Check in on 2018 goals

We are now quarter of the way through the year so I thought that I would check in on my 2018 goals to see how I am doing.

1. Continue our part vegetarian lifestyle through the year. 

On Track! I really can't take much credit with this goal because it is really CP that cooks most of our meals, but we have continued to eat meat only a couple nights a week for dinner (mostly Friday and Saturday). I have been trying to eat more fish when we are out at restaurants instead of eating red meat. We have significantly cut down on the amount of meat eaten in our household.

2. Continue to send paper cards to friends for their birthdays. 

On Track! 

3. The usual lose weight goal.

On Track! As I mentioned before, I was slow in making changes so January I saw a 1 pound weight loss, the same in February. However, March was a better month and I lost 4.5 pounds so I am down 6.5 pounds so far. If I can keep up even just losing 4 pounds a month I will definitely hit the weight that I wanted to hit by my birthday in December and even more! 

4. Be more consistent with working out.

Working on it! Last week I took almost a whole week off of my Beachbody workout because...well, I didn't reallyhave a great excuse. But on Friday and Sunday I was back at it for week 3 and feeling fairly good. My heel pain hasn't lessened with the inserts so no running anytime soon, but I will continue with my workouts as there is a low-impact option. 

I will say that a local mom's group did a pushup challenge for the month of March and I faithfully did my pushups EVERY DAY in March. On the last day we were up to two sets of 31 pushups which meant that I did 62 pushups on Saturday (on my knees of course)! So at least I was consistent with that. This month we are doing a combo of moves every day- situps, planks, leg raises, crunches, and pushups. :-)

5. Continue monthly dates with CP.

On Track! I think that we may have missed going on a date in March, but CP was in Ireland for two of the weekends and we were quite busy the rest of the month. We are going to make up for it by going out two weekends in a row this month. :-)

6. Pay down our credit card debt.

On Track! We are watching our spending and we are so close to paying off our credit card debt. Our work bonuses should be hitting our accounts soon and CP gets three paychecks in the month of May and I get three paychecks in the month of June so between all of those things we should be completely set and may have some money to put into our savings account.

7. Continue to be politically active and contact my elected officials when necessary.

On Track! Since joining the local Moms Demand Action group I have been busy contacting elected officials and going to marches. I also wrote a bunch of postcards for the Postcards to Voters group.

8. Create a better and more consistent bedtime routine.

Working on it! I really am a night owl at heart so I enjoy going to bed later on the weekends...but then it messes up my schedule for the week. Unless I am out and having fun with friends, I need to work on getting to bed on time.

9. Run in at least two races this year.

Not completed yet! I'm still not running yet and had to drop out of the Ragnar Relays (the race from Chicago to Madison, WI) in May. However I am signed up for a Tough Mudder with mom friends in August and there is always the local 5K that runs past our house and the 5K that I do with coworkers in September. Plenty of time to get back into running shape and hopefully with less weight on my body I will be able to run faster than last year!

Nighttime potty training

Izzy has been potty trained for basically two years now but we are nowhere close to potty training her at night. Every morning she wakes up with a full pullup and has maybe woken up dry two times ever?

This past week I talked to a neighbor who let me know a while back and she used a sensor on her oldest to wake her up when she was urinating. On Friday night we put the sensor on Izzy and were a bit confused when the sensor never went off during the night and Izzy slept in until 8am (not normal). Izzy peed at least once during the night in her bed and woke up wet but apparently slept right through it. The sensor obviously didn't work but apparently getting wet throughout the night also didn't wake Izzy up, so we needed to try something else.

Our neighbor had given us a second sensor that she said she didn't like as much because it wasn't quite as loud, but it had the ability to not only sound a loud alarm, but also vibrate when clipped to the kid's shirt so we tried that Saturday night. Izzy drank less than 8oz of milk at dinner (finishing by 6:45 or so). Izzy tried to go potty before bed but didn't have to pee and was in bed around 8pm (she peed in between dinner and heading upstairs). CP and I settled in to watch a movie in the basement (The Big Sick- which btw was really good) and at 9pm we hear a loud alarm on the monitor. I race up the two flights of stairs and try to wake Izzy up but she is practically dead to the world. I manage to get her into the bathroom but she is so out of it and has already emptied her bladder. I change Izzy and change her sheets, putting on a second set and she goes right back to bed.

CP and I continue watching the movie and watch a little Saturday Night Live before heading up to bed around 10:45. We are just settling into sleep when at 11pm, the sensor goes off again. We rush into Izzy's room and CP has an even harder time getting her up and on the toilet while I strip the bed once again and put on new sheets. She had fully emptied her bladder again before getting to the toilet so back to bed she went.

