Thank You Dear Crissy & Bare Neccessities!

Earlier this week I started entering a few high value giveaways on a whim. I am not usually one that wins the giveaways, but luck – a whole heck of a lot of it – was on my side this time and I won the biggest giveaway I’ve ever won – $300 to Bare Neccessities thanks to the awesome giveaway at Dear Crissy. Let’s just say I am beyond stoked!  So, I just wanted to give a quick little shout out and big THANK YOU to both Bare Neccessities and Dear Crissy! 

Gilt (Invitation Only Shopping Site) Giveaways

Two blogs I love are each featuring a Gilt (Invitation Only Shopping Site) Giveaway – MomDot and Dear Crissy.  We aren’t gonna discuss how much time I spend parked on the MomDot site (so don’t ask, heehee) and Dear Crissy has been open on my browser for a couple days steady now, thanks to some pretty awesome high dollar giveaways.  I’m tweeting daily. I wanna win, because I just don’t consider Christmas shopping really done until we are opening gifts on Christmas morning.  Just sayin’. 

Trisha and Crissy are both great bloggers, so if you aren’t familiar with them, now as good time as any to check their blogs out.  Trisha has actually started doing a lot of super cute DIY stuff, mainly for girls (lots of princessy stuff).  If you have girls, unlike me, you’ll like what you find there. (Ahem, I like what I see there, I just have no use for it. Wanted to clear that up.) 

Anyhoo, both have a $100 Gilt gift card up for grabs. Go enter here and here.

I entered to win a $100 credit for Gilt Children at Dear Crissy & MomDot.

Body After Baby Week 2: Dec 8-14

Body After Baby
Week Two

It’s week two! So, I am a little late with this one, but what can I say? I joined in at the last minute as it is, I’m not cleared to get back to exercise (the incision is actually still kinda painful at times) and everything seem to be upside down.  I really need to get focused on this b/c once I am *officially* released, I need to get on it big time.  I’d like a small difference by Christmas and a slightly bigger difference by my birthday.

I’m going to look into this site, My Fitness Pal, that Mama Notes mentioned and browse through some iPhone apps. Maybe it – or another app – will be helpful as I try to stay on track.

There are 2 challanges for this week (ummm, of which I have 2 days left of, oops):

#1: Write down everything I eat & drink. Ooooh, I hate these. I always forget, lol. Or, just because I am writing it down and drawing focus to it, I tend to want to eat 400 times a day. Guess my body trying to get one up on me.  Very annoying.

#2: Cut out one un-healthy habit from my life this week.  Hmmmm, staying up late may be an unhealthy habit.  Of course my inner clock is a little whacked thanks to Calen having his days & nights mixed up just recently - though I think he’s doing great now. Me, not so much.  Or, it could be drinking coke. Which I typically only do when we run out of other things I prefer to drink. Which do not include water. Because I do not like water.  I’m afraid an upcoming challenge will involve water. {sigh}  I don’t have a lot of unhealthy habits, I just don’t do a lot of healthy enough things. 

Recap: Week One: I have a “before” picture courtesy of having family portraits done just as this challenge was starting.  My intro is here if this is your first visit here from the Body After Baby Challenge.

Bare Necessities Giveaway At Dear Crissy

Dear Crissy is celebrating the 13 Days of Christmas {wait.. I thought there was just 12 Days of Christmas? heehee} with a lot of giveaways, including this one from Bare Necessities.  I’m hoping to win so I can stock up on some new PJs and nursing items.  I may even have a little leftover to do some Christmas shopping. The more I browse the site, the more ideas I get. 

I entered to win a $300 gift card from Dear Crissy & Bare Necessities!

Body After Baby Challenge: Week One

Body After Baby
Week One 

Mama Notes is hosting an 8 week Body After Baby Challenge for Dec 2010 / Jan 2011 and I”ve decided, totally spur of the moment, to give it a whirl.   Technically, I will not be cleared to exercise, etc for another 2 weeks as the baby was born on Nov 1 via c-section, but I can certainly start planning, start out slow, and work on eating habits. 

If you are coming over from Mama Notes, HI!!!  I am Christy, mama to a brand spanking new baby boy, born on November 1 and to a rowdy, keeps-me-on-my-toes four year old boy, and wife to a firefighter.  My favorite pasttime is creating blogs.  (Getting them established and actually posting on them is sometimes a different story, heehee.)  My home base is Shake The Salt, but I’ve also created Sweet Posh Baby, Florida Fun Reviews, Savvy Frugalistas, and Simply Sensational Divas Review.  Right now I am working on Christmas Gift Idea features on Sweet Posh Baby and Christmas deals on Savvy Frugalistas. I hope to welcome new editors at Savvy Frugalistas in the very near future, but there are still a lot of kinks I have to work out before I go full steam ahead with it. 

As I write this, I have a screaming one month old that I should probably get back to, so here’s to typing a little faster.  He has these times at least once a day, for hours, where he is just very restless and I almost have to hold him non-stop to help him settle.  Maybe it is meant for me to have that time each day to stop everything and take a breather. 

I am very excited about taking this challenge and meeting other great ladies that will be participating.  

From Mama Notes:

This challenge is about coming together as woman and moms to lose that extra “baby” weight and improve our overall health.

This week you should focus on what your goals are and what your plan is to get there.

 My goal is to, obviously, lose weight. I’m not setting a number, since I still have to “take it easy” for 2 more weeks AND I’m nursing the baby, but I want the number to go down.

