Third Times the Charm

Taken 6 months ago

 Sweet success! Today is day 3 of Lexi sleeping in her crib for naps. It may be little, but for us, it's a huge accomplishment. Her swing stopped working a little over a week ago and I think sleeping in it while it wasn't swinging helped her make the transition. She's gone back to 3 hour naps which she hasn't taken much in several months. I decided to keep the swing up in her room for a little while, she likes to rock her baby.

Rocking Baby

Potty Training 1.0

The only naked pictures you'll probably ever see!

 So, we've been kind of dabbling in the potty training area the last few weeks. Nothing serious. And by nothing serious, that's exactly what I mean. We've had two naked baby sessions where she'll run around the house naked and then we sit on the potty from time to time. She doesn't want to go outside her diaper at all, which is good and bad. Good because it means she really gets upset when she has an accident and she'll hold it for a very long time; bad because it means she's a bit scared about going in the potty. We've started sitting on it after baths and I think because of her shaking from being chilly and the sound of the tub draining, we've had some success. She's now gone twice in the potty and the other day she ran into the bathroom yelling "bum bum" and sat down. So, took her little jammies off and she had just pooped (this is why I have a blog, nobody wants to read this stuff on Facebook lol). So, she knows what she's supposed to do. Once I have a week where nothing is going on, we'll get down to the nitty gritty. Not bad for a 20 month old though.

Keep on Truckin'

Totally how we felt walking on Sunday

Okay, hopefully back on track with exercising. I did so good the week I came back and then it got knocked back last week because I just couldn't find the power cord lol. We did take a nice brisk walk on Sunday, but didn't realize how cold the wind really was. We walked pretty fast and came home frozen. Think we'll wait until March to start walking again.

Today I did 56 minutes on the tread climber, maxing out my speed at 3.6 mph, which is the fastest I've gone. I burned 465 calories and feel good! This should push my body back into energy mode and help me stay awake later at night again.

I've still been holding steady to 117.5 lbs and I'm quite happy with that. Once I get down to 115 I'm really going to start focusing on toning my stomach.

Happy running!

Lexi's Cruising Towards Two

Lexi and her Daddy
15 Months

 So, I'm pretty sure my last post about Miss Lexi Roo was when she was a year old. I may have done one at 14 months, but that was still over 5 months ago now. She will be 20 months in just 10 days, which is so hard to believe! She's a little ball of fire and fun and we adore her, as do all her grandparents, aunts and uncles - she's quite spoiled.

Her newest things as of the past week are saying tractor "da du" - basically sounds like tractor but with d's, saying ball "bow" - like a hair bow, and experimenting with potty training - we've done two half days and even though she hasn't gone in the potty yet, she's really good about sitting on the potty for m&ms haha! And she tries everything in her power to hold it if she doesn't have a diaper on. She hates going without one.

Lexi on her tractor
January 2013

 Even though she's not quite putting words into long phrases yet, she has a huge mouthful she says, which include some of the following:
juice, doggy, kitty, bye bye, hi, daDDDDDDYYYYY (yes, that dramatic), Mama, yes, please, ooops, uh oh, hot dog, cheese, beep, choo choo, vroom, bump, woof, rawr, quack, duck, meow (but only for her Aunt Heather), all done, I did it, what's that, baby, good good (or something, it means her favorite snacks), yogurt (yo go), cracker...and plenty more that I can't think of at the moment.

She will get into things she's not supposed to, like the plant soil, and then run to me yelling "bad bad" and show me her dirty hands and then run to the kitchen to get her hands washed. She also tells Winnie's she's a bad dog lol.

She loves her books and will bring them to us to read her. Usually, out of probably 50, she brings us the same 5 or so every time. It's pretty cute she already has her favorites. And she has parts of them memorized already too. She also loves music and will turn it on herself and dance to it. We plan on enrolling her in one of the toddler dance studios in late spring or early fall. I think she's going to love it!

Lexi at 16 months

 Her favorite song is Twinkle Twinkle, which I find fitting considering that was the room I recovered in after having her. I sing it to her every night as I put her in bed. 

