Welcome to my Life!

Again, I have let a month go by without posting. I really can't say much as an excuse, except that I have gotten back into the habit of walking, which takes up much of my afternoon. So, my day goes something like this:

5:30 I rise and shine and hop into the shower.

6:00 Baby M usually wakes up on her own, but sometimes my husband or I have to wake her. She takes a bottle while I pick out something to wear and blow dry my hair. Then, she gets her breakfast, which usually consists of fruit and oatmeal. She's not eating it on her own, yet, so that involves my husband or me.

6:45 If my husband takes Baby M to the sitter, he leaves at 6:45, and I leave for work at 7:00, which means I have a 15 minute window to clean house a bit, or make bottles. If I take Baby M to the sitter, I leave at 6:45 for the sitter's house.

7:30 I arrive at work to face my other 80 children, my fifth graders.

3:00 I leave work and head out for my favorite part of the day. This is when I get to pick Baby M up from the sitter's. That is absolutely the best feeling, when I walk in the door and she sees me. We make eye contact, and she gets this beautiful grin on her face. It's magical. There are no words to describe how much I love that moment.

4:30 We get home from the sitter's house, and usually Baby M needs an afternoon snack, so again, she has a bottle, while I clean out her diaper bag and wash bottles.

5:00 We usually lay down for a snuggle time and her mini nap on the couch. Usually, when she nods off, I get up and get changed into my walking gear.

6:00 We meet "Nina", as Baby M will call my mom, and go walking.

7:45 We return home from our walk, and Baby M eats and takes a bath. My husband and I eat shortly after, and bedtime comes quickly.

There just doesn't seem to be any time in there for posting on the blog. School lets out in the beginning of June, so hopefully, blogging will become more frequent.

Meat Only

A few years ago, I did a 3 day meat only period. It was fairly easy to do, but took will power and planning. Now, with Baby M being (the best) part of our lives, both planning and will power have taken a back burner. All planning is now in regards to her. That's not a cop out, though, because it always bothered me to hear people say that once they had kids, they had not choice but to "let themselves go." Instead, I am simply explaining why I didn't choose to do this at the beginning of induction this time around. I am wondering, however, if I had done this, would I have seen better results? Something to think about after Easter when I have consumed a little too much chocolate...

That's Life

Here's a quick update of my life right now, so you will understand why I have not been keeping up with this blog very well.

After the chaos that was last week, I thought this week would be a great week for getting back on track. I could not have been more wrong...

Sunday, I decided to go to a festival that was 2 hours away. We were out all day long, but I thought it would be fine, because Baby M and I could rest on Monday, since I had the day off of work. I also thought this would be a pretty monotonous week, so it wouldn't be a huge deal if I was exhausted all week.

However, on Monday, Baby M was in the process of cutting her first tooth, so there was no rest in our house. She also had a pretty raspy cough that had gotten worse, so I made her an appointment for Tuesday at 11:15. So, Monday afternoon, my husband was at the doctor to find out if he had a kidney stone. He was told he did not, and instead, he needed to have a test run that would cost almost $500. This was quite a shock and also quite painful. Then, at 2:00 Tuesday morning, I had to rush him to the ER for side pain that was excruciating. Three hours of waiting with Baby M, who was such a little trooper, and we find out... he has a kidney stone. (which basically renders the $500 test pointless) We then went home to repack the diaper bag and rest for a bit, and had to turn around to go to Baby M's appointment. The rest of the day was sort of a blur, and yesterday I stayed home to nurse both of my babies to health.

That being said, I will be weighing in tomorrow, and will be super excited to just maintain the past weight loss. Stress eating is generally not healthy. Just a little update, and I am praying for next week to be much better!

Weight Loss Kit

I received my weight loss kit from Atkins on Tuesday. It contained various tools to aid me in my weight loss journey. The most interesting to me is this pocket carb count guide. It has the carb counts of various foods, including specific brands. I was impressed with it, and being now that my purse is huge because it contains new items, such as diapers and socks, I will be carrying it in my purse. It also had a quick start food guide. This is great for those who are new to the low-carb lifestyle. It helps you to better understand how to begin the low-carb journey. It's basically a mini-book on Atkins. It also included a nice recipe book full of chef recipes that can are for the various phases of the Atkins plan. I have looked through it, and there are some wonderful recipes for some great sounding meals in it. Finally, along with a coupon and rebate for the new book, there were three different Atkins bars. I am going to try each of them and see how I feel about them. I am a bit apprehensive to add them into my meal plan because the lowest carb count of the three is 16 carbs. However, in net carbs, the highest carb count is 3 net carbs. I know that they are pretty expensive, also. It can't hurt to try them, though, and maybe keep them at the house for when I just need some chocolate. After receiving the kit, though, I would highly recommend everyone go sign up for it. After all, it's free, and includes some great resources!