My plan to work toward that goal:

1. Drink water.  I hate water, so any little increase will make a difference. I haven’t decided how much more, but I do want to increase my water intake.

2. Exercise.  Once I am cleared to exercise, I’ll need to start slow and gradually build up a routine. With the brand new baby, the holidays, and other things going on, plus with me quite simply not being used to having exercise in the routine, it will take some getting used to.  I have the Wii and some various workout DVDs – one with a weight ball type thing – so I will probably utilize those.  I also want to add in some walking.

3. Eat healthier.  I can’t do complicated and I eat a ton in the middle of the night since I’m up anyway.  I need to make sure that whenever & how often I eat that I am making better, healthier choices.  I have to be realistic.  If Ifeel hungry, I’m going to eat, even if it is at the worst possible time of day for my metabolism. 

 I know those are atypical plans, but it is a start.  Hopefully I can expand on them once I am able to sit and think and focus on the upcoming 2 months.  My birthday is Feb 1, so what a great birthday present to myself to have this challenge end up a success!

The Circumcision

Baby C had his circumcision procedure today.  It broke Mommy’s heart that he had to endure it.  They were absolutely great with him, but it is what it is.  Not the most fun a one month old can have, that’s for sure.  And waiting til he was a month old… made it a little worse I think.

I’m not sure how it works for others, but for us to have the circ done while still in the hospital, we would have had to sign the consent forms and pay prior to the delivery. Somehow, that was missed. We weren’t given the forms to sign nor asked to pay – but whether that responsibility lied with the OB or me for not specifically requesting it, the end result was the same.  We didn’t even realize it until after delivery when we found out it wouldn’t be done.  Once we were home, I checked with our Ped, who did not do circs, but referred us to someone that did.  It would be a couple of weeks before they could get us in, which pushed us up against the “less than a month old” deadline, which was today.

I was convinced following the procedure that it “looked good” but to me it just looks painful.  It might look the way it should following the procedure and on its way in the healing process, but to a Mommy, it was just a reminder of the pain.  The next 2-3 weeks are not going to be easy for us.  I canot wait til it is all healed and this experience behind us. Sometimes he whimpers – a sound he never previously made – when he’s sleeping.

For now, we are keeping medication on it, medication in him, and for the first 24 hours we are double diapering.  So far today since we’ve been home, he’s only been awake long enough to nurse, get changed, and take meds before starting to doze off again.

Four Weeks Old Today

Already.

Where did those first few weeks go? Most of the first was in the hospital – has it already been several weeks since we were discharged? The time has passed in a sleep deprived fog for me, but the moments have been all too precious just the same.  Well, the moments when he wasn’t screaming anyway. As I write this, I’m watching him sleep, his little fist near his mouth, so content and peaceful.  And I realize these weeks of so little sleep are all worth it. 

Tomorrow morning he will be getting circumcised. I’m not looking forward to it.  The very thought of him being in real pain horrifies me.  But I know those moments will pass soon, he’ll heal, and he will not have any memory of it.  But the time between now and then will have me completely heartbroken.

Deuteronomy 31:6

Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Deuteronomy 31:6

After posting Overwhelmed, I was sitting on the couch messing with my iPhone and I pulled up the Bible Verses app I added earlier today and this was the verse for today.  It doesn’t magically remove me from this place I am in right now, but it helps to be reminded that I am not walking through it alone.

Overwhelmed

Sometimes it feels like all the things I’m juggling are just going to come crashing down. 

Maybe it is that my hormones, 4 weeks postpartum, haven’t leveled back out yet. 

Or maybe it is that I am still experiencing pain / discomfort from the c-section.  (I stopped taking all the meds awhile back because I just could. not. take. anymore. I get nauseous at the mere thought of taking another pill. I probably shouldn’t have quit taking them, but it is what it is.) 

Maybe it is that my husband is going back to work in a couple of days and I haven’t settled into a new routine yet. 

Maybe it is because I am still operating on very minimum sleep.  Last night I got 2 hours of sleep, but I usually am able to get up to 4. 

Maybe it is that I try to ease back into a routine, doing things that need to be done, but doing so seems to aggravate the incision, externally and internally. 

Maybe it is because my four year old pushes the envelope a little too far, a little too often and I know most of the fault of that lies with me.  I was so sick and weak during the pregnancy, I wasn’t able to stay on top of correcting bad behavoir and mainly gave extensive warnings.  We are trying to reel him back in, but it is extremely difficult since I allowed him to go to this place and for so long.  It is frustrating and I don’t always handle it as well now as I should.

Maybe it is because as completely lovable and precious as the new baby is, he’s also a screamer.  And he has hard a hard time getting settled at night, very restless, nurses and fusses, nurses and fusses, nurses and spits up because he’s nursed too much and mostly refuses a pacifier, but still wants the comfort.

Maybe it is because there always seems to be so much to do.  Around the house. With work.  Yes, I’m lucky enough to be a work at home mom, but I have to work for there to be income from it and quite frankly, work is work no matter where you do it.

Most  likely it is the fact that ALL of these are in the play. At the same time. 24/7. 

I know, somewhere in the back of my mind, or maybe it is deep in my heart, that things will get better.  Eventually.  They will, right?  But for now, I have lots of little moments like this where I simply feel overwhelmed.

Tinkerbell Is… Ummm… Tinker Beau…

Oopsie… !!!  Still a cutie though with lots of character!