get finished with the whole house, start back at the beginning. The plan is that with each rotation, the time spent on the room will get shorter and the cleaning more complete, because there will be less to do, just maintenance. Goals here are:

     1) Don't get hung up on how the bathroom drawers are already looking junked up again. Keep in mind that they look great compared to how they looked before and how in a few weeks it will be there turn again.
     2) Don't look around at all that is left to do; focus only on the task for this week and not at the week's laid out in front of you. Take time to enjoy all that you are finished so far!

I aspire to fitness. I want to be thinner and stronger and committed to my personal health and fitness. I want to be around for my child (possibly children) and be able to take them to the park and keep up with them and roll around on the floor with them. It takes health and fitness to do that. However, as much as I want that, finding the time, energy and, let's face it, motivation to put the video into the DVD player is hard. I wish for a buddy to workout with, but Mom and I walk and bike and I blow her off every chance I get! I brought the Tracy Anderson stuff, but she is so hard core that it is impossible to keep up with the hugeness of daily life and workout for 2 hours without stopping. Also, I don't need perfection, I just need better.

     1) I found a couple of DVD programs at yard sales and online. Both claim to compress the moves so that you will get a full body and cardio workout in one short burst. I will do a ten minute workout each day.
     2) The other DVD program is something that Smug-Sister and I both want to do, so I will do that ten minute workout each day too. Using her as my buddy and my support and offering my support to her.  That's only 20 minutes of working out each day and they can be split up into an afternoon and evening burst, when Smug-Baby is eating dinner or playing with Smug-Niece. I only need 10 minutes. I WILL FIND IT!!
     3) Daily walking with Mom. We are planning on walking with the babies in the mornings just after I leave work, before lunch and the rest of the day. We won't be able to do it every week day, but most and we will support each other.

I aspire to make healthy meals for my family. I make menus and plan dinners each week. I have been leaving a few nights open for take-out, family get togethers, or leftovers. I haven't planned lunches, thinking to have the previous night’s leftovers and I have never planned snacks. We end up eating pasta or peanut butter some nights and I find myself tired and burned out from my day and not cooking when I should and leaving Smug-Hub to scrounge up something for himself at the last minute.

     1) Cook nightly. Now that I have found Peas and Thank You, I have quick, healthy, easy to put together, meals that call for ingredients that I already have or aren't too expensive. Mama Pea has never asked me to buy crazy one note ingredients that I will never use again.
     2) Plan for snacks during the day to cut down on getting overly hungry while out and about with the girls. It leads to too many trips to Chipotle!!

OK, so that is the plan for action. I have been working on my weekly cleaning plan for a while and it has been working out well. I have been getting better about the menu planning over the last two weeks and cooking dinner more regularly. Now, I just need to add the workout routines and keep up on everything. I can do this. I WILL DO THIS!!!

Floundering

I feel like I have been floundering lately. Ever since we got back from the beach the sleeping stuff hasn't been good and I haven't worked on the deep cleaning projects in the house and have slid back into unhealthy eating habits. You know that I have put back on 10 of the 25 pounds that I lost? That's insane!! I have been feeling depressed about not getting pregnant last month and at the same time wondering if I am totally nuts for thinking about trying to add another life and another level of stress to my already sinking ship.

Then it was like something flipped in me and I spent this week getting back on track. I did a power walk three days this week with mom and while walking we brain-stormed about some ways to help each other and Smug-Sister better while still getting our own needs met. I did each of my daily tasks on their assigned day. I made delicious meals from Peas and Thank You (which is my only cookbook anymore as far as I am concerned - I actually made something from another vegan cookbook this week too and it wasn't eatable!! Even Smug-Baby who eats almost anything threw this glop into the floor!

I haven't been totally great though. I still haven't started my 10 minute workout DVD's yet, and yesterday I had a chocolate milkshake from Arby's and the day before a couple of tacos from Taco Bell, so I am sure that all the junk offset the good done by the walking, but it was a better week overall than I have had in a while.

I have all the rooms upstairs completed as far as organizing and deep cleaning except for the kitchen. I asked Smug-Hub to complete the pantry shelving as my birthday gift and he seems like he might actually do it. That would give us so much more space in the kitchen!! I am going to try to tackle a few cabinets each day with the hope of getting it finished by the end of next week so I can start on the downstairs.

