Best typo EVER!

As posted by my sister on Facebook!

Princess is on a roll!

Princess has been trying very hard to roll from back to belly, she'd get 90% of the way, but couldn't quite make it all the way because she couldn't get her arm out from beneath her. Last week she mastered the belly to back roll and today she successfully did her first back to belly roll!!  3 weeks & 12 days old!
What a proud moment and also a terrifying one.... I will now have 3 mobile children!! And so the fun begins!

Pushing through the pain

I'm currently running 25 minutes (no stopping) 3 times a week. The first 15 minutes are fine, the next 5 are a little tough and then the last 5 I literally have to cheer myself on. But I manage to make it through each time. I'm proud of myself for sticking with it. Only 2 more weeks of the C25K program and I will be an official c25k graduate!
Yesterday I slammed my toe into a toy. My toe had a huge red gash across it & a bump/bruise on top. It throbbed painfully all day yesterday and I could hardly walk. I thought the pain might give me an excuse not to exercise today, but it didn't hurt all that bad today, so I decided to push through the pain and exercise. I'm glad I did. I always feel better after I exercise, even those times that it takes all my motivation and then some to get off my butt.
It does feel a little weird to be exercising today (Tuesday) though. For the last 6 weeks my exercise routine has been Mon, Wed & Fri. But Donkey goes to preschool on those days and the schedule was just getting to be way too grueling for me. Get all 3 kids out the door by 8:20, drop him off at school, put the 2 younger ones in the living room with things to keep them occupied. exercise for 40 minutes (walk 15, run 25). feed Princess. shower. feed myself & mama's boy lunch and then back out the door to pick up Donkey. I didn't have time to accomplish anything else on those days & I just felt like I was always on the go, go, go.
So now I'm exercising Sun, Tues & Thurs and it seems to be working out much better. On M,W,F I'm free to clean & play with Mama's Boy while Donkey's at school. And then on Tues & Thurs I can exercise without having to rush. 
Hopefully my hard work will pay off this week & the scale will be good to me. One can always hope, anyway...

You have your hands full

If I hear that one more time, I swear.....

Yup, I think I hear that comment on a daily basis, or at least whenever I'm out in public with my 3 kids. And sometimes I hear it multiple times a day. It's like I'm the only person on the planet that has 3 kids. Trust me,  I'm not the only one!!
But yes, I do have my hands full. My hands are so full that my house is a mess - I have laundry (clean) piled up to the ceiling waiting to be folded, there's toys covering ever inch of the floor in my boys room & there's fruit loops all over the floor in the living room... and that's only 3 things, to name a few. I never have enough time to keep up with it all. By the time I clean up one mess, there's 5 new ones waiting for me to clean, so why bother?
But if you think my hands are full, you should see my heart. It's so full of love for my three children, it hurts (in a good way of course).  I love my children so much and no matter how difficult things might get, how tired I might be, how messy my house is, I would do anything for them. They are my whole world. <3

Addictions

I guess you could say I have an addictive personality. I'm addicted to food, if you couldn't already tell, but I think I've touched upon that enough & will continue to do so in future posts, so enough about food (damn, now I'm hungry). But I wanted to introduce you to some of my other addictions. 


Addiction #1 - All things girly - girl clothes, girl shoes, & ofcourse every girl has to have the bows to match, girl toys,  etc. This addiction is a recent one, as recent as 3 1/2 months when my precious Princess came into my life. Let's start with the girl clothes. I have a sick obsession to anything with polka dots, cupcakes, tulle and plaid. I am also drawn to the same color combos over & over again - pink and orange, pink and green (watermelon colors), pink and purple, & purple and blue. The Carter's brand is my number one choice for her clothes. And ofcourse, like I said, every outfit has to have a bow to match. I love the korker style bows - most of my bows come from Simply Elegant Bowtique. I think I drive her a little crazy with all my bow orders, but she makes super cute bows! Too bad Princess doesn't have much hair yet, so they usually get clipped to a headband. Someone said that she is going to have a permanent mark on her head from the headband.  Oh well, it's a small price to pay for looking pretty.
I find myself going to stores (Walmart, Target, Kohl's) weekly, just to see if they've changed their clothes selection. Most of the time, they haven't, but I'll be damned if I'm going to miss an opportunity to buy another outfit Princess will only wear once.  I've even started buying clothes in bigger sizes. She now has a wardrobe that will last her until she's 3... maybe even 4. She has 2 First Birthday outfits. Don't ask me what I'm going to do about that... maybe I'll have her change outfits halfway through the party. Or one can be for pictures & the other for the party? All I know is that I liked them both so much that I couldn't resist. 
And don't get me started on the girl toys. I already have a list of toys that I want to buy her for her 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc birthday.
Hey, after 2 boys, I think I deserve to go a little girly crazy!!


