Everyday a little more

Progress, people! Progress is happening. I'm still losing weight, still racking up those 10k steps a day, still attempting to squeeze in as much exercise during the day as possible. I told Ed, I feel like I'm perpetually sweaty. I don't believe that will change at any point in the near future, what with munchkin moving faster every day. I should get extra caloric credit on my Fitbit for not only getting in my 10 flights of stairs a day, but 10 flights while carrying almost 20lbs up and down. Side note - if you're a fitbit user, please friend me! One of my friends is dusting me by 20k steps this week, and it just makes me try harder so let's help each other out with some healthy competition.

I'd just like to make progress at a slightly faster pace so I can go back to wearing all those nice clothes I bought before. And by nice, I mean, not leggings and not flowing shirts. I hate leggings. When I think about being pregnant again, I dread all the stretchy clothes. I've never felt like 'forgiving' clothes looked or felt very good. By the end of the day they were always over stretched and sagging. That's not my bag baby. Bring me jeans and cotton shirts. It may not be fancy, but it's what I love. Caveat - athletic clothing. I do enjoy wearing my running clothes and yoga pants. But! I would argue that they are not forgiving. Comfortable yes, but concealing? Not in the least. Either way. Give me liberty to wear my jeans or bring me... nudity? Death seems extreme.

I've made a bargain that I won't allow myself to go to the Gilroy Outlets until I drop the weight again. I cannot wait. I'm hoping by Christmas time I'll have made some serious progress and can maybe allow myself an early visit? Maybe? :)

In the mean time, I'm still trying to get back into reading, writing and my general hobbies. I'm currently reading Food: A Love Story by Jim Gaffigan and My Wish List by Gregoire Delacourt and truly enjoying both immensely. My Wish List is a French book that I just happened to grab when it caught my eye. In truth, it looked about the right length for what I can manage to read these days (a slim 163 page paperback). I was actually about to poll Facebook for a book that was in the same vein as Shopgirl by Steve Martin (one of my all time favorites). The universe must have read my mind when it sent me this piece. I'll let you know more when I finish it. Also, seriously, if you have books in mind similar to Shopgirl, send those recommendations my way!

Gardening is coming along. Damn caterpillars are trying to invade again, but I'm showing them zero sympathy this time around.

Currently, there are beautiful flowers in the community garden I'm loving. I feel my day get brighter just looking at them.

I'm back in the kitchen, making real effort to try new things. I'm making new baby foods, cooking chicken in new ways (spatchcock), and trying new vegetables in our weekly meal plans. It feels good to eat fresh made foods again and roll back the take out and frozen foods.

With golden beets, carrots and sweet potato

We visited a local pumpkin patch that had a petting zoo set up. Because I'm a terrible mother, I took pictures of the baby goats - but not of my own daughter in the pumpkin patch. Priorities, right? Ah well. Can't win 'em all.

 This year I went for a bit more adventurous pumpkin design. Last year, my mom had us dress up like minions for Halloween, so I thought I would honor her efforts by attempting the minion form. I think it turned out alright for an amateur hand! Ed did the work on his and Munchkin's.

A coworker of Ed's constantly brings in persimmons and no one wants to take them. Before you say, but Carly, persimmons are delicious! Let me tell you, these are NOT the delicious kind. These are the apple like kind, that are only good for cutting up and eating like an apple. And they aren't as tasty as apples. So when you get a bag of 40 of them or so, what do you do? Paint pumpkin faces on them!

It was Ed's idea, I can't take any credit. I think they look so cute and spooky. God, I love Halloween. I can't wait for you guys to see Elise all dressed up. She doesn't have a costume per se, but she's got something planned. I'm definitely taking her grocery shopping in it. :) Until then!

Month 7

Sheesh, sorry for the delay! There's just been a whirlwind of activity these days. I've also been concentrating on accomplishing more, (I wrote a little bit about that in the last post and I'll update on how that's going in the next post), so her nap time is spent running all over the place with tasks and chores.

We've had a big month! Her first flight, first time meeting a bunch of family, first meeting close friends, Ed's birthday... It's been one great milestone after another. I could gush about how perfect it's all been, (seriously, I have zero complaints and a bajillion amazing memories), but, I'd rather just let the pictures do the talking here.

A couple of keeping house notes - Elise is fully moved upstairs so we don't really have a space for visitors anymore. We do still have a futon and can swing a night or two with her in our room, but for routine's sake, she's taking over her own space now. People are still absolutely welcome to visit, there just isn't a place to stay in our apartment. There is still a visitors apartment for rent in our apartment complex, just fyi. Also, I've decided that as soon as she hits the big 1 year mark, I'll be changing the security settings on here to make it a little tighter. I'll need your email address at that point if you'd like to continue reading. I know that'll chase away some readers, but hopefully I'll retain the ones who are really interested. Don't hesitate to ask for access, I really do want to share, it's just a matter of the big bad internet world that I don't know about that is the issue. I'll remind you of this as the big day arrives.

I've got a good deal of pictures this post so I'll just get them started and add captions along the way. Let's be honest, you're only reading these to see the cute baby pictures - the writing just gets in the way! :)

We realized it's time to lower all her sleeping areas when she started giving us the side eye from her packnplay... She may not be sitting on her own yet, but she sure tries to launch herself with her strong back legs.

