New Year, New Resolutions

I'm joining the millions in making New Year's resolutions.  But unlike the majority of the millions, I hope to make my resolutions part of my daily life and have outlined a few baby steps to help.  Drum roll, please!

1. Eat healthier.
• 1 fruit and 1 vegetable with lunch and supper.
• Eat at the dining room table.
2. Plan weekly menus.
• Assign days of the weeks a category (crock pot, soup, sandwiches, left-overs, etc)
• Pre-make dishes on Sundays.
• Thaw necessary meats.
3. Get in shape.
• 10 minute yoga DVD 4 nights each week.
• Family walks when the weather is nice.

      4.  Drink 6 glasses of water each day.

      5. Cut expenses and funnel money to pay off student loan debt.

• Cancel cable.
• Shop at Save-A-Lot and Fareway sales
• Plan menus based on sale items.

        6.   Be a more pleasant and positive person.

A lot of these resolutions are aimed at making me a healthier person.  This was no accident.  I want to be healthier and stronger.  Lately we've fallen into the lazy trap while making supper.  We would make a menu but fail to thaw the meat for the majority of our meals.  This caused us to fall back on eating mac and cheese and pizza way more than I care to.  The reality is I don't have the necessary energy for my life when I'm eating something with no nutritional value.  I also want to feed Katherine more nutritious meals with a variety of foods.  I don't want her to constantly be eating the same bland nutrition-less foods.  I plan to accomplish this by having one fruit and one vegetable with lunch and dinner.  Hopefully we can get some variety in those so we're not eating the same thing constantly.  I also want us to stop eating in front of the TV.  We have a beautiful dining room table.  It serves as a landing area for all sorts of things.  No more.  We need to sit at the table, pray before our meals and actually talk about our day instead of zoning out in front of the TV.

I also want to get better about planning and implementing our weekly menus.  I've put a lot of thought into what hasn't worked for us with our menus and what will work.  Each day is being assigned a category and we'll pick meals that fit that category.  This should make it easier to plan our meals.  I also want to do any prep work for our meals on Sunday.  I want to be able to come home and make supper quickly.  Sunday will be spent cooking chicken, browning ground beef, chopping veggies and putting together the crock pot meals.  And lastly, we need to remember to thaw out the meat needed for our meals!

This year I really want to get in shape.  I don't want to talk about getting in shape anymore.  I actually want to do it.  I'm not a huge fan of going to the gym and going to a gym would be hard to fit into my schedule.  Instead I plan to exercise 4 nights each week.  I have a yoga DVD with 10 minute work-out each focusing on a different section of the body and another fitness DVD with 10 minute work-outs.  This should fit perfectly into my evening.  Ten minutes is very doable.  There is no excuse to not do 10 minutes of exercise 4 days a week.  I also want to ask my faithful readers to give me some gentle encouragement on this.  But please don't nag me.  When the weather is nice again, Steve and I plan to start going for our family walks again.

I was really good about drinking water when I was pregnant with Katherine.  (Partly because it reduced some of the swelling from my preeclampsia.)  But within the past 16 months after she was born, I've gotten really bad at it.  There are some days I only drink a glass or 2.  There is no way this keeps my energy level up.  I want to drink 6 glasses of water everyday.  This shouldn't be hard considering the water bottle at my desk holds 24 ounces of water.  If I drink 2 of those at work, I've already met my goal.  Eventually I would like to drink 8 glasses each day but I want to set goals I can reach and then adjust them as needed.  Another bonus of increasing my water: the more water I drink, the less pop I drink and that can only be a good thing.

Steve and I want to get serious about paying off my student loan debt.  We have made such progress and I'm so proud of us.  We still have a little bit more to pay off and I really want to be done with student loans!  After my loans are paid off, we can funnel the money into more important things like repairs around the house, saving for retirement, saving for Katherine's Catholic school education and maybe vacations.  To be able to funnel money to the student loan debt, we plan to do a few things differently.  First we're going to cancel cable.  We watch too much TV as it is and most of our shows can be watched online the next day.  We plan to funnel the savings from not having cable into my student loans.  (I'm also hoping we'll get more done around the house without the distraction of TV.)  We're also going to plan our meals around the sales at Fareway and also shop at Save-A-Lot.  Hopefully this will free up more money in our budget to throw at student loans.

