tiffany's spot

Not so long ago , I was quite angry. I had started watching my food intake and lost 6 pounds in a couple of weeks. Then I added exercise, continued watching the food and gained two pounds! Unfair right? Right! Candice (you remember Candice right?) was nice enough to give me the following pep talk: The short version: muscle weighs way more than fat. Loose fat + gain muscle = overall net gain in weight. BUT this is a great thing! Muscle is way more metabolically active than fat. Meaning, with more muscle, you burn up more calories all day long even when you are just sitting around. Or sleeping. Please, PLEASE keep in mind that the scale does not provide you with a number reflecting health value - just a number that reflects how much gravity wants you. The scale does not have the authority to measure your success. Instead, take note of your energy level, the way your clothes fit, etc, and *you* measure your success that way. Aim for greater health. Not lower weight. The true beauty of t...

Being a mommy is great - hugs, kisses, smiles, drawings and paintings from nursery school. However - there are times when the mommy gig is not so glamorous. There are days when I change my shirt two or three times due to spit up or poop-throughs. There are noodles on the floors, lost shoes when we're in a hurry and ten levels of mess. Yesterday was interesting. I'm sitting on the couch nursing Mitchell. Tennyson is beside me. Steven and Jordan have gone off to nursery school. Suddenly, Tennyson throws up everything he had eaten that day all down the front of his shirt and into his lap. I quickly go to put the baby down to help Tennyson and realize that Mitchell has liqui-pooped all out the legs of his diaper and into his sleeper. I get everyone cleaned up (including manually picking bits of chicken off of the couch) and resume nursing. Steven comes home, and we give Tennyson some gingerale. He's very excited for this treat and drinks it. Fast. He then turns and barfs it all...

Something terrible has happened. I gained 2 pounds back. Somebody please tell me how this is possible! I weighed myself on Friday, and then on Saturday I was 2 pounds heavier. I always weigh first thing in the morning for consistency. I weighed again the next day - still there. Tell me if this makes sense - I've been dieting the past couple of weeks, and I lost 5 or 6 pounds. I then add some crazy treadmilling and ellipticalling and the first thing I do is gain weight. I haven't been eating any more. In fact, most days I'm well below the 1770 calorie limit. What I need is for someone who knows something about this, maybe having studied this type of stuff in depth (hint hint :) to tell me that it's because I'm toning up my leg muscles in a big way. Anything along those lines would suffice. I complained of this to Ange or Steven or someone, and it was suggested that I'm not eating enough calories for the workouts I'm doing, and my body is desperately hanging o...

J: Mommy, can you phone some of my friends and tell them to get me a Cupcake Maker? M: Why should they get you a Cupcake Maker? J: Because I want to make cupcakes. M: Yeah, but why should your friends get it for you? J: Because I will share some with them. At least her heart is in the right place, sort of.

I almost hate to write a new post, that picture of Mitchell is so cute! Okay, so I've been using MyFitnessPal.com in a big way - tracking all my food and the calories consumed and burned throughout the day. It's been working pretty well, I lost four pounds last week! Today I joined the gym. I figure it's the next best step. It'll force me to set aside blocks of time to actually work out. Steven's very supportive. He told me to go ahead and sign up for a year and not feel bad about it. I have a little guilt: Mom-Guilt. I honestly felt really guilty today about leaving Steven and all the kids and going out to do something totally self-serving. I should be spending the time with him when he's home right? Financial guilt. It's a little expensive. This ties in a bit to mom-guilt I think. I never feel bad about spending money on the kids - kid stuff, kid clothes, kid "events" (nursery school). Yet if I spend a few dollars on myself I feel pretty darn gui...

A lot happens in three months. Three months ago today I was plodding along behind my double stroller, pushing Tennyson and watching Jordan run along the sidewalk. She was racing. I'm assuming that she was winning, since she was the only participant. We walked a mile. We then came home and played in the backyard, running around with Jordan and playing "Superhero" and pushing her on the swing. Tennyson was quite amused by all this. My water had broken at 7:30 that morning and I was trying to encourage contractions to start. It was a beautiful August day. Steven was napping because he had just gotten off work that morning. I had called my mom and Angela and they were waiting for me to let them know that I needed someone to come and watch Jordan and Tennyson so I could go in and have the baby. I did my normal stuff. I cleaned the house a bit, did dishes and scrubbed the bathroom. I talked on the phone with friends. At some point during the day, Auntie Christine stopped in. Sh...

