Month: March 2011

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I did it! (& a couple other things)

I just have to toot my own horn here for a second. I went out and jogged after work yesterday! Toot toot! I’ve mentioned how I have completely slacked off from exercising all winter and basically for the better part of a year now, and it’s finally gotten to me. I have to get back into some sort of shape! The other night I had 2 pieces of Ian’s pizza for dinner (holy yum, btw), which usually I’m all about, but when I got done eating this time I thought man, that made me feel like total junk. I need to change something here. So yesterday I got home early, the sun was out, it was above freezing (turns out not by much, though), and I actually was motivated to lace up the kicks and get out there.

Now please notice that I did not say I went for a *run*. I know better. 😉 This was definitely 100% a jog. I knew it would be though – I can’t head out just sprinting along like some people. I’m the type of runner who, if I’m really going to get into running shape and stick with it without injuring myself, needs to start out very very slowly and ease into things. Especially right now since I’m totally out of shape. I planned on simply going for 1 mile with no walking allowed, see how that felt, and add on if I could manage that far. I also told R to take a guess at what my 1 mile time would be – I said 11:22. Well, I just plugged my stats and route into my MapMyRun account and whaddya know? A 9:05 mile pace! Holla!! I went 1.44 miles in 13:06. Sweetness, much better than I was expecting. However, that was only for 1.44 miles. I’m sure as soon as I start to add distance that pace will slow exponentially. 😉 I need to keep at it, though. It’s sunny again today and supposed to be mid-40s, so maybe I’ll give it another shot tonight. I do need to make sure not to do too much too fast though, because I often end up with shin splints when I go that route. At least 1 day off in between runs is usually my preferred routine, but I know I won’t feel like it tomorrow afternoon.

I was pretty annoyed during my jog, though, because it seemed no matter which direction I went – north, south, east, or west – I was constantly running INTO the wind. I must’ve been in a vortex, lucky me. 😉 And it was cold, too! Man, I can’t wait for this crap cold weather to end.

I can’t run without music either. I used to hate running with headphones on, but now I can’t stand to not have them. I can too easily talk myself out of the run when all I can think about is how badly my legs and lungs hurt. So music provides a nice distraction. Plus, when the pump-up songs come on it seems like each step gets just a little bit lighter and easier. Yesterday Perfect Gentleman by Wyclef came on toward the end of my run, and dude, that is my JAM! For my Madison peeps out there, you know the relationship that song and I have – it would come on, usually at Brother’s, and I would instantly be on top of a table dancing. Kind of like a Pavlovian dog. Ahh, the good ol’ days….

Ok, onto the couple other things… Today is the Brewers season opener. Oh yeah, Go Brew Crew!! D’s all into it too:

My first Brewers outfit!

 

I took that picture on my phone this morning in dim light, so it’s not the clearest shot, but I love her little almost-smile in that one. She’s such a character, I love it. Monday is their home opener, and D has another special outfit for that one. 😉 Here’s a great Bob Uecker article to get you in the spirit too:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704399804576193151094758490.html

R made another wicked meal for dinner last night – pork tenderloin, cut into thirds, tenderized, grilled, made into a sandwich on amazing pretzel rolls with cheese and his delicious homemade mustard blend concoction on top. Let the drooling commence:

And best of all – it’s almost Friday!! Hell to the yeah!

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F for Mommy

Ok, so I mentioned the other day how D’s cold got a lot worse this weekend with the bad cough that was making her gag and all that loveliness. Well, yesterday morning it was nearly impossible to wake her up to get ready for daycare at her usual 6:30 hour, and once I was able to roust her the coughing began again in earnest. The poor little thing was hacking and gagging all over the place, and I just felt terrible for her. Each time the coughs would come she’d cling onto my shoulder for dear life as I was holding her. So by the time I got her changed, fed (she could hardly nurse either since her nose was so stuffed up), and dressed, we decided that it would probably be best for her to stay home from daycare seeing how awful she looked. Fortunately it’s pretty easy for R to work from home if needed, so he stayed back with her. Sick day #1 of her life.

I called the doctor’s office and explained how she’s had this cold for months and it ebbs and flows, but now the cough is really bad with the gagging and all. So they wanted to see her this time and R took her in at noon. The prognosis? Sho’ nuf, ear infection in her right ear. Boo. A couple people had told me they thought she had one once they heard about the crying at bedtime we experienced a couple weeks ago, but I thought that couldn’t be it – she never pulled at her ear like it bothered her, she was never out of sorts any other time than bedtime, never had a fever or anything like that. Apparently I was wrong. So we got her going on some amoxicillin starting yesterday for 10 days. You know, the fun pink stuff you shake up and keep in the fridge. I used to love it when I was a kid (yeah i know – weird, duh. but it was pink, thick, and tasted good) and she does too. She happily sucks down the 3mL in the dropper we have to give her twice a day. When I told the lady at daycare this morning that it was an ear infection she said she wasn’t surprised seeing how contagious they are. They are? Dang, I didn’t know that either. Little daycare mongrels.