Lexi loved her bottles from Day 1, so when she turned one year old, it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be to just take them away. She didn't want sippy cups at all and really didn't use them until she was around 14 months, if I'm remembering correctly. My goal was to have her off them by 19 months. When she did hit 14 months, we took them away cold turkey due to a friend's recommendation. It was terrible! She just wasn't ready. Her bottle was her only comfort item. After she was three weeks old she didn't want pacifiers and only sucked her thumb a few times. She has favorite toys, but nothing she can't live without. So, we decided she wasn't ready and her waking up multiple times a night crying wasn't worth it, especially when she was way past needing to have a bottle in the middle of the night anyway. So, out came the bottles again, but now it was only right before bed and right when she got up. I started worrying when she was 18 months old that it would be a battle. I know some doctors recommend up to two years old and even my aunt and uncle said she would have no problems if she held on to it that long, but I wanted it gone before that. Well, she was 18.5 months old and started to only have a sip here or there. And then much to our amazement and happiness, she was completely done!! She weaned herself off them by herself! Never asked for her bottle again and I packed them up a few days later. Now we have about three different sippy cups at a time in the fridge! Oh, and our island cupboard has 12 different ones! That's how many I had to buy in order to find ones she liked. Of course now, she doesn't care and will drink from any and all of them.

Lexi feeding Winnie her bottle
17 Months

She's quite a picky eater much to my dismay, but she's getting better each month it seems and will eat new things from time to time. Like today, she decided to eat the rest of my egg salad sandwich when just a few weeks ago she cried and spit it out when Derek gave her a sample. She loves breakfast, so that's an easy meal. She eats bananas, yogurt, breakfast bars, cereal, muffins (she loves bread!), but lunches and dinner usually consist of macaroni and cheese, pb&j (sometimes without the p), or hotdogs. And unfortunately, trying to give her the good quality, real meat hot dogs won't work because they are too greasy and make her pretty sick, so she eats the 8 for $1.00 ones. She loves dipping her foods whether it's hot dogs in ketchup or crackers in spaghetti o's - oh yeah that's a new one she loves. The last few weeks though, we've discovered that if we have cooked vegetables, she'll eat them with ranch. Yes, my kind of girl!! That's the only way I'll eat veggies too. She also loves pasta, so that's become a good one for dinners. When she has the occasional snack they usually consist of apple sauce and teddy grahams. Teddy grahams are her absolute favorite and she refers to those as her good goods, at least, that's the only thing we can translate from whatever she's really saying.

 She loves dogs of all kinds, which I think is very good, but also not always good. When we see strange dogs out and about I just tell her she can't touch them. One day, she'll understand that. It'll be fun to see her with a puppy this coming year. For now, she just loves on old Winnie who is very VERY tolerant of her little person. If anyone tried to hurt Lexi, Winnie would kill them on the spot, no exaggerating there.

Lexi and her baby
18 Months

She's just now starting to be able to wear certain 24 month clothes, as long as they are short sleeved or have shorter long sleeves. The pants though, well forget that, she is just barely tall enough for 18 month haha!

Lexi at 19 Months

Her 18 month checkup was now a little over a month ago and she did so well! Only had to get one booster and her flu shot! We were thrilled it wasn't the normal 4-6 vaccines. And now, other than the yearly flu vaccine, she's good until kindergarten! I was concerned about her eating habits, but when I started listing off what she eats, the doctor told me she's actually very healthy and more so than most kids that age. She was also very impressed with how many words Lexi was saying, she said she's advanced in that area so that made me very happy! I'm so glad we switched doctors. Lexi loves Dr. V!

I think that brings everyone up to date. Hope you enjoyed it!

Starting 2013

I know it's been a very long time since I've posted! I stopped because we had the holidays and I was just having a hard time being motivated to write for two or three people. However, I think I'm going to publicly open my blog up. It's not like a lot of people are going to stumble across it by accident anyway. Hopefully this will allow my extended and far away family to be able to access it now.