Addiction #2 - Facebook and all it's evil games. A.k.a the Evil Zynga Empire!! The games I actively play change every few months or so, based on how much time I have and how bored of a particular game I get. Right now I'm currently addicted to Farmville & Cafeworld, with a little Frontierville thrown in for good measure.  I have the alarm on my phone set to go off every time my crops need harvesting or food needs to be served. 
What's so great about a virtual farm or cafe anyway? Who knows, but those darn things have sucked me in & it's hard to step away from them. Go ahead, laugh at my geekyness, but you know your'e addicted to the damn games too! 


Addiction #3 - Pictures, pictures & more pictures. Yeah, I'm one of those people that still get pictures printed & put them into albums. I currently have about 15 albums filled with pictures of my kids and my oldest is only 4. I think it's about time to build a room just for my pictures!


Addiction #4 - Exercise. And ofcourse this is a direct result of my addiction to food. They go hand in hand if I want to lose weight. I never would have thought I could be addicted to exercise, I mean, isn't that something that most people dread doing? And yeah, at first, I dreaded doing it too. But I guess after following a strict exercise regiment for 7 weeks, it starts to grow on you. Now I actually look forward to getting beat up by my treadmill. And I can't wait to get my ass kicked by my Firm videos, which I will start incorporating into my routine very soon.

I guess it could be worse... 

'Mom'

Why is it that the second you become a mom, that instantly becomes your name & 'title'. You will then refer to yourself as "Donkey's Mom" or so & so's mom and never introduce yourself by your real name from there after. 

A.K.A.

From here on out, I will refer to my husband as "ThatDude". My older son as "Donkey", my younger son as "Mama's Boy" and my daughter as "Princess"

Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels

'Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels' needs to be my new motto. I love food, how do you think I got to be overweight, by not eating? Wrong! I love food! But lately, whenever I give in to one of my "temptations", I end up regretting it later on because it usually ends up not tasting as good as I thought it would, and it's just not worth the extra calories and frustration. 
Take Saturday for example. I lost 1.6 pounds last week and on Saturday I decided to treat myself for my hard work. And ofcourse I used food as my reward - a great big chocolate chip cookie from Dunkin' Donuts. I took one bite & even though it was gross, I finished the cookie because that was my only 'treat' and I figured I might as well eat it.  So I ate 400 calories and didn't even enjoy what I was eating. What is wrong with me? I thought I was stronger then that. Old habits die hard. 
So ofcourse I take a peek at the scale today & even though I got myself back on track yesterday (Sunday) and even exercised (ran for 25 minutes), the scale shows a 2 pound gain since Saturday. Lesson learned scale, lesson learned... you can go back down now. 

I'm not going to let that cookie get the best of me. I AM stronger than that cookie or cake or brownie or whatever else comes my way. I have to come up with some new 'treats' for myself, ones that don't involve calories. And I need to form some new habits. Easier said then done! But it's time to get serious!

