So Cliche

I promise this has nothing to do with lame-o New Year's Resolutions, but with the fact that Elle is almost six months old (and will be starting solids instead of breastfeeding exclusively) and Troy's wedding is in three months (and I ordered my dress two sizes down and I MUST fit into it). It's merely coincidental that I'm starting my weight loss program now. But whatever the reason, it has to happen. I'm so unhappy about where I'm at. Having two so close together really did me in - I've been making poor food choices now for the last two years and time for exercise is nearly non-existent. I'm not sure when the exercise thing will start to happen as Elle is still not a good sleeper AT ALL and I'm just too tired to make working out a priority, but I 100% own the bad food choices thing and that I can and WILL change. I've bought a 3 month Weight Watchers Online membership and I want to make that work, although I kept it relatively short term so that, if it's not working and I need the shame aspect of the real live weigh-in I can make the switch. I'm starting off at 206.8lbs (and I hope you can imagine the courage it took me to make that public, yikes!!)

Starting Out Small

I have way more important family stuff to cover since I've been so neglectful of my blog, but I decided to start out small with pictures of our kitchen paintover. For my birthday James gave me a coupon good for the painting of one room of my choice. It was completely his idea to get it done over the post-Christmas break, which was a big surprise to me (he's not a painting/remodeling fan). I decided to chose the kitchen because I thought it would be the easiest downstairs project. Boy was I wrong. It took us three days from start to finish to complete it, mostly due to cleaning, taping, and drying time. But it's done now and I'm so happy with it. We chose a color called Nocturnal Sea (with an accent called Bayou) which is a dark blue with strong shades of green and and grey in it. We're accessorizing with white, sand, and cloudy grey. I'm so happy with it and I can't wait to tackle the dining room and living room next!

Before:


After:

Wow

I really sucked it up last month. November flew by in a raft of activities and sickness in our household. It felt like the shortest month ever. Ah, for the good old days of being a kid when November dragged on in your haste to get to December. November saw both Elle and Cecily checkups at the pediatrician's. Elle weighed in at a whopping 15 pounds 8 ounces, which is crazy big for our kids, and Cecily hit 22 pounds, which is smaller-than-average but respectable. Elinor is still exclusively breastfed and going strong. I think we're going to go to six months before we introduce solids, although the ped gave us the go ahead already. It's just easier, and since she doesn't really need it yet, we'll keep things simple. I wanted to share some Thanksgiving pics - it seems like eons ago, but it was only last week. We came home from Thanksgiving dinner with leftovers (yum) and a run of intestinal illness (yuck). Que sera sera.

Baby Steps

I have a million and one things I should be blogging about that I've missed, but I suppose i just have to jump in somewhere. Here's Elle's 3 month pictures - she really changed a lot this month, I would say. She's much more interactive, newly demanding (like, don't sit down while holding her, ever), and she likes to grab for things with her hands. She finally can hold her head up at a 90 degree angle while on her tummy but still nothing going on in the rolling over department.

A Splurge

We did really well in the costume department this year. James' mom made Hero and Allegra's costumes (a green fairy and a Felicity-era gown), Colin is wearing Ian's old Smee pirate costume, and it's Cecily's turn to wear the traditional duck costume (the one that all of our children have worn from Hero on down). Ian just wanted to be Mario, so that was easy enough. I had originally planned to have Elle wear Cecily's costume from last year, but then I was flipping through Chasing Fireflies catalog and found the star bunting that I had wanted so badly for Cecily. So I splurged and ordered it for her. It is so adorable, and I'm an absolute sucker for anything personalized anyways. I had to try it on her the moment it arrived. It'll be perfect for Halloween night! The older kids already wore their costumes to last Saturday's piano recital. It was James' turn to attend the kids' recital (we switch off, it's too hard to keep all the little ones still and quiet for the hour in a cramped space) and I made sure he left with the camera specifically to take pictures. And this is the picture he snaps. In the ghetto parking lot. Really? You couldn't have taken it inside the recital hall in front of the grand piano? Men...

The Postpartum Roller Coaster...

is in full swing and I want to get off! Gosh I feel like an absolute lunatic. One day I'm low and the next day I'm high. I think that most women expect to deal with crazy emotions for the first six or eight weeks after giving birth, but for me it lasts longer than that. I'm not sure if that's just a quirk or if it's normal and most women try to hide it. It's a combination of both mental and physical stuff too. This week I've started the hair falling out phase. I have really long hair right now and I'm so tired of finding it everywhere, on the baby, on the bed, on my clothes. A minor thing, but an annoyance that, on a bad day, can be the proverbial straw. It's not all hormones, though. Things are undeniably tough right now. Like "I don't want to be a grown-up anymore, I want someone else to make the decisions" tough. I think it's exacerbated by last year being such a stinky year too. Thank goodness no one was able to tell me last year that I'd be in the same spot at the same time next year. (((sigh))) I don't want the blog to turn into an exercise in self-pity, so I'll leave it at that. Here's to hoping it gets better, right? Elle's getting cuter by the day, at least.

Elle @ 2 Months

On one hand it's hard to believe that Elle is a two month old already, but on the other hand she seems so much older than that. I'm not sure if that's because she's big for her age or because our whole Wisconsin trip seems so long ago. She's doing AWESOME in the growth department: 12lbs14.5oz (90th percentile), 22 3/4 inches (55th percentile) and her head is in the 82nd percentile. I just cannot get over how big she is - I've had so many problems breastfeeding my babies in the past. It's just amazing that it's working out just the way it's supposed to right now. I'm taking it one month at a time. My next goal is to exclusively breastfeed until four months, which would be a record for me (I hit 3.5 months with Colin). I'm trying not to get too ahead of myself, but it would be so wonderful to get to skip formula altogether with Elle. I purchased a book called Eating Well, Losing Weight While Breastfeeding (or something like that) so that gives me hope that I can peel off some extra poundage without a negative impact on nursing. She's changed so much in the last month. She's very interactive now and loves to smile, coo, and "sing" with you. She has very little schedule when it comes to napping, but a bit of one overnight finally. She goes down for the night between 9:30 and 11:00, gets up between 2:30 and 4 for a feed and diaper change (the girl is a champion pooper), then sleeps til 6 or 7. It's doable. I look forward to gettign to sleep through the night sometime in the future, but I know that is actually not a good thing for breastfeeding, so the night-waking is worth it if it keeps nursing going well.