And lastly I want to be a more pleasant and positive person in 2014.  I've become a bit of a brat in 2013.  I really don't want to be known as a brat so I'm choosing to bite my tongue, remind myself to think positive thoughts and try to go with the flow.

Those are my resolutions.  Hopefully I've set myself up for success!

The Cat No One Wanted

Meet Leela. The Fuzz was getting lonely while home alone. He would put his paws on the front door as I was locking it as if to say "Don't go!". We decided to get another cat to keep him company.  I had taken a few days off work to have some extra time with Katherine.  Steve and I decided that would be a good time to get our new cat.  The morning of October 10th we went to the Humane Society.  It was really heartbreaking to go in there and see all the kitties in their kennels.  There were adult cats and even little kittens.  It broke my heart to see tiny kitties there.  The Fuzz is two so we wanted someone who would play with him.  We decided a cat age 2 or younger would be a good match. We walked along the kennels and looked at the cats, reading their papers.  We needed a cat who is good with kids.  Leela's kennel was one towards the end.  She looked at me with her head hung slightly as if  to say "You're not going to want me.  Nobody wants me."  The look on her face broke my heart.  The feeling behind the look was one I had experienced many times.  Her paper said her name was Callie, good with kids, litter box trained and liked to play with cat toy balls.  "Can we see this one?" I asked the Humane Society volunteer.  Steve was also looking at another cat named Buzz.  "Can we see Buzz too?" Steve asked.  We saw Leela first in the small room designated for meeting the animals.  The volunteer put her down on the bench and left us with her.  Steve sat down on the bench on her blind side and I sat on the other.  She hoped down and cowered against the other wall.  We picked her up and spent some time with her, holding her near Katherine.  She did pretty well.  After that we met Buzz.  He was extremely affectionate with Katherine and purred the whole time.  "Which one should we choose?" I asked Steve.  "I kinda like Buzz," he said.  And so the decision was made to adopt Buzz.  I almost bawled at the thought of not getting Leela.  The thought of her staying in her kennel feeling so unwanted was too much.  "Do a lot of people look at her?" I asked the volunteer trying to reassure myself that she would be adopted soon.  "Yeah, a lot of people look at her."  Before we filled out the adoption paperwork for Buzz, we mentioned we had another cat.  When the Humane Society manager found out The Fuzz was a male, she cautioned us against adopting Buzz.  Because The Fuzz and Buzz are both males we could potentially have an alpha male problem with both of them trying to assert their dominance.  This problem might never go away.  "Callie seemed nice," I said to Steve.  We decided to take another look at her.  We went back into the cat room and looked at Leela again.  "Let's get her.  We'll take Callie," we told the Humane Society volunteer.  When filling out the paperwork, I asked the volunteer if Leela had been at the Humane Society for awhile.  "Yes, she has."  We filled out the paperwork and paid the adoption fee plus a $10 donation towards Buzz's adoption fee.  (I felt bad leaving him there too but I was certain someone would adopt him.  I checked back a few weeks after adopting Leela.  Buzz was adopted!)  As we drove home with Leela, we talked about names for her.  Her name at the Humane Society had been Callie but that was not up to par with The Fuzz.  I wanted her to have a name that referenced her only having one eye.  Steve suggested Leela like the character from Futurama.  We both liked it and agreed.  It took Leela and The Fuzz a few days to warm up to each other.  By Sunday Leela was running around the house with a plastic cat toy ball in her mouth with her head held high and a sparkle in her eye.  Today she spends her days playing with cat toys, lounging, play fighting with The Fuzz, following me around the house and letting Katherine smack her in excitement.  (We're still teaching Katherine to pet appropriately.  She's getting the hang of it gradually.)  I'll never forget the look on Leela's face that Sunday though.  Someone had finally wanted her.

What a difference a year makes!

