Remember Me?

John is seven weeks old today. Last week I had my follow-up midwife appointment. I had to get on that scale again. This time I looked at the numbers. And they mattered to me.

I worked so hard for the last few years to get myself fit again after having Lucy. I was down to a skinny weight and I ran two half marathons last summer for the love. I was FIT. And now here I am at another starting point. I'm 30 pounds overweight (again), and I'm eating whatever I can eat with one hand while the other arm is occupied with a newborn who still widely refuses to be set down. I decided that John's being a cuddle monkey, or having a newborn at all, or having two kids, is no excuse for not taking better care of myself.

I can't fit into my "fat" pre-pregnancy clothes; I'm still living in my maternity yoga pants and t-shirts. I don't ever want to go shopping again and face those dressing room mirrors that show a lumpy-looking me in an enormous size (postpartum hormones and dressing rooms DO NOT MIX. I should know that. And yet.).

Now, don't get me wrong. I pushed a baby out seven short weeks ago, and I'm pretty proud of my body for doing that. But now I'm saying, thank you, fat, for taking care of my baby and my pregnant body, but I don't need you any more! I've made a conscious decision to give myself a little more room and time so that this doesn't end up being a body-image downer, and instead I can focus on running and being fit again and fueling an athlete's body.

I've decided that for the month of June, I'm going to eat a vegetarian diet. I want to do this for a few reasons: a) we don't eat that much meat anyway so it's not that much of a stretch, b) to see if I can, c) to kick myself into an eating healthily again focusing on fruits and veggies, and d) to force myself to find some new and interesting vegetarian recipes to add to our boring recipe repertoire.

My saintly husband looked at me sideways when I made this announcement and said "Does that mean we ALL have to be vegetarians?" I promised him I'd come up with some really interesting recipes and we could reassess what he thought of it in a week or two. So far, I think we're in for some good stuff this week including this casserole among other things.

I'm also gearing myself up to start seriously running again with the ginormous double stroller. FYI two kids and a stroller are HEAVY. I'm going to be seriously buff if I can do my old 35 miles/week distances with this thing. Right now it's all I can do to huff and puff a mile.

But! You gotta start somewhere! And that's where I am.

Friday Photos

Little old man smiles!

I forgot how completely gratifying a little smile can be.

Evidently I turned 32 last weekend according to the math.

Lu and Bubba took me for a nice walk to the Locks.

Lucy at the locks

I took my birthday as an excuse to buy a two-baby moving contraption.

I opted for the bike trailer that can be converted to a jogger.

Not much else going on around here! We're mostly still in survival mode.

One

One whole month!

(Adorable "Little Monster" onsie courtesy of Emily)

My Jiggity-Jack is one month old already, can you believe it? Because I can't. This month has been a serious blur.

We're still not quite sure what to call this man-child. I love my baby's name, and I love my boy, but I have a really hard time associating the two with each other for some reason. I call him Baby Boy or Baby Brudder, Buddy or The Dude. We only decided on his name maybe a couple hours before he was born. My dad's name was Jon. And we both liked the idea of honoring him. (We opted for the more conventional spelling.) And Ignatius is after the Bubba's Grandpa Iggy. We really like this family connection thing. It's so different than how we named Lucy. (You like Lucy? Yeah. You? Yeah. Ok!) But! What will we call him? We were/are pretty sold on Jack, but then...we could call him Johnny! Or Iggy! And when I do call him by a name, John is usually the first thing that comes out. Lucy is convinced that his name is Baby Jack, though, and will correct me when I call him John or Ig. Ah well! Something will stick in the not-so-distant future.

This baby is a complete cuddle monkey. Well, that's a nice way to put it. We tease that he likes to be right next to the Source (my chest) at all times. In fact, he'd prefer to have constant unfettered access whether or not he's hungry thankyouverymuch. But I do have to draw the line somewhere, and I opt for decency and the potential to leave the house. He's awake and alert for an hour and a half at a time these days, and most of that time I spend walking around our circular floor plan with him. God forbid I set this kid down. I don't know how I haven't lost all thousand pounds I gained being pregnant with him just from the miles I''m walking around my house... He prefers the Bjorn to the Moby (which is disappointing since the Moby's more comfy for me!) and is more than content to spend every moment of the day either plugged into his Source or strapped on right next to it. I've gotten pretty good at getting things done around here with one hand, with a baby strapped to me, or with passionate screaming in the background.

"Are you getting any sleep?" The short answer: some. He had his nights and days screwed up for the first few weeks, which was less than fun, but now he's straightened himself out a bit. We wake up twice a night, usually at 12ish and 3ish, and otherwise sleep from 9:30 to 6am or so. And usually Jack just needs a dipe, meal, burp, bed. It's not that bad a gig, but hoo boy, it's catching up to me! Especially with this mastitis setback, I've been seriously wishing I could "sleep when the baby sleeps."

When he does deign to sleep in his bassinet, he much prefers to sleep on his stomach. So I let him. (Judge away, people!) But because of that, instead of a bald patch in the back of his head, John is losing the hair on the sides! Hee! And for all the Get The Toddler Outside As Much As Possible hat wearing that he does, it's coming out at the top too. So basically the only place he has much hair is in the back. It's the most committed mullet I've ever seen.

Mostly he's awesome. And Lucy's doing well; she swings from ambivalence to violent affection to curiosity/wanting to help. It works out. So far, I'm still kind of scared to leave the house and do errands with two kids. That's not to say I haven't done it. But I'm just sure John will blow out or be starving in the middle of groceries and Lucy will run away and hide in the aisles and CPS will be waiting for me in the parking lot. So, you know, we've been taking baby steps. A walk to the park here, a trip to pick up diapers there.

Life is slowly getting a little easier as we all get used to each other's schedules and quirks.

What? It's May?

Time stopped for me in March sometime. My aunt and uncle came over the other day with a pie to celebrate an early birthday for me. I was all, "Um, but my birthday's in MAY." Uh. Oh yeah.

It's called Newborn Haze.

Mother's Day was kind of a non-event over here. When we were young and single (read: without children), gift giving occasions were...maximized. I mean, I used to have a "birthday month." I'd start teasingly reminding the Bubba at the end of April that my birthday is approaching. And he'd start being coy and teasing about my gift and I'd take May as an excuse to go out for lunch more often or to treat myself to those sunglasses I was checking out at Anthropologie.

The Bubba would then make an appropriately big deal out of my birthday. For example, our first May together, the Bubba got tickets to Les Contes d'Hoffmann which is only my favorite opera of all time. (Worth it just for the Barcarolle. It brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it it's so pretty.) One other birthday, he took me out to dinner at a schmancy place downtown one night and then rented us kayaks to watch the sunset over the Sound the next night.

For Mother's Day this year, the Bubba and Lucy collaborated on a card, I bought myself a work out DVD, and the Bubba let me take a nap, made dinner and put clean sheets on the bed.

I wouldn't trade that for all the sunset tours in Seattle.