Weighing In: Today Quinn is 5 weeks old, and today I got down to what I recall as the number closest to my pre-pregnancy weight. Nice! It doesn’t mean that I have reached my goal weight. That is a much longer range goal. Due to the multitude, or plethora, if you will, of problems I had with my back, neck and shoulder in the year to 18 months prior to being pregnant I gained 30 lbs back from the weight I had lost. Bah freaking BOO. Dang but as hard as it is to lose weight its that much more easy to gain the weight back. So. Not. Fair. My neck and back have been pretty good since I was pregnant and since I had Quinn, so I am praying that with supplements and taking care of myself as I should I can keep the nerve pain and pinching away. Too many car accidents, horseback riding spills and mishaps jacked my spine up to the point where I have developed quite an extensive amount of arthritis and degeneration in my spine. S U X greatly but at this point I am working on not losing any more movement and halting the degeneration. Lots of Omega Fatty Acids and supplements to repair the damage. The weight gain came from sitting about not moving because of severe pain when I did well, pretty much anything. Walking, gardening, sewing…it all hurt..so forget about bike riding, swimming, tennis. Feh.

I started at about 188lbs before being pregnant and wearing a 14-16 in jeans. The day before Quinn was born I was at 229 lbs. I am back down to 188 lbs as of today. I keep bouncing 2-3 lbs up and down from the 188lbs, but its staying right in the 188-191lbs range.

I notice several things about keeping the weight loss continuing:

1. I need to make sure I get up at a decent hour and eat 3 good meals a day with good protein and good low glycemic snacks.

2. I MUST drink at least 6 big glasses of ice cold water a day. At LEAST. And the more I drink the more I crave it. Not bad for it being winter and COLD. I figure it will be a lot easier to do as the weather warms up.

3. I have been taking Fenugreek to keep my milk supply up for the baby. When I slacked off on it the weight loss slowed down. Hmm. I started researching and saw that some people claim that Fenugreek helps reduce the glycemic load of some foods. DING DING DING. OK…Fenugreek after each meal it is! When I started being diligent about that, the weight loss picked up.

4. Take my vitamins and supplements. When I am not taking them, I feel funk, don’t want to eat right and well, ick. Not good for my spine or general health to be a slacker..and not good for Quinn either since she is getting my nutrition for me. So, NO SLACKING on my vitamins and supplements.

5. It really helped when I was able to get out and walk. We have had 2- 3 feet of snow on the ground continuously for the last 3 weeks, or the temperatures outside were in the teens. Brrr. I was going to the mall and walking a couple of times a week. I am sure that helped, even though it made me bleed more as I was healing up from Quinn’s birth. The bleeding did stop about 3 weeks after her birth and I am all healed up now. So , dur, I need to exercise. No surprise there. My body is super efficient at conserving calories. If I do not move, I do not lose. In fact, I will gain. Dang it all. I might not be sporting what society deams today’s ideal figure, but dude…in a famine I will outlive all those skinny bzatches! buahahaha I don’t need to eat much to survive and my body is good about conserving and utilizing what I do consume. Don’t hate. ;^) Bad thing now is this week the clutch blew on Michael’s car and well, we are going to have to pray in funds because they aren’t there right now. He is having to use my van until the car is repaired so I am stuck at home.

I won’t get started on that because its too depressing to contemplate for too long. I will rest in that God knows our needs…He has never failed to supply for us…I have prayed and given it over to Him and will continue to seek Him. I refuse to stress about the car. Onwards and upwards….

My goal for my weight is that by the end of the summer (hopefully sooner but I will be realistic on this) to lose to 150-160lbs. I want to be in a size 8-10 pants, so I am not worried about the number on the scale as much as how I look. I am 5’6″ and carry a lot of muscle mass. The charts “say” I could go from 120-140lbs. Umm well.. at 120 I would look anorexic and I don’t know how realistic 140 could be for my particular body type. If I can get down to 150 I will know I will be at the point where I can schedule to get this darned hernia repaired that got MUCH worse with this pregnancy. Also from my initial weightloss (from wearing a size 22-24 down to a 12ish) I am desperately in need of a tummy tuck. This gal is just too white for her skin to stretch back after many years of carrying that extra weight. This isn’t just a vanity thing, my skin is a mess and …well, its really not pretty or healthy. :^/ I am just glad I didn’t have a tummy tuck BEFORE I was pregnant with Quinn. I know I can lose two pants sizes off my hips and stomach with a tummy tuck. I can’t express how frustrating it is to NOT be able to get rid of this mess through diet and exercise. Bah. Or how bad it is to get rashes and skin irritation in the summer. Or winter. Or whenever. Enough of that but you get the idea.

