How'd Week One Go?

Week One wasn't *terrible*. It wasn't 100% either, though.

Sugar: I actually did really great on my No Sweet Treats plan all last week (starting Monday) until Saturday. Saturday we attended FOUR birthday parties. Crazy, right? I was pretty proud of myself-- I had planned to have one treat at the last party. That friend is a great baker, and I knew her cake would be worth it. So I withstood the pink funfetti cupcakes at Party #1. I didn't eat the blue Robot cake at party #2. I just dropped the girls off at Party #3, so no temptations there! And I ate one cupcake at Party #4 (plus one chocolate covered pretzel rod). Then Sunday I wanted a trefoil cookie (Girl Scouts!!) and I thought, eh, it'll be fine. 2 cookies won't hurt. That turned into 4 cookies. Then the past few days I've had a cookie here and there. And I think I've kept myself to just one M&M since Saturday.

So the Week 2 Goal related to the Ultimate Cut Out The Sugar Goal, sill stay the same as Week One. Get that sweet treat craving kicked!!

Workouts:

I've been walking more! Yay! I am one workout behind this week-- I had intended to workout on Monday and it just didn't happen. One thing after another built up and it's the old excuse that I didn't get to it. I did work out today and will tomorrow, too to "catch up" on my 3 workouts this week!

Week 2 Goal is staying over-- 3 trainer workouts a week (with walking) and 4 days a week of stretches

Water. Oh. man. I thought this was going to be the easiest of the goals this week, but HAHAHAHA!!
I think I actually drank less water per day than I did even before I started this goal. I have no excuses or reasons. I either didn't want it, didn't think of it until later, or or or. Definitely need to step up my game this week!!



Exciting thing this week! I am planning my annual Labor Day Mommy's weekend off trip! Some friends and I are definitely hitting a beach this year! All the more reason to get healthy over the next few months!!

Week One: Goals

I know it's Wednesday, but maybe I'll roll over each week on Wednesdays? Start when and where you are-- no reason to wait until the arbitrary Monday!

Ultimate goal: Cut out all added sugar
Week 1 goal: Cut out sweet treats. 

I never thought I had a sweet tooth until I started paying attention!!
-B is currently potty training and gets M&Ms for his successes (I know, I know... food rewards aren't the best. We tried other things at first, but this is what is actually working). He would get 2 M&Ms, and I would get 2 M&Ms. Or 5. or 10.
-Girl Scout cookies are in my house. I tell myself I can eat just 2 and be satisfied. But I end up eating a third, and sometimes fourth after lunch. Then another 2-3-4 after dinner.
-When I drink my coffee I either like it really gussied up (mmmm maple & brown sugar lattes...), OR I like my plain old regular lattes and coffee with cinnamon toast or some sort of sweet roll or chocolate.

This needs to stop. I'm going to talk more about this concept later, but I am an Abstainer. It means I don't do moderation well (this is part of my eating disorder behavior, too). I'm an all or nothing sort of person and for this stage of my work, I am just going to abstain from sweet treats all together. When I feel more secure, and when these items are less of a binge temptation, I will see if I can add them back in once a week or something.

Ultimate Goal: Do some sort of workout/body movement/stretching activity every day
Week 1 Goal: Complete trainer workout (including a short walk) 3 times a week. Do stretching program on the off days. 

This goes with the Abstainer idea. I need to make sure I am doing something intentional to move my body every single day. If left to my own devices, especially in these cold winter months (It's not even 30* here today!), I just cuddle up under a blanket and read books all day. Luckily, my kids help with this sedentary lifestyle some. I am always going up stairs to check on them, picking things up around the house, chasing B down the sidewalk when we go pick up the girls. When it's warmer/my back is fully healed, we will walk the girls to and from school again. I did this the entire first semester, and it was great! It is .6 miles to their school, so it was really nice to walk about 2 miles each school day. I'm looking forward to that happening again!

I do have a trainer and she is awesome. I see her just once a month, where she comes to my home and goes through the month's exercises with me. Then I get an emailed plan of my workouts for the month. This is really the best set up for me. The gym isn't a good option for me right now, plus everything I need to do to get my core strengthened I can do at home. Her plans include doing the week's work out 3 days. I am doing a stretching set she put together for me the very first week when I was still pretty injured on the off days to keep the healing process going.