Oh yeah – I do trust doctors, and I LOVE D’s pediatrician. D gets her immunizations (as horrible it is hearing her cry during the shots) and if medicines are prescribed to make her better (or myself, for that matter), we will be giving them to her. Don’t flame me if you’re against modern medicine and all the evils you’ve heard it causes to the human body, I dig it. And if it will help my baby heal and end her suffering, then she can’t take it soon enough as far as I’m concerned. That said, however, I am not a proponent of just pumping meds in at the first sign of a sniffle; but if whatever’s wrong has been going on long enough with no relief in sight, then give me what I need to make it better.

I felt horrible when I heard that it was an ear infection, though. How long has it been festering in there? Has she really been in pain and we didn’t know it? Were there some signs that we just didn’t recognize and therefore accidentally ignored? R said the doctor couldn’t tell how long it had been in there, so hopefully it hasn’t been too long. Apparently there is a cough reflex in the ear, which is why the bad coughing that started the past couple of days was a sign. Good to know.

So I will chalk this one up as an F in the Mommy category (possibly one of many) – who lets their baby endure an ear infection without even knowing it? Gheesh. Ah well, live and learn!

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All high tech and stuff

I’m still learning how to set up all the intricacies of my website and its widgets and plug-ins galore here, and today I found yet another one that I’ve been looking for. Those cool little sharing buttons I see all over the place. If one of my posts is just so fantastically outstanding that you can’t believe the entire general population hasn’t read it, those little clicky buttons at the bottom of each one should send it zooming off across the world wide interwebs in the fashion of your choosing.

Anyone want to test them out? Go ahead, I dare ya… 😉

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You guys, I am so excited

Look what’s back in stores:

Leinie’s Summer Shandy!! I just saw it for the first time this season last weekend and had to pick up a 12er. SM, really, again with the beer? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. But look, this is one of my favorite brews, it’s only around in the summertime, and I couldn’t have any of it last year. I promise, I’m not an alcoholic, I simply enjoy good beer, especially when everything about it just SCREAMS summer!

And a new added bonus with the Shandy this year is that each bottle neck label has a code that you can text in to win a “Trip to the Chip” or a Leinie’s canoe. A Leinie’s canoe?? Sweet! Sign me up. (side note – i had a couple bottles from that 12er this weekend and R already texted in all my codes. i’d love a leinie’s canoe!)

I love how the Leinie’s website has a Shandy countdown clock on it that still has over 2 days left. Apparently it’s not supposed to come out until April. I must be special. That, or else I just got the end of last year’s stock and they replaced the labels with the new ones for Trip to the Chip. 😉 Who cares, it still tasted good!

Ahhh…. summer here we come!

Too bad it’s still frickin’ 25 degrees this morning, ugh. 🙁

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Yum to the um!

So remember how I said R’s a great cook and loves to take pictures of what he makes? Well check out what we had for dinner last night. BLADDOW!

Mushroom ragout-stuffed rolled beef tenderloin. Um, yes please, I’ll have two. 🙂 He served it with a side of spaghetti, then made some extra spaghetti sauce to go on top of both the beef and pasta. What a man!! For a beverage, we enjoyed a bottle of this:

Pacific Peak Merlot

 

It paired nicely with the beef – a smooth, easy-drinking red with none of the harsh throat-burning that some merlots can cause (i’m sure there’s a technical *wine* term for that, like it’s caused by tannins, or whatever, but i like to dumb my descriptions down to my wine level – do i like it, or don’t i like it?).

‘Twas a great way to wind down the weekend. Saturday we spent the afternoon and evening at our friends T & S’s house watching some NCAA tourney bball action and letting D play with their little girl, which was a lot of fun. Yesterday morning I got some house cleaning and laundry done while R did all the preparations for dinner. D’s cold intensified infinitely yesterday, unfortunately, so she spent all day coughing and battling snot rivers out of her nose. Poor little thing. She’d cough so hard she’d gag, which would in turn cause her to throw up anything she had in her. 🙁 Fortunately she was only up once last night and seemed a little better this morning with much less coughing, so we have our fingers crossed that we don’t get a call from daycare asking us to come pick her up today. We both were amazed, though, at how happy and playful she still was through all of it – nose wiped a million times, jammies changed 3 times due to barf eruptions, coughs to the point where you could tell her throat was so raw and sore, and very little napping.