Katherine turned 1 year old on September 8th. It's hard to believe it's been over a year since that fateful night Steve rushed me to the ER because I couldn't catch my breath.  Our lives are so different now and I wouldn't have it any other way.  The beginning of our journey as parents was definitely the hardest part.  Katherine stayed in the NICU for 29 days.  I also had to fight a nasty female doctor for the right to continue breastfeeding.  Thankfully our hospital stays are now a distant memory.  Today our little girl is continuing to grow and learn and amazes us every day.  Katherine has amazed her medical team with how quickly she caught up developmentally.  She was discharged from Child Health Specialty Clinics at 11 months.  Katherine was doing so well the nurse practitioner didn't see a reason for her to have any more follow-ups with them.  Most preemies are discharged from CHSC at 18-24 months.  We are so proud of our little NICU baby.

Katherine September 2012

  Motherhood might be the most exhausting thing I've ever done but it is by far the most rewarding.  I love the days she crawls into my lap as we eat our breakfast before she goes to daycare and I go to work.  I also love watching her play with her princess castle and the little people that go with it.  It's been fun to see her grow from banging her toys to very specifically putting her princesses in the castle.  I love that now she cuddles with her blanket or a clean burp cloth to go to sleep.  I love that she's learned how to wave and do high-fives.  I love that her first time saying to bye-bye she said it to Steve as he left for work, The Fuzz and our house when we left for the day.  I love that she's started giving kisses by touching her mouth to our cheeks.  I love that she won't do any of these on command if she doesn't feel like it or if she thinks you already know the answer to the question.  I love that she's such a smiley baby.  I also love her giggle.  I love that she's a daddy's girl.  And to all of the people that say "Just wait until..." with some negative outlook on parenting or who try to warn me about the not fun part of raising children, I want to say "No. I will not wait until xyz because I'm too busy enjoying everything I just listed." I know someday she and I will argue but I'm not thinking about that as I observe all of the above.  I marvel at how the tiny baby in the picture above grew into the little girl in the picture below.

Katherine September 2013

Operation Declutter The Continuing Saga

Operation Declutter is in full swing.  We've begun to go through our house and get rid of items not needed and organize those that are.  I'm pleased with everything we've accomplished so far.

Our cookbook cabinet was a disaster, overflowing with cookbooks and loose recipes torn from magazines and printed off the computer.  I sorted through the cookbooks.  The cookbooks we use frequently stayed in the cupboard.  The cookbooks not used very often found a place on a pantry shelf downstairs.  Steve helped me sort through the paper recipes.  Recipes we aren't going to make ever were thrown in recycling.  Recipes that had potential found a place in my recipe binder.  The cabinet looks so much better and it is so much easier to grab a cookbook.

I loved my Scentsy pot but it was impractical for my house.  I have a fairly large home with open doorways between rooms.  I also don't have an appropriate place to put the Scentsy where Katherine can't get it now that she's mobile.  (Yup, she's crawling!)  My little sister Darcy moved into an apartment in Ames and the previous tenant had pets.  Her apartment has a smell.  (Lucky her, right?)  I boxed up my Scentsy and all of the wax and mailed it to her.  Clutter gone from my house!

Does anyone not have a bathroom closet that overflows with all the necessary and unnecessary items shoved in it?  Ours looked that way.  I wanted to put in small plastic totes to contain the clutter.  Lucky for me it's back to school season so things like small plastic totes are super cheap right now.  I bought four small purple crates for a dollar a piece.  Two of the purple crates now house bandaids and medicines (pain relievers, allergy meds, etc).  I actually over-bought the crates because I have two left. I already had: 

• A small tote for feminine hygiene products simply because I don't like looking at the boxes and the boxes take up so much space for the quantity they hold.  
• A small wicker container for baby travel toiletries.   
• A rectangular cloth storage container from the hospital for my nursing pads.  Again I don't like to see the box.  (This storage container was actually from a formula company.  The lactation consultant gave it to me so I could have the small cooler and ice packs.  I donated the bottles of ready formula to a local pro-life pregnancy resource center.)
• Two pink crates which store baby lotions (we have a lot) and miscellaneous items (travel kleenex and things like that). 