Ultimate goal: Drink 120 ounces of water every day. 
Week 1 goal: Drink 80 ounces of water each day this week. 

This is obvious, right? Water is important. I hear all the time you should drink the number of ounces that equals half of your weight, so this is sort of around there. Seems like a good place to start and adjustments can be made as needed. That's a LOT of water. I have a 20oz straw bottle I'm using, but I need to figure out how much I am actually drinking because I need ice in my water.


I guess those are my current ultimate goals. Notice I am not focusing on a number of pounds to lose in these big goals. I won't try to be all high and mighty about it-- the numbers are definitely in the back of my mind. But I am really going to try to keep them there-- in the back of the mind. I want to keep the focus on building healthy habits, and creating goals that are sustainable long term for me.

I'll be back early next week with a post about the whole Abstainer/Moderator concept!

Starting over. At the bottom of the mountain.

*Deep Breath*

I'm starting over.

7 years ago, I lost 60 pounds. My goal, my "why" was to get pregnant. And boy did I-- our twins are 6 years old now. I gained 90 pounds during the twin pregnancy, though my doctor has said at least 30 of that was water weight I put on due to pre-eclampsia. But still. 90.pounds.

After the girls (A & N) were a year old, I lost 60 pounds. Again. I did spin, bootcamp, running, weights. The whole shebang. Between losing the water weight and then the workouts, I still had 30 pounds of the twin weight on when I got pregnant again.

With my singleton, I gained just under 40 pounds.  I was pretty happy about it, and my doctor was, too. I lost 20 of those as soon as B was born. But I had learned when I was nursing the girls that I was one of those women who can't lose weight while nursing. My OB tried to make me feel better by saying that it means hundreds of years ago, my babies and I would have been the ones to survive famines and droughts. Didn't help a ton, but thanks. my goal while nursing is just to not gain weight, and then once weaned, my body lets the pounds go a little more easily. Plus, I am not chained to my baby and can get out and walk and exercise more easily.

But. Oh, here's a big but. when the baby (B) was 5 months old, I had my thyroid removed. It has been 2 years of tumult trying to get my meds figured out. I gained 40 pounds in the 6 months directly following my surgery. Let me assure you, this is not because of any particularly bad habits. My levels were so low, I barely got out of bed, and I surely didn't waste energy walking from the couch to the fridge when I was that low.

I've done some stops and starts these past two years and I have lost 12-13 pounds from the Most I Have Ever Weighed. I have a long, long way to go.  Let's add it up: 30 twin pounds, 20 Bennett pounds. 40 thyroid pounds. (90pounds) and then subtract the 12 I've lost-- I still have 78 pounds to get down to my lowest weight ever. I'm not sure if that's my ultimate goal, though, at this point. We're going to go 10 pounds at a time and see where I land. Where I'm comfortable. Where I'm not obsessed with each calorie, but able to enjoy life and food around me.

In January, I hurt my back while doing yoga. One of those "damn right I have the availability to do boat post" moments that you regret the day after. It took 6 weeks before I could walk upright again. I'm 10 weeks from the injury, and I can still feel my back getting tired REALLY fast. I am also noticing some disordered eating popping up here and there (I have been treated twice for an eating disorder. I will probably talk more about this in another post).

So I need to get back in it. I need some accountability. So I will be posting to this blog a couple of times a week. If you still follow this blog at all and it randomly popped up today, feel free to comment. Support is good. Accountability is good.

I am ready to work.

Diet Struggles-- a mind game

So, obviously the past few weeks I've not been blogging. The main reason for this is that I've been completely ignoring dieting. I've chosen to actively ignore the need on many different levels to watch what I put into my mouth and instead wallow in self-pity and the "unfairness of it all". Because I'm human and I'm weary. I'm flat out weary of not having a "normal" body (I'll pause here while we all laugh at how I think everyone who is skinny doesn't struggle with food on any sort of level and that their bodies don't rebel in some way some how and that everyone who is skinny is automatically happy and has their life completely pulled together). I'm weary of telling myself no.

The truth is that is just sucks and it's hard to completely change habits. It takes willpower and effort and generally being un-lazy. I'm so not good with being un-lazy.

