Something in the Air

Noah is really good about not leaking through his diapers very often, unless I'm bad and forget to change him. But even after sleeping in the same diaper for 10+ hours his clothes usually stay dry. There's an exception to the rule though: being at Grandma Jean's house. Seriously, the last like 5 times we've been over there he has pooped out of his diaper. He did it once or twice at home, so I changed him into the bigger size diaper and we haven't had a problem since. Until today when I went to mom's house. As I was leaving she was scooting him up a bit in his seat and noticed that his shorts had a wet spot on them. I figured he was already in the seat, I was going to be putting him to bed when we got home, so I just left it for a bit. I get home and oh is that not just a wet spot. It's a poop spot! I think there's something in the air at mom's house that acts as a natural explosive laxative for babies.

Solitude

Yesterday was Zander's first day of classes for this semester, and it looks like they're going to be pretty good classes. They're taught by people who work in the field, so they know what they're talking about, and they understand the whole working and going to school in the evening thing. That's one thing that I really appreciate about UVU's night classes. It's not that they're lenient or don't teach as much in the evening, they just understand that people's lives are crazy and that school isn't their only priority.

With Z having school in the evenings it means that he is gone for 12+ hours several days a week, which kind of sucks for me. Thankfully Noah had a really good day yesterday and didn't get fussy or grumpy really at all until about 6:30, and went to bed an hour early. On days that Z is gone I'm trying to give myself something to look forward to around 5:30ish, just to help break up my day and keep me on a similar schedule. Even if it's something as simple as going on a short walk to get the mail. I'm also making sure that I get outside for a little while, even if it's just sitting in the backyard for 5 minutes while I eat my lunch.

Repeat

Ok, so this blog may end up being a workout blog, we'll see. But I did my second Slim in Six workout tonight, and again, it kicked my butt, but not nearly as hard as it did last night. I turned the music off, and while it was a little disorienting to be working out without music at first, eventually I didn't notice the silence. And I'm glad to find out that I do get a rest day on Sunday. *whew*

On a side note, I'm really missing my Missy Higgins cd right now. I'm not sure where it ended up, but it's one of those cd's that I can listen to for about 4 hours straight, just repeating it, and not get tired of it. Krystal can agree with me on that point, it's an awesome cd. Heck, even Zander doesn't mind it too much.

Noah is having a lot of trouble sleeping during the day again, and it's really starting to wear on me. I can usually get him to sleep fairly easily, but if I try to put him in his bed, he wakes up and gets really mad about it. So we struggle with that for about half an hour, then I get frustrated and end up holding him for a couple hours while he sleeps. It makes my butt hurt a lot, our office chair is nice, but not several hours worth nice. *sigh*. I know, it gets better...

Sweat

For a couple of years now I have been doing the Turbo Jam workouts, and while I absolutely love them, I think I got really bored with it the last year or so. But I know that I like the products that Beach Body has. Thankfully Alisha had another Beach Body program, and she's been dropping weight like mad. So she burned me a copy of Slim in Six and I tried it out tonight. OUCH! man, that program is going to seriously kick my butt in a good way. Of course there are a few things I don't like about it, like the fact that she can't keep time with her own music, but thankfully there's an option on the menu to turn the music off, so maybe that won't bug me as much. But I'm actually really excited about this program. It's been a long time since I've been this excited about working out, cuz I know that this is something that is really going to challenge me. It's not nearly as much FUN as Turbo Jam is, but I think it's a much tougher workout. I'll probably throw some of the cardio from Turbo in once in a while just because it in genuinely fun, and it's a great cardio workout. But I really think that I'm going to be sore tomorrow morning from doing this workout tonight. I've been trying to get my workouts in during the day when Noah is napping, but his naps are so inconsistent right now that I don't think it's going to work. Thankfully bedtime for him IS consistent, so I'll be doing my workouts around 8:30 at night after he's passed out for the night.

Eyes and Ears

No, I didn't forget about writing on the blog, I just haven't been able to come up with anything that I wanted to write about. Just barely, however, a random thought came into my head, and I shared it with Stephanie, but now I think I want to explore it a little bit more.

I'm sitting here working on the computer listening to music, and I keep thinking I hear Noah crying, but I know that it isn't him because he's dead asleep, and it sounds further away from me than he is, so I think it might be the neighbors little boy Jaymon. Anyway, it got me to thinking about how incredibly hard it would be to take care of a baby if you couldn't hear. You wouldn't know if he was crying in the other room, especially in the middle of the night when he wants to eat. You also wouldn't be able to tell the difference between tired, hungry, and gas cries, so instead of going straight to the root of the problem you would have to go through all of them to figure out which one needs to be fixed.