That's right, the scale budged! Did you check out my ticker? I'm down four pounds this week! Seriously, I'm on cloud nine this morning. It's like Christmas, only without all the food. This actually gives me motivation to keep being good. For example; we're having penny rolling today. Steven's dad's side of the family saves pennies all year, and then sometime in November they all get together and roll them all up and donate them to charity. Of course you can't (usually) do something like this without lots of chips and pop right? See what I mean, I need the motivation! Some of my favorite tools right now: www.myfitnesspal.com - You can track your weight, exercise and diet on here. It counts calories for you. It's awesome. http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php - This website lets you type in a recipe, and how many servings there approximately are, and it'll give you the nutrition information for that recipe. Both of these links are ...

It's funny how we see ourselves in a totally different light than others do. Thanks to everyone who apparently doesn't think I'm sumo-wrestler material. Not that I don't still want to skinny-up a little! Totally unrelated: Did you know that November is National Novel Writing Month ? Me neither. Steven knew, but he apparently always forgets until the middle of the month. It's not about getting published, or writing anything that anyone would want to read more than a few lines of. The entire point is just to let the words flow and try and beat the clock, and write 50,000 words in the month of November. Since there are only 17 days left in November, we decided to do our own competition. If either of us actually finishes a 50,000 word story in the next 25 days or so (we started a few days ago), the winner gets to pick a movie and a restaurant of her choice (i'm assuming the win already) and gets an entire 3 day weekend with no diaper changing. Dinner and a movie? Pe...

It's official. I'm a heavyweight. I should really take up a heavyweight sport. Maybe women's sumo wrestling. I can picture the look on my mom's face now. She'd be so proud. If you'll notice the ticker on the right of this screen, you'll see that I joined My Fitness Pal. You can click it if you're interested in the website - not my website, one of your own. It's suggested a skimpy, scrawny daily diet of 1770 calories. Apparently the internet thinks I'm fat too! I managed to stay under yesterday. I was pretty proud of myself, until I woke up at 3 to feed the baby and then lay awake for the next hour because I was so frickin hungry! It's okay, I'll get used to it. I figure I have to diet because I don't have a lot of time during the day to exercise, and by the time the kids go to bed at 8 or 8:15 I have no motivation to slap in the aerobics tape. Wish me luck!

Jordan carefully lays her blankets out on the living room floor. She pulls the edges and corners tight so that there are no wrinkles. She pesters me for a pillow, so I fetch her mine. Hers is in the bedroom, and Tennyson is sleeping. She lays for a while, watching tv, and then she gets up and starts running. She runs in circles around the blankets on the floor. I tell her to calm down, she responds by informing me that she has to run because the monsters are chasing her. I go back to my book. Eventually she comes to stand beside me. I put my arm around her in a hug. Her cheeks are flushed, her breathing quick. I can feel her heart beating in her chest. I take her hand and lay it over her heart. "Do you feel that?" She nods, eyes wide. I don't think it's occurred to her that there are things going on inside her. "That's your heart." Her big blue eyes widen more, a smile plays at her lips. "My heart?" I nod. "It goes faster when you run arou...

For a mother of three young children who is very often housebound, a good and successful outing consists of the following: a trip to the library in which nobody leaps from the stroller, nobody pees their pants, and I find the next three books of the series I'm reading. a stop at the gas station where I instantly spot and grab the single copy of a new release I've been wanting to see. an extra large French Vanilla Cappuccino from Tim Horton's. It doesn't get any better than this.

Not to get all political in blog-land, but... I've been watching some of the talk shows this morning, and it seems that America is abuzz over the win of Barack Obama. And they should be! It's very exciting for African American people. It wasn't that long ago that they weren't allowed to vote, weren't allowed to sit at the front of the busses, weren't allowed to eat in certain diners or use public washrooms that were designated "white" (among many other things). Now Barack Obama has become the first black president. Lots of people say that this election wasn't a "race issue." I hope it wasn't. I hope that people voted for the platform, and that party that they felt would do the best job for America. That being said, it's still a big deal that a black man is the president. Ask yourself - 43 years ago, would Americans have voted for an African American and ignored the colour of his skin and focused on the platform? Doubt it. It'...

Last night after our kids were finished trick or treating, and we had run out of candy, I thought "hmm, I should bring in that pumpkin." Not that I'm all sentimental about the pumpkin, it'll probably be put on the curb next week or the week after. It's more that I'm worried that some prankster is going to smash it against my house. For the same reasons, I made sure the van was parked inside the garage. You never know what kinds of things the neighborhood kids are going to do once the lights go out. Not that I mind good clean fun. Then I got thinking of the stuff we used to do. When I say "we" I mean "Leigh Ann and I." Sorry Leigh Ann, I'm going to drag you into this! When I still lived in Austin, Leigh Ann and I were on the fire department together. It was only a year or two, and then I moved to Portage. Every gate night and Halloween, the fire department was in charge of patrolling the town to make sure bad things weren't happening...