Time to Stop the Upwards Creep

I've discussed this before. I could search for the post (or two) and link to them, but I'm pretty sure that would be a depressing exercise emphasizing how long I've been postponing this particular battle so I'm going to skip that part.

I've been gaining weight. Steadily. I put on weight with the back-to-back pregnancies. That's fairly typical. Ever since I stopped breastfeeding though, I've been trending upwards rather than back down. The craziness that was life with an infant and toddler, and then two toddlers, and then a preschooler and toddler (etc.) prevented me from focusing on it overly much. Once or twice I'd try to start a regular exercising habit only to abandon it a week or so later.

It's time though. The children are older. In about a month they'll both be in preschool five mornings a week. My husband and I have been working on a new plan of attack for about a month now and so far it is working. I'm down about 6 1/2 pounds. I have many more to go, but that's a pretty decent start.

We had to get geeky about it though. We're using a calorie tracking app called Lose It on our iPhones. It is a free app. You can simply scan bar codes in and then choose your portion size. It also has a pretty decent database if you don't have a bar code handy. It's amazing how warped my sense of portion size had gotten. Logging food intake is really powerful.

We're combining that with a device called a Fitbit. It's like a fancy pedometer that talks to your computer and you can link the Fitbit data to Lose It. It'll track steps, stairs climbed, and even your sleeping patterns. It'll tell you how active (or sedentary) your lifestyle is and then estimate the number of calories you burn in your average day. As it turns out, I'm pretty darned sedentary. I spend a lot of time at a computer. I needed to adjust my dieting calorie goal down about 250 calories beyond the target Lose It gave me in order to lose a pound a week.

I'm pretty sure the Fitbit was my missing link. I had tried calorie tracking before, but always abandoned it when it didn't seem to be working. I needed to know the piece about my habitual activity level so that I could start in the right place.

At the same time, wearing the Fitbit is encouraging me to be more active. I climb up and down the stairs a few extra times so I can get a badge for doing so 10 times in the day. (I have yet to get the badge for doing 25 flights in a day. I need to try that one day next week.) I take a walk with the kids so I can get 1000 more steps in.

The Lose It / Fitbit combo and regular weigh-ins showing it is all working is pretty motivating. Pounds are dropping off. I have more energy. I am having far fewer blood sugar "crashes" and random cravings. It's all pretty nice actually.

More importantly, this is sustainable. When I reach my target weight, the Lose It / Fitbit combo will give me an accurate idea of what I can eat to maintain that new weight, but not start gaining again.

Lose It is free. If you have a smartphone, you can use the app. If not, you can use it on your computer. I highly recommend it. If you have some extra cash to commit to the project, check out the Fitbit on Amazon too. It's been a big part of the weight loss puzzle for us.

Swimming Update

Two swimming lessons and two trips to a Six Flags water park later and Ava is... improving. Given the proper circumstances, Michael could be a fish. Proper circumstances would be regular opportunities to play in water deeper than his bathtub or the kiddie pool on the deck. He loves it. He loves dunking his head under the water and trying to swim. At the moment his "swimming" mostly involves sinking to the bottom and being pulled back up by an adult. He surfaces sputtering, blowing water out of his nose, and deliriously happy. But he would get better with practice.

Ava is more cautious. What she hates most is being dunked against her will and she protests every activity that involves the involuntary dipping of her head into the water. But... and it's a big but, she's more angry than terrified about it at this point. She cries, but not for long. In the activities where the children are encouraged to put their mouths, ears, or even entire faces in under their own control she's beginning to voluntarily participate. Then she'll look back over her shoulder to make sure I'm paying appropriate attention to her bravery and competence.

Gosh how I love them both. I'm so enjoying them learn to love the water. I always did as a child. I wish I had more opportunity as an adult.

So, decent progress on the swimming lesson front. Now did I ever tell you guys about the gymnastics session where Michael fell off the beam, cut his lip with his teeth, and I had to call the pediatrician to ask if he needed stitches? Fun times.

The Weekly Review: Week 69

SLP Idea of the Week

I saw this fine motor activity post and thought it would make a fun reinforcer during articulation therapy for preschoolers. Gather a piece of styrofoam (or a large lump of playdough), several golf tees, several marbles, and your articulation stimuli. First let the child hammer the golf tees into the styrofoam (or playdough). Then have them balance the marbles on top of the golf tees. You get to work on articulation and improve fine motor skills at the same time all while keeping a young child completely engaged.

Ava this Week

Ava gave me one of those heart-stopping moments of terror this week. Here's what happened.

Ava has discovered clothes. I am not a clothes person. I have two pairs of jeans and 6-7 t-shirts and I simply rotate between what's clean. I am perfectly happy that way. Ava has this gorgeous chest-of-drawers full of little girl clothes because I have a good friend with a little girl two years older than Ava and we get her hand-me-downs.

Ava loves digging through her chest of drawers and pulling out something new to put on. She needs a stool to get into the top drawer and even then, she has to be on tippy toes to see into that drawer. One night I was getting her ready for bed and told her to go pick out a shirt to sleep in. I watched her drag her stool over and pull open the top drawer hanging onto its edge to try to peer inside. And then it happened.

The entire dresser began to tip. I watched it pull away from the wall and time slowed down. I said something, but I truly don't remember what. The dresser is heavy. It's a really massive piece of furniture. It was going to crush her. I wasn't going to get to it in time. I was sitting in a chair completely across the room. Just at that moment she lost her balance. I don't know if it was my panicked voice that startled her, or just coincidence. It was a wonderful happenstance though because when she lost her balance she also lost her grip on the drawer and the dresser thumped back against the wall. Another half an inch and it would have fallen the other way. Onto her.

Just thinking about it makes me sick. I have forbidden her to go into her drawers until we get one of those straps to childproof the thing and attach it to the wall. Perhaps in about seven or eight spots just to make me feel better.

Weekly Michael

Once a week my parents come over and we have a three-generation family dinner. It is a ton of fun and we all look forward to it. My dad has a joke he tells the kids regularly that they always laugh (and groan) at. He'll ask them, "What's worse than finding a bug in your piece of bread?" They'll respond, "What?" After a slight pause he delivers the punchline "Finding half a bug in your bread." At that point they giggle, groan, laugh, and complain, "Eww Grandpa!"

This week Grandpa told his joke again getting the usual laughs from the children. Several minutes later during a pause in the conversation Michael asked, "What's worse than finding half a bug in your piece of bread?" He had instantly captured the complete attention of all the adults at the table. We were wondering where exactly he was going with this. We dutifully asked, "What?" He delivered his punchline "Finding a quarter of a bug in your bread!" It doesn't sound funny typing it all out. Perhaps you had to be there. We all busted out laughing. It was hilarious. Michael's first joke and it was a punchline based on math.

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I have another Michael story this week. We were trying (I think ultimately, unsuccessfully) to make homemade rock candy. The activity gave us the opportunity to discuss concepts like dissolving, solutions, boiling, and super saturated solutions. I, however, forgot to refresh my memory on exactly what those concepts mean in detail and of course Michael called me on it. "How does the sugar dissolve into the water? Why does more dissolve when the water is hot? Why does even more dissolve when the water is boiling? What happens when the solution cools back down?" Darn it. I couldn't answer those questions. Perhaps it will be a good thing, a week from now, when the experiment fails and we have to try again. I'll study up on the answers to those questions before our redo.