So for the past 3 weeks, I have half-heartedly gotten up and gone to the gym maybe 2 days a week. I go on my "easy" days- Thursday when I work out on my own and can therefore do 15 minutes on the elliptical and 10 crunches and say "well, that's better than nothing" and go home to a bagel and coffee and Friday when I go to yoga in the middle of the morning without my kids and while it's a pretty good workout, it's more about having 'me time' built in away from the "stress" of being at home. I know I'm using a copious amount of quotation marks here which are mostly technically grammatically incorrect, but I want you to know that these  phrases I'm using I don't 100% believe myself.

I also quit tracking my calories and told myself I can "keep up with it in my head" (I can't) and "eh, I'm pretty sure I'm close" (I wasn't). So I gained 3 pounds in about 2 weeks. I'm back at having lost less than 30 pounds and that REALLY BUGS ME.

Today, I was getting back on the wagon. I had a horrendous day yesterday (If you every looked at my food journal yesterday, you'll see that I never recorded dinner when I had 350 calories left in the day-- yeah. that was on purpose).  Today already kind of stinks. I made a poor choice for snack (coffee cake made by a friend. Sooo good.. but you know, not.) My goal over the next few weeks is to record everything. Even if I'm over my 1200 calories for the day. ESPECIALLY when I'm over my 1200 calories for today. I need to acknowledge these failures. I need to pray. I need to do a lot of things besides tooling around the internet thinking about which iPhone case I should get.

There's my confession. I'm here to work on myself. I will not be motivated to say no 100% of the time-- I will not lose the next 50 lbs overnight (though, at times I really do think and say to God "You know how hard I"m working-- can't you just make this happen more easily??? I know you can!" but more on that whole struggle another day).

We'll talk again tomorrow.

Over

Bleh. I went over in my calories today-- roughly 150 over. There were so many things I could have done differently for that not to have been the case, and I even thought of doing some of them a few times, but I didn't. Why? I have plenty of excuses. Wednesday is my off day from exercise-- my body needs time to rest. Tara, this doesn't mean you can't take a 30 minute walk with a stroller. You could have totally burned off that extra little snack. We had friends over for lunch (always fun!!) and both of the women who joined us are nursing mothers so THEY got (and totally should have!) to have an extra croissant with the chicken salad. I had one, too. That's 90 calories right there. One of the guests brought some Uh-mazing brownies with her. I totally ate one. That's 110 calories that were 100% WORTH IT. But I should have done something to counteract it.

Tomorrow I'm doing my incline program at the gym. I typically do 30 minutes and then just head home. I think tomorrow I'll do the 30 minute incline program and then something else (rowing? yoga? ab work? hmm...) for 15 minutes.

Sounds weird, but it was so good!

I had a roasted grape, goat cheese and honey stuffed sweet potato for lunch today. I know, it sounds weird. Roasted grapes? Sweet potatoes with what cheese? Yeah. well. It was fabulous. Go here and get the recipe and make it. Well, if you like goat cheese. You definitely taste that awesome tang, and if you already you know you hate goat cheese, you will probably hate this. But still go roast some grapes. Cause they.were.awesome.  And the whole thing was about 250 calories (medium sized potato, and I'm out of honey so I used agave nectar). Just delicious. Yum.

And here's today's accountability. If you look right this instant, obviously dinner isn't up yet, but we're having Lebanese style beef patties. Just 340 calories and super flavorful. I'll share that recipe next Monday, I think! Oh, and we have LifeGroup tonight, so hopefully I can handle myself with the snacks. That's always a hard time for me. I don't want to make the hostess/snack provider feel bad and think "well my snack isn't good enough/healthy enough/whatever for that Tara Salsman. hmmph." And goodness knows I WANT to try it... and try it again... and about 12 times. But I also know that if I eat just one cookie, I'm going to end up eating 4. I'm horrible at portion control. I'm really an all-or-nothing sort of eater most of the time. But I'm working on it. I promise. Check out my food journal later tonight to see how I did!

A few words on breakfast and notes on a weekend

Happy Monday morning, folks. Apparently I'm not a weekend blogger. I'm ok with that-- I wasn't entirely sure how weekends would shape up in the blogging world since we sleep in (kind of... we do have 2 toddlers) and I don't formally exercise or typically record food intake on Saturday and Sunday. So Monday-Friday seems to be when I'm able to hop on.