We don't "live" downstairs, but the room has to function as a guest room, an office, a fly tying room, and a place to store things that we use, but don't use often. It's going to be tough! My thinking is that the upstairs is where we live so the things that we use all the time, every day should be up there. The downstairs should store stuff that we don't use on a daily basis, but use enough that we don't want it boxed up and stuck in the attic or garage. The garage storage should be for stuff that doesn't get used but a few times a year, like the Christmas stuff, off-season clothes and old baby equipment.

I am going to check out Craigslist for a cheap out building for the back yard. Then the mower, lawn tools, wagon and bikes could live out there, freeing up more space within the garage! After Smug-Hub gets the pantry shelving done, I am going to start nagging in earnest about the built-in bookshelves in the downstairs room. Getting my books out will make me happy and will free up more space in the garage!

In the meantime, I am going to pack up everything I can and move it all to Smug-Grandma's attic until some of these things come together, because while I have the ideas, I don't have any money, so....

The sleeping stuff is hit or miss. Smug-Baby got sick this week and had a stuffed up nose that affected her sleep and Smug-Hub is still having a hard time coming to bed, but we are coping.

I am actually excited about getting the last few "to do's" finished today and having a nice weekend with my family. I actually am having a haircut and massage on Saturday using the last of my birthday and Christmas gift certificates so that will be great and the Greek Festival is this weekend which is always wonderful! Also, Smug-Hub and I are taking Smug-Baby with us out to a super nice place for dinner on Sunday to celebrate our 4 year anniversary. It is going to be a great weekend!!

I already have the menus and grocery list for next week completed as well as the new "to do" list for next week that includes exercise! I am looking forward to being back on track and getting my home, body and mind in shape!!

The Beach

We have returned from our week trip to the beach. Well, it was less than a full week because of Hurricane Irene who's visit forced us to put off traveling to the Outer Banks until Monday. But arrive we did!

I haven't been on a vacation like this as an adult, most of my time off has been to go visit family or long weekends to get something done around the house or whatever. This was my very first vacation! I was looking forward to it with mixed emotions. On one hand, I was excited, but I was worried about the amount of work involved in packing up everything (and I do mean everything) we would need for a week in a beach house. On another hand, I was feeling like I was expecting too much and it couldn't possibly live up to my hopes and dreams. On yet another hand, I was concerned about money and concerned about how Smug-Baby would do being off her routine and in a new place.

Basically, everything I was worried about happened. We spent too much money (mostly because when you plan on cooking at the house to save money you forget that you have to purchase everything that you normally already have on hand at home, like oil and salt and sugar and spices and...). We had to take everything, like sheets and towels and toilet paper and paper towels and everything for the beach and everything for the bathroom and kitchen towels and dish soap and, and, and... it was massive and it was a ton of work to get together and I was exhausted by the time I finished the list, let alone got everything into bags and suitcases. The car was jam packed full, so I couldn't have climbed into the backseat to hang with Smug-Baby should she have needed it. It was tight!!

Smug-Baby didn't sleep well and really hasn't slept well since we have been back either as I think she is cutting the 2 year molars at long last. The lack of decent sleep at night caused her to be cranky all day. She loved running around in the surf, however when a wave sprayed some water into her face she decided she was done with the ocean for the rest of the week. She liked playing in the sand until she noticed that her hands were dirty and then she decided she was done with sand castles for the week too. I spent the majority of the week back in the beach house trying to get her to nap.

I did, however spend just enough time on the beach to end up with splotchy sunburn and no nice tan at all.

Did I mention that I spent the week in the deep throes of PMS? I seriously told my husband that he needed to anticipate what I needed and just do it (read: read my mind) I was serious about it at the time, although now I see that I was being ridiculous! Sort of...

I didn't know it was PMS at the time, because I spent the week trying to talk myself out of taking a pregnancy test too soon. I was trying to get my head around being pregnant again and then I started my period and was crushed. I was sure that it would happen faster this time around and while two months of trying isn't anything like the two years of trying we had with Smug-Baby, I was still hoping for faster this time.

I know that by reading this you will think that I had a horrible time but I really didn't. I just didn't have an amazing time. I didn't feel rested and ready to face down the world and that was what I had expected from a week away from my life. I wanted to feel rejuvenated and I don't feel like it was all that different from normal life. You still had to make and clean up meals, make the beds, etc. The only difference was that you got to go sit on the beach for an hour or so in the afternoon before the baby needed a nap.