10 years in the making

I have struggled with my weight all my life. Up until I was 18, I didn't really care how fat I was, just as long as I kept eating yummy food, which is how I got to be 280 pounds at the start of my weight loss journey. I love food, there's no denying that. I didn't get to be 280 pounds by telling myself "no, you can not go back for seconds." or "no, don't eat that cake.".  And I'm the type of person that can look at food & gain 5 pounds. 
After my freshman year of college, at the age of 19, I finally decided I wanted to start losing weight. But yet, here I sit, 29 years old and I'm still overweight!! For the last 10 years my weight has yo-yo'd up and down and I am sick of it!!  So here beings my weight loss (and gain) story....
When I was 19, I started losing weight by simply counting calories and making sure I did not eat more then I burned. Simple math, seemed easy enough, and it was. The weight practically fell off the first few months. When I got to around 210 pounds, I had some changes in my life - I started dating my now husband M.  M & I would go out to eat quite a bit so for a long time my weight hovered just over the 200 pound mark. I wasn't 100% happy with my weight yet, but I was basking in the new relationship (my first and only relationship mind you) and got lazy. 
M & I moved in together after a year of dating and Friday night pizza takeout became our weekly ritual and soon the old habits crept back into my life. By the time we got engaged (6 months later) I was packing on the pounds and back up to around 240.
I was determined not to be a fat bride, so for our year and a half long engagement, I started following the Atkin's diet. It worked well at first and I was able to get back to 200 pounds pretty quickly, which is where I stayed until my wedding day. 200 had become my biggest nemisis, I just couldn't seem to get past that number on the scale. I married M on a beautiful May day weighing 200 pounds.
When we returned from our honeymoon 10 days later, I decided I had to break out of the 200's. The Atkins was no longer working for me, nevermind the fact that I didn't want to look at another piece of meat for as long as I lived, so I started following the Weight Watchers plan.   I combined WW with exercise (walking, aerobics, elliptical) and within a year I was at my lowest weight ever - 160 pounds. I wasn't super skinny, but I looked good & I felt great and that is all that mattered.
Victory sure didn't last long because soon after reaching 160, I got pregnant with my first son R. I wasn't too worried about gaining back the weight because I made a vow to myself to continue to watch my diet & continue to exercise which is exactly what I did. So how did I manage to gain 40 pounds?!?!?! Apparently, my thyroid was on the verge of destruction and the pregnancy pushed it to it's doom, so to say. I was now hypothyroid which means that my thyroid did not work the way it was supposed to, which means that my metabolism slowed to a hault.
For a year after R's birth, I struggled to lose the baby weight only to be left fat, frustrated and exhausted. I finally found a doctor with the answers and I started meds to help rectify my hypothyroidism and I was once back on the losing end of the scale. But, I didn't get very far, 10 pounds at the most, because when R was 2, I got pregnant with baby #2. And oh boy, did that pregnancy wreck havoc on my body. I gained 40, 50, 60??? pounds? I don't even know for sure, and to be honest, after I passed the 40 pound gain mark, I stopped looking at the scale. It was too depressing and I just didn't want to know. The good news is, is that my entire body was swollen (or so it seemed) and therefore after I gave birth, and the water weight was gone, I instantly lost 40 pounds! Easiest diet I've ever been on, and yet, I still had weight hanging around from my first pregnancy and a little more from that pregnancy.
My husband and I really wanted a baby girl and we decided to try one more time. But at this point, I was done with the whole up & down weight game. So I told my  husband if we were going to try again, it would have to be soon because I wanted the fat chapter of my life to be over so I could finally lose the weight once & for all. Low and behold, when my second son was only 4 months old, I found out I was pregnant with baby #3.
No matter how much I ate (and boy, or should I say girl, did I eat this time around!)  I didn't seem to gain any weight. And actually, in the first trimester, I lost 5 pounds! Turns out this pregnancy revved up my thyroid kicking it into overdrive! If you're thinking that pregnancy sure does a number on my body, then you're right! Pregnancy hates me. Anyway, I gained the least amount of weight on my third and final pregnancy and within 2 months after the baby was born, I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight.
As I type this, my 3rd child, H, is only 3 months old, so now here we are, caught up to the present time frame.   And here I sit, still 40 pounds away from my 1st pregnancy's starting weight, determined beyond belief to lose this weight once and for all. 
I'm a busy mom of 3 young children, but I HAVE to find the time, even if it's only 30 minutes at a time, to exercise 3 times a week and I HAVE to follow a strict food program. I've joined Weight Watchers once again since that is the only 'diet' (they prefer to call it a lifestyle change) that has ever worked for me and I also started a running program called the couch to 5K. Yup, I'm going to be a runner! I'm currently on week 7 and running 25 minutes non-stop! Go me!!
This has been 10 years in the making. 10 years of juggling with the scale, 10 years of binge eating, 10 years of "I'll get back on track tomorrow", etc etc etc. No more excuses. I have to do this!

Welcome to my life

Have you ever walked into a room, opened a closet door and stared blankly inside trying to remember what it was that you went in there for.... only to realize that you got up to make your baby a bottle which isn't even located in that closet, let alone the same room that you're standing in?
That's me - permanent mommy brain. I was once a well put together, organized young woman, and now I'm a scatterbrained, forgetful mess with grey hair. But you know what, I'm a mom and I would give up my sanity for my kids... and trust me, I have. 
So there is your warning. Things might get messy....