So breakfast. I'm finding that a lot of dieters/lifestyle changers really struggle with breakfast. Some people's former go-tos are now perceived as off-limits. No more sugary cereal; no more PopTarts; bacon or no bacon? There just seems to be so much confusion about what will be filling and truly break the overnight fast and get you to lunch time and still stay within calorie and nutrient restrictions.

Last Monday, I posted a recipe for pumpkin pie baked oatmeal which has 190 calories per serving. I try to stay around 300 calories for breakfast (then there's 400 for lunch, 400 for dinner and 100 for a snack). However, that is just my personal preference. If you'd rather have a bigger breakfast and cut back at lunch, go for it! It's all about what is sustainable and works within your lifestyle.

I have noticed in my own diet and in the diet of many around me that we (Americans? Mid-Americans? my little group of friends & family? I'm not really sure how to define the 'we') are somedays severely lacking in vegetables. Scott and I are members of a CSA, so we do have access to a lot of fresh produce that I am struggling to learn to cook and use effectively (this is our first year); but some people I talk to say things like "I know I need to eat more kale/chard/greens/green vegetables, but I have no idea what to do with them and/or what I tried last week tasted TERRIBLE." I'll admit, greens take a little getting used to and take some creativity and really good recipes to actually ENJOY for me. I have a friend who loves greens and seems to eat them constantly (I'm sure this isn't true, though). I've been trying a lot of different things, and one that has worked REALLY well for me has been adding kale to my scrambled eggs in the morning. I know, I know you guys are thinking "WHAT?!!? I don't need greens THAT badly! KALE! for BREAKFAST?!" Yeah, I thought the same thing. But guys. I have one serving of veggies under my belt alread and it's not even 8am. And it adds extra volume to my breakfast and I almost couldn't finish my eggs this morning. So give it a shot. I think you'll like it! Here's my method:

1. slice up one (or half of one if they're big) apple & maple chicken sausage (I used meijer brand). Saute over medium-low heat in a pan sprayed with cooking spray. Let it get a little brown, but not too much.
2. While the sausage is browning, chop up a nice handful of kale. I used 2 small leaves. Remove the middle rib and chop leaves into 1" cubes. I used organic red kale, but any sort of tender green like chard, any sort of kale, or whatever you have on hand should work well. I wouldn't use more bitter greens like turnips or collards. Those need to be cooked longer.
3. Add kale to the pan with the sausage and saute until bright green and a little wilted. My kale hasn't been wilting very much lately, so just saute for 3ish minutes. Remove sausage and kale from pan.
4. Scramble one or two large eggs (so stir up in a separate bowl, add a tablespoon of milk and a pinch of salt & pepper) in the same pan. Just before set, when it still looks a little wet, add back the kale and sausage and mix together.
5. Sprinkle with some grated fresh Parmesan (just a tablespoon or so). Stir to melted and then eat! I had a whole wheat frozen waffle (Van's brand) with mine, but any bread product would be great.

Let me know how you like it!

Today's food diary can be found here: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/TrappedSoutherner?date=2012-09-17

Thursday accountability

So tonight, I'm loving Jason's Deli. I'm waiting to see if the 100 Days of Real Food does a review of their ingredients. Jason's Deli claims organic and real food and I hope it's really true because it's delicious! The girls and I went there tonight for dinner and I had the Savvy Chicken Salad Wrap (340 calories) and their steamed veggies (60 calories). I had enough calories left over that I was able to indulge in their free for dine-in ice cream cones. So good!

Tomorrow I'm going to do a post about exercise, but here's today's food log. See y'all tomorrow! 

Zoo Calories (Day 3)

Wednesdays are my gym off days. On Monday I go to the 5:45am spin class, Tuesday is the 5:45am Bootcamp, Thursday I do my own treadmill incline program (I'll post about this later) early in the morning and then Friday I do the 10:30am Power Yoga class. I've really found this mix to be a good mix for me. We can talk more later about how I discovered the best mix of exercises for me (sounds like a good Friday information post!). But since I don't go to the gym on Wednesdays, I feel more ready to do lots of walking with the girls. This means a zoo trip! We went with a group of friends today and had a great time for about 2 1/2 hours. I was conflicted about how to determine and record the calorie output for zoo trips. There was a lot of starting and stopping, but I was on my feet for about 2 hours straight (before we stopped to each lunch) and much of the time I was pushing a stroller that weighs roughly 60 pounds (stroller + 2 girls + diaper bag). After some facebook discussion, I went with 250 calories. My Fitness Pal registered pushing a stroller for 120 minutes as 445 and that felt way too high for the amount of exertion I felt. So 250 is my guesstimate. If anybody has other suggestions, please let me know!