So, 2013 should prove to be a great year! Have a few great trips planned, a new show puppy hopefully in the works for the summer, a new business opportunity, just some great things. I'll post another blurb shortly about what Lexi is up to, but here's where I am with workouts and health stuff.

I've been jumping between 117.5 and 119.5, so have been very happy with those numbers. I didn't exercise from December 24 through January 13 because I was so sick most of that time. I started up again on Monday and it felt so good!! I'm surprised I was able to start back where I left off going 55 minutes and having 35 of those minutes be at 3.4 mph. I think getting back into working out will help keep my weight more towards 117 and move down to my next goal of 115. Since I hit 120, I've really noticed my stomach fat is slowly going away too. My hips are much more prominent, in a good way, and I can wear much tighter shirts and be okay. I am now a solid size 5 and was able to get into a size 3 a few weeks ago. Now, that's not saying it looked good and I left it at the store, but they fit and they buttoned, just had a bit too much of a muffin top and that's not flattering.

I'm planning on keeping to my lower calorie intake and exercising on the tread climber three times a week. I do have coffee each morning, but no Pepsi except on the weekends. I only have a dessert item once a day at dinner and it usually consists of some m&ms.

Well, there you have it :) Hope you're happy Megan hehe!

Happy Thanksgiving from Us to You!

Happy Thanksgiving to every one of you! Which, okay, is only like two people who read this...but Happy Thanksgiving to you anyway! We're thankful for so many things and are truly blessed. 

Now...let's have some FOOD!

Post 8 Months: Month 2

I decided that since I've reached my first goal, I really don't need to post every single week. I think it'll be much slower going from here on out, so I'll post every few weeks. I'm not going to do huge posts, just little recaps about my workouts and anything that I've either had a hard time with or something that has really motivated me. For example: watching The Amazing Race while working out on the tread climber is insanely good motivation and makes the time go very fast. Too bad it's only on once a week :-)

The last several weeks I've been getting back into 'tread climber mode'. It's been much easier and more fun than I thought it would be. Last time, I had to literally make myself do it, and a lot of times, even housework made a good excuse not to do it all the time. Well now, I have good headphones, it's right by our open window in the computer room, and I watch some show that I like. I've been doing the workout for the duration of the show: whether that's a 42 minute show on Netflix without commercials or a 45 minute show on The CW with commercials that seem to take forever. My workouts have been between 42 and 55 minutes. I start out at 1.5 mph and gradually increase it to 2ish mph by the time I hit the 5 minute mark. Then, I up it to 2.5 and gradually have been increasing it to 3.2mph around the 20 minute mark. Once I hit 35 or 40 minutes, I start decreasing it again. I've been burning about 400 calories and walking 2 - 2.5 miles in the time frame. It feels so good and I'm getting lots of energy. Not always good since now instead of wanting to go to bed at exactly 10:00, I'm finding myself staying up until 11 or 11:30.

A week ago when I stepped on the scale and it read 124 I literally screamed! I told Derek I had no idea what happened, so he reminded me that I'm drinking more water now and we hadn't been jogging for quite a few weeks so probably was water weight and new muscle weight. Today I was 119.5, whew! Working out along with getting my Camelbak water bottle back out have made a huge difference in my water intake. Instead of drinking around 16oz a day, I'm back up to 32-48 a day. I usually have a splash of Mio in my water once a day too and that really helps. Their new Thunderbolt flavor is pretty dang good.

This last weekend I helped put together a baby shower for my friend and it was about 90% sugary foods. I indulged on yogurt with chocolate chips and granola, white chocolate covered strawberries, cake pops, oreo balls, cake, punch, white chocolate dipped rice crispy treats...yeah...not good! And all were either made by those of us helping with the party or by the Crazy Cake Lady, so everything was incredible...and very very sinful in the calorie department haha! We also bought $40 worth of chocolate from Derek's cousin's little girl for her fundraiser. We sort of have a lot of chocolate around here. But, I try to only have a little.

Anyway, that's the update. Till next time.