And now here we are back at Monday again. How does that always happen so quickly?? I hope you all had a great weekend!

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Milkin’ Mama

Or Moo, as R likes to say. For you see, I breastfeed D. Wait, I guess I should put a disclaimer here:  ** This post is all about the wide, wacky world of my boobs since D was born. So if you don’t care for that subject, please turn back now. For the rest of you, let’s break on through…. **

To breastfeed or not is probably one of the first questions on most new moms’ minds. And sometimes, it’s not entirely up to them. The baby may not latch on right, the milk supply may not be there, and honestly, it’s just not for everyone. From the time I found out I was pregnant, though, I knew I would give breastfeeding a shot.

I was never one of those women who was adamant either way on the issue, but I just felt it would be right for me to try. I actually was somewhat expecting it not to go smoothly for me since I am not, how shall we say, well-endowed in the chesticles region. 😉 Why I thought that would be an issue, who knows. I’m weird, you should know that by now.

Anyhoo… Fortunately my worries were quashed practically immediately after D was born, for as soon as they got her out and cleaned off in the delivery room, they positioned her on my chest and she started sucking away. (see, if you were one of those who turned back, that image probably would’ve grossed you out. hence, the disclaimer) I kept thinking what in the world good is that doing? There’s nothing in there, I can’t tell if anything’s coming out, and these things are so little there’s no way they’re providing her any nutrients whatsoever.

The nurses reassured me, though, that even though I wasn’t producing milk yet, the colostrum she was getting those first couple of days (fancy medical term essentially meaning pre-milk) was basically liquid gold to her body and was all she needed. Ok, if you say so. I’ve never done this before so I’ll trust you guys.

Fast forward a couple days to a day or two after we got home from the hospital, so either 3-4 days after she was born, and VAVOOM! These babies filled up like you would not believe, and I was shocked to see myself in the mirror that day. I even made R come into the bathroom to take a look, because it’s nothing he’d ever seen with me before. 😉 I said look at these! Don’t they look like implants?! They totally did too – perfectly round, just stuck right on there all perky for the world to see. Hey, I could get used to this; now I see why some chicks get the surgery.

And ever since then, I have been Mama Moo. R jokes that we should just go up to the farm and he could hook me up to the cows’ milking machine. Um, NO! I don’t want them to get ripped off, thankyouverymuch.

Everyone has their own personal reasons for choosing whether or not to breastfeed their babies, but my main criteria were thrice:

  1. It’s free
  2. It’s the best thing for her, so if I am capable of producing it then why not give it to her?
  3. It’s been easy and pretty convenient for me

Oh real nice, SM, you decided whether or not to breastfeed based on economical reasons? Um, yes. Please revisit #1 – it’s FREE. Have you priced formula lately? That shit is expensive! So if I am physically able to provide my daughter my milk at no added cost to our family, why wouldn’t I?

And I know formula is not harmful to babies (duh, or else it wouldn’t be out there), but I have never heard anyone say that formula is better for an infant than breast milk. I do personally believe there is some truth to the saying “Breast is Best”, but again, I’m not one of those staunch exclusive breastfeeding moms who looks scornfully down upon anyone who formula feeds. No way, none of that crap going on here. This is just what I chose.

And as for #3 – breastfeeding has worked easily and comfortably into our schedule. For the first couple months that’s all she did was nurse, no solids yet. So it was great – she’s hungry, I’m full, let’s do this. And believe me, when I say full, I mean FULL. Man, if she didn’t eat for one reason or another or I didn’t pump for too long at a time we were talking some serious swelling going on.

Remember the implant day? Yeah, they tend to get back to that status after too many hours of no sucking, whether it be from D or the milk machine. And dude, it hurts! I never would have thought boobs full of milk would be a painful thing, just more like a squishy water balloon or something, but boy was I wrong. The only thing I can even think to relate it to, and having no personal physical experience with this I can’t confirm for sure, but is when a guy hasn’t, well, um, you know…. released?

The one thing I really haven’t had to deal with is nursing in public, thankfully. For the most part we’ve timed outings so she’s either fed before or after we go, or we take pumped bottles for while we’re gone, or whatever. If we go to friends’ or relatives’ houses I’ll obviously just nurse her there if we stay long enough, too.

