One Year And Three Days Ago

One year and three days ago I signed up for a membership at my local rec centre. December 27. And one year and 12 days ago I joined Weight Watchers. A lot has happened in the last year and twelve days.

I knew when I joined Weight Watchers I would have to commit to making a lifestyle change, a comprehensive transformation of mind and body. I didn't fully know what that would look like, but it was an innate understanding that would make this time around different.

And different it was. One year and twelve days later I am a very different person.

• I don't think twice about choosing active activities with my family. (We're going snowshoeing tomorrow!)I take the stairs whenever I can.
• I don't worry about parking close to the mall, store, etc.
• I can play and rough house with my kids anytime and for as long as they want.
  
• I LIKE going to the gym and I miss it when it's been a few days.
• I have a very real awareness of my own body. I can predict down to the half pound what my weight is on any given day, good or bad.
• I eat mindfully, even if I'm "mindful" of that fact that I had three treats in one day.
• I can now cook more than just pasta and sauce.
• I no longer feel like a hypocrite at my job when messaging to women about healthy living and maintaining a healthy body weight.
• I like myself more than I ever did before.
• I am happier.
  

And that's just the stuff I can list right now. There are small, indescribable changes that I realize every day. I now recognize choices I would have made before, and how those choices ultimately contributed to me reaching 230lbs. Little things like helping myself to a free sandwich in the office kitchen even though I'd already eaten lunch. I wouldn't have thought twice about that just over a year ago.

2010 has been an absolutely amazing year for me and for our family. I had a good portion of the year off to spend with them and although the little man is STILL not fully potty trained and may not be before his seventeenth birthday, there were other significant milestones achieved by us all. Not to mention I began blogging!

As this year draws to a close tomorrow and another one begins, I wish you the very best for the year to come. Thank you for reading, thank you for your comments, and I'll see you in 2011!

They're Just Waiting For You To Relax

The human body is a truly remarkable machine. The very process of procreating and childbirth is enough to boggle the mind, but what really amazes me is its ability to go on in the face of stress and adversity.

You could be going through the most stressful season at work, dealing with a serious illness or death in the family, or some other incredibly trying experience, and your body will keep plugging away to get you through it, fighting off the bugs and viruses attempting to attack you at every turn.

It's when you take a moment to reflect or relax that those insidious little germs will get you. You rest just for a minute and WHAM! you've been struck down with the worst cold/flu/bronchitis/gout/plague/etc ever.

My father in law (Opa Awesome) has worked in the music industry for 30+ years. Christmas is his busiest time of the year and every single year for the past 30 years he's come down with a cold immediately after the last shipment has left the warehouse, right in time for Christmas vacation. He's retiring this year and Oma Awesome recently exclaimed "No more Christmas colds!" She can already envision November 2011, completely devoid of stress and the first December in years completely free from colds. (We'd better make sure not to send our preschool petri dish kids for a visit or the stress and sickness might return.)

What is it that keeps us going through the stressful times? Sheer adrenaline? Something else? Can't they bottle it and create a cure-all for whatever ails us?

Dear scientists: For the thousands of you that make my blog part of your regular reading routine, please take this suggestion under serious advisement.

There. That should do it. Stay tuned for a groundbreaking announcement from the world of science.

Bad Mommy Moment

I think I may have scarred my son for life. I MAY have inadvertently given him a crippling fear of birds.

We set up our Christmas tree last week and on it I placed an ornament that has been on our family tree since I was about six years old. It's a silver ball with a switch on it, that when switched on makes an extremely repetitive bird chirping noise. It just chirps the same note forever or until switched off again. What ornament designer thought this was a good idea I will never know, and it's pure nostalgia that makes me drag it out and hang it up year after year. The fact that it has the SAME batteries it's had since it arrived in our home should explain just how little we actually turn the thing on.

So, like every year before, I hung up this ball and flicked the switch to hear the old annoying familiar song. The little man's face went deathly pale until I explained that it wasn't in fact a real bird, but an ornament that made a bird noise. It took a few minutes, but he eventually calmed down and accepted that there wasn't a real bird living in the tree.

This could have been the end of the story. He could have gone on to live his life quite normally, until we scarred him in some other, currently unforeseeable, way. But then he started whining.
And whining. And not listening. And I had a moment of mommy weakness.

I said "If you don't stop whining, I'm going to have to open that door and let a real bird fly in to live in this tree."

Okay, I admit, it was not my most shining moment in mommyhood. His eyes went as wide as saucers. And he stopped whining. And for two days any time he started to whine, all I had to do was look at him sideways and he would say "Mummy, no bird comes to live in our tree."

I didn't mention the bird again and it seems as if he's forgotten, so we may have averted the potential bird phobia and thousands of dollars in psychiatrist bills for the future.

Although it HAS been suggested that I might want to resurrect the bird threat to try and make some progress in the poop department...

The People Have Spoken

Okay, not so much people as person. Kristy at Pampers and Pinot basically told me to get off my butt and blog again. She's right. I miss writing terribly, but life has kind of run away from me since I returned to work.

So, this will be a brief catch up and then I'm going to get to work on the posts that have been brewing in my brain over the last few weeks. I think Mr. Awesome will be much happier when I'm regularly blogging again, as I won't be bending his ear with my rants and rambles otherwise saved for my readers...lucky you.

I went back to work on October 18. I work at 7:30am, and due to my need to move fairly slowly in the morning and the fact that the little man is usually bright eyed and bushy tailed (read: whining and demanding a movie and Cheerios) by 6am, I actually have to get up at 5:30am to get everything done.

I usually get home by 5:15-ish, we get dinner ready, eat, then Mr. Awesome takes the little man and I take the little miss and we get them ready for bed. By the time they're both tucked in and finally quiet, Mr. Awesome slinks off to his office while I settle in to try and catch up on some of my recorded shows. This is typically around 8:15pm and by 8:30pm I'm out cold on the sofa. Sometimes I don't even make it that long, and start falling asleep while giving the little miss her pre-bed bottle of milk.

This has pretty much been my reality for the last eight weeks. Work is great and the kids are handling me being away pretty well, with the occasional "Mummy, you don't have to go work today" from my little mama's boy. I'm keeping on track with my eating and working out. The only thing really missing has been the blogging and I really DO miss it.

So. Here goes. I am going to try and blog once a week. I have to remind myself they don't all have to be brilliant. They don't have to meet some standard length. I feel better when I write, so as long as I write something that resonates for someone, I'm good. Even if that someone is just me.

I'm baaaaaaack.....