Steve has been extremely helpful with Operation Declutter.  He made shelves for one of our storage rooms in the basement.  They are very simple plywood shelves.  They look nice and will keep our items off the floor.  He's actually made two sets of shelves because we have two storage rooms.  I so appreciate him doing this.  He thought of this project, measured the space and bought the supplies completely on his own.  And I'm so glad because I wouldn't have thought of it.

Steve also tackled a huge project while I was at work and Katherine took a 2-hour nap.  He cleaned and organized our home office.  That room was a beast.  It was our catch-all for everything.  Papers everywhere, random items placed on the table and desks.  Steve cleaned and organized it and hung some artwork on the walls.  His mom had made me a fabric photo board for Christmas a few years back and Steve had a friend make a "Count Your Blessings" wood carving this year.  Both are now on the walls!  It's so nice to sit in a clean office each morning.  This project was especially important because we wanted it clean for Katherine's birthday party.  To get to our main bathroom, people have to walk through the office and we were tired of the mess.

But Operation Declutter is not complete.  We have a few upcoming projects that will make our lives a lot easier.  We have a storage closet upstairs next to our linen closet that we plan to turn into a clothes closet.  Our closets are tiny because our house is really old and our dresser is also small.  This is quite a change from the walk-in closets we had at our apartment.  Laundry never gets put away simply because we don't have a place for it.  We plan to paint the closet and get a carpet remnant for the floor.  Right now it's bare wood, not finished and full of boxes.  It will be a big project but will be so nice when we are done.  When we moved in, I over-bought on paint... by a lot.  We will use that paint so we're saving an expense there.  I'm hoping we can get a cheap carpet remnant.  The space is not very big.  If not, Dollar General it is for a cheap rug.  Our second upcoming project correlates with the storage closet project.  I need to go through my clothes yet again.  (I've actually already started this.)  I still have maternity clothes floating about.  I also have clothes that are too big for me right now which need to be put into storage.  The last project is organizing our office closet.  Right now it holds a mismash of things: yarn, fabric, diapers, clothes and who knows what else.  I would like to get the closet organized so we can actually find things in there.  The fabric will be moved to the basement.  I had dreams of learning to sew and quilt and making fabulous items for our house.  Right now we are just too busy for me to be able to focus on that.  It will happen someday but now is not the time.  I'm using the yarn to make dish cloths as Christmas gifts for the daycare ladies.  The clothes will be moved upstairs to their permanent home after the clothes closet is complete.

There you have it!  Operation Declutter is in the works and it feels great.

Dear Spiders, I Hate You

Two weeks ago a spider bit my eyelid.  (Yes, you read that right.  It bit my eyelid.)  It also bit my right wrist.  This year the spiders have been particularly venomous.  Each time I've been bitten, the bite has swollen instantly and is a painful unbearable itch.  I woke up at some point in the night and my right eyelid was sore.  I decided to just go back to sleep thinking it was a tired muscle and the rest would help.  At 5 that morning, Katherine woke up to be fed.  My eyelid felt thick when I opened my eyes so I went to the bathroom to check it out.  My eye was starting to swell.  Before I went to work, I called for a doctor's appointment.  I left a message about my eye swelling and was called back within a minute.  (I'm not exaggerating.  It really was that quick.)  By 10 o'clock, my lower eye lid was starting to swell.  My appointment was at 10:45.  I told my boss I wasn't coming back after my appointment and clocked out.  Steve picked me up and drove me to my doctor.  Thank God he had the day off.  I could barely open my eye when I got to the doctor's office.  "You look awful!" my doctor exclaimed when she walked in the room.  "I feel awful" was my response.  There was no beating around the bush.  I did look and feel awful.  After explaining to the doctor that this swelling was acting similar to the spider bites I had earlier in the summer, she diagnosed it as an allergic reaction to the bite.  When I went in there, I wasn't sure what it was because my eye wasn't itchy the way the previous spider bites had been.  "Are you a spider lover?" was her next question.  Apparently there's people who don't want to kill spiders because they eat other insects.  That is so not me.  "No.  I'm actually afraid of them," I answered.  I think my doctor was relieved she wasn't going to have to convince me that spiders are bad and to try to rid my house of them.  She gave me a prescription for predezone and recommended OTC Benedryl.  A bug bomb was her final suggestion after Steve and I stated that we had been trying all summer to get rid of the spiders.  And we have been.  We've scrubbed the floors, complete with vacuuming and moving furniture.  We've put out sticky traps (and haven't caught anything).  Steve sprayed the perimeter of our house earlier in the summer after removing all weeds.  He also sprayed the perimeter of our bedroom Thursday morning.  We bug bombed the house Sunday which was tons of fun.  We had to be out of the house for 4 hours and we had to take The Fuzz with us.  We wanted to go to a park but it was raining.  We were in the car for pretty much the whole time with a baby and a freaked out cat (in his carrier).  It was loads of fun.  We have finally caught up on all of the laundry this little adventure produced.  (When we set off the bug bomb, we had to cover our hardwood floors.  This used every blanket, towel and sheet we have.)  Here are some pictures from our adventure.

