so, we have some exciting news… :)

 

it's says "positive"!

 

we’re having another baby!  woohoo!

pray for us all, if you think of it!  this is a big blessing, but we have a lot of work to do before new baby gets here.

peace to you all!

using up leftover greens

about three weeks ago, darin and i were in harris teeter to buy some salad greens and saw 16 oz boxes of organic spring mix on sale for a really fabulous price.  we had a dinner with a friend that night that we were hosting and we’d been eating a salad every other night at dinner, so we felt certain we could eat the whole box before it went bad.  needless to say, we bought one.

and we ate and ate from that box and three days later we’d only barely made a dent.

even though i took measures to fluff the leaves every day, by the fourth day, the greens at the bottom of the box were browning and leaking ooky stuff (i know now that adding a paper towel to the bottom of the box would have been helpful in keeping moisture down, but hey, i’ve only been eating salads for a month.  i have a lot left to learn!).

so in an executive kitchen decision that fourth day, i decided to get creative.

learning to love the nanny elixir

so, after reading nina planck’s Real Food, i learned a lot.  a whole lot.  and now we’re taking it step by step to incorporate proper and real foods into our daily diets.

it occurred to me as i was reading those enlightening pages that the bulk of my health problems are likely a direct result of my really unhealthy childhood.  to fill you in if you haven’t ever heard, i didn’t really eat food until i was 18.  i pretty much ate nothing but french fries, hot dogs and breakfast pig meats, cheerios, junk food, candy, and packet rices from lipton (now knorr).  i didn’t eat pizza until i was in eighth grade (though i’d been eating cooked pepperonis for ages, i wouldn’t touch the total pizza package).  i didn’t touch beef or turkey or other poultry until i was a senior in high school.  i didn’t even eat bread, as in loaf bread–i ate biscuits like they were going out of style–, until the same time as i learned to eat turkey (at least i skipped white bread altogether).  i refused to eat spaghetti (unless it came from a can stamped with a make-believe chef’s face and name) until i went to college and didn’t have a lot of other choices available to me.  my first taste of mashed potatoes was two years ago at a thanksgiving dinner my friend’s grandmother invited me to.  i still can’t eat yogurt unless it’s frozen or ice cream unless you have to chip at it with a fork, nor did i touch a salad until about three weeks ago.

needless to say, i was very picky.  and increasingly unhealthy.  and fat.  and often sick.

now, at the ripe old age of 24, i have had a retinal detachment, a number of major dental surgeries resulting in zero wisdom teeth and a tooth implant that failed at first and had to be redone, and i have a serious medical condition, part of which leaves me incapable of producing enough breastmilk to support a baby’s life.

random smattering of things…

where to begin…?  whole lot of random things happening here in the damme life.  guess i’ll just get typing and see where it goes.

x. ransom is 19 pounds 11 ounces and 26 inches long.  he makes for a very big boy.  he’s wearing 12 month clothes at 7 months.  i’m not ready for my little to be so big… : (  but at least he’s really cute.  see:

 

weekly weigh-in

not a whole lot of excitement this week.  in fact, there’s been none at all.  i kind of had a rough emotional week for a number of reasons and so i didn’t really do much of anything at all, in general.  i hate weeks like that.  i attribute it to the weather.  it was dreary all week.  put me in a bad mood.  yuck.

so stats:

Weight: 194 lbs.
Waist: 33″
Hips: 44″
Progress: none this week, but 50 lbs. gone since Ran was born!
Pounds to Ideal Weight: 38 to go!

i cheered myself up mid-week after my breakdown by remembering that little fact posted in the “Progress” line–50 lbs since Ran was born–that’s a lot of weight gone.  granted 10-15 of that was the baby and the goop he swam in for months, but still.  it’s gone.  it’s a pleasant remembrance.

well, that’s all for now.  i’ve got stuff to do around this house.  later, taters.

just like his daddy…

sneaky little young’un…  i found him like this after leaving the room for just a moment.