Sew’n and Such: I love to sew…crochet…make clothing, costumes, etc. I do make clothing for myself, Michael and Brenna, but having a little one again to sew for is giving me major “itches” to sew. The clothing is so fun, makes up so quickly and, face it…making clothing for someone that doesn’t yet have an opinion as to what the clothing looks like is a major plus. I can decide the color, style, print, etc. without a battle, boo-boo lip or disappointed look sent my way. Sew, er, so while I have a year+ of this option available to me I am going to take advantage of it. I have been scouring the net for free patterns and voraciously reading blogs by those sewing for girls/babies. Wow. LOTS more out there than when Brenna was a baby! Could it be that the web has created a bit of a sewing Renaissance? If so, that is an incredibly awesome thing. I have found a bunch of neat things to make for Quinn, and also my niece who is 6. If I am ambitious I might make something for her baby brother, who will be 2 in July. Patterns and instructions for things such as a kimono shirt/dress, making a dress from a man’s dress shirt, 1 hour sundress, pillowcase dress, twirly dress are the things I have found that immediately come to mind. I will have oodles of options of things to make. Not to mention that I still have all the patterns I bought/used when Brenna was a babe, or for my niece, or for friend’s babes and grand-babes. I also am sort of swimming in fabric. Ahem. That is a topic in and of itself. ;^)

Designing Interiors: Quinn’s crib and dresser,etc. are in our room since we have such a large bedroom. Readying the room for her furniture meant we could get busy working on our room as far as purging, rearranging, etc. One of the things we did was remove the headboard on our king size waterbed. I was really over the 80s style headboard…after almost 20 years we had gotten our money’s worth from it and it definitely was no longer a style I was enamored of–bookcase with mirror, etc. It wasn’t ugly…just…eh. My long dresser also has a similar style topper to it. That is going to be removed and replaced with a long rectangular mirror that is edged in black iron swirls. There is a head board we are looking at at Ikea that is also black iron swirls that costs under $100. If the head board isn’t wide enough I am going to widen it by adding wooden posts to either side and stain them the honey pine color to match the rest of the bedroom set. I also want to get an iron blanket stand. My pine one has some “issues”–namely that where the feet attached is stripped and will not stay together. If I can fix the pine one I may use it in the back bedroom. If not, it will be tinder for the firepit out back when the weather warms up. For the walls it looks like we may paint the room an orchid color or a dusky orchid. I would like the colors in the room to be sage green, cream, and orchid purple. The curtains are a darker sage green. I am going to make covers for the sofa and chair in a cream color and stamp tone-on-tone cream on it…probably ivy leaves or some such. I found a neat tutorial about using well washed canvas drop cloths to make sofa covers, curtains, etc. I have been wanting to use an off white canvas or denim for the covers so the canvas is a great idea. As the weather is warming up we will work on the walls. This weekend we are redoing the waterbed as some of the board have warped underneath. NOT a good deal if that were to collapse.

Gimme Some Green: Last year my intention was to make sure we put in at least tomatoes, peppers, salad greens, cucumbers and a few salad herbs. I even bought a few tomato plants. :^/ They wound up not getting in the ground, languishing and dying in their pots. Terrible! I have never done that before. Since we have had snow on the ground for most of the last 3 months, again a highly unusual occurance, the normal February itch to start gardening is much worse than it normally is. Catalogs from my favorite seed and plant vendors are coming in the mail tempting me. Emails from seed suppliers and gardening experts tease me mercilessly. A friend who is on Facebook that lives in the Pacific Northwest posted about starting on her Spring gardening chores, which unleashed a storm of envy in me as I looked out the back door at the two feet of snow still on the ground. How I wish I had done some Winter-Sowing! I guess with all the snow on the ground, I still could do so. The difficult part would be finding soil to use that isn’t frozen. Or even at this time of year trying to find potting soil in the stores, other than in 10lb bags. I have oodles and oodles of seed and plenty of containers, but without soil. Or heck, not even being able to see the ground, it will be a bit difficult to put the containers out.

OK I am off to try to place some orders for clients while the baby is sleeping. I really could use a nap already though. Quinn didn’t rest great last night due to waking up with gas pains. I am falling asleep while I type this. I guess I should have napped while she was…hrm…