Here's the link to my food diary. It turns out that the links I leave each night will take you to the current day's food diary. But you can scroll back to see any previous date's diary (in case you want to check out some dinner ideas maybe).
*Update* I think I figured out how to fix it. I'll go back to the past few days and try to remedy the issue. Have a great day tomorrow!

Day 2 Accountability

Here's the link to my public food diary on My Fitness Pal.

Have a great night!

Pumpkin Pie Baked Oatmeal & Today's Accountability

Fall is in the air! And this calls for pumpkin pie. For breakfast.  So this morning, I made baked oatmeal that has the tastes of pumpkin pie for all of us. It was yummy AND you're getting a vegetable (pumpkin is a vegetable, right?) for breakfast! Our girls DEVOURED it. This make 6 servings in small ramekins. 

1. Preheat your oven to 375*. 

2. In a bowl mix 1 1/2 cups rolled oats (not instant or quick but old-fashioned oats), 3/4 cup milk, 9 Tbsp canned pumpkin (plain, not pumpkin pie mix), 4 Tbsp maple syrup, 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract, 2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground ginger, 1/8 tsp ground clove, 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg (if you like nutmeg... I don't so I didn't use it), healthy pinch of salt. Taste and adjust seasoning and sweetness according to your liking. 

3. Divide batter evenly between 6 small ramekins sprayed with cooking spray. 

4. Bake for 15-20 minutes until set. Switch oven to broiler and broil 3-4 minutes to get a crust on top.

5. Enjoy! (if I weren't being so calorie conscience, I would absolutely pour just a little cream over the top!) And the girls loved it with some raisins

Accountability: I've decided to make my My Fitness Pal food diaries public. This is for real a big deal to me. I really put everything that I take in there even the bad (if you look at today's... well, you'll see...even though I am under calories today) and it's been good accountability for awhile, but I see myself slipping because I can easily think "eh, no one knows if I eat this cookie... I'm the only one who sees this..." Well. No more. So if you want to, check out my food journal for today. Constructive criticism is welcome. And if you see a recipe ever that you'd like to have, just ask!

Here's the link to the MFP diary for today: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/TrappedSoutherner

The Beck Diet Solution, Day 1

This is my second time going through The Beck Diet Solution by Dr. Judith Beck. I cannot recommend it enough. Yes, the basics of weight loss are less calories in + more calories out but if we're all honest with ourselves it is so much more than that. It's about our relationships with food, God and situations. The Beck Diet Solution (BDS from here on out) really teaches the reader how to "think like a thin person." In the actual book, Dr. Beck spends time explaining why certain mantras and mindsets are important to weight loss and each day you implement a new strategy to change your relationship with food. This time around, I'm just going through the workbook, which is an abbreviated version that gives space for writing in responses.

Day 1 of BDS is centered around WHY you want to lose weight. Your task for today is to write down all the reasons you want to lose weight and then refer back to them. You should read your card at least twice a day. I've chosen to read mine in the morning when I go through the workbook tasks and then again around 2:30 when I start craving afternoon snacks.

I won't write all of my reasons here because some of them are private, but here are my top 10 reasons for losing weight in no particular order:
1. I will like myself.
2. I will have more time with my girls and more energy to play with them (and maybe even their future kids).
3. I will set a good example for the girls and others.
4. I will get off the medications I am currently on.
5. My knees and hips will feel better (I had knee surgery in high school, and my hips have basically been sore since my pregnancy. I can't imagine that losing weight wouldn't take off some of that pressure).
6. I can buy longer-lasting clothes in brands that fit my style better.
7. I will be less self-conscious.
8. I will complete a task (I'm a perpetual task-starter... and have a really hard time with 100% follow through. More on this in a future post maybe).
9. I will learn self-control and discipline--this is something I struggle with spiritually also. More on this later.
10. I won't be embarrassed to tell people my clothing size when asked for gift ideas or clothes sharing or while shopping in stores.

So there you go. My top 10 public reasons I want to lose weight. I have written these and others on a notecard and will carry it with me to ready when cravings and temptations to deviate from my eating plan strike. And I will also read it every day when I sit down to do my workbook.