2:30am rolls around and CP and I are dead asleep ourselves when the sensor goes off again! Damn girl! Once again we have to try to wake her up and essentially carry her to the bathroom where she doesn't do anything on the toilet because she has already emptied her bladder. At this point I have run out of sheets for her so we put her back into bed with a pullup on.

The next morning she wakes up and has NO IDEA that we had to wake her up three times throughout the night. She doesn't remember any of it. But she is pretty excited because her pullup is dry (*shakes head*). I know that I have bragged about Izzy sleeping through a fire alarm going off in our house, but this is somewhat scary.

We decide that we will put another pullup on Sunday night and on Monday I emailed her pediatrician to find out if we should be worried. He replies that for a heavy sleeper, this is normal and that she is simply not ready to use a pullup. If she is still not nighttime trained by age 7 then we need to start talking about what is going on, but otherwise she is just fine. He did add that if she is constipated then she will have a problem nighttime training but I don't think that is a problem for Izzy.

So....we wait and hope that her body figures out the nighttime thing sometime in the next 2.5 years.... Since Wes is a fantastic sleeper and has put himself to sleep while a fire alarm has GONE OFF in his room and throughout the house, I feel like we are going to have the same problem with him. However, I would much rather take a good sleeper that takes longer to nighttime potty train than one that wakes me up all of the time or has trouble sleeping in general. 

BTW, thank goodness for Good Nites bed pads. We put them between the sheets and Izzy's mattress cover and they helped to keep the mattress cover dry!

PF again

Yesterday I was able to get in to see a podiatrist about my heel issue that has plagued me since November. I have been trying to listen to my body more so that I could give the doctor more information about what was happening and when.

The heel cups that were supposed to provide more cushioning in my shoes didn’t seem to do anything so I clearly didn’t have a bone contusion. Based on his exam and then my more detailed description of what is going on, the doctor thinks that I have Plantar Fasciitis again. However it has presented itself in a different way than last time so that’s why I was convinced that it was something different. At least I am not trying to train for a half marathon right now like last time! (Sadly, I had to drop out of the Ragnar team race in May.)

The plan is to wear a night boot until the pain goes away. 

My new sexy night boot

It was tough to sleep with last night but it was also REALLY nice to not hobble out of bed this morning at 5am when Wes woke up crying from crusted snot all down his nose and an ear infection. The doctor also gave me stretching instructions and a pair of orthotic insoles for my high arches. Now that I have had this for a second time, I am going to be more prone to it so the doctor recommended that I continue to wear the orthotics even after I get better. Reading back on the last time that I had PF, I also had gained a bunch of weight right beforehand....sort of like last year so I bet that there is some correlation. Even more incentive to continue with Weight Watchers!

I am not allowed to run or do any high impact stuff until the pain is gone for a week so I will have to stick to the low impact T25 stuff and not run despite the nicer weather in the forecast. Fingers crossed I can get rid of the pain in the next couple of weeks so that I can be back to normal!

The looming big 4-0

In a little more than 8 months from now I will turn 40. The nice thing about being the youngest person in my class all through growing up and even through college is that I see everyone turn the big 4-0 before me- although being the last one to drive and the last one to turn 21 was a little difficult. Often times women and mothers do not prioritize themselves or their health. I was going down that road this year before I decided that dammit, I'm going to be 40 and I don't want these things to bother me for years down the road when I can fix them now.

Weight

Part of that thinking is why I joined Weight Watchers. So far I am down 6 pounds which is a start. I hope that is a much bigger number by the time my birthday hits in December.

Working Out

I have also prioritized working out. It took me a bit because I was waiting for my heel to get better, but I decided that I was done with that excuse and started the Beachbody T25 workout. At first I was freaking out because I knew that I wouldn't be able to commit to doing the workout 6 days a week....normally that would have kept me from even starting the workout. However, as long as I am consistent and okay with the fact that I may not see results quite as quickly, I'm still doing the workout, just over a longer period of time. Currently I am doing the videos 4 times a week and trying my best to get 10K steps a day otherwise. I am definitely quite sore after the workouts which is a great sign. This month I also joined a 30 day pushup challenge and I've done the pushup workout every day so far this month (today is 2 sets of 20 pushups!). 

Smile

For the past few years now I have been self conscious of my smile because my teeth moved after wearing a night guard in law school. I almost had braces put back on my teeth back when we lived in CT, but then held off because we were trying to get pregnant (to no avail) and it would have required surgery. My teeth moved back for the most part, but I still have a gap between the bottom and top sets of teeth that bothers me. At my last dentist appointment, my dentist mentioned that whenever I wanted to fix the bond on my front tooth (from hitting my tooth on a tile floor when I was 5 or 6 and had just gotten my adult tooth) because it was stained, he could help me with that. I thought about it for a few weeks and decided yes, I am going to put a new bond on and have the bond length match my other front tooth. It won't completely cover the gap but it will cover some of it.