Where Have I Been?

It's been 2 years and 18 days since my last post, and you may be wondering where I have been. Well, a lot has happened in my life since then. Let me bring you up to date with some information.

We'll start in August of 2007. I know, it was a long time ago, but it's really where this story begins. In August of 2007, my husband and I decided that it was time to expand our family. Being a normal American woman who has watched friend after friend get pregnant the month that she stopped birth control (and some others accidently while they were still on birth control), I assumed we would conceive with no trouble at all. Wrong-O! By October, I was distraught. I couldn't believe we weren't expecting, yet. That was when I learned to search the internet day and night to figure out what was wrong with me, or my husband, as the case may be. Every month, I would find "the problem" and do whatever the online posters said you needed to do to fix "the problem." I needed to take Dimatapp for a few months. That didn't work. I needed to just relax, and let it happen. That didn't work. There were many other things that I needed to do that didn't work that are too explicit to talk about on a blog. Suffice it to say that if you google "trying to conceive" or TTC, as I learned to refer to it in online communities, you'll come across many random things that I did to try to get pregnant. After about a year of trying to get pregnant, I started to question an OBGYN. He told me it didn't seem like anything was out of the ordinary, but ordered an HSG test, and also tests for my husband. I won't go into detail about the HSG test, but let's just say it was unpleasant, to say the least. The HSG test, as well as my husband's test, came back normal, and it was time for me to start Clomid, which is the first fertility drug that doctors try. Three months, fifteen or twenty nervous breakdowns (including me on the kitchen floor, crying hysterically for no reason at all), and about 20 pounds later, I decided that Clomid wasn't for me, especially since it didn't seem to do any good. We looked into our options, and decided that we would try an IUI, being that it was fairly reasonable in price, but that would be all we did. IVF and other procedures aren't really covered under Florida insurance, and cost a small fortune. Since there was really no indication of what was causing us not to be able to conceive, it was kind of hard to get any kind of statistics as to the success rate for us doing IVF anyway. We had an IUI once in August of 2009. I just knew it worked. When the next month came, and it hadn't worked, I lost it. It was such a low point for me. So, that month, I gained another 10 pounds. My husband and I decided that for my mental health's sake, it would be best if we put TTC on hold, and looked into adoption.

If we were going to get serious about our adoption, though, we had a lot of work ahead of us. We had fingerprints to get done, DCF clearances to pass, home visits to schedule, and lots of money to come up with. We worked to gather all necessary documents, including physicians statements about whether or not we were healthy enough to raise a child, birth certificates, reference letters, and so on. After a few months, we were given the okay, and our home study was complete. We then signed with 3 different agencies, and got put on the WAITING LIST. That is the most excruciating time, ever. You just wait for a call that someone wants you to raise their child. As long as that period seemed, it did come to an end when we were chosen to parent a baby girl that was due in August. After many ups and downs, and a fall through, we finally brought our baby girl home at the end of August in 2010. Although I would love to show pictures, my husband is very uncomfortable with her pictures or name being used on the internet, which I can't blame him for. I will now refer to my precious little angel as Baby M.

Since her arrival, I have gone into mommy-mode. I have become a full-time mom (without 9 months to plan) and am still a full-time teacher. I have spent lots of time and effort taking care of this precious little girl, while slowly gaining another 10 pounds. All in all, I am beginning my quest to drop 75 pounds. Yesterday, I joined the Atkins community and signed up to receive a free weight loss kit, and 3 free Atkins bars. This isn't anything new to me, since I have lived low-carb before. I know I feel better this way, and am actually excited to get back some energy that an extra 75 pounds takes away. I weighed myself this morning, and have started crunching numbers. I will be updating every Friday with the amount of weight that I have lost over the week. I am being realistic about this, since I will be losing weight strictly from diet and exercise. I will not be taking any medication to aid my weight loss. I will be watching my carb intake, and walking a few times a week with Baby M. Yesterday was day 1 of the two week induction period. Because I have lived low-carb in the past, I am not expecting outrageous weight loss in the first two weeks, as can happen the first time you cut carbs from your diet. Nonetheless, though, I am excited about my journey.

This blog will continue to be information about a low-carb lifestyle. It's not going to be a daily journal entry of my quest to lose the 75 pounds. I will only mention my journey on Friday, when I am updating my weight loss statistics. If you have been to this blog in the past, nothing about it will change, except I will be posting more often (pending Baby M allows me to), and I will be updating my own weight loss on Fridays. If you have just stumbled upon this blog, welcome, and I hope you enjoy what you find here. I post any information about living low-carb that I come across, as well as tips that I find helpful, and recipes I enjoy. Please visit often and learn to enjoy living and loving the low-carb lifestyle with me!