And I have nursed her in the back seat of the car, but never just right out in the open in a public setting. I do have a nursing cover for such instances, but I still think I’d feel a little weird. I’m pretty private like that, and I don’t really want people watching when I’ve got things hanging out, cover or not. In fact, the only people I’ve actually nursed in front of are R, my mom, and one of R’s sisters-in-law. They’ve got kids, they don’t care. 🙂

I was a little anxious to see how pumping was going to go once I went back to work, but so far it’s been no trouble at all. I have one of the good double electric pumps, so I only have to do it once a day, and it only takes about 20 minutes total from the time I step off to the time I’m back at my desk.

And I don’t make a big deal about it with fanfare and an announcement that I’m going to go relieve by breasteses or anything like that, I just discreetly step away and return. I figure if anybody has a problem with it, screw them. D comes first now in every aspect of my life, and anyone with kids (which is practically everyone with whom i work) should recognize and respect that.

It works out perfectly, too, because we send the two bottles I pump at work each day to daycare with D for the next day. Actually, I pump 3 bottles a day, because in the morning I need to pump the side on which she doesn’t eat, too. Ok, so 3 bottles go to daycare, and then sometimes we get a backlog so I’ll freeze the morning ones. This kid gets lots of milk. 🙂

I actually started pumping and freezing milk a while before I went back to work, just in case my supply dwindled too soon, or pumping during the workday ended up being a bust (ha! no pun intended), or things just didn’t work out for whatever reason and we would need some back-up reserves. Fortunately we needed not worry there either.

When I said R says Moo about me, he’s not that far off. I seriously make enough milk for a couple babies. We have a freezer-full of bags in the basement, a freezer door-full of bags in the kitchen, and a couple bottles chilling in the fridge on a daily basis. Yep, I’ve got milk.

I’m planning on breastfeeding D for the whole first year, which, judging by how well my supply has lasted for almost 8 months so far, should be no problem whatsoever. It’s what I’m going to do when I want to stop that kind of frightens me. I don’t get quite as engorged after long periods of no relief as I did in the early months, but these suckers still get quite enlarged and painful if I do go too long.

So what am I supposed to do when it comes time to stop if I’m still producing this much? Do I just pump little bits at a time less frequently to trick my body into thinking I don’t need to make that much? Do I suck it up and just sit in pain for a few days until they go down? (that last notion scares the shit out of me, because i’m not kidding when i keep saying these things hurt when they’re full!) Eek, we shall see.

One nice side effect of BFing that I’ve experienced is that it has served as my *exercise* for going on 8 months now. I’ve read that it burns like 500+ calories a day, depending on how much you produce, and I believe it. Without substantially changing my diet at all (and actually eating crappier than usual sometimes) I’ve been able to lose all the weight I gained during my pregnancy and then some, and I credit 100% of that weight loss to BFing.

I haven’t worked out regularly since shortly after D was born, and even then I was just taking her for walks. Before that, it was a good couple months since I’d followed my normal workout schedule, so it’s pushing a year now that I haven’t exercised like I’m used to.

I haven’t gone this long without regular exercise since high school, and I really need to get my butt back in shape. I’m still contemplating trying a half marathon this summer, so I need to do some serious work to get my cardiovascular stamina back up. I’m not gonna lie, I am a big fan of the BFing weight loss, but I really am wimpy right now in the fitness category.

Oh, and I forgot to mention – nursing releases some hormone that has a calming effect on both baby and mom, so yeah, I’ll take that too. And now that I think about it, never once have I felt nervous or antsy or rushed or unsettled at all while breastfeeding D.

Moo.

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FF

Ok, before I get to the Friday Funk for this week, I just have to mini-vent. Did you see the Badgers basketball game last night? WTF was that?? Again, playing like a grade school team. I mean, COME ON, it was the Sweet 16 and that’s all you got?! Ugh, seriously. So disappointing. I was, however, thrilled that Arizona beat Duke, so I’ll cheer for them now from here on out. I’ve always liked AZ. Plus my bracket’s shot anyway. 😛

But on to the more important point of this post – the FF. I have a book of quotes in my desk drawer where I jot down good ones that I find along the way, so I thought this would be the perfect venue to showcase some of them. When I don’t have anything really witty or clever to throw out there for the FF (shocking, i know, but sometimes it does happen), I’ll just choose one from my notebook, how’s that?

They’re all wonderful, but here’s one I saw again just the other day that caught my eye and made me look to see if I had it written down yet. I did. That’s apparently how good it is:

“Know how to ask. There is nothing more difficult for some people, nor for others, easier.”  ~ Baltasar Gracian