This was Thursday after my doctor's appointment.

This was Friday morning after 8 hours of medicine.

This was The Fuzz in the car Sunday.  He was a little freaked.

Best Friends

It's true.  Katherine and The Fuzz are best friends.  The Fuzz is extremely protective of Katherine and has been since before she was born.  He would lay on my belly and purr while I was pregnant.  But when my pregnancy started to get complicated, he wouldn't come near me.  He knew something was wrong before we did.  The Fuzz checks on her when new people come to the house.  My mom and grandma came for a visit awhile back.  Both sat on the couch while Katherine sat on the floor.  The Fuzz who is normally nervous in social situations made a point to walk over and sniff Katherine in their presence.  He didn't just walk over; he walked between Katherine and couch effectively putting himself between her and danger until he decided Mom and Grandma were not a threat.  Last night Katherine had a stomach bug and was throwing up.  In between throwing up, she sat on the floor with Steve and The Fuzz came over to sniff her.  He also came into whichever room she was in while she was throwing up.  He looked at us with big concerned cat eyes, waiting for reassurance that she was ok.  Katherine adores The Fuzz.  She smiles, giggles and screeches in delight at him.  She reaches out and smacks him or grabs his fur.  (We're teaching her how to pet him appropriately.)  To his credit, he hasn't bitten her even when she grabs a hunk of fur.  I credit part of this relationship to nature and another part to Steve and me.  When Katherine was very little, we would frequently take her over to The Fuzz and let him smell her.  This let him know she wasn't a threat.  When we brought her home for the hospital, The Fuzz came over and smelled her head.  It was adorable and the prefect start to their friendship.

Thankful...

I've been reflecting on my blessings a lot lately.  I have a lot to be thankful for.  Here are a few in no particular order:

• Katherine
• Steve
• my house
• The Fuzz
• modern medicine
• c-sections
• Katherine's medical team including Dr. Rundquist, Child Health Specialty Clinics, her Early Access service coordinator
• my church
• Steve's church
• my and Steve's extended families
• our friends
• books
• magazines
• Katherine's premature birth because we have learned so much about how fragile life is and baby development 
• babies develop the suck-swallow-breathe reflex at 36 gestational weeks just to name one fact we've learned
• St. Luke's NICU 
• even the mean NICU doctor because she taught me that I will stand up for what I believe is right for Katherine even if trained professionals don't agree with my point of view
• my lactation consultants, Nancy and Dena
• without Nancy's support I wouldn't have a successful breastfeeding relationship with Katherine
• without Dena's breastfeeding support group, I wouldn't meet other breastfeeding moms
• Medela
• Dr. Jones, my OB doctor
• sunshine
• green grass
• my job
• the lactation room at work
• silly comedies on TV
• my education starting with kindergarten and ending with my bachelor's degree.
• all of the conservation projects our grade school made me do because they made me care about the planet
• my life
• every day

Those are just a few of the many things I'm thankful for.