Hair

The grays in my hair have been around for a while, but more recently I have needed to dye them more often because they seem to be noticeable after only a few weeks. I will continue to prioritize that and making the time because I am not quite ready for a full head of gray hair yet. I have also found a few gray hairs in my eyebrows and pluck them immediately!

Lump

Finally, earlier this year I freaked myself out because I found a lump in my neck, sort of where an Adam's apple would be on a man. I got it checked out because after consulting WebMD it could have been something wrong with my thyroid, but thankfully it is a cyst. I'm not sure WHY my body produces all of these random cysts and for about a week or two I was adamant about not doing anything about it because I was afraid of a scar on my neck (I have a big scar on my back from removal of another, larger cyst). However, the cyst isn't going away and I'm starting to see it in pictures. It is only going to get bigger so it's time to get it removed and hopefully the scar won't be too big.

So there you have it. I'm doing my best to start my 40s with my best foot forward!

20 months

20 months

Height- He was 2' 9" (65%) on February 1st.

Weight- 30 pounds (97%) on February 1st.

Diapers- Size 5 diapers during the day, Size 6 nighttime diapers. He sometimes wets through his Size 6 so we try to give him some time to pee out his dinner milk before putting him to bed.

Riding his tricycle- this month he could push himself forwards

Milestones- Wes is getting better about drinking from an open cup and not spilling. He has been correctly pointing out and saying three colors- yellow, orange, and blue and is very excited and insistent that we are paying attention when he is pointing out a color. He is working on not spilling when he has two hands holding an open cup. He is starting to learn his shapes (at least to point to them as say them- he correctly can point out and say circle and oval. I love this age because he is such a little sponge!

While still cautious, the nicer weather recently has been allowing us more time outside and more time at the playground. This month Wes has been willing to go down slides by himself, instead of with us. I can only assume that this spring, summer, and fall he will get a little more adventurous and try out some of the other playground toys.

Language- In addition to the 20 words from last month, Wes started saying the following words: bus, corn, blue ("bloo"), cracker, box, boom, apple, hi, bye, hat ("at"), orange, yellow, circle ("ircle"), beans, egg, cheese, purple, house, oval, and two. This month he started to put two words together as well. Whenever I sing the ABC song he tries to sing along (mostly in the ABC and LMNOP parts). Whenever I count something for him, I say one and he will say two.

He still signs a couple of things that he can't say yet like "thank you" but if he is pretty insistent on something, like wanting more milk he will say and sign "more" repeatedly.

Favorite Toy- If he had his way, it would be my Iphone. We have had to use a phone or iPad to watch Thomas the Train YouTube vidoes to distract him when he gets a 10-15 minute nebulizer treatment and so whenever he spots my phone he points to it and says "choo choo" because he wants to watch Thomas. I have tried to keep my phone in my pocket more often. Otherwise, one of his favorite things to do these days is to put stickers on paper.

Favorite Book- Every night he wants us to read "Red Fish, Blue Fish" by Dr. Suess. It's actually sort of a long book! His other favorite books these days are "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" as he loves saying "BOOM" with the story and "The Pout Pout Fish" as he loves to say the "blub, blub, blub."

"Reading" a book

Sleep- Wes is a great sleeper from about 7:30pm to 7 or 8am. He is down to one nap a day, generally starting around 12:30 and lasting for about two hours.

Clothes- Solidly in 2T clothing. Size 7 shoes.

Eating- Wes seems to be out of his throwing food phase which has been nice. He has more been mashing up food between two hands, which is also messy, but not as much. This month he finally decided after months of trying to eat cherry tomatoes that he now LOVES them and will happily eat half a package of them- good thing since we should be planting our garden soon and cherry tomatoes will be a big section. Hopefully CP and I get to eat a few after the kids devour them...

Teeth- No new teeth this past month.

Illness- An ear infection. His ear tubes are trying to escape and according to his ENT 5-10% of kids will need them again so we'll have to see how he does this spring and summer to figure out whether he needs them again.

Misc- Wes continues to copy whatever Izzy is doing and we often have to tell her not to bang her spoon on the table (or whatever she is doing) because then he does it. He loves playing peek-a-boo at the dinner table when he is doing eating, even if he has food all over his hands. He is starting to get picky about what he wears, whether it is a certain tshirt or hat. Like Izzy around the same time, Wes has started to get bossier so when he points at a certain chair for you to sit down, you better sit down. The other night we were reading "Pat the Bunny" and Wes would do something (like look at himself in the mirror and then say "Mama" and I was then expected to do it before he could turn the page).

This month was the first international trip CP has taken in a while (Ireland) and when Wes asked about him, I told him that he took an airplane. So every time Daddy was mentioned this week, Wes would use both hands to point up to the sky like Daddy was in an airplane the entire week. LOL.

"Choo choo"