I think that my expectations were unrealistic. I was thinking that with my parents going with us and my sister's family going too, that I would have lots of help with Smug-Baby and I would be free to do some things on my own, like read a book or get a tan. In reality, Smug-Baby prefers me when she is uncomfortable and she was out of her element and teething so no one but mommy would do. And really, how can you complain about being number one!! She also started calling me "mum muma" over the week, so my heart was bursting with love!

We went shopping at the outlet mall one evening and I found some really cute outfits for her and she picked out a pair of shoes that she loves. She picked them out and handed them to me to put on her feet, then she ran around the store laughing and showing her feet to random shoppers. It was too cute, so I had to buy them. Then every time I told her to go get her shoes, she would find those and bring them to me. I love watching her little personality come through.

She actually did super great on the drive both there and back, sleeping most of the time and playing with her toys quietly the rest of the time. She did get really cranky about 90 minutes from home on the way back and we stopped and she nursed and ran around for a bit before driving the last hour home. That last hour was hard for her too, but she played with various toys and we sang songs and she made it without too much drama. I was really proud of her overall. Considering her teeth hurt, it could have been a lot worse.

She got sick and threw up all over the bed the last night we were there so that was fun. I think her stomach was upset from all the food that she isn't normally allowed to have (and since she is still nursing, all the food that I don't normally have either). She was fine after that and fine the next day, but I have re-committed myself to eating better and getting myself into healthy routines.

This first week back was nice, because we got home Saturday evening and had both Sunday and Monday off (Labor Day) so we had time to get things unpacked and laundry done and so on before the work week. It is also a short week, so I just need to get through today (Thursday) with both girls and tomorrow with Smug-Baby and all these appointments before the weekend will be here again and maybe, just maybe I will be able to get some rest :)

Sleep

Since the purchase of the new bed, I expected that I would be sleeping like a rock each and every night. That, sadly, has not happened. It appears to me that Smug-Baby is having a hard time adjusting to having so much room and thus thinks she is alone and wakes up.

This results in marathon nursing to get her back to sleep and me laying awake either because of an uncomfortable nursing position or because I am fully awake or worse yet, because I am fully awake and know that I have X minutes left to sleep and the pressure to fall back asleep as fast as possible is keeping me awake.

So, we have been tweaking our bedtime routine some. We put Smug-Baby in the exact middle and then we scoot in really close in an effort to make sure that she feels us there and can sleep without feeling as though we have abandoned her. We are bringing a water cup to bed, so that if she wakes and asks for "ice" we don't have to get up and turn on lights to get it for her. We are also going to bed mostly at the same time she does in the hopes that we will get some sleep before she wakes us.

In the last two weeks all those ideas have been put into place to varying degrees of success, as in, mostly without success! We generally are able to do some of the above but not all. Last night though, we did it! All the pieces were in place and I personally slept like a rock until the alarm went off at 3:54am (I have been going into work early to make up the time I missed being sick on Monday). I was finishing in the shower when I heard Smug-Baby start crying. I tried to finish getting ready for work and see if Smug-Hub was able to get her back to sleep, but she just ended up hysterical. By that time, even nursing wasn't going to make her go back to sleep so a banana was sliced and Elmo was turned on. Every time I leave her sight to gather something for work, she cries. She knows that I am leaving. I hate leaving.

She is laughing at Mr. Noodle's brother Mr. Noodle, so I am going to sneak out. Wish me luck :)

Oh Yeah, I Remember This Feeling

Waiting.

I am again waiting.

I wait for the day on the calendar that is the day I can take that all important test. I wait for the blood that will tell me that another month will pass without taking that all important test. I wait for the signs, the tiredness, the sore boobs, the sick feeling in my stomach that will tell me that he or she has decided to join our family.

Are you still out there Little-Smug? Waiting for the right time? Or are you already here? Living within me?

I have found myself putting things on hold while I wait. I was going to order a new pair of jeans that are on sale on Amazon, but decided not to because I may not be able to wear them for long.

I was playing on the floor with Smug-Baby and Smug-Niece and they were blowing bubbles on my belly and it was tickling and I was laughing and they were laughing and I wondered if Little-Smug could feel the vibrations and hear the laughter of both mama and girls.

I remember this feeling. The hope. I remember knowing the second Smug-Baby was conceived and worried that I don't feel that way this month and worried that I won't be pregnant and seeing the negative test will be like losing all over again, only this time I know so much more about what I would be losing.

I don't like waiting... Also, the sooner I know for sure the sooner I can get ready for morning sickness or alternatively, feel relieved about not having morning sickness :)

I don't like waiting :(