maybe he’ll give that 114 second solving asian kid a run for her money someday. : )

weekly weigh-in #whateveritis

yayay!  i’m a day late, but i still remembered!

anyhoo, so, not a lot to tell.  i learned to eat salad this past week: a big accomplishment for me in my life.  i’ve never eaten salad before.  it’s not so bad this time.  i made my own salad dressing, which was tastier the second time around (yay for crushed red pepper adding zest!), and then discovered that i can only eat a little of it before i get heartburn, so next week i intend to find a different something to make.  it’s a shame that apple cider vinegar makes my stomach too acidy; it tastes really good.

i also started adding push-ups and crunches to my regimen, at least 3 times a week.  it’s not much, but i’m finding that ransom naps much less these days and so my cardio/toning workouts are getting somewhat shorter (basically becoming whatever-i-can-do-between-feeding-entertaining-and-changing workouts, generally 2-3 miles with intervals).  when ran is in a good mood and enjoying playing on his mat with his toys, i can sometimes squeeze in an extra mile or set of crunches, and look forward to those times because i honestly feel better when i’m active and so should be as active as i can.  yes. 

you might be a rabbit if…

so, somehow miraculously i made it 24 and a third years without ever eating more than one single leaf of lettuce in regards to salad.  two of those years were even spent as a vegetarian, and i never ate a salad.  not even one.

how did i do it?  i have no clue.  but i did.

and then…

last night i ate a salad.

and it was delicious.

i just wanted everyone to know.

thank you.

still here, just busy!

hey friends!  i haven’t posted in a couple weeks for various reasons (most of which you’ll see here later in the post), but i’m here now and ready to write!

so on to updating:

x. stinker alert!  pictures of ransom coming up!  just look at that stinker:

x. we went to durham last weekend for the onething regional at kings park international church (which is a way cool church, for what it’s worth) and got to see some old friends (and make some new ones!) from KC.  it was a fun and spiritually refreshing time for us, though we didn’t get to make vacation of the trip as much as we wanted to because darin wound up volunteering for the on-site bookstore and that meant i had full-time baby care on my hands.  i tried to help out with the conference at first in a number of ways, but ransom decided he didn’t much care for mom doing anything but dealing with his growth-spurty-whining self (growth spurts are the worst…).  but we still had a blast.

x. we did, however, manage to visit the famous barbecue restaurant The Pit in raleigh and it was everything it was supposed to be–delicious pit barbecue with savory sauces and old-fashioned sides.  darin got pulled pork and brisket with sweet potato fries and i got barbecue tofu and veggies (because we ate so poorly the whole trip so far and my body wa screaming “give me something good to eat!”) and everything was so flipping tasty!  we also got a scoop of homemade cinnamon ice cream with a maple-bacon gingersnap cookie for dessert; i tell you, i never thought bacon would be good in a cookie, but this one sure was tops! we definitely recommend!

weekly weigh-in #5

i’m one month into this thing and so glad i did it…

it’s honestly been the most challenging to not go nuts with this.  we watch the biggest loser every week and i see folks on there losing 5-15 lbs a week (which isn’t really safe, and certainly not safe for a nursing-possibly-baby-making mom), and i use the show for motivation to keep at my regimen, but for me in my position, i am supposed to be losing an average of 1-2 lbs per week.  sometimes i pull 3, but that’s why 1-2 is an average, and usually i’ll lose nothing the week following (however unintentional) when that happens.  much more weight loss than the recommended level sends too many toxins into the breastmilk (because as fat cells are burned, they let go of everything they’d been holding on to, and fat cells are notorious for hanging onto toxins), which goes straight into baby.  no bueno.

and as far as calorie cutting/counting goes, i can only do so much.  i’ve got a baby to deal with every day, and i live in the reality that God is in control of my womb, so if he sees fit to bless us with another child and i’m not eating a decent amount of food to support its life, i’m going to wind up doing harm.

in any event, i’m doing this wisely as i can.  i have support and encouragement from family and friends.  i am getting healthier no matter what pounds and inches i have to show for it.  and i feel so much better.  it’s a great exchange.