After thinking about how glad I was that I could hear, of course I had to be glad that I could see. Aside from the obvious reasons of being able to enjoy the beauties of nature, I thought specifically of taking care of a baby. Mainly, how do you know if you got all of the poop off when you're changing a diaper? Or if your baby is starting to roll or walk, and they get away from you, it could be really hard to figure out where they went.

Side note: no, that is not my eye.

Two months

When you have a baby everything changes, naturally. And honestly not all of it is good. And when you're miserable it seems like everyone tells you over and over "don't worry, it gets better, usually around two months." They were far more right than I ever thought possible. About a week ago he finally started taking real naps during the day. Before he was just taking 20 minute cat naps and then being really cranky at night cuz he was so exhausted, but now he sleeps at least 6 hours during the day. And who knew the key to sleeping through the night was sleeping during the day? The night that Noah turned two month old he slept through the night, from 8:30 pm until 7 am with barely making a noise. of course I didn't sleep that long though. We went to bed around 1 am, after I made sure he was still breathing. I woke up again confused that my baby hadn't woken me up. I made sure he was still alive and then went back to bed. I passed off that first night as a total fluke and didn't expect it again. well, he did it again last night. So happy two month birthday, to both Noah and to me.

New Challenges

For quite a few years now I have had a fascination with Asian body-mind disciplines. I've toyed with Yoga and always loved it, especially last summer. I had a gym membership at 24 hour fitness and they had a yoga class several nights a week that I could make it to right after work. It was a great way to wind down and re-energize myself after a long day of being at a desk. While I really love Yoga, I've also really wanted to learn T'ai Chi. It's movements are so beautiful and controlled. So yesterday while we were doing a bunch of errands down in Orem, I got a beginning T'ai Chi video. I got Zander to try it out with me last night, and it's actually a lot harder than I thought it would be. I know that once I get the movements down and can flow smoothly between them it's going to be a good workout.

Trial run

I admit, this is not the first blog that I have created, but I don't remember the login or password to any of the others and I never did anything with them anyway. So here's hoping that this one survives. I feel like it's new years day and I'm writing in a journal saying that I'm going to do better at writing consistently, and then it never happens But this will be a good project for me and will help me find significant things in my somewhat monotonous life to write about.

Exciting things this week:
My cookbook is coming along really well, and I'm still very motivated to work on it. I have most of the recipes from my Cooking Light magazines done. Next I'll have to go through the recipe box and all of my cookbooks and figure out what I want from those. That might be more fun, cuz I'll have to work harder to get the pictures on those recipes instead of just copying them from a website.

Last night we went on our first REAL date since having Noah in mid June. We've gone out to dinner a few times without him, but that was only like an hour long, so it doesn't count. We were out for about 4 hours last night, and it was kind of like taking a big huge gulp of air, it was great. Don't get me wrong, I love my baby lots and lots, but it was nice to have a break from him for a little while. Brian wanted us to double with him, so we went with him and Amber out to Tucanos in Orem, and then went bowling afterwards and played two games. We hadn't met Amber before, but she was a lot of fun. Very easy to talk to and joke around with. I out-ate everyone at dinner (no, I'm not proud of that), and then won the second game of bowling. Zander wasn't having the best game on that second round, so he started trying to throw the ball as fast as he could. It was rather entertaining.

We've begun to actually think about the trip that we're taking to California this coming March. Our invitation for Craig and Steph has been officially issued, and we're starting to think about what we want to do while we're down there, which has brought up the issue of swim suits....Granted I've lost just about all of my baby weight, but I was a good 10 pounds heavier than I wanted to be even before I got pregnant. I've got a good 20 pounds that I want to loose before I put myself in a swimsuit in public. I'm incredibly motivated to start working out, but it's a whole new challenge when a newborn baby is involved. I can't always expect his naps to last long enough for me to get in a good workout, and I'd like to start running again, but I don't think that our current stroller would handle it very well. Not to mention I have a tendency to forget to eat during the day when I'm taking care of Noah. So we'll see what happens. I've always had the goal of being able to fit back into my wedding dress by our next anniversary, which is when we're going to California, and if I can fit into my dress then I won't be too ashamed to be in a swimsuit.