I'll be back later today with a breakfast recipe!

Back on the wagon

So here I am. I'm going to try blogging about food and weight loss and PCOS thing again. A lot of things have changed for my family in the past 2 years since I last posted and that has, of course, changed the way I see food, the way we eat, and what we eat. There is so much that has changed, I'm not even 100% sure where to start.

Probably the biggest change, and one that led to many of the others, is that we have two toddlers now. A & N will be 2 in November and they are silly, sweet, wonderful, difficult, everything I had hoped for and nothing like what I expected. Being a mother has dramatically changed my priorities and how my day looks and feels. I am so blessed to be able to stay home with the girls, but this also presents challenges. I always have food at my fingertips. Any time I am frustrated, bored, needy or feel the slightest tinge of what may be hunger I have an entire pantry and refrigerator waiting for me. Some days it is so easy to turn on Sesame Street and give myself an hour to just sit in a recliner instead of taking the girls outside to play. I have long been an indoor girl-- I'm sure my mom would tell you from when I was a toddler myself that I would rather sit in a cozy chair and read a book than go climb on playground equipment. But my girls need to get outside more than we do right now.

So from the concerns of a new mother, as well as general disgust in my own body after giving birth (I gained 90, NINETY, pounds during the twin pregnancy. 50 came off easily. The last 40... not so much. Since Nov. 2011 I've lost 25 of those 40.), I started gathering information. That's me right there. Gather as much info as I can and then take another million years to make a decision. But then, THEN I am wholly altered and I move as quickly as I can with dogged conviction to make changes. Here is the stage I am fully implanted in now when it comes to food. Many of you may have read or heard through other avenues (or even me) about Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food and the follow up book Food Rules. These two books have completely changed my views on food and the food culture of North America. Later I unintentionally read a series of books related to the food culture in France and have ever since been trying to take real steps in making concrete changes to the food that my family eats.  We daily move a little closer to eating what many blogs and books call "Real" food. There are countless people who can give more information on what this means, but to us it means cutting out the pre-made, processed food for whole, more natural foods. In the coming weeks and months I'll go into how this really looks for us. Right now, it means a lot more cooking, a lot more learning, and most of it is fun.

I've really been feeling lately that God wants me to pour myself into encouraging and supporting other women. For a while, I thought it would be in helping other mothers of multiples, but after a few unsuccessful attempts to connect with some ladies, I'm hearing more and more of my friends around me discussing food and weight loss and how it relates to us as Christian women. I have 0 credentials, y'all. What I do have is a lot of reading, and one successful dieting attempt that was cut short by pregnancy. I lost 60 lbs before getting pregnant, and I am looking forward to seeing those numbers again. But I also want to help and encourage those around me who want to lose weight, whether it's 10 lbs or 100. This journey isn't just about eating less and exercising more, honestly. It's about your thought process and your soul and your motivations and your relationships with people AND with food. I'm learning this more and more, and I'm excited to share it.

Well, now what is this blog going to look like from now on? I'm going to be honest and real with my expectations here. My plan is to make one post daily-- however, however, most of these posts are simply going to be accountability posts for myself. I am going to start over working through The Beck Diet Solution and will post my work through that each day including a sort of food diary to keep accountable. I am 100% positive that most people won't want to read that stuff and that's ok. Then I'm planning to make more in depth posts weekly: one recipe and then one informative post (I'm thinking Mondays and Wednesdays?).

Here we go. So far today:
breakfast: bowl of cereals (Multigrain Cheerios, Mom's Best Naturals Honeyful Wheat & Grape Nuts with whole milk. 2 cups of coffee
lunch: Open faced turkey sandwich: 1 piece walnut whole wheat bread from EarthFare with 1/2 tsp mayo, 1/4 tsp dijon mustard and 3 turkey lunchmeat slices; 1/2 medium apple (pink lady. yum); 2 small sweet peppers, 18 mesquite BBQ kettle cooked potato chips (meijer).

Not the best day so far... gotta pull back on the carbs for snack and dinner!
See you all tomorrow!

Update and new blog!!