Very happy playing with Mel!

Maybe not so much with Brian - 'Rescue me Michelle!'

Ck keeps her dressed well :)

Take off on the second leg of the flight to Kansas. She was actually really happy but I just happened to snap this at the perfect time. This cracks me up every time I look at it.

Meeting 'Omi Omi' or 'GrosOmi'

Related much? :)

Tia Kate! Her favorite babysitter :)

You guys. How cute is my niece. And yeah, she's definitely wearing a Dirndl. 

Daddy-Daughter photo shoot in some amazing evening light

Cousins messing with each other

Too much excitement for one little munchkin

Bye bye to Omi for a little while!

Back home! Not as smooth as the flights out, but still, a pretty good experience over all.

And for the monthly photo shoot...

She wasn't thrilled to be sitting in one place for any period of time so....

She let us know she was over it pretty quickly :)

What She Is Like:
SHE HAS A SCHEDULE. It's amazing. We have a schedule now and it's great. I have zero complaints. She is about to just take off crawling. She moves so fast with her creeping, I'm dreading how quick she'll be at her crawl. And she's already trying to launch up into a standing position when we try to get her to sit up. I want to tell her to slow down and take her time! She loves hiding games. After her bath, I'll hide her behind the towel and when I swipe it away she dances and squeals with excitement. She's game for all the long walks I've been taking lately. We aren't swimming these days because it's way too cold outside. She'll be signing up for some classes soon - gym or pool, we'll see. I'm excited to meet some other moms. She's saying 'mama' but she is just saying it for the sound. We've also got our 'p' and 'b' sounds down. Haven't quite mastered the 'c' or 'd' but I know that's close. She's blowing raspberries lately, so that's fun if you like a face full of saliva spray. 

She Likes:

* Sleeping in her own room allll night long :)
* Sweet potato, butternut squash, egg yolk, peas, cinnamon, and ginger
* Books. Whether it's tossing them around, listening to Dad read, or trying to turn pages, you can be sure the living room is covered with an array of board books and Dr. Seuss books.
* The cats. She love the cats so much. She'll tear across the room just to be near them, especially Rosie.
* Noisy toys - the hand bell, the bottle with pennies in it, the rattle... anything that is loud as all get out
* The phone - specifically the camera on the phone. Face time is wonderful but, even more so, she loves just seeing her smiling face (Hence all the over excited close up pictures of her)

She Doesn't Like:

* Still don't like avocado. I tried to sneak some in during a meal with sweet potato and we sussed it out right away. She was wary of the sweet potato for the next couple of days. Mango is also on the do not like list.

Avocado is the grossest apparently

Not Sure About:
* Strangers. I wouldn't say she's got full on stranger danger, but she's wary.


That's about all for now... hopefully, I can keep up a more frequent posting schedule.

Falling Into Place

(The next munchkin update will cover our trip to Kansas for my family reunion, but for now I'll just talk about day to day stuff)

Oh my goodness it's finally clicked! I'm back on track with diet and exercise. Not necessarily running... that's not been as easy to fully embrace again. I'm trying. But, I'll take what I can get and apparently that's finally re-motivating myself. I've been saying the same things in my head over and over, but for whatever reason, this week, it finally feels like it did last spring and I can actually talk myself out of eating the Halloween candy that I bought early. Or talk myself into doing a round of bodyweight exercises while munchkin naps. Oh, it feels so good. And after having done this once before, I feel like I've really conquered the hardest part - just the starting of it all. It's not going to happen as quickly as before, or in the same way... but I'm proud to have finally pulled myself together and recommitted.

I'd like to say that I could have done this sooner... but I don't think that's true. I think I just had to wait this all out until everything resolved itself. That whole, just keep trying until it works thing. It helps that our schedule is falling into place and I'm making time for cooking and exercise. Being able to prep lunches and dinners makes a world of difference for managing calories in and out.

I'm focusing more on weight training this time around because let's face it, I'll never be a fast runner. I don't have the drive to be, it doesn't feel good, and frankly, I just don't have that kind of time anymore. Man, remember days when I would go run for an hour. An hour. Or multiple hours! And then have time to shower and stretch and have a snack. Wow.  I think I could pull that off if I woke up at 330am. As long as munchkin didn't beat me to getting up at that time first. I'm using MyFitnessPal again to track my caloric intake, Fitocracy to track my strength training, my heart rate monitor when I go to the gym, and I've added in using my Fitbit more rigorously. I'm not using nike run as much, but I try to turn it on when I'm out. If you're using any of those, definitely friend me on the apps so we can motivate one another. :)

I keep reminding myself, that this year is rushing by and I need to suck it up and take care of myself if we're going expand our family at any point in the near future and so I can keep up with the munchkin and her endless supply of energy.

In other (awesome) news, we've scheduled our time home. I'm jumping out of my skin with excitement to see friends. The small taste of being with family that we got at the reunion this past weekend was a huge breath of fresh air. I've forgotten how nice it is to be around people. Lovely, wonderful people.

I'm just feeling really good lately. Health stuff is back on my radar in a great way, the seasons are changing and the holidays are coming up, always my favorite time of year. I have other things I want to get on track with, but I'm happy just to have one big thing going well.