Healthier living

Well, hope you have all enjoyed a good weekend and an excellent start to the week. We had a wonderful (busy) weekend that included lots of visiting with friends and family, celebrating the arrival of our son Ethan. We didn't have a traditional baby shower for him; instead, we hosted a Sip 'n' See Open House where people could drop in and visit and meet the little tyke informally. I had a few snacks out and some beverages, and it was a really nice time. We didn't expect gifts, but boy, did we get them! We were very blessed!

For food choices, I had a veggie platter, fruit skewers, bacon swiss quiches, meat and cheese, crackers, hummus, and cream puffs, mini cupcakes, and brownies for sweets. This is where I want to get in to healthy living. See, I love me my cream puffs. And brownies. And poetry much any type of appetizer! But I have to say that I only had 1 cream puff...and 1 mini cupcake and brownie (That is self-restraint for me, considering I could easily east a dozen puffs). But last week I wasn't feeling well and made some diet changes in hopes of feeling 100%. And so that meant cutting out all the refined sugars and processed junk that I love so much! :) I'm also hoping that my weight loss after baby will continue with my diet changes.

I've been eating better for almost a week now, and drinking a whole bunch of water on a regular basis (I'm talking litres of it) and trying to make wise choices for meal planning too. So far, so good. I'll share what I've been eating in another post...it's lunch time and i'm off to prepare our grub!

Over and out...
Penny

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Family Weekend

Hope you've all had a wonderful long weekend! We took it easy for the most part, and thoroughly enjoyed doing not much of anything. I managed to squeeze in some housecleaning (not nearly enough, but hey, baby steps, right?) in between movie watching, vegging, and playing around! Yesterday we took Annika to Galaxyland so that she could play in the play park and then she went on a little horsey carousel and went for a ride on the train. It was a nice day. Today we headed out to Costco and picked up a few things we needed and stopped for lunch at a vietnamese place. It took forever to get our lunch though, and by that time Annika was antsy, Ethan was crying and hungry, and we were just plain worn out. I managed to eat my soup while nursing Ethan (stopped his crying, at least). I'll tell you what, we were happy to get home this afternoon.

Before we went to Costco, we stopped by the cemetery to leave some flowers at my mom's grave (and Marc's while we were at it!) Today is 3 years since my mama passed away - wow. I can't believe how fast the years slipped by! Lots has happened in those three years...and I sure wish she was here to see the changes, particularly in my growing little family. It would be so nice to have her here to phone up and chat, to ask questions about raising a toddler and best discipline methods, or to just hang out with her. I miss her...

Hope you all enjoy the rest of the evening...
Penny

One month old

Today my baby boy is one month old! I took him in to have him weighed and measured and he's growing fast. I'm not surprised though, considering that I spend a significant portion of each day feeding the little man. All that feeding is paying off! He's just shy of 10 lbs now and 22 3/4" long. Wow! He was 8 lbs 1 oz at birth and was 20.5" long.

Whoa - I'm growing fast!!

His big sister is in love with the little guy. She's really good with him, although we constantly need to remind her what being gentle really is! She's always asking to kiss him and hold him.

Big sister holding her little brother

I haven't done much of anything today (housework wise). I cleaned the oven (gotta love self-cleaning ovens) and took the kids to the health center, washed the van since I could hardly see out the windows, and had some lunch. Then I put my feet up and read a book while feeding/pacifying Ethan! :) Not the most productive day, but what the heck...I'm giving myself a few hours off from feeling guilty. LOL! Now Ethan is swinging away in his swing while I finally download the last half year's worth of pictures off of my camera. About time! I want to do some scrapping now that my craft area is set up.

Hope you have a great day!
Penny

My littlest Valentine

Thought I'd post a pic of my newest little love. He's going to be one month old in two days...wow! Since I'm up with the fussy little guy tonight, I decided to surf the net and post a quick blog update. Hope you all had a wonderful valentines day with loved ones! I had a nice evening...hubby brought me home some lovely lilies. Ok, i'm going to see if I can get this little man to sleep so that I can too!

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Love...it's everywhere!

Well, Valentine's day is tomorrow...love is on the air (at least that's what the stores are saying)! You may recall that last year on valentines I took Scott out for a special date. We went to the shooting range and went for lunch and did some shopping. This year it's going to be a much tamer, toned down celebration since we have a newborn in the house! Today we did some crafting and annika made daddy a vday card (I'll make him one later if time allows)! I think we'll just enjoy a meal at home...I'm thinking french onion soup, shrimp scampi, and brownie parfaits to finish it off on a sweet note. What do you think? That'll be it for us probably. Maybe a movie night, if time allows. What are you all doing for Valentines?

Oh, and i've been doing not too shabby with meal planning and prep...i'm happy about that! Just need to figure out when I can do a big grocery trip for the next couple weeks!
I hope you all have a great week!
Penny

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Crafty!

Well, here's a picture of my new craft space! I'm still organizing, unpacking, and rearranging, but it's coming along! I'm so excited!!

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Tradeoffs

I'm a nursing mama. Although I'm happy to do it, and I enjoy spending time with my babe, there are some (very minor) drawbacks to having an exclusively breastfed baby. The biggest is that nobody else can feed him. I can't pass him off to his daddy for a feeding (unless I get the pumping down-pat and we are able to do the bottle thing). I'm thinking about trying to pump as much as I can in the next week or so and hopefully we'll be able to break out the bottles at some point and maybe mama can have a night off! :) Then maybe I can actually get some serious cleaning done. These past few days Ethan has been a hungry little fella - he's attached to me frequently having a meal. But it's a good thing because he gained 6 ozs in 4 days! Wow!! My little guy is growing fast! He's 8lbs 5ozs now, so that's encouraging. I took him to his dr appt yesterday and he's been pronounced a very healthly little babe, which makes me happy. 


Ethan is having an afternoon nap in his swing right now (I hear him stirring, so this post will be over right away) but his nap gave me time to whip together a supper for tonight...shepherd's pie it is. Yay! I emptied and reloaded the dishwasher and started gathering the garbage/recycling - pick up is tomorrow.


Ok...he's up!! I'll leave you with this quote I like:


The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow,
But children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.
(A verse from the poem Baby's don't keep by Ruth Hulbert Hamilton)


Penny