Hello everyone!
I know it's been an incredibly long time since I posted anything here. Since my last post we've bought a house, moved in, had twins, survived the holiday season, and generally attempted to settle into this new normal. Because of the dramatic change of our life, and the trajectory of the next few years, I've decided to start a new blog. I've posted an introduction to myself there as well as what the new blog will be about. There will still be some posts about the girls and recipes and things, but in general, it will be about our new home!

Thanks to all of your for your support and I hope to see you over at Cottage 1910!

An Autumnal Christmas

I am going to be completely honest here. I WANT desperately to be the person starts Christmas shopping every year in August. I want to spend lots of time considering and searching for the perfect gift for each and every person on my list. Unfortunately, this usually doesn't happen. Summer is just so... hot. You can't think about Christmas time then! Then fall comes and there's football all Saturday that hinders me from hitting the malls and shops.

But this year is different. With the girls coming at the end of October/beginning of November, and the adventure that will follow, I don't imagine I'll be doing a lot of mall walking in November and December. So I have badgered our friends and family and I have gotten gift ideas from almost everyone on our current list (by almost, I'm calling out Greg and Blair!). We still have to wait for the name drawing at Thanksgiving for both sides of my family, but still, I'm excited about getting such an early start.

In this spirit, I want to showcase two sites that I have loved using the past few weeks when searching for gift giving inspiration. Of course there are the usual suspects: amazon.com for everything and etsy for the cute, artsy, homemade options. Both of these are great sites, but honestly, I get incredibly overwhelmed and rarely find items that I didn't go looking for. The newest site I found just today through another blog is Kate's Paperie. This site not only has beautiful stationary and paper products, but also just some fun stocking stuffers. The site has a "gift giving" tab that gives 7 categories of gift recipients to help focus your search. Another more eclectic site is Uncommon Goods . "Eclectic" does not even touch the massive variety you can find there. Just go.

How is your Christmas shopping going? Have you at least made your own list?

StarSearch: Pediatricians

I am on the quest for the perfect pediatrician. Today was my first step into the world, and I'm a bit excited. I have 2 meet and greets scheduled with two doctors at two different practices. Both are within 10 miles of the new house in Delaware, which is exciting, but neither have privileges at our delivering hospital. What does this mean? It means that they won't meet the babies until they're about a week old and the random pediatric person at St. Ann's will be the one checking and discharging the babies. Not a big deal to me, really, b/c I'd rather have the pediatrician(s) close by for the next few years than have one for the (hopefully) short hospital stay.

I have a fun list of questions for the meet and greets. Any input on the questions is wholly welcome!

1. Are you willing to support us with an alternate vaccination schedule?

2. Are you "twin friendly?" Meaning: will you do joint well visits? or at least make an attempt to schedule back-to-back appointments?

3. Do you have separate waiting rooms for well patients v. sick ones?

4. How likely are we to get same-day sick appointments? By what time of day do I need to call to get a same-day appointment?

5. Do the doctors in this practice rotate, or will we always see you for the well visits? (I realize sick visits are an entirely different animal)

6. What are your after-hours/weekend procedures? Are there charges for calling after hours?

7. How does this practice handle doctor vacations? Do you stagger them? What do you do around major holidays?

Now it really feels like we're in the home stretch! Dealing with the hospital post-birth plan (I don't really have a birth plan b/c there's no telling what's happening with twins. My OB at least knows I want as little intervention as possible), finding pediatricians, and getting excited to get the nursery established in the new house is making it all set in!

Neave is the Emily of 2015

We've gotten a bit of flack from various people about our name choice for Baby B. Ever since I went to Ireland in 2008, I've loved the name Niamh (pronounced Neave; rhymes with leave and weave) and Scott has, too. Long story short, when I visited a school outside of Dublin, I encountered a girl named Niamh, and found her name to be original and exciting.

Fast forward to now, and we want to name our 2nd girl the anglicanized version of Niamh. We realize that our daughter's name would never be pronounced correctly using the old Irish spelling, so we settled on the very British way--Neave. We continue to get feedback-- some of it not so nice.

I am proud to announce after some research today that in 2001, Niamh was ranked 6th in baby girl names in Ireland (it's currently ranked 18). To compare, in 2001, the 6th most popular name in the US was Sarah. SARAH. So, just realize that Neave ISN'T weird! It's the Irish equivalent of Sarah.

And we love it.

Moved on; in a new process

So last week was a little nuts, and I never got around to updating what happened with the house situation.

The House from before is no longer an option for us. The sellers didn't agree to make some of the remedies we considered non-negotiable (uh, mold in the basement!) Plus, our architect friend suggested getting out of it.

The same day we were back at the original house taking pictures for our architect friend, our realtor suggested seeing a few other homes. Well, we found a 2nd place we liked! It's significantly more expensive than the previous house, but it's bigger and nicer. There are more decorative things to do at some point (1st on the list: get rid of the granny wallpaper!!), but the house is in better condition.

We had our home inspection this past Saturday, and there are a few things for these sellers to fix, like new roofing shingles and a new hot water heater. But we're very confident in success this time around!

This house has great landscaping, so I'm reading up on gardening. I'm getting excited about plantings and I'm making some plans for the way I want to do our yard! It will be a busy and wonderful spring! :)

I really should stop loving this house

This is really going to just be a quick status update without much practical advice included.

We heard from the sellers yesterday. We have a list of 11 items of the 18ish that we requested that they are willing to fix for us. Now the difficult decision making really kicks in. Are these 11 enough?

Some of our larger requests, they aren't doing, except to offer us $1,000 to go towards the issues. One of our largest concerns is the damp basement and all the trouble that entails. Our home inspector considered it a major concern and suggested having a basement professional investigate the issues. The sellers had a contractor come in, and their contractor really says there isn't much to be done. His recommendation is to install a dehumidifier and do some basic tuck-pointing as needed. So I started feeling good about the situation again. It seemed like things would work out.

However, I am a lucky girl who has a resource many people don't-- an architect friend who, in the past, has worked with how to remedy old building problems. So I call him, sent him a copy of the inspection report and thought all would be ok. Turns out he thinks there are more issues than are mentioned on the inspection report. So this afternoon, Scott and I are returning with our Realtor to take some more pictures of the spaces he is concerned with so we can get a better idea of what to expect with this house.

I'll keep ya posted on how things progress from here!

Perimeter drains, exhaust fans, and handrails

As I mentioned last week, we're in the process of (hopefully) buying our first home. I'll skip the more boring details (I wrote a REALLY long post on Friday that was just way too boring, so I deleted it) of actually finding a house that we like, no, love, and making an offer and I'll go straight to the home inspection part.

This is the part of first-time home buying I didn't really know about. We all see the shows were people walk through lovely houses and find the one that just feels right to them. Then the prospective buyers make an offer, sometimes they go back and forth with the seller a time or two, and then they're "in contract." That's the easy part my friends. Today I'm just going to give a small hint into the world of being in contract on an older home.

The House (how I will now refer to the place Scott and I are in contract on) was built in 1920. The previous owners have done a beautiful job renovating the kitchen and maintaining/restoring the old, mostly original woodwork and windows. However, as is the case with all old houses, there are a few questions that popped up even as we made an offer, such as, "how long will this furnace last?," "Will this old piping still work?," "What's going on with the basement and foundation?"

So b/c of these questions, and just because it's smart, we got a home inspection (and a furnace inspection, and a radon evaluation). I would HIGHLY recommend a home inspection to anyone looking to purchase a home whether old or new. We learned so much about the house and home maintenance that even if we end up not getting this house, we're much more prepared for another process in the future.

A home inspection consists of having a qualified home inspector come to the home and visually evaluate all areas of the house. Usually you walk through with the person and they explain the issues they see, and many times give recommendations on how it should be handled (i.e., have a certified basement specialist come see this; You can do this yourself with some $6 caulk from Home Depot). Then you get The Report.

Another note for first timers: inspections cost money. And you don't get that back if the house falls through or if there are major issues. The home inspection, with termite and wood destroying insect included, cost us $360. Then we will add money for the furnace and radon inspections as they happen. More info on these guys later!

Our home inspection report is 30 pages long if that tells you anything about our house. We then waded through the report with our realtor to make a list of all the things that we are going to ask the seller to fix before we buy the house. We have roughly 29 items which need to be addressed at some point. Some of these we will expect the seller to repair; others, Scott and I can do them at a later date. Our next step is to submit this list to the sellers and then negotiate again on which items they MUST do. We do have a few non-negotiable fixes that we will pull out of the contract on the house if they are not remedied.

So please keep thinking and praying for us as we discuss things with the sellers and hopefully get a house to move into before these girls are born!