Mommy & Daddy’s Reward Chart

Who says stickers and stars are just for kids? Not us! Since The Husband and I are very serious about our little friendly weight loss competition, we’ve decided that another component to our little competition would be to record our exercise on a calendar for a little extra, “Look what I did today, what did YOU do today?” kind of boost. So far I’d say that March is lookin’ pretty impressive if I do say so myself!

(I whited out The Husband’s name and some personal information to protect the innocent if you’re wondering what the white blobs are :-D.)  I also did 60 minutes on the treadmill yesterday which I didn’t do until after I took the photo (just sayin! I’m proud of those stickers!).  We decided that you get a sticker for every 30 minutes of activity. My favourite cardio burn of late is doing the “Heart Rate Program” on the treadmill which allows you to pick a heart rate and a time limit and the treadmill adjusts your speed and incline to keep boosting your heart rate to that number.  You can’t even cheat and adjust the speed or incline if it gets tough (which it definitely DOES). Some days it decides to torture you with speed and other days it’s tortures you with incline AND speed. Awesome.

Before getting into the swing of exercise again I was getting anxious about it which is why it took me so long to get back into it.  I’m much heavier than I was pre-pregnancy and the thought of the impact on my foot, knees and hip (because of some older injuries) was quite honestly, something that caused me anxiety.  But regardless of that fact, my knees were already causing me discomfort every single morning when I’d have the Little Peanut in my arms (who is not so little since he’s actually in the 23 lb range!) going down the stairs and let me tell you, my knees HURT in the morning so really I have no where to go but UP (down?) with the promise that at the end of this journey is living in a body that makes the best of living with a busted foot, knee and hip! I already know that it makes all the difference in the world.

So while Daddy and Mommy are moving more every day, The Peanut is still working on this crawling idea.  He’s not entirely impressed with spending too much time on his belly, but each day he gets more and more adventurous and struggles more and more each day before getting too upset and frustrated with being “stuck.” I love watching him try each day and I can tell one of these days he’s just going to “get it” and off he will go!

”Oh Hi Mom, I’m just hangin’ out down here and it’s kinda fun the more I do it…”

“Doo dee doo….phew this is tiring, I need to rest for a sec…”

“Ok, back at ‘er…ummm I’m not having so much fun anymore…”

  

“Mammaaaaa….NOT fun anymore, I can’t mooooove!“

      

My dear son, there is one important lesson you will learn very soon: if you never stop trying and never give up, you will get there…

Holy Crap

We enjoy our dose of Dragon’s Den in our house (not sure if it’s aired in the U.S.) and one episode a while back, there were people pitching their product to the Dragons, “Holy Crap.”  I vaguely remember their exact pitch but I remember thinking, “I want some of that!”  The entrepreneurs pitched about the health benefits of chia and hemp seeds and automatically my ears perked up and I’m thinking “YES” I eat that all the time and now someone’s got a product I’m interested in that includes these nutritious foods. They described the product as “The world’s most amazing breakfast cereal” and they Dragons got to try it and they were all “Mmmm this is great!” I remember Jim getting the most excited. So right away since they tasted it and were so impressed I thought “I WANT THAT!”



Not that long ago I saw Planet Organic tweet that they were now carrying Holy Crap so after a while and after hearing a few others say they got their hands on some (oh the powers of Twitter!) I finally got myself some to try.  First of all, I was not too happy to be spending nearly $13 on a rather small package of “breakfast cereal,” but I have been known to fork out a more than reasonable amount on a health food item before. 

Quite honestly, I feel a little duped by this product.  Maybe it’s because I’m more on the “health savvy” side of the ingredients in the product, but does this look like “cereal” to you? A serving size is 2 tablespoons.

 

Ingredients: organic chia, hulled hemp hearts, organic buckwheat, organic cranberries, organic raisins, apple bits, organic cinnamon.

All WONDERFUL ingredients and extremely healthy which I absolutely appreciate, but for me, I feel like it’s a glorified type of “seedy trail mix” that I could make myself with a quick trip to the Bulk Barn, especially for the price I paid for such a small package.  I was already adding cinnamon, chia and hemp seeds to my oatmeal and smoothies so I personally don’t feel like this is worth the bang for my buck. 

For people who don’t normally have these (ingredients) items on their shopping list, it most definitely IS a healthy item to add TO your cereal or yogurts etc because there are some pretty major health benefits to the ingredients in this product.  But I am hard pressed to consider this product a “breakfast cereal” – just sayin.

The other point I wanted to make is that I’m pretty sure at present this product isn’t available in mainstream grocery stores (maybe it is), and the people that shop at places like Planet Organic are generally the type of people who are more familiar with foods like chia and hemp so they quite possibly may not be as impressed as the Dragons were. And those who aren’t as familiar with the actual ingredients, but are excited about the health benefits of the product, may not be used to paying $12-13 for such a small package.  But that’s just me.

Wordless Wednesday

 

 

You Can't "One Up" ME!

So underneath all of the supportive, "Good for you, husband!" for getting on this journey to health is a serious competition on our hands.  Oh yes...bring it on rookie!

If there's one thing that I've noticed in this new SAHM lifestyle is that even though I found the stamina within myself to be up every two hours for many, many months and am STILL getting up at night (thank GOD it's no longer every two hours!), if I have to leave the house for an afternoon to run errands (with or without the baby), it totally runs me down!  Kind of like if you've been sick and over do it too soon and you get really tired out quickly. I obviously still have not "paid my sleep debt" which is kind of hard to do since the Little Peanut has only slept through the night twice in his life and each time was a nice early morning rising at 6 a.m.  Even though I'm still getting up usually at 2 a.m., and then up for the day at 6, I consider this a vacation compared to what it was like.  But even still, sleep deprivation and interrupted sleep over time totally takes it's toll on your body. 

So that's a very long winded introduction to explain that I was out yesterday afternoon running errands while the little one was home with his Nan.  I had to get my Driver's Licence renewed, pick a few things up at Wal-Mart (it's been forever since I've been there) and go to an eye appointment and get new glasses/contacts.  I was gone from about 12:30-4:30 and upon getting home, it was time to make Supper, feed the Peanut, play with the Peanut, bath the Peanut, feed & get Peanut ready for bed and get Peanut into bed which was not as easy as it usually is because he was thrown off by having someone else get him down for naps for the afternoon and didn't sleep all that well and today I see that a 3rd tooth is poking it's way through so it took a little extra Mommy love to get him settled down for the night.

After all of that, I cleaned up supper and then sat down on the couch.  Hubs was watching a UFC recording and while I half contemplated making my way to the basement to work out, my fatigue outruled my motivation and I stayed put.  That is until UFC was over (8:30) and The Husband gets up, gets his water bottle and declares, "I'm going to work out." Pffffffffft! I TOTALLY don't feel like it, but since he is going, I HAVE to go because he's been showing quite the competitive side at these early stages of this little weight loss competition!  So I huff and puff, shoot him a dirty look or two (you know the, "you can't one up me" look) and get changed into my workout clothes and down I go with him.  We have a treadmill and an elliptical so we can both work out at the same time.  If I had to drive to the gym there's NO way I would have gone, but our little home gym is proving to be the best decision we could have made.

I can't let the rookie show me up, ya see?! :-D

Hugs & Kisses

Never in my life have I been so enthralled by another human being. It’s crazy. Especially if I’ve been apart from him for any length of time. Like yesterday I saw a movie with a friend and while I was only gone for a total of 3 hours and he napped for half of it, I just couldn’t wait to snuggle those cheeks when I got home.  not that a mother needs to justify this, but it doesn’t hurt that he’s actively starting to return the affection (and initiate it) and it’s THE.BEST.

It started with him wrapping his arms around my neck and hugging me tight. On Friday, he showed his Nan the same affection:

   

Then he leans in for big slobbery open mouthed kiss:

Then he decides, “Hey wait a minute, I’ll show you just who has who’s nose!”

  

“How do ya like THAT, Nan? I totally got your nose that time!”

  

Cutest.thing.ever.

It makes me so proud to be working hard along side Daddy to bring ourselves (back) to a healthy weight to show him a good example of healthy living parents.  I am HAPPY to report that both Mommy AND Daddy each dropped 2.8 lbs this week :-)  Not that Daddy wants me talking about his efforts because I’m sure he doesn’t and I won’t make a habit of it (I don’t think!), but I just can’t help myself. I’m so proud of him. I’m so proud of US.

GO TEAM PEANUT!

I'm baaaaaack!!!

Hello my beautiful bloggies!! :-)  I obviously haven't been saying very much here for a while, but I am VERY VERY excited to blogging today. Why? Because I woke up physically sore today. Umm wha? Are you off your rocker, Angie, You say? Well yes no, I'm trying to tell you that I am back in action with exercise and I feel it and it feels glorious! I woke up with an extra sparkle of "me" today.  By that I mean that I feel like I'm truly clearing the dust bunnies from that part of my brain and feeling ok with dusting myself off and being a Mom AND who I "was" before the whole Mom gig.

I am embarrassed to say that I got off of the exercise wagon fairly early into my pregnancy (tsk tsk) and am just now getting back into it.  I realized that for me, I just wasn't getting my money's worth out of my gym membership. Yes they have daycare, yes new Moms do it all the time, but in my life and in my situation, it just wasn't working out for me, so my husband and I decided we would take matters into our own hands and do what we could to make it work.  He was never one to ever consider joining a gym; he's just not the gym going type, but he also wants to get himself into healthier shape and drop some pounds and do the best he can to be a good example for our little Peanut so we decided to take a leap of faith on ourselves and invest in a good quality treadmill to have in our home.  I say "leap of faith" because how many people do you know (or maybe you too) who own a treadmill and don't use it?  That's an awfully expensive clothing rack, especially if you invest in a gym quality one and not the one that was on sale at Canadian Tire or Sears or wherever. 

We did it and I am happy to say, while I didn't burst out of the gates in full force (it took me a couple of weeks to really "feel" it), I've worked up a serious "motivated" sweat 4 days last week (as opposed to the suffering through it but don't want to be doing it kind) and I'm already 2 for 2 for this week. I feel so accomplished and motivated...and relieved.  Relieved because it was like I wanted so desperately to feel this way for so many months now. I wanted to have my grove back, but it seems like "wanting" it isn't enough.  I hear so many people say "you have to want it bad enough" and they believe that if you're not doing it, you must not want it bad enough.  I have to disagree there.  I believe that there are more people out there that "want it" just as bad as those who are doing it, but struggle with themselves for all sorts of reasons to get all the ducks in a row to get there.  The mental side to changing your lifestyle is huge - the hardest part really. It's wayyyyyyy harder than the workouts hands down.  Yes?

So what finally lit the fire under my arse? (Yes they say "arse" where I come from :-D.) You would think my that gaining a bunch of weight back would be it, but if it were, I would have already made some serious progress.  I struggled mentally every single day with the weight gain. So much so that when you couple that with all of the normal post partum challenges and sleep deprivation, I just felt too spent and too "down" to get it together. (Hence the wanting it bad enough thing I talked about.)  You know how everyone says, "Oh the weight will just melt off, especially if you're breastfeeding." Well, apparently not, especially if you have issues surrounding food & emotional eating and especially if you are extremely sleep deprived.  Breastfeeding is on its last leg out the door and he is 90% weaned at this point so I totally missed out in the extra calorie burn benefit. Instead I ate them.  My MO has been reaching into the fridge or cupboards trying to cope with trying to function quite honestly. 

I think the thought of taking the long and difficult journey that it was to do this the first time on top of sleep deprivation and no mental capacity to devote to meal planning etc. intimidated me more than anything up to this point and it had quite an opposite affect on me. It only reinforced me to be more irresponsible with my choices.  I needed something completely different to pull me out of this.  I am very proud and happy to say that it is my husband who has inspired me.  There was a point in my life that I never thought that would happen, he just wasn't the "healthy living" and exercise type.  But he suggested that we make our commitment a little more interesting and challenge each other to a little friendly competition to see who can make the most progress by our little Peanut's birthday on August 13.  There will be a cash "guilt free spending" prize for the winner of $500.  That's FIVE months of hard work and enough time for us both to transform ourselves into one good lookin' healthy Mom & Dad :-)  I gotta tell ya, watching him make the trek down to the basement after supper with his water bottle in hand for a few days was enough for me to step up and not let him show me up!  (Although I secretly do want him to show me up:-D)

The bottom line bloggies is that often times I write these posts in an effort to motivate myself, but this time I'm writing it with a true renewed vigor.  I'm starting to feel happy again :-)

Canada’s Cutest Baby

Oh yes….

 

 

 

I can’t believe my little Peanut is 7 MONTHS OLD!!  Happy 7 month birthday my little punkin…my little coconut….my little boy :-)

Baby Gourmet – A Review

Lots of people make their own baby food, lots of people buy it and lots of people do both! I’m one of those people who loves to cook and making baby food is easy, so it’s a no brainer for me!  But let’s be realistic, I’m not going to be making my own prunes! (I don’t know about you but prunes are a staple baby food in this house to help when he has “issues” :-D)  I want my baby to eat organic foods as often as possible and there are some things that are not worth my dollars or time to make myself, especially in the dead of winter when things aren’t in season.

Enter Baby Gourmet!


Disclaimer: this product was provided to me as a free sample from Baby Gourmet and I’m reviewing the product because it is a very good fit for my life and my blog and I’m giving you my honest opinion. 

If you visit their web site you will see that not only are all of the ingredients used in their products organic, but all of their packaging is BPA free.  It’s sold frozen rather than in a shelf stable jarred state.  So in a way, it kind of “feels” like homemade because all of my homemade baby food is frozen too! Correction: apparently my samples arrived frozen because of they froze during delivery and are not actually sold that way! I have them stored in my freezer but I guess there's no need!

The first thing that caught my attention about this product is how deliciously interesting the food combinations sound (and I have since found out taste!). 

Once he had already individually tried all of the foods included in these packages, I was happy to have him try them!  And for the record (I taste all of the things that he eats because why would I feed him something that is not good tasting?! I want him to have a positive experience with food), I would be happy to eat these myself!  First up was the Orchard Apple, Carrot & Prune simple puree:



He was all ready for lunch wondering what was on the menu for today!  I tend to give him quite a variety of food, even at his young age.  He’s tolerated all foods very well (so far) so my thinking is that if he’s exposed to a wide variety of foods on a regular basis, I’m hoping that he won’t develop a “I only like X and that’s all I’ll eat” attitude. (Yes I always wait several days between introducing new foods.)  Maybe it’s unavoidable, but since he’s tolerating everything so well, I can’t see how it can hurt!  So far he’s eating just about everything I’ve given him (with the exception of some homemade v. jarred preferences which I will discuss in other post). 
            
And I think this face speaks for itself, he ate every bite :-)



I am very pleased with this baby food.  I am a Mom who makes her own food in addition to using pre-prepared foods too.  I don’t believe it has to be “all or nothing” so having this option available in addition to jarred foods is great!  In my area in Halifax, they are available at the Wal-Mart in Dartmouth Crossing.  I will say though, that the price is (obviously) higher than the jarred foods that I’ve seen.  I think the reason is obvious.  It seems like there is more innovation & effort put into this product to deliver a healthy organic high quality baby food where lots of thought and trial and error has been put into finding a great combinations of foods, all the while being sold in 100% BPA free packaging for your freezer.  There are some jarred combinations that all seem to taste the same! This is not an issue with this product. It is very flavourful & even exciting to give him. 

I definitely plan on picking up a few of these periodically to compliment the foods that I make as well as in addition to some of the jarred foods that are the staples of his diet!  As a new Mom (and an obvious food lover), I’m excited to provide the very best tasting foods for my son and this product makes me feel like I’m doing that!  Also as a new Mom, I